Trusting Children with Risk Is Not Recklessness

Trusting Children with Risk Is Not Recklessness

by Rebecca Fox

I trust children with risk. Not because I underestimate danger, but because I understand what’s at stake when we take all the danger away.

Yes, I keep an eye on branches slick with snow. Yes, I stand nearby when the ice makes footing uncertain. Yes, I know that a slip could lead to a bruise—or worse. And still, I trust them.

Because the greater danger—the one we rarely name—is what happens when we don’t.

Children climbing in winter are not reckless. They are alive to the world. They are assessing, adapting, recalibrating every second. They are learning the texture of bark through gloves, the give of a frozen branch beneath their weight, the edge of their own capability.

My job is not to eliminate every risk. My job is to create a context in which real challenge is possible and real support is present. I observe. I prepare. I communicate. And then I step back.

Because trust is not something you give once children prove they can handle it. Trust is what allows them to become capable.

There are those who will say this kind of freedom is dangerous. That it’s our job to protect them from all harm. But that definition of protection—constant hovering, artificial safety, full control—displaces a child’s own judgment. It replaces courage with compliance. Awareness with anxiety.

There is a difference between harm and hardship. A difference between danger and challenge. Children need the latter to grow.

What I’ve seen is this: when children are given freedom to take real risks, they also develop the responsibility to manage them. They pause. They help each other. They come down when it’s too much. And when they don’t, I’m there—ready to respond, not control.

Freedom and responsibility are not separate skills. They are one living system.

I trust children with risk because I trust them as whole people. Because I want them to know their strength. Because I believe fear is not the same as safety. And because a child who never gets to climb into the treetops in winter may never know the full height of her own power.