What is your first job as a parent? Keeping your child safe is likely top of mind for many, since a level of physical and emotional safety is one of the foundational needs of all children. While safety may be a primary concern in both our households and at our school, there is likely a wide variety in the definition of an optimal level of safety. Should your child avoid all injury, emotional distress, and risk? How much safety is too much, and when may it impede your child’s ability to problem solve and gain confidence in their ability to adapt and deal with life’s challenges?
The book Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner explores this very question. The family in the story has significant wealth, gained through their business making polystyrene molds to protect items during shipping. Just as their molds protect televisions or other items during shipping, the family hopes their wealth can protect their children from the challenges they and their ancestors faced. As a Jewish family, they have a history of Holocaust trauma, making their quest for safety all the more visceral.
But life inevitably offers challenges that can’t be avoided, whether death or illness or violence— or the more mundane challenges of youth. In the story, some of life’s difficulties come not despite the family’s wealth, but because of it. The father in the story is kidnapped for ransom money in the first pages of the book, and this event shapes all aspects of the characters’ lives as they come to terms with the fact that one can’t be protected from all danger.
The book left me thinking about my own children, now in the struggles of their 20’s as they define careers and deepen romantic relationships. The story reminded me to embrace the times when they struggle and feel the world’s challenges, knowing it is strengthening their skills and capacities for life’s challenges.
This mindset can be more challenging with young children, since we work to keep infants from almost all challenges, and slowly allow for more difficulty as children age. While part of me would love to wrap each DCD student up in a protective layer that is insulated from the world’s difficulties, I know they will be more competent adults— and happier— because of the ordinary challenges they face to both their emotional and physical safety. Significant research shows that risky play, defined by thrilling and exciting forms of free play that involve uncertainty of outcome and a possibility of physical injury, develops executive function skills, confidence, and the ability to assess risk. The research distinguishes between risk and hazard, and we as parents and educators are always working to find this line without erring too far on the side of safety.
So the next time the science test doesn’t go as planned, or “there was nothing to eat at lunch,” or the sleepover party doesn’t include your child, think of those polystyrene molds that protect, but also don’t allow the television wrapped inside of it to fully function or shine. Our children will be stronger for life’s challenges, especially when they feel our love and support as they figure out how to thrive in our imperfect world.
