Emotional Risks

I love the way that a simple comment from someone can set you thinking about something in an entirely new way. In a discussion at Conference, I found myself talking with a group about children’s safety and about our role in attending to children’s physical and EMOTIONAL safety.

We’ve talked a lot about children taking physical risks and the learning potential of these experiences. Within our social world and relationships we take risks too. Encountering risk is not always about stretching our physical limits. When children are taking risks with their social development there will be plenty of times when things don’t go quite as they planned. Perhaps as they attempt to resolve a conflict themselves or try a new way of approaching a group of children they wish to join there may be times that end in arguments, feeling left out, hurt, tantrums or simply not getting what they want.

From the outside things like this might look disruptive, unfair or even like misbehaviour, but if we think ahead to what we really want for our OSCAR children, we want them to be confident to manage themselves in whatever situation they find themselves in.

“Risk” is when the outcomes are not entirely predictable, and we learn to predict the outcomes with experience and understanding. Like most things in our life we learn from trying new things, from watching and listening, from reflecting on what worked and what didn’t and from “getting back on the horse” and trying again.

Odette