I love this post from Let Grow. It’s calling out how pointless and even damaging it is to just say “Be careful!” to your kids all the time. It’s a really interesting read.
👉 Let’s Stop Telling Our Kids to Be Careful All the Time
Of course we all want our kids to be safe. But the point here is that we should teach them specifically how to identify and deal with risk instead of a hand waving “Be careful!”, which only indices fear and is mainly meant to make the parents feel better.
As parents, we should be guiding our kids through risk. Our job is to make them strong, independent, smart people. That means helping our kids recognize, evaluate, and manage different kinds of risk. 💪🏻 How about empowering them by asking them, “What’s your exit strategy?” instead of vaguely scaring them with “Be careful!”.
Using phrases that empower our confident kids to manage risk on their own not only gives them important information about their environment, but it also teaches them that they’re capable of doing it.
They even have a poster of things to say instead of “Be careful!”.
patmcg.com 