OCTOBER 6 — All the silly things children do; playing with fire, running with scissors, swimming immediately after eating.
It is difficult to explain why they do these things. Why they push boundaries, test the rules and take unnecessary risks — but they do.
When I was a child — now a long time ago — I followed my older (and considerably more garang sibling) on absurd adventures through our neighbourhood.
We climbed through holes in fences, explored longkangs and spoke to strangers. Looking back, some of our decisions were plain stupid but I am glad we did it (I am also glad nothing actually bad happened!) because it sparked so much.
Figuring out where to go and what to do forced us to be creative. It enabled us to imagine worlds that were not there because the alternative was only reality.
We had less entertainment — more than the previous generation I am sure — but far less than kids these days.
In a world of YouTube and Facebook, why would a child do anything other than endlessly scroll and click?
This is why I was surprised by the recent headline of a group of kids stopped by the police while attempting to leap between two buildings.
What were they doing or not doing that they found the time to put down their phones and engage in such rash stupidity?
The headline read: Police called on boys jumping over two-storey building in Serangoon North.
In fact they were jumping from one building to the other over a gap a few feet wide.
The story made me a little sad. I understand the risks involved in these "adventures" and I appreciate that the person who called the police wanted nothing more than to protect silly children from doing silly things but it made me sad to think of these boys getting into serious trouble for doing nothing more than being young.
To be honest, I remember doing exactly the same thing myself — leaping between low buildings on HDB estates (mainly multi-storey car-parks).
It was risky, I guess, but also fun. I guess it's a difficult balance to strike and one that more and more people are discussing now — how much do we protect the next generation before we wind up mollycoddling them until they can no longer take risks.
It is also a sign of my age that I am even expressing these thoughts because I remember my parents saying similar things — describing the silly things they did (multiple boys on a single motorbike, for example) — and knowing that some of those things were more dangerous than character building.
But some of it was genuinely character building.
Sometimes we learn only after we have skinned our knees or broken our noses. Sometimes the high-risk play is good for our tenacity.
For a city like Singapore that is wealthy and well-managed, finding that balance between protecting our children (even from themselves) and preparing our children for the world will only get increasingly harder.
How do we raise well-adjusted, bold and bright children without unnecessary injury and harm?
Fortunately, the news article gave me hope for an answer. The police were called but as soon as they arrived, the boys jetted off — both richer for the experience and safer for having been stopped.
Children need to do silly things; we just need to be sure silly isn’t life threatening.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
