Should I let my child take more risks?

'Yeh na karo, chot lag jaey gi' is one phrase that we have all heard our mothers yell over and over again. However, The Guardian states that unsupervised children have better self-regulation and psychological health.

Strangely enough, research indicates that children need 'risky play' which includes climbing and jumping from a height, unsupervised play where a child could get lost, cycling fast down a hill, playing with knives, or playing near water or cliffs.

PHOTO: BABBLE

You might be freaking out just at the thought of this, but children who do these things improve their reaction time in detecting risk which in turn increases their self-esteem.

An English study found that, while 86 per cent of children between the ages of seven and 11 went to school without an adult in the 1970s, this fell to 25 per cent in 2010.

"Never put your kid in a car – it’s the most common place for a child to die,” said Dr Mark Tremblay director of Healthy Active Living and Obesity at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario.

PHOTO: VOSIZNEIAS

He thinks that parents are more fixated about extraordinarily rare events and should instead worry about problems 'under one's nose'.

While we warn our children about the dangers of talking to strangers, a Canadian study proved that the odds of abduction by a total stranger are one in 14 million. Would you believe that the risk of your child encountering a stranger is 500 times more likely in your own home?

PHOTO: VSOCIO

“Parents have to have a balanced view of this. Their child at home is 500 times more likely to meet a stranger – the internet has many cyberbullies. Children won’t develop resilience without getting a little hurt and getting back up again," he reasoned.

Evidence suggests that a child is better able to evaluate risks in play and self regulate himself when faced with a danger than one who leads a sedentary life. The latter may be safe from a broken arm but could fall victim to obesity and chronic disease later in life.

Apparently there’s even a term for overprotected kids: risk deficit disorder. Yikes.