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Eleven ways to let teenagers take healthy, positive risks this summer

From encouraging them to use public transport to sending them on errands, here is what experts advise

If they are not in the habit of going to shops and supermarkets on their own, maybe now is the time to send them on errands. Photograph: Getty Images

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Sheila Wayman
Tue Jun 4 2024 - 05:31

Whatever age your child is, “let them do something [today] that they were not able to do yesterday”, says Dr Mary O’Kane, a lecturer in psychology and education. We should be encouraging teenagers to take small, healthy, positive risks every day.

Summer of Family: This summer, parents are looking for tips, advice and information on how to help their children thrive during the holiday months. You can read all about it at irishtimes.com/health/your-family

What those risks might look like will depend on the level of maturity, personality and circumstances. Parents should be the best judge of that.

[ ‘How do we grow if we don’t take chances?’: Letting children take risks is terrifying but beneficial ]

But here are a few suggestions:

  1. Give younger teens at least brief tastes of being home alone. Albeit bearing in mind that the official advice from Tusla, the child and family agency, is that children under the age of 14 should not be left home alone “for more than a very short time”, while teenagers over the age of 16 “can be left home alone”.
  2. If they are not in the habit of going to shops and supermarkets on their own, maybe now is the time to send them on errands.
  3. Allow them to go out and meet friends, relaxing rules around time limits, checking in, curfews etc, as they earn your trust.
  4. Don’t constantly track their phone, says psychotherapist Stella O’Malley, as it is very liberating for them to feel a parent does not know where they are. That might sound like irresponsible parenting to you, but she argues that if teenagers have never experienced being free of virtual monitoring until the age of 18, it can be overwhelming for them when they go off to college.
  5. Let them use public transport where available, rather than driving them everywhere.
  6. Guide them towards adventure sports and other challenging activities, although if they seem to be getting bored of those, it may be because they are only “pseudo risky”, says O’Malley.
  7. Join them in an activity, such as kayaking, rock-climbing or high ropes and zip-lining, that might terrify you. Allowing them to see your fear but doing it anyway, perhaps with their encouragement, gives them inspiring insight into handling emotions.
  8. Facilitate trips for tweens to some of the best adventure playgrounds in your region and let them at it.
  9. You don’t have to go outdoors for summer challenges. A drama camp, for instance, pushes many a teenager out of their comfort zone, says psychologist Dr Malie Coyne, and provides the risk of failure through the staging of a show.
  10. It is important they are diverted from taking a summer-long retreat into their smartphones and other devices. You might want to agree on no-phone periods of the day and rethink the location of TV monitors and other gaming equipment in your house, to make it less comfortable for them to use on a summer’s day.
  11. When out and about as a family, encourage them to interact independently with “strangers”, be they waiters, transport or retail staff, tourist attraction guides or ticket sellers etc, rather than doing it all on their behalf.
ParentingParentsSummer of Family