Health and Safety

 

I once saw a friend's child, who had come round to play with our 3-year-old, go running across the lawn and tumble face-first on the lawn, getting a bit grassy. Her mother ran across to her and said 'Oh, my poor darling, are you OK?' (or words to that effect). And then the 3-year-old started crying, which as far as I can see she had not intended to do previously. I often think about this incident as it seems symbolic of other ways that we can cause harm by intending help. 

I often think about this, and whether the 'concern' or 'care' or 'wanting to keep safe' from the parent's side had actually made the child more upset, or feeling that she should be upset. And therefore made it more likely that the next time she fell she would start crying straight away. And it was only a lawn; there were no cuts or bruises, just a bump and a bit of a surprise. 

So to generalise this point absurdly widely (and why not), how much of what we do to protect people, and especially but not exclusively our children, actually has an unintended negative effect by making them less able to cope with life, and hazards and anything which is negative but a part of life?

Now you can start looking at examples of this by looking simply at physiological matters rather than psychological ones. There is a widely-held theory that some of the rise in the incidence of allergies in Western countries is because there is a reduced exposure to microbes in childhood. So keeping things cleaner can make your later health worse rather than better. This hypothesis is called the 'Hygiene hypothesis' and seems to be supported by studies, for example ones that look at allergy by position in the family. So children who have older siblings are more likely to have microbe exposure and may also be correspondingly less susceptible to allergy problems later. 

The take-away is that by trying to make things cleaner and 'more sterile' we could unwittingly give our children other conditions to worry about. By trying to help, we end up harming. 

You can extend the examples into the way that we treat people's emotional problems (whether they are children or adults) and whether this makes later emotional problems better or worse. Maybe we should avoid saying 'emotional problems'. Is it a problem that you feel unhappy because you have failed your exams, or is it a normal response to a life event? How should you help a child in this situation? Should you say 'let's go out to Nandos and forget about this, to cheer you up' or should you say 'How do you feel about these results? What do you think is the best thing to do next?'

And similarly, if a child of yours comes across other children that they really don't like, or if they come across ideas that they disagree with, should you try to protect them from these elements of life? If they view disagreement as something that causes them 'emotional harm', then how will they navigate life? Will they only ever interact with people who agree with them?

The thing that links all of these ways that adults (usually) try to protect their children (usually) is that they all come from a position of sincerely wanting to help. You do not use Dettox on all the surfaces in your kitchen for no reason. You believe that microbes are harmful and want to do everything you can to keep them from your child. You do not rush across to help a tumbled child out of a negative instinct. You think that they need your help because they are hurt. And if your child is upset by something, then one reaction is to try to make that something go away, to try to 'solve' the problem. 

But if you stop for a moment, there are other ways to approach each situation: Perhaps the Dettox ad was not telling you what was medically accurate, and maybe some bugs are good. Perhaps that rush to help is only needed if the child starts crying straight away. And if your child is upset by something that is common in the world (such as unpleasant people) then maybe your help is by making them better able to deal with the world rather than trying to make the world go away.