Let Them Climb the Trees

As a facilitator, I hear this question all the time when we take homeschoolers out into the world: “What if someone gets hurt?” It comes up whenever kids start running, climbing, tinkering with tools, riding something a little too fast, or testing their strength. Adults hiss warnings: Don’t run. Don’t climb. Don’t touch that. And underneath it all is the fear: someone might get hurt.

And yes—someone will. That’s part of life. But here’s what I’ve noticed: in the last year, I only saw two kids with broken bones. Two. Compare that with the hundreds of children I see every week who are denied the chance to test their limits, assess their own risks, and discover their true capacity. Broken bones aren’t the real epidemic. Anxiety is. When kids are prevented from taking risks, they don’t learn how to evaluate danger for themselves. They grow up unprepared, without the inner compass that says: I can do this, or That’s too much for me right now.

At some point our learning center was located near a public park with a creek and beautiful redwood trees. The kids loved exploring it, and of course part of exploration was climbing those trees. After a month or two, the people who maintained the park cut down the lower branches so the kids couldn’t climb anymore. And here comes the word so popular in America: liability. The threat of being sued had stripped away the sense of trust and adventure from a public space. Now, children were allowed only on the playgrounds carefully designed with cushiony floors and rounded edges, spaces so controlled that risk—and therefore real discovery—had been engineered out of them.

This is what we face again and again: the fear of injury replacing the opportunity for growth. There’s a simple framework I use when watching children explore: how severe could the consequence be, and how likely is it to happen? If the consequence is severe and very likely, that’s when I step in and set a boundary. But notice what’s not part of this assessment: my personal anxiety, my imagination of what might happen, my nervous system’s craving for control. And that’s the harder part of parenting and facilitating—learning to sit with our own discomfort as kids encounter the world.

We live in what some call an “anxious generation.” Devices have become the safe, predictable alternative. When a child is on a tablet, you know exactly where they are, what they’re doing, and that they’re not climbing a tree or balancing on a ledge. Predictability calms our nervous system, even as it deprives children of the unpredictable, chaotic, real experiences that grow resilience. The same craving for predictability shows up in school promises: follow the path, do the assignments, get into college, get a job. Parents cling to this script because the world outside feels chaotic enough. Predictability feels like safety. But life has never been predictable. And no amount of control will keep our children from getting hurt.

When I gave birth to my second son, I remember the exact moment the cord was cut. My thought was: That’s it. He is a separate human, with his own path. He will get hurt. And my work now is learning to deal with my emotions about it, to let go of control, and to trust. That moment set me on a deeper journey with meditation. I had learned Transcendental Meditation early in life, but what helped me as a parent was Taoist meditation—what I call being peaceful in motion. Unlike practices that require a quiet room and separate time, Taoist meditation invited me to stay aware of my body and mind as life was happening. To find calmness in the movement, even as children ran, cried, tested limits, and yes—sometimes got hurt.

For me, this has become the key to parenting, facilitating, and really all of life. Children don’t just need safe spaces. They need courageous adults who can regulate themselves enough to let kids take risks, explore, and live in the unpredictable world. Instead of asking “What if someone gets hurt?” perhaps we should be asking: what if no one ever learns how to fall, what if no one discovers their true strength, what if the cost of protecting children from pain is raising a generation unprepared for life? Because the truth is: someone will get hurt. And that’s not the end of the story—it’s where the learning begins.