In praise of car seats and helmets (but not kneepads)

Over the past few years, I have become a fan of Jonathan Haidt’s books. I have read The Happiness Hypothesis and The Righteous Mind (twice) and they have helped me understand myself and others better. Last night I finished reading The Coddling of the American Mind which he co-wrote with Greg Lukianoff.

This book has a lot of information which is pertinent for folks raising children as well as those of us advising folks who are and much of it resonates with me. But I want to focus here on what they refer to as “safetyism.” That is, the normal impulse to try and protect our kids, but taken to extremes. They point out that children need to have free, unsupervised play, take risks, and to experience disappointment, injury, losing, conflicts, etc. in order to be able to navigate those things as they get older. If we always rush to protect them, they will never develop the skills needed to navigate the world as adults. Children who never experience adversity lack resilience and are prone to anxiety when faced with the real world.

Some people in my generation are fond of saying things like “We never used seat belts and bike helmets and we survived.” That is not what Haidt and Lukianoff are saying. The reason some of us can make statements like that is that the folks who didn’t survive aren’t around to disagree. The book points out that “from 1960 to 1990, there was a 48% reduction in deaths from unintended injuries and accidents among kids between five and fourteen years of age, and a 57% drop in deaths of younger kids (ages one to four)” due to more safety measures for children. We obviously want fewer children to die so they are not advocating going back to no seat belts, car seats, or bike helmets.

Some risk is good and builds resilience but too much can be dangerous. So how do we navigate this as parents, grandparents, teachers, pediatricians, lawmakers, etc.? Everyone has different tolerance of risk and some people’s environments are more risky than others.

One way I approach this with my patients is to say something like this when I recommend helmets for bicycles, skateboards, etc.: “If you fall off your bike and break your arm, it will hurt but it will heal up and you will be OK. But if you fall and hit your head and damage your brain, it could cause trouble the rest of your life because brains don’t heal very well.”

I think a healthy childhood includes bruised shins, bike helmets, scraped knees, seat belts, and the occasional minor fracture.

This is how I make sense of it but I welcome other perspectives.