Abstract
This presentation describes parents' risk perceptions regarding children's engagement in everyday occupations and how these influence the decisions they make to offer children age-appropriate opportunities for risk taking. It offers a qualitative analysis of stories parents shared that illustrate specific instances when children's engagement in age-appropriate risk taking resulted in children developing specific abilities, experiencing positive emotions, and gaining life skills.
Primary Author and Speaker: Anita Niehues
Contributing Authors: Anita Bundy
Risk, often viewed as danger or threat, can be reframed to also include positive understandings such as uncertainty, opportunity, and challenge (Niehues, Bundy, Broom, and Tranter, 2013). Parents face risks and uncertainties as they make decisions both for and with their children. While parents feel they must protect children from harm, they must also offer them occupations that allow them to experience uncertainty and challenge to help them develop confidence in their own decision making and life skills. This presentation shares findings of a qualitative study of parents’ perceptions of risk and the influence on their children’s access to age-appropriate risk taking opportunities such as those available in . It includes excerpts from parents’ narratives that illustrate specific instances when children’s risk taking resulted in outcomes that contributed to parents’ desires for their children such as health, happiness and well-being, and resilience. We used a narrative approach to this qualitative study. Participants represented a sample of convenience drawn from a larger study conducted in Sydney, Australia. Thirty-seven parents, aged 28-55 years, completed a card sort of attributes they most desired for their children (i.e. happiness, resilience) followed by in-depth, semi-structured interviews. Parents were asked to reflect on their perceptions of risk and the role it might play in their decisions about occupations they encouraged for their children. Parents formed two groups; one (n=18) comprised parents who had encountered significant risk in their lives; the second (n=19) had lived relatively risk-free lives. All parents focused on one of their children, aged 5-17 years, as they engaged in the interviews. Parents agreed for interviews to be transcribed to create textual data for analysis. Pseudonyms were used to maintain confidentiality. Using a theoretical framework based on happiness and well-being, risky play (Sandseter, 2009) and resilience, we took a hermeneutic interpretive approach to data analysis drawing on an adaptation of Charmaz 's (1990) approach to social analysis to develop an interpretation that offers the reader an opportunity to "see a new world or see our familiar world in a new way" (Packer 2011, p. 101). Constant comparative analysis enabled us to identify emergent themes, patterns, and complexities within the stories participants told. Our analysis resulted in the construction of four major themes: nothing to fear but fear itself; resilience in the face of fear; risk as opportunity; and everyday risk taking: the benefits. Many parents agreed that risk is part of life and said they benefited from the opportunity to consider how risk, and their perceptions of risk impact the choices they make together with their children about everyday occupations. While we recognize that this study is based on a small sample of parents and that we cannot generalize the results to large populations of people across countries, we offer the stories of these parents as means for parents and others engaged in raising and teaching children to reflect on the outcomes, benefits as well as costs, of supporting children to engage in healthy, age-appropriate risk taking to create long-term benefits adults desire for them: health, happiness and well-being, and resilience.
Charmaz, K. (1990). ‘Discovering’ chronic illness: Using grounded theory. Social Science & Medicine, 30(11), 1161–1172. doi:10.1016/0277-9536(9090256-R).
Niehues, A., Bundy, A., Broom, A., & Tranter, P. (2013). Everyday uncertainties: Reframing adults’ perceptions of risk in children’s outdoor free play. Journal of Adventure Education & Outdoor Learning, 13(3), 223-237. doi:10.1080/14729679.2013.798588
Packer, M. (2011). The science of qualitative research. New York: Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/9781108264907.
Sandseter, E.B.H.(2009).Characteristics of risky play. Journal of Adventure Education and Outdoor Learning, 9(1), 3-21.doi:10.1080/14729670802702762.