Urban Pretzel Sequence by JGord on Newschoolers.com
“Mommy, I learned how to do a switch 720 pretzel today on an Urban,” Brevitt said to me as I drove him home from a day of training with the Aspen Valley Ski Club in the half-pipe. He looked over at me, as he often does, to see if my face registered any recognition. “I sound like I’m speaking Gibberish, don’t I?” He asked with a smile. “Walk me through it,” I asked.
As he broke the trick down for me I thought of the wedding tribute I had watched on YouTube celebrating the marriage of Rory and the recently passed twenty-nine year old Canadian free skier, Sarah Burke. Quoted by ESPN as being, “A trailblazer for free style skiing,” Sarah was a four time Winter X Games Gold Medalist who pushed the X Games to include women’s skiing slope stye, which they added in 2009. She was a woman with a beautiful smile who the boys admired for her perseverance and devotion to the sport.
In the same two week span we lost three other skiers in Colorado. With temperatures ranging from freezing to balmy, and a few snowstorms tossed in, it’s not surprising. The snow conditions become unstable which is how we lost Keith Ames, killed after getting caught in an avalanche while skiing out of bounds on Burnt Mountain. But we can’t blame all of the accidents on the weather. Sarah was injured while training on a Superpipe and the other accidents also occurred from mishaps while skiing. Devastating reality checks reminding us that we are not invincible and that as much as we love to play hard outside, we must be aware of the risks involved.
When asked if it worries me that I have children who strive to reach higher heights in the terrain parks I say, “Hell Yeah it’s scary.” In fact, I am petrified that by living in the mountain town where the Winter X Games are hosted, extreme sports are beginning to be perceived as the norm. All Wade and I can do is to drill into the minds of our boys the importance of being focused, responsible, sensible, well rested and nourished and to place them in reputable clubs like AVSC to insure that they get professional coaches to drive the message home.
I have written before about how I would prevent the boys from playing football if I could but what about hip hop where they spin on their heads without fully grasping how to protect their necks? The matter of the fact is that they are going to test their limits and get hurt regardless of how much I worry. When I was waiting in the car for Brevitt yesterday I heard a loud crash and looked up to see him flat on his back in a yard sale in the parking lot. He had made it through a day of training in the half-pipe but couldn’t get to the car without falling. Just yesterday morning Axel bent down to kiss Muki and cracked his neck landing him in bed for two days with muscle spasms. Young boys are actively careless and as much as I would love to dress them in full length padding every day, it’s just not cool.
When we were in Telluride a friend of Brevitt’s broke his back in a competition. Before the accident he had begun to create a video that he finished while laid up in bed. It was a bit too bizarre for me and I asked Brevitt to interpret the message. “It’s about how you need to appreciate life,” he said. I asked him if that included taking risks and he answered yes.
Most studies I have read back this point by emphasizing that children, not just boys, need to take risks and explore their independence.
An article on ezinearticles.com explains that young men need to be challenged and they need male role models to help push them to their limits:
“They need someone encouraging them to do better, try harder and reach farther away. A good male role model can teach a boy that doing better is possible each time. It takes persistence and hard work. It also demands proper encouragement and a relationship full of trust and respect to achieve that.
A good role model will help a little boy learn something new each day, take appropriate risks and explore the unknown. The majority of moms feel more comfortable if their sons stick to familiar grounds. Boys, however, need to conquer the world and get into new adventures each day.”
An article on teachingexpertise.com describes why children need to experience risk and challenge:
Everyday life always involves a degree of risk and children need to learn how to cope with this. They need to understand that the world can be a dangerous place and that care needs to be taken when negotiating their way round it. Inevitably the most powerful learning comes from not understanding or misjudging the degree of risk. Similarly the toddler who ignores the warning, ‘Don’t touch, it’s hot’, and feels what ‘hot’ means, is not likely to make the same mistake again. Being told about possible dangers is not enough – children need to see or experience the consequences of not taking care.
If we observe young children, we can see that, from an early age, they are motivated to take risks – they want to learn to walk, climb, ride a tricycle – and are not put off by the inevitable spills and tumbles they experience as they are developing coordination and control. In early years settings children find their own, often quite ingenious, physical challenges and, in doing so, learn about their own strengths and limitations.
Children who are sheltered from risk and challenge when young will not be able to make judgments about their own capabilities and will not be well equipped to resist peer pressure in their later years. Jennie Lindon warns that: ‘Adults who analyse every situation in terms of what could go wrong, risk creating anxiety in some children and recklessness in others.’ (Lindon, 1999 p10). Children who learn in their early years to make their own reasoned decisions rather than simply doing what they are told to by others will be in a stronger position to resist the pressures they will inevitably face as they reach their teenage years. In contrast, overprotected children may well make reckless decisions which put them in physical or moral danger.
There is a danger that many adults, who are afraid that children might hurt themselves, simply remove objects and equipment rather than teach children how to use them safely. These adults need to get risk into perspective.
As Jennie Lindon points out: ‘…no environment will ever be 100% safe. Even well-supervised children manage to hurt themselves, often in unpredictable ways.’
Additionally, if the environment becomes unstimulating children will inevitably become bored and behaviour will deteriorate. In Learning Outdoors, Helen Bilton highlights that: ‘Without challenges and risks, children will find play areas uninteresting or use them in inappropriate ways, which become dangerous.’
Knowing all of this, I still will state that I am not an advocate for pushing limits to the extreme. There is plenty of adventure to be had without taking life threatening risks, but if the adventure that one seeks needs to be more in the wilds, off the beaten track, than there are precautions and safety measures that one must always take as revealed in interviews I have conducted with extreme athletes such as; meticulously scoping out the dangers, staying in cell range, wearing the proper equipment and knowing the terrain, for as exhilarating as it is to be out in nature, it will take you down when you least expect it to.
Please, always be careful and respectful.
Showering love and warmth to those families who have lost their loved ones, my heart is with you.
Excellent piece.
~H
Holly´s last [type] ..Colorado Avalanche Information Center Issues High Avalanche Danger Warnings!
Holly, I know this resonates with you after what you experienced with your son’s accident!!
It’s been in the high 70s here for weeks, hardly winter weather, but I followed the Sarah Burke story. You wrote an important post for everyone to remember.
Thank you Winston!