Is it time to step out of the ‘safe space’?

  I often wonder what the heck am I doing to my kids. Are we playing it to safe, or not safe enough? The systems we have created simply bow to themselves, with so much emphasis put on education and school that our kids feel like we have squeezed them into a tube that over a number of years they are slowly pushed through before they come out the other side suposidely ready to be contributors to society. I certainly don’t want to diminish the incredible work done by educated humanitarians around the world, but there is so much pressure on our young kids to get an education, to excel to succeed that play and fun loving living is something we no longer have time for. I think our educational institutions are recognising this but like any kind of institution, change takes seemingly forever to filter through the ranks of structure and tradition. 

I loved watching those ‘crazy’ parents on the ‘Sunday night‘ television program, abseiling, hiking and pushing the adventure boundaries with their kids…. I say, Awesome!!!! Sean and I had to ask ourselves before we strapped our 9 and 10 year old to a three wheeled motor trike and road them 22,000 kilometres around the coast of Australia… ‘Are we being responsible, is this safe??’ …. We decided YES, after all putting our kids in the car and driving them to school is a little risky too!  

The Big Things We need to be seeing beyond the realms of possibility and if we are to raise strong, courageous, responsible and limitless young adults, then SAFE is probably not the prescription we need to be filling. 
I haven’t by any stretch of the imagination mastered any of this, and now I’m navigating a world filled with young men who need to know they are loved, that they matter and that they have inside them possibilities beyond their wildest dreams…. That if they are to become contributors and earth-scape changers then they must step out of the normal boundarie, go with their hearts and have No regrets! 
“The way forward from here is not the road but rather the field, it’s the way where there is no trail, no track, no footsteps. If we are to encourage the next generation to be fearless in their pursuit of those things that will open new doors and forge new territories then we must no longer live in the safe place but in the place of new frontiers of new ways and of embracing the mysteries found in the unknown” – Kylie Henderson