Why don't children realize the main dangers, even though the costs are so high? How can they be taught to calculate risks? How to deal with teenagers looking for trouble? Here are ways to build your kids decision-making competence.
We face risks from the day we are born. From our first steps, our parents became fans around us so that our heads would not hit the edge of the coffee table, we would not fall down the stairs, we would not be hit by a vehicle, we would not get a toy piece in our throat and similar things would happen to us. With adolescence, our parents also become alert to
- Alcohol
- Drugs
- Violence
- Mental health risks.
But ultimately, we all need to be able to assess the risks ourselves so that we can navigate the world safely without the guidance of our parents or guardians. Without these skills, our health, our wallet, and our wallets may suffer, and we may even rot in prison.
So, how do we teach our children about risks? Science writer David Robson offers some tips in his article for BBC Future.
Each developmental stage needs a different approach. However, with the right guidance, it is possible to teach children and young people to develop high “decision-making competence”, with enormous consequences for the rest of their lives.
Children learn by experience
Babies are born with surprisingly little innate knowledge of even the most basic dangers. As many parents will know by horrific experience, babies learning to crawl try to push themselves off the edge of the bed or high chair without a moment's hesitation.
Research shows that fear of heights is just experience, and children learn to pay more attention to their surroundings over time. After just a few weeks of independent movement, babies can begin to show signs of anxiety, such as a rapid heartbeat, when they see a hard fall from a glass floor, for example.
Children who are all “social sponges” often learn to recognize danger indirectly by noting the facial expressions and body language of others. However, easily recognizing a danger is often not enough to keep a child safe. Because their developing brains may not be fast enough to react to the problem they are facing.
Research shows that we don't learn to fully integrate our senses, such as sight and hearing, until we are 10 years old. This makes it difficult to detect, for example, the approaching speed of a car. In addition, children are easily distracted because their brains are developing. This means they can forget about potential danger.
When it comes to things like road safety, parents are often advised to establish routines like always looking left and right a few times or waiting for the green light to come on before crossing the street.
Repeated practice makes these behaviors become habits so that the child eventually performs them without the need for constant reminders.
Are teenagers really looking for 'trouble'?
Guiding teenagers through adolescence comes with its own challenges. The adolescent brain is known to increase sensitivity to dopamine, a pleasure-related neurotransmitter, and undergo major structural changes. This was once thought to make adolescents much more impulsive than younger children as they actively seek out risky situations that would inject them with more dopamine.
But lab experiments that tried to examine the cognitive processes involved in risk assessment revealed that this was a gross injustice to young people.
Contrary to the notion that adolescents inevitably take risks, such research shows that teenagers are more cautious than their younger peers. “When we give adolescents the opportunity to avoid risk-taking, they actually choose the safe option more often than children,” says Associate Professor Ivy Defoe of the Department of Child Development and Education at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, who recently published a scientific study on adolescent risk-taking.
In his research, Defoe concludes that young people are not necessarily ready to rebel. But this is often linked to the situations they find themselves in. As teens gain independence away from their parents' watchful eyes, they have more opportunities for impulsiveness.
How to achieve decision-making competence?
When trying to help an adolescent navigate his or her newfound freedom, it is worth remembering that there are significant differences in risk assessment among individuals of all ages. For this reason, adolescents are generally not tempted by danger, but a significant number of them can often override their guard.
In many cases this can be due to poor reasoning skills. To investigate this, psychologists developed a comprehensive "decision-making competence" test. This test contains questions that measure the adolescent's ability to follow basic logical rules while weighing the pros and cons of different options.
For example, participants are asked to estimate their chances of dying in the next year or the next 10 years.
Logically, the probability given for the first question should be less than the second because the risk of dying builds up over time, but not everyone's answer reflects that. This is known as the “framing bias”. If this kind of inconsistency is shown in the answers, it is indicates that you are not accustomed to critically evaluating statistical information and focusing on specific details of what is presented.
Someone who was once irrationally confident in their knowledge would be humiliated compared to someone who noticed its effects. This is important because it is our inability to judge our own abilities that often puts us in the most dangerous situations.
All of these questions may sound quite academic. But people's performance on the decision-making proficiency scale has "ecological validity" in psychological jargon.
For example, when the decision-making proficiency test is administered to young people, low scorers are more likely to use drugs than others and are more likely to engage in criminal behavior such as regularly breaking rules at school.
Meanwhile, when administered to adults, the test seems to predict everything from missing a flight to contracting an STD or filing for bankruptcy. More importantly, there is no connection between decision-making competencies and intelligence levels. Decision-making competence is not only a measure of raw brain power, but also how well one can assess situations.
How do you teach thinking?
Research shows that parents and teachers may need a wise approach to guiding children and adolescents about life's risks. Rather than setting strict rules that eliminate the child's exposure to risk, it may be more beneficial in the long run to help them develop their decision-making and thinking skills.
Perhaps most important is the promotion of self-control and emotional regulation. Because many dangers are the result of impulsiveness. Practices like mindfulness can be helpful, as can metacognitive practices like teaching children to imagine the consequences of their actions.
In this way, parents can encourage the use of critical thinking strategies, such as looking for evidence that contradicts their assumptions. Schools, Colleges and Universities can also help children and young people learn to make better decisions.
In a case involving 10th graders in Oregon, USA, history teachers and students examined historical events in terms of decisions faced by historical figures. For example, they took on the role of steelworkers deciding whether to strike for higher wages. The study showed that the approach improved students' academic performance as well as their scores on the decision-making proficiency test.
The aim is to use every possible means to get children and adolescents to start thinking more analytically about risk and danger.
When they reach adulthood, they must be ready to deal with life's dangers more rationally, and eventually use these skills to protect their own children as well.
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