Many parents, including me, don’t want to put their kids in a situation where they might be hurt.  

Yet the goal of getting your newborn to adulthood isn’t just for them to survive, it’s for them to thrive. 

Part of this is helping your child handle risk confidently.

This is why you need to let your children fall.  

This doesn’t come easily for me. I’ve had to work hard on it.

I’ll never forget a time when my brother’s kids were standing on a wall that looked terrifyingly high. My brother noticed I was worried and said:

 “When I feel nervous I ask myself, could this kill them? If it can’t kill them I let them take the risk. If they hurt themselves they have also learnt a lesson and probably won’t do it again.”....

My brother was onto something because research from Dr Peter Gray, an evolutionary biologist, who has studied play deeply shows that when allowed to play freely without adult...