 Poster: A snowHead
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My partner flashes me a 'what the hell do you think you are doing' look - not a pretty sight, and I expect an explosion a couple of minutes later. Sitting in the car on the autoroute this summer Alex - just 11 - asked the same question he asked at Easter... 'Can I do some downhilling with Yves?...' And this time I have said 'yes, no problem...'. There's a cloud of disapproval from the passenger seat.
A week later and he's in full armour and on a long travel bike, having mastered the fact that the brakes are the wrong way around on a continental bike. I spend the morning walking around Crans with fingers crossed, chicken entrails in my pocket and hoping that no black cats cross my path. But I trust Yves implicitly...a brilliant coach and ski-school director - Swiss Mountain Sports. At lunchtime they all arrive safely, dust-covered and buzzing. We watch the GoPro videos which Yves meticulously has taken, talking through technique with the kids, all clustered around the screen in the SMS office.
I mull over this during the next few days. We head up to the Turtmann hut, and we negotiate the paths with a 300m drop to one side, taking the walking poles from the kids to enable them to hang onto the chains pinned into the rocks at this point. More risk?
And I think back to Easter, when Alex, Ant and I are on deserted pistes in Crans Montana - Alex pauses on the lip of a rocky chute, and I know he isconsidering dropping in. I mither about whether to drop in or go round. As we approach, Alex makes the decision for us, and calmly drops in, executing a series of perfect turns on what turns out to be boilerplate under a camouflage dusting of new.
Last weekend we did loads of high speed single track where a single mistake would have put us in the trees, with plenty of nasty body damage.
All this continues to burn away in a small part of the back of my brain. The majority of the world's youngsters do not do hard-nosed skiing. They do not do DH MTB in the summer. Sure they live lives with huge risks of riding in cars, crossing the road, cycling to school and other statistically risky things. I look at the stats regarding youth injury - rugby (not great); football (surprisingly high) and riding (awful). Interesting.
I am starting to build a full DH rig for Alex - next year he will do DH on a bike which fits him perfectly, has 160mm of travel, and the brakes are the right way around. He gets POC armour and a full face CORTEX helmet. The right equipment is one way of making all this stuff safer.
But last night I also talk to him. I explain that many people live lives without any of this high-speed, marginal stuff. We talk about why on earth we do all this stimulating, adrenaline-fired, activity. I explain that injury - like the times that I have gone from fully-fit to a broken mess, in a single second of misjudgement - is BAD and should be avoided. We talk about going into each segment of mountain with calm deliberation, estimating risk. But he also says something very interesting. 'Dad...yes we need to take care...be safe and not be afraid...but --- when I am skiing and DH-ing, I just feel different, like I am not there, and it's really important. I love it...'
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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I just feel different, like I am not there,
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That's a very interesting comment. What do you think he meant?
I'm all for kids doing activities with inherent risks (my 4 year old grand-daughter comes some major croppers in the skate park) BUT I think that there's an age below which a continuous, split second, series of barely conscious judgements can't reasonably be expected over a long period of time. They do - as any teacher knows - have lapses of concentration.
In your example above I'd have preferred that Alex wait for you, then suggests that it'd be OK for you to drop in together, and you perhaps ask a couple of "risk assessment" (not risk-avoiding) questions, for example about the terrain or the snowpack.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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@pam w,
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In your example above I'd have preferred that Alex wait for you, then suggests that it'd be OK for you to drop in together, and you perhaps ask a couple of "risk assessment" (not risk-avoiding) questions, for example about the terrain or the snowpack.
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Agreed. The ability to assess risk and/or to seek help in doing so, is more important than being kitted out with the latest safety equipment. That concept applies throughout life, and the sooner a child learns it, the better. Surely, feeling as though one isn't there implies that one is beyond rational thought. Dangerous place! (Though not so dangerous in a concert hall, where I regularly experience that feeling.  )
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@pam w,
@Hurtle,
Agree entirely. It's not about the gear. But the right kit is important as a 'base' for safety.
Yes, the psychological disposition is much more important.
In climbing, we risk-assess every move. And that's what I am teaching Alex.
I wondered about the chute. In fact it was well within his capability. He made an excellent call. The next occasion that afternoon at another location he stopped waited to discuss it - good lad.
Dangerous place? Not so sure.
Dreyfus and Drayfus on competence:
Stage 1 unconscious incompetence - we don't know what we can't do
Stage 2 conscious incompetence - we begin to know what we can't do
Stage 3 conscious competence - we can do it but we need to think about it
Stage 4 unconscious competence - we can do things with superlative ease
In skiing - too many people at Stage 1.....I avoid them like the plague, and get all absolute beginners to stage 2 as soon as possible....
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Also agreed. But Stage 4 on a mountain doesn't tell the whole story, there are external factors to be taken into account, however high one's level of competence.
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@Hurtle, absolutely ... Some big errors made when brain not engaged or hypoxic ('harold' Andy Harris for example).
Continuous risk assessment vital, and takes a lifetime of learning...saw people walking across a 2m crusty snow patch where a slip and fall would have sent them over a 100m drop - we roped up...most just went across in summer shoes. No awareness of the risk.
Indeed too many stories of people with group think going onto slopes with obvious Avalanche signs, suppressing good risk assessment.
This is SUCH a hard area with youngsters. Cotton wool, armchair games, or sensible risk exposure. It's what constitutes 'sensible' that is so hard and contested...
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Alex makes the decision for us
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That's the thing though, isn't it? Was that the right decision for an 11 year old to make, leaving you with no choice. Had he initially discussed the decision with you, it would have been different. You yourself, with your superior skills and judgement, had been wondering whether to drop in, so it wasn't exactly self-evidently OK for him. And on another day maybe that same drop would have been much more risky. You could let him take the lead, then discuss pros and cons, then make the decision together.
He should "stop and consult" if he confronts something he feels to be risky. If he doesn't feel something is risky, and you feel it is (and that he should have stopped to confer) then his enthusiasm is running ahead of his judgement.
He's still very young.
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@pam w, ...yes he is...and I agree with 'stop and consult'. And it's challenging to establish exactly the margins when that should and shouldn't happen as he develops in his skiing and biking. And I guess the thing I am fretting about is that things which we all consider fine for youngsters as they develop in a sport are intrinsically very risky on the hill. Even a lapse on something apparently simple and easy can be terrible....so setting the margins and managing the risk is a tricky and ambiguous process....and I think that's the reason for the post....
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I think at least we're all agreed that hills are risky and that assessment of the risk is all-important. If a child is too young to assess the risk, he must understand that the decision has to be made by someone else and that he should wait. In essence that's exactly like teaching a child how to cross a road.
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@Hurtle, ...spot on. And by 25 I want both my kids to have taken their sports to the high level they aspire to, and without the serious setback of injury. Daunting.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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And it's challenging to establish exactly the margins when that should and shouldn't happen as he develops in his skiing and biking.
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Risk assessment is difficult even for experienced adults (and a fair few get it wrong every year  )
It's not just a case of being "too young to assess the risks" in a technical sense. You could impart more knowledge to a bright and experienced 11 year old than many adults will have. Just as you could teach a well coordinated 11 year old to drive a car pretty well, in terms of hand/eye coordination and technical ability. You still wouldn't want to let him on the road, though.
I don't for a minute believe people who say "kids don't have any fear". Some have far too much fear and are too timid for their own good (sometimes because they've been over-protected but sometimes it's just a fundamental character trait). But plenty have too little fear for their own good (and that feeling of invincibility kills many 18 year old drivers).
Only you know your lad. But for me, if he badly overstepped the mark one day (dropping into the steep without consultation, for example) he'd be reined in pretty tight for a bit. You can only start to assess a risk once you've recognised it exists.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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@valais2, but very worthwhile. I think they're lucky to have you as their thoughtful and generous dad.
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@pam w, ...that's interesting and a good set of thoughts....SO many non-Alpine people say of the young folk I have helped ski 'they are fearless at that age' and indeed this gets it VERY wrong. They need to be fearful (risk aware) but not afraid....if that's a sustainable distinction.
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You know it makes sense.
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Let them do crazy stuff when they are young. 3 - 7.
Put bandaids on the inevitable and pray that they don't get seriously hurt which does happen to the unlucky few.
This helps when they are a little older and need to think before they leap.
My parents did this and I learned to take risks VERY CAREFULLY.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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@valais2, Not being a parent I can only imagine the mental turmoil this causes. In the end it comes down to probabilities, it seems to me you are doing the best you can to minimise them. Better this that the mollycoddled playstation twits that arrive to do their first ski season in Tignes wearing plimsolls and go clubbing in -20 degs without a coat. 
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Poster: A snowHead
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I think basically you have to let kids take whatever risks they are comfortable with, and just hope and pray nothing goes wrong. You don't have to be doing adventure sports for kids to hurt themselves - they can fall out of a tree, get injured playing rugby etc. As a parent that horrible cold fear goes through you when you see your child going out of control or crashing badly, and your heart is in your mouth until you check them and thankfully nothing too serious is wrong. I feel for patents where the outcome is not so good.
Started our 8 year old on motorcross today. I'm sure that will bring some worrying
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Sounds like he's talking about something like getting in a flow state which is great when it happens.
It's kinda hard to raise adrenalin junkies because at some time you have to be prepared for them to make a bad decision and hope by that time they have enough skills and smarts to manage the situation.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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@Themasterpiece, ....goodness....yes, that puts a bit of perspective on the issues...
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Interesting post Valais thanks.
I've posted about this before but my kids have hit this area with skiing where they have the skiing ability to handle some really adventurous off-piste but in my view still lack the maturity to be expected to be self-reliant in a hazardous mountain environment.
I ask the question - should I put them in a situation when there is a risk that I might be caught in avalanche and they were left to deal with the aftermath? In my view 13 and 11 are too young for that whatever gear we are carrying and training we have done. So I restrict our skiing to terrain where this, in my assessment, negligible risk of avalanche (low angle, not overhung - ridges rather than faces, low risk snow pack, etc). Then I find they have skied IMV more risky terrain with their instructor without any avalanche gear at all... So am I wrapping them in cotton wool or not?
On a different topic, I've done a bit of mountain biking over the years and did a little down-hill in the Alps this summer. Have to say that while I enjoyed it I think I'm going to avoid getting to into it. At home there's a bunch of 40 something blokes who do quite a lot but the accident rate is a bit alarming - over the last 5 years almost all of them have broken a wrist, a collar bone or dislocated a shoulder. I just can't be bothered with that - I'd be so grumpy unable to cycle to work or, heaven forbid, missing skiing because I'd crashed my bike!
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Great thread. Got kids of 11 and 9, and going through the same sort of angst.
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I think a lot of kids are harmed by parents wrapping them in cotton wool. Few kids are lucky enough to to off piste skiing with their parents but most could be given far more freedom than they are to do stuff on their own. To go to shops, catch a bus, meet friends, go to the swimming pool or the cinema.
Does your 11 year old get to do fun stuff with his friends without any grownups, @valais2?
That's a whole different and important area of "assessing risks" and making your own decisions.
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I think a lot of kids are harmed by parents wrapping them in cotton wool. Few kids are lucky enough to to off piste skiing with their parents but most could be given far more freedom than they are to do stuff on their own. To go to shops, catch a bus, meet friends, go to the swimming pool or the cinema.
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great point and probably much more important to their development!
Really in the days of mobile phones there is even less reason to stop kids doing these kind of things but as a society we are increasingly risk averse.
It's relatively recent (last year or so) that we've started letting our kids walk ten minutes into our (very safe) town to go to the shops or park. This summer my wife and I went out for a drink for a couple of hours ten minutes walk away from our house without getting a babysitter for our (sensible) 13/11 year olds.
Feels much more daring than skiing!
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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Feels much more daring than skiing!
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 Do you mean your 13 year old was 12 before they were allowed to walk 10 minutes into town?
I do find that fairly astonishing but perhaps it's the norm these days. I know I took a long time persuading my daughter in law that her (very sensible) 10 year old ought to be allowed to go to the village shop on her own.
How do they get to school? At 11, starting secondary school, I walked about 11 - 12 minutes and had to cross a couple of what seemed then like busy roads. Most came to school by bus (I lived unusually close) and the "elite", who had a bike and passed the Cycling Proficiency Test, came by bike.
I don't remember anybody I knew being routinely dropped off by car.
At 10, still at junior school, I used to walk to my friend's house - just a few streets away - and then both would walk together to the swimming pool, around a mile. This was absolutely par for the course; my parents weren't regarded as mad or bad. Once at secondary school a group of us would go regularly to the brand new and excitingly huge "Empire Pool" after school.
It's a strange world we live in where kids who are not allowed to organise an outing on their own are (or think they are) well informed about anal sex.
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@valais2, A very interesting thread. Its always a difficult call to know when to give your kids that extra bit of rein. My son first started doing VTT at about the same age as yours , he was always pretty sensible about it unlike my daughter who's pretty accident prone (now aged 25 and 22). Alex sounds a pretty rounded lad, but I think you're right to put the 'risk' argument to him, he's lucky that he's got a father (or mother) so keen to help and guide him.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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| pam w wrote: |
| ... I don't for a minute believe people who say "kids don't ... But plenty have too little fear for their own good (and that feeling of invincibility kills many 18 year old drivers) |
I remember regularly being scared as a kid. I think people who say that have very short memories.
I suspect then that kids are poor at assessing risk, worse even than adults.With sports like hang-gliding or cave-diving, people take a lot of precautions, and mostly don't die through lack of comprehension of the risks, which are obvious. Sports like horse riding, which are not thought to be dangerous by many, are perhaps more risky than they should be because the danger is less obvious. I think skiing is somewhere in between: there is danger, some of it obvious, some not. Your challenge is to get them to learn where the non obvious stuff lurks before it bites them.
One thing which I think causes people to make the "they have no fear" mistake is that kids do not have the same "fear of looking foolish" which adults have. They mind being "a learner" less - it's what they're there for, after all.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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kids do not have the same "fear of looking foolish" which adults have
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very true! They also have no problem with falling over - the prospect of which terrifies some adults.
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| pam w wrote: |
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kids do not have the same "fear of looking foolish" which adults have
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very true! They also have no problem with falling over - the prospect of which terrifies some adults. |
For me it is not the falling over that worries me it's the struggle to get back up again at my age.
I have noticed with the passing years that you see fewer kids out playing than you used to. At first I thought this was due to changing demographics but you see plenty kids coming home from school in the afternoons. I have also noticed that my grandchildren don't seem to be able to entertain themselves outdoors the way we had to many years ago.
Kids should be allowed to take risks in a sensible way so they can learn how to assess risks in other activities.
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You know it makes sense.
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@pam w, pam 'without grown ups' is an interesting point. He has some close friends of his own age with whom he gets on really well - often hours in the garden just knocking about with things. Yesterday it was paintballing with a large group of friends, but actually to date he has been far more at ease when going off with highly skilled adults, often 1:1 - eg with instructors and coaches. Scout camp was not much liked by him since there was quite a lot of what he saw as 'unfair' and irrational peer-to-peer stuff. He needs to be able to deal with that, but he prefers the more relaxed and rational context of working with elite athletes and highly competent adults.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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Do you mean your 13 year old was 12 before they were allowed to walk 10 minutes into town?
I do find that fairly astonishing but perhaps it's the norm these days. I know I took a long time persuading my daughter in law that her (very sensible) 10 year old ought to be allowed to go to the village shop on her own.
How do they get to school? At 11, starting secondary school, I walked about 11 - 12 minutes and had to cross a couple of what seemed then like busy roads
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They have been walking to school for longer (also about 10 minutes) but that's a bit different - they would normally bump into or meet friends on the way and they aren't just hanging out for a couple of hours. To be honest we weren't stopping them from going it was just that they weren't asking to go, their close friends weren't doing it and we didn't urge them to go. However strange it is, it feels a little uncomfortable to be in the vanguard on this. I walked 20 minutes to school when I was 8 but the roads were pretty quiet.
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Poster: A snowHead
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Scout camp doesn't count as "without grownups" I do think it's important for them to be able to sort things out themselves and solve "minor" problems for themselves.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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@valais2,
Interesting thread indeed.
My 8 year old son is a very competent skier and biker too.
He skis with one of Whistler's athlete development programs, and I was super pleased at the end of last year when skiing with him in slightly tricky snow heading into a double black he scoped it for a while and picked his own route completely different (and better) than the one I would have taken. Testament to his training program and coach that they teach them to think for themselves from an early age. When we ski together we also work on lines, hazards, and consequences (I'm a scaredy skier so almost everything has consequences to me! )
That said, to pam w's point he certainly has many moments of do-first think-later recklessness that are hard to work out of him despite pointing it out repeatedly - and moments where you really wonder what is going on in his head - like skiing in a ditch and busting his elbow, then on his return almost doing the same just to prove he really could get through it, or deciding a 180 in the middle of a mogul comp was a good trick!  
Downhill biking seems somewhat less forgiving, so worries me more. Kind of wonder myself whether that was a good thing to get started on, but he loves biking, we live in mtn bike central, and he is good at it, so better to get him doing it safely and skillfully I think.
Trying to keep his speed down and stop jumping everything he can find is a challenge. We even came across quite a bad injury in the bike park, and that still didn't slow him down (I recently did a wilderness first aid course just in case son required it, as it turned out someone else did!). It seems the best approach here is to go and do more technical trails rather than flowy ones.
Son did somehow manage to go over the bars yesterday on a green run (not in the bike park) he's ridden many times .
So we work on how to crash "well" or be skillful enough to avoid it in the first place. Same with skiing. He declared on day he was going to do a backflip off a jump - we could tell him not to do it (and do!), but better to teach him the consequences of it not going well. He also goes to gymnastics so that if/when he inevitably tries it despite being told not to, there is a better chance of it ending well.
They do manage to do some pretty stupid injuries at school without seemingly doing anything hardcore, like getting wedged in a park bench when just sitting on it! 
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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@stuarth, wow! I'm glad none of my kids were that dare-devil. Though having said that one of them, when I took him to see an ENT specialist about persistent problems with his nose/breathing, turned out to have broken his nose diving off the roof of our house in Fiji into the swimming pool. The guy shone a torch up his nose and said "Ah, I see.... when did he break his nose?" - looking at me. I said he'd never broken his nose and then Nick fessed up.
That trick was strictly forbidden - the pool wasn't deep enough. He could have broken his neck.
Today my 4 year old grand-daughter started school. That's her on the left. Her father cycled them to school and her mother picked her up at 1 pm (both teachers, they took time off for this special day). I had to cycle back to school with her and meet her big sister and cycle them both home. It was the first time I've been in charge of kids on bikes and I was very apprehensive, not being a particularly confident or competent cyclist myself. I could have taken the car and put their bikes in the back but.......
I didn't!
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sorry that photo's so big - I just used the defaults
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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@pam w, aw, so cute! 
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| maggi wrote: |
| @pam w, aw, so cute! |
Indeed!
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They're much more competent on their bikes than I am!
Thing is about taking risks on behalf of your kids is that even low risk activities can end in injury or worse. Just don't tell yourself it won't happen to you. And if it does - it doesn't mean you made the wrong decision.
When my sister was a single mother, for some years, she said the hardest decision she had to make was whether Matthew should be allowed to ride his bike to school. That was when she really wanted someone else to share that decision with.
I do think that if parents have a very different viewpoint on risk (going back to the thread title) it demands negotiation. It's pretty essential to agree, IMV. When my sister subsequently married and had two kids with Husband No 2 they used to go skiing and she always grumbled when, right at the end of the afternoon, when they were all tired but happy,and kids clamouring for more, he'd agree to take the kids back up on one of the last lifts, and they'd arrive back exhausted, stroppy, fed up, as the light was fading. Nothing bad happened, but.....if it had, the recriminations would have been awful.
You need to accept that a risk exists, not just shut it out of your mind. And make a conscious decision (a joint decision in the case of two parents) exactly where, along the risk spectrum, you are prepared to be.
Not right to involve small kids in this decision. Both the girls in my photo are huge eaters - they'd promise to "be very good" for a month in return for a third helping of something they like. It would be absurd to take them up on it. They're kids. We're the grownups.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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@stuarth, I did a genuine LOL at your last comment  My boy is only 3 and I'm looking forward to the day when he can go skiing/snowboarding/cycling with his dad. Partly so that I have a reason to go!
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We have a similar path. As we're only 2 week a year skiers we don't do a lot (any really) off piste, it's not something I'm confident with until I get more experience. Jnr is a decent skier and racers in fridges over here, but that doesn't help with off piste. However, I'm much more comfortable with downhill mountain biking and as a result I'm happier to take Jnr out. He's actually better than I am at both, although he is a lot less cautious.
He was at ski training on Sunday morning so I went out for a ride with mates. I much prefer the ride parts, as I tend to stand around watching while a bunch of 40-somethings send it over big gap jumps! Where as when Jnr goes out riding with his mates they spend the afternoon attempting to break themselves or their bikes over big gaps.
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