We must free our children from their chains

Afour-year-old Siberian girl sets out before dawn to walk six miles through snowy forests to get help for her motionless grandmother. Her blind grandfather reluctantly agrees to let her go because the house has no phone and there is no other way of alerting anybody. It is 34C below freezing and there are wolves in the woods. Saglana Salchak, carrying nothing but a box of matches, walks through chest-high snowdrifts and along a frozen river to reach the next house.

It takes her six hours and her journey becomes worldwide news. It is described as an ordeal and even a potential scandal. Russian police say they may charge her mother, who was away herding cattle somewhere even more remote, with neglect.

This is the wrong way to look at this story, and it’s not how Saglana sees it. Asked whether she had been afraid, she said no. ‘‘I just walked and walked, and then I arrived.’’ She was cold, she admitted, and when she arrived she really wanted to eat.

Saglana’s trek is a reminder of how deeply our culture underestimates our children. We don’t expect or encourage resilience and self-reliance. Instead we applaud anxious overprotectiveness, up to and after the age of 18. The best parents, the ones beyond reproach, are seen as the prudent ones whose children are either in supervised activities, kept safely in the house, or being watched as they play.

This caution is officially supported. Parents planning to leave children at home are warned by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, in guidelines backed by the police, that it would be rare for the under12s to be able to cope in an emergency. If a child has any

Growing up without challenges or risk is infantilising and damaging the next generation, says Jenni Russell

doubt about being left alone, the NSPCC doesn’t recommend trying it out and says parents should find a carer instead. The charity advises that under-16s are unlikely to have the maturity to act as babysitters and says children of that age should never be left alone overnight.

This is all such self-fulfilling nonsense. It’s true that children who have never been expected to take responsibility, think for themselves or care for others might be bad at it. But the answer to that is to start early, rather than hobbling children’s development through almost two decades by insisting that they are delicate and incapable.

History, other cultures, journalism and our own experience tells us how foolish and destructive our current child- mollycoddling is. It cuts children off from the joy and satisfaction that comes from discovering their own strengths. The young are capable of much more than we allow.

There was a fine example of that last week when we read about the Bennets, three young people orphaned last month when their parents died within days of one another. At an age when many of their peers are still expecting their parents to do their washing and help with their essays, the 21-year- old is now the guardian of his 13-year-old brother. Together with their 18-year-old sister they are running their own household, continuing with school and university, planning their future with wit and courage and cheerfulness. To us they look like exceptions, but in most times and places this resilience would be the rule.

In many traditional African societies girls start working, looking after toddlers, cooking, carrying water and collecting firewood from the age of four.

When I was travelling through Lesotho last year I met boys aged seven riding lines of donkeys miles to the nearest mills, and 10-yearolds alone with cattle herds all day.

In America, as one sociologist has observed, four-year-old girls tying laces are applauded.

At the same age in colonial times they would have been adding to the household income by knitting stockings and mittens and doing intricate embroidery; by six they would have been spinning wool.

In England Edward IV was just 18 and already an experienced military commander when he won two significant battles and declared himself king.

Many of us grew up with much more independence than is expected now. I started babysitting my siblings at six, which made me feel gratifyingly grown-up. At nine we were left to run free all day in the country, on bicycles or ponies, building dens, quarrelling, getting lost, making friends.

At 13 and 11, living temporarily in the Kalahari desert, my sister and I were allowed to go riding all day on half-wild horses, following sand paths. Years later I asked my mother what she would have done if we hadn’t found our way home.

‘‘We’d have asked some bushmen to track you,’’ she said.

My six-year-old brother spent his days with goatherds of his age, learning how to make catapults, kill small birds, create fire with stones and grass, roast the birds whole and eat them.

My younger sisters learnt how to build huts in half a day. It was the highlight of our childhood.

I amnot arguing that we should bring back child labour, send children through snowy wastes or lose them in deserts. But we are so obsessed with keeping children safe and driving them to achieve in ways we can measure that we are neglecting a key part of their development: the capacity to take risks, deal with the capriciousness of other people, and experience the fierce pride that comes from learning how to manage the world rather than being shepherded through it.

Parents, dare to experiment now. Your children have nothing to lose but their chains.