Why I let my children play with knives, by Ben Fogle
MOST parents strive to keep danger well out of their young children’s grasps.
But it seems TV star Ben Fogle has an alternative method to bring up his little ones – giving his seven and five-year-old children knives to play with.
The 43-year- old, who is father to son Ludo and daughter Iona, said: ‘Children should be able to take risks.’
‘My five and seven-year- olds have got knives, whittling knives, they’ve got a sharp blade ... to whittle wood. They’ve had those for years now.’
The adventurer and broadcaster, who has been married to his wife Marina for more than ten years, said they also let their children play around with fire and snakes in the hope it will kill any unhealthy obsessions in the future. He said: ‘We make fire. They do everything. We treat them like grown-ups.
‘One of the reasons that we are all so obsessed with fire is that when we are children we’re told to “stay clear of fire, don’t take that match, fire is dangerous”.
‘We have this slight fascination with it. But that’s when problems come. Suddenly in later life, when you can start playing with fire, that’s when all sorts of disasters happen. If you start from an early age and it doesn’t become something unknown, it loses its lustre and suddenly fire is “whatever, I can start a fire by rubbing wood together, or with a match or a magnifying glass”, it loses its mystery.’
The Castaway star added: ‘Children should take risks – my son loves playing with snakes – it’s definitely something we encourage.’
The father of two, who is working for the dogs’ health campaign Act Against Lungworm, also criticised the Government for preventing him from taking Ludo and Iona out of school.
Last month Jon Platt, from the Isle of Wight, lost a landmark court battle when he refused to pay a fine for taking his sevenyear-old daughter out of school to go to Disney World in 2015.
Fogle, who works abroad for up to eight months of every year, said: ‘I think my children get a lot more out of spending a week in the jungles of Sri Lanka than they would in a classroom.
‘I appreciate that I’m incredibly lucky that I can give them that opportunity. But I do find it a little bit sad that I am not allowed to take them away in term time. Sometimes it’s the only opportunity I can get.
‘ Parents get fined a huge amount of money and you hear some of the stories of parents who just want to take children to a wedding or to see a dying relative. It’s desperately unfair.’
‘We treat kids like grown-ups’