The fearless child

Set limits
The fearless child needs to learn from her parents, by your setting limits and consequences and describing what's appropriate and acceptable behaviour. You can't be as permissive as you would be with a shy child who doesn't always push the boundaries and test the limits. Instill a healthy respect for the dangers of particular sports or activities. Help the risk taking child to visualize and think about consequences, and to see the impact his actions might have on himself and others. Start early. It's important to be firm and consistent with a six-year-old who is constantly testing limits. If you apply limits appropriate to his age when he's young, he will have internalized the need for caution and preparedness in new situations by the age of 12, when you may be more willing to let him demonstrate his self-control.

Once this child develops a clear sense of right and wrong and the consequences of unsafe risk taking, he may become a friend and support or guide to more timid friends rather than become a bully. Be clear about your family rules for behaviour, language, treatment of other siblings, friends, and parents. As your child grows older, discuss and negotiate new rules and discipline appropriate to his age. When he has input into the rules and the consequences for breaking them, he's more willing to be guided by them, but be firm on the follow-through. If you've agreed that he is to let you know when and where he goes on his bike and that the consequence of not letting you know is that he loses the use of the bike for a week, then lock it up if he breaks the rule. Also, find ways to reward your child when he acts less impulsively.

If you discover that your 11-year-old daughter performs daredevil routines for friends by walking along the top of a high wall at a nearby construction site, take her through what would happen if she fell, what her injuries might be, what the impact would be on her, on you, and on the rest of the family. Discipline her for her behaviour, perhaps not letting her play outside after dinner for a couple of nights. Then talk with her to find out why she needs or wants to get the adrenaline rush from danger. Sometimes a depressed child acts out self-destructive tendencies through recklessness, or perhaps she's trying to prove herself to other kids. On some level, a reckless child doesn't care about consequences. The adrenaline rush may be her only high in an otherwise low-spirited existence. Try to get to the bottom of the problem.

Excerpted from Raising Great Kids: Ages 6 to 12 by Christine Langlois. Copyright 1999 by Telemedia Communications Inc. Excerpted, with permission by Ballantine Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.