To educate his children, this father, known all over the world, goes against the tide. If that shocks more than one parent, experts approve his approach.
Most parents make sure to protect their children from everyday dangers. They monitor each step, anticipate the dangers, avoid falls and prevent disappointments to offer their cherubs a reassuring cocoon. Their objective: to avoid injury, failures and disillusions. But some parents adopt a radically opposite approach. Rather than dismissing risks, they encourage their children to face them, saying that falling, failing or being wrong is part of learning and forges character.
This is precisely the approach that Jeff Bezos and his ex-wife Mackenzie adopted with their three sons and their daughter. Indeed, during an event “Summitla” in 2017, the founder of Amazon explained that being resourceful is a competence that he learned as a child and that he tries to instill in his children, with the support of his ex-partner. “My grandfather embarked on large-scale projects that he did not know how to carry out and then he found how to achieve them. When I was a child, I saw him solving all these problems and becoming a real solution of problems”he said.
To transmit this mind to his children, the billionaire did nothing like everyone else: as soon as they were 4 years old, his four children could play with sharp knives, and later, from the age of 7 or 8, they could handle electric tools. A surprising method to say the least, approved by her children’s mother. One day, she even told him that she “would prefer to have a child with nine fingers than a child without resources”, reported Jeff Bezos in 2017. A vision that the businessman approves. This implies that one like the other prefers that their child takes risks in life. If this parental approach can shock, it represents some profits for certain experts …
In any case, this is what specialists defend. In an article published in The ConversationMariana Brussoni, associate professor of pediatrics at the University of British Columbia, explains that risk games allow children to test their limits and “Flirt with uncertainty”. Instead of continuously repeating the famous “attention” or “does not do this”, “It is rather necessary to leave the children the mental and physical space necessary to determine themselves the appropriate risk levels: enough for this to be exhilarating, but not too much for it to become too frightening”underlines the specialist. Of course, this is not a question here of encouraging games where children could seriously injure themselves. In any case, Jeff Bezos’ children have all their fingers!