Grown-ups will often talk about how health and safety wasn鈥檛 even a concept when they were young. This was in the days before helicopter parenting, where children played in the street and adult supervision was a distant notion. Parents nowadays are more concerned about protecting their children from getting hurt, though they have less to worry about 鈥 most kids are too busy playing games on their iPads to climb trees.
Adventurer Bear Grylls thinks we could all be a bit more gung ho. 鈥淵ou don’t empower kids by removing risk,鈥 he says, arguing that 鈥渓ife is full of risk鈥, and children should be taught to manage it at an early age.
The 51-year-old host of Celebrity Bear Hunt has put his own three sons, Jesse, 21 Marmaduke, 19 and Huckleberry, 15, through their paces. They鈥檝e learned all sorts of survival skills and done extreme sports like base jumping and paragliding. Grylls once came under fire for leaving his eldest son Jesse stranded by himself on some rocks off the Welsh coast when he was aged 11, as part of an RNLI rescue exercise. But as he repeats: 鈥淟ife isn鈥檛 about trying to minimise risk in kids鈥 lives.鈥
Grylls has had numerous near-death experiences, and it seems he has passed down the daredevil spirit. Aged 18, Jesse base jumped off a bridge topless with the parachute hooks stuck into his bare skin. 鈥淭hat one is outside of the correct health and safety parameters,鈥 Grylls concedes. 鈥淲e’ve all made a few mistakes in our life, and that one drifted on the wrong side of the line.鈥
The family live on a remote private island off Abersoch in Wales, where the children 鈥渓earned from a young age how to tie knots, be respectful of the sea and, you know, check the weather and all these sorts of things.鈥
To that end, Grylls set up a festival called Gone Wild, now in its fourth year, which takes place in Devon in August. It鈥檚 a bit like Wilderness meets PGL. In between watching artists like Clean Bandit and Professor Green, revellers can take part in commando assault courses, paintballing, 10k races and catapult making.
Grylls hosts a 鈥渟urvival academy鈥, where kids learn skills like making arrows and spears, foraging for food and navigating by the stars. 鈥淚 always say it鈥檚 the safest unsafe festival in the world, because you have kids throwing axes everywhere, but everyone is a policeman or a royal marine,鈥 Grylls says. He set the festival up with an ex commando friend, and 10% of proceeds go to the Royal Marines Charity.
Nursing your hangover by going on a 10k run with a load of policemen may not be everyone鈥檚 idea of festival fun, but there鈥檚 clearly a market for it: Gone Wild expanded to a second site in Norfolk last year, and there are plans to grow the festival internationally.
It鈥檚 all part of Grylls鈥 campaign to get kids off their screens and out into nature. 鈥淚鈥檓 not against screen time, it鈥檚 part of our lives,鈥 he says, though he laments how many parents use screens to pacify their children. 鈥淭he easy option is to shut the kid up and put it on an iPad every mealtime,鈥 he says. 鈥淚 see it all the time at hotels 鈥 the kid is just sat there when Mum and Dad are having dinner, on an iPad with headphones on.鈥
Grylls is nervous to 鈥減ontificate鈥 about whether schools should ban smartphones, but thinks parents should encourage their children to 鈥渂e their own policeman to their screen time鈥.
While his family may appear to be wholesomely detached from technology, they still struggle too. 鈥淪creen time is a continual battle for every family, and we’re like that as well. Not just with the children, but with ourselves,鈥 he admits.
His advice is for parents to encourage their children to seek out adventure. 鈥淵ou don’t have to go halfway around the world to have adventure. It鈥檚 on our doorstep: green spaces, planning little trips away, cycle rides, getting outside, getting off screens.鈥