Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Fear of outdoor activities!

I'm wondering if some of you have experience with this one. DS6 has always been quite fearful of trying new things, and we just don't know how to help him get past this.

One particular problem we have is that DH and I have always been an active couple (skiing, off-road mountain biking, canoe camping, triathlons, that sort of thing), and we can't seem to get DS6 started. DS4 would be ready to tackle lots of these activities, but DS6 pretty much panics whenever we try to introduce them.

Part of it is his perfectionism (he can't stand doing something if he's not good at it), but part of it is fear. A big one is that he's afraid of bears and of getting lost in the woods. For that matter, he gets concerned as soon as he realizes we might be momentarily lost in a new city.

Our approach with learning to swim was to get him private lessons (instead of in a group) and a lot of patience. But for skiing, he refuses to get out and freaks out when we mention it. We're really worried that we're never going to be an active family if we can't help him get past these mental blocks.

And the thing is, he is usually hooked once he gets into it. He now LOVES being in the pool. We've even got him hooked on his kid-sized kayak! Ok, so I guess we can be somewhat active already.

Any ideas, anyone?

I found private lessons for things like skiing lessons, and going slowly to build confidence, helped. My son was like that when he was younger and I was the same as a child. My dad was a firm believer in "throw them in the pool they will learn how to swim." I do not recommend this method for your child. I still have anxiety when I go skiing because my father thought I would get over my fear if he did (his version) of exposure therapy which was basically taking me to the top of a slope and telling me to get down on my own. He finally broke down and got me lessons (he was an avid skier so he thought why pay someone else to teach me what he could teach me, right? But he didn't know how to teach a terrified kid) but by that time I already had the fear ingrained and would become overwhelmed by anxiety at the idea of skiing.

Alternatively, find him a kid sitter and get out on the slopes on your own. I think he will get over it, but it may just require more maturity. He is only six, as time goes on he will get better at handling his fear of things. But I totally agree with Portia, if you don't have buy-in, and a way to get out quickly if things go south, I would not push him.

Mine is afraid of mountain lions on hiking trails, avalanches down ski slopes, tsunamis near beaches etc. So, I have a fair bit of experience with this. What I do is to take DS a couple of hours ahead to the ski slope and just let him watch kids younger than him hit the slopes enthusiastically and eventually ask him to try it. He usually does and his fears of great big avalanches like he sees in documentaries are gone by then. Same with beaches - we walk along the beach for a while and then, I head out to the water alone and eventually he follows me and he is fine with beaches after that. We are still working on the fear of mountain lion attacks during hikes - there were a few in our area, which does not help much - but, we had a park ranger talk to DS about how most of them avoid humans etc.

So, basically, I too recommend taking it slowly. I also recommend giving your DS a choice of whether he wants to do it or not so that he does not feel pressured. I always tell DS to observe and then decide if he wants to take up the activity. I also tell him that the rest of the family will do the activity while he waits and we will arrange for one of us to stay with him if he decided against going. Mostly, he wants to participate after he sees that other people are coming to no harm and that they are having a good time.

My experience as a parent of a teenager is this one. Six is still fairly young for many of these activities. Even though other kids do it. My experience is often that starting really young turns them off an activity rather than on, I did this with swim team. Really wish I had waiting to introduce my DS till he was 8 or 9 rather than 5. Go skiing as a family and find him a babysitter or put him in the onsite daycare. Expose him but don't push. And you will be surprised in a few years he may be very happy to joining you.

Sigh. I guess the message is quite clear. We'll have to expose/introduce him gently, give him an out, and be patient. It's just tough when we see friends and neighbours being so active with their kids (we live in a pretty active/outdoorsy community). And I was always an adventurous daredevil as a child, so I really can't relate. I hope we haven't pushed too hard with skiing already.

Thanks, all.

I wonder whether, as a family, you could try something new to all of you, such as cross-country skiing (if that's new) I wonder if he needs to see someone else learning how, learning technique. And XC you can go slow and have control that you may not have in water or on the slope. Or perhaps snowshoeing (our family enjoys it because we don't even have to get in the car, just stomp across the yards.)

Actually, I hadn't clarified yet that it's cross-country that we're trying to get him to do. In our world, XC is "skiing" and the other kind is "downhill". Anyway, he's not afraid of the skiing as much as he's afraid of the woods and the bears. We're trying to get him out in nature and aren't having much luck.

Hmm. Will he XC in the yard, or down the street? We sometimes just go to the park, even the golf course allows XC. At least by the time he gets over his fear of bears, he will be accomplished enough to hit the trail?

I think outdoor activities are wonderful for children mentally and physically and gentle encouragement seems appropriate at this point. But as someone who never enjoyed the same activities as my mother, as he grows older it may be worth thinking about what your family dynamics will be if he simply isn't outdoorsy? In my case, the mismatch did lead to some feelings of alienation because I never got a parental signal that it was ok to be different. I have no idea where the right balance is between pushing and accepting, but it something I ruminate about quite a bit as a parent.

It was fairly hard to get DS to try new things as a kid but it is getting better. We're also a pretty adventurous family and love to get out and do stuff and travel. Some things we've tried to various degrees of success

- bribery - want to go for a bike ride? No, ahhhh but what if we bike to the bookstore and you can pick out a new book or we bike to get ice cream (oh the things I thought I'd never do as a parent...)

- baby steps - canoe camping is too much? maybe start with sleeping in a tent in your backyard, then car camping at one of those crazy campgrounds that have a million activities/toys/etc, then camping at a provincial park and then finally back-country

- brainstorm together to list a bunch of activities and let them help pick - you can start with some of the baby step ideas. We did this a couple summers ago and did a couple new things a month. Not all of them were crazy but we had a lot of fun.

- be active in the city and/or local parks - so many options where you can be active and build the confidence to maybe venture out of the city eventually. We've had a blast geocaching in our neighbourhood which is pretty low risk for bears

- recruit friends - DS never ever wanted to skate until we asked him if he wanted to sign up for skating with his favourite cousin and then he was all for it. We then used that success to build on and try other new things.

The other thing to think about is if it is better or worse for him to have the younger more daring sibling learning something in parallel. Sometimes it has been good to have our DD who is far more daring doing it because DS then does it to compete but I can also see it easily backfiring if DD were to catch onto something quicker and he wasn't.

Good luck! We've now managed to do some pretty cool things but it definitely didn't happen overnight.