In another time, in mine, getting lost was part of our growth, and we had fun. Falls were part of learning: scraped knees, we put sand on our hands and kept playing. It wasn't getting lost in abandonment; it was getting lost in a street that seemed infinite, in groups of friends where you didn't always win, in afternoons that weren't planned: whatever came up.
Today I notice that childhood is not lost, it is managed, it is supervised. Children have schedules, but they do not have territories; activities, but no exposure to the elements. And all this is having an emotional cost, silent, but real.
Absolute protection is being prioritized, that "nothing happens to you," avoiding any physical or emotional wound and eliminating many learning opportunities.
We have made protection an absolute priority. We want to avoid any injury: physical, emotional, or social.
The psychiatrist Marian Rojas Estapé has explained in multiple interventions that the brain needs small doses of manageable stress to develop resilience. Excessive overprotection prevents the nervous system from learning to regulate itself in the face of frustration.
Without moderate frustration there will be no tolerance; and, if they do not have tolerance, any mishap or difficulty is perceived as a great threat.
I see in my work how children are being raised who have barely experienced discomfort and who, nevertheless, feel frustrated and overwhelmed very easily.
Evolutionary psychologist Peter Gray maintains that unstructured play is the main natural mechanism for social learning.
The game is a great personal training, where rules are negotiated, conflicts are resolved, leadership is learned, and real risks are evaluated. All of this does not happen in the same way under constant supervision.
In my adolescence, the street was an emotional laboratory, where I fell, got up, and tried again without my parents reorganizing the experience for me. Today the intervention is immediate and, when that happens, we subtract competence.
Today children have an agenda with more tasks than an executive: languages, sports, music, tutoring, technology. Free time is suspicious. If there is boredom, it seems like a system failure; but before, boredom was the origin of wonderful creativity. It was the space where we faced ourselves without any external stimulus.
Marian Rojas Estapé insists that dopamine —the hormone of immediate pleasure— is triggered by constant stimuli, especially digital ones. When the brain gets used to quick gratifications, its tolerance for sustained effort decreases.
On the street, there were no mediators; there were agreements. And, if there were injustices, we learned to manage them. We ourselves created our own rules.
Now adults intervene before the conflict matures, avoiding any social discomfort, without realizing that mild conflict is great emotional training.
Without small frictions, psychological skin does not develop. Children have a dread of rejection and need constant validation.
We had never invested so much in protecting them and, however, the levels of anxiety and juvenile emotional distress do not decrease; on the contrary, they increase.
If a child does not explore, they do not discover their limits; if there is always supervision, their autonomy is not consolidated.
With so much overprotection we are instilling the idea that the world is too dangerous for them. No longer just as a teacher, but as a mother, I have been able to verify all this, and I have surely erred on many occasions.
It is not about ignoring the risks that exist, but about understanding that human development needs room: room to be bored, to make mistakes, to solve.
A childhood without the street can turn into an adult without an internal compass or, what is the same, where there was no early risk, there will be late fear. If they don't get lost in the street, there will be no marks on their knees; and perhaps they won't fully find themselves. That will mark their character.
I end with a small example of a child I met. Today he is a 40-year-old man.
A pair of pants never ripped while playing. His knees never touched the ground. He left school and a car was waiting for him.
Monday: English.
Tuesday: swimming.
Wednesday: robotics.
Thursday: reinforcement.
Friday: training.
His sneakers were spotless.
When he couldn't swim in the expected time, he cried with rage. When something didn't turn out perfectly, he would freeze. There are no scars on his body. He never learned to fall without someone picking him up. He couldn't get lost to discover he could return alone.
His knees have no footprints, but his security also has no deep roots.
His skin does not bleed; but his frustration bleeds. Now he is an adult who walks with cracks.
If everything becomes constant fun, nothing leaves a mark.
May our children, someday, get lost in the street!
Every time we avoid a fall, we take away its strength to get up on its own.
Loving them is accompanying them to take their own steps.