Teaching Kids to Belay: A Progression of Learning While Maintaining Safety
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Aren’t your kids too young to belay!?
I once saw a documentary in which a three-year-old girl ,who lived primitively on a far-off island, was using a machete to chop the bark and husks off of a tree as part of her contribution to the family chores. I certainly wouldn’t have handed my boys a sword at age three, but that’s my point: my wife and I believe that the task or technique is appropriate when our child is ready. (sometimes it’s different timing for the different kids, despite their being twins.
That being said, one of our responsibilities, as parents, is to help our children be ready for the tasks and techniques they desire to learn. As such, we are constantly thinking in progressions: take an activity and break it into it’s component skills and tasks. That doesn’t just go for climbing. How can the kids progress to contribute to the laundry until they are ready to do their own laundry? As my wife will say, “you are not going to be one of those boys whose off to college and doesn’t know how to wash his own clothes.”
In the video, I discuss a “macro-progression” of climbing skills that eventually culminate in being able to lead climb on gear (as opposed to bolts). To get to that point, you need to be able to climb, belay, build anchors, and the like… I don’t need to repeat it all, here.
Then, taking on of those skills, in this case belaying, we further break that down into smaller chunks: there is top rope belaying and lead belaying. Lead belaying (belaying a climber who is on lead) is a lot more complicated than the former. So, we start with the former. Then, within just that smaller part of top rope belaying, there are even another subset of skills, some technical and others mental: doing the Pull Break Under Slide technique correctly, staying focused and attentive for the duration of the climbers’ climb, understanding the magnitude and importance of the task (keeping the climber alive)… not necessarily in that order.
So, as we move the kids through their progressions of life, we are constantly resetting expectations as they demonstrate more and more capability.
As far as the severity of this particular task, I imagine the criticism being something like, this is an either life saving or life ending (if done poorly) task. How can you put that responsibility on your children. I would actually turn the criticism on its head: risks of all kinds - and indeed some of them being life threatening - exist all around us. Thinking of some common experiences that young kids face every day that could result in serious or even life threatening injury: walking across the street, riding bikes around the neighborhood, safety in the kitchen, and so on. In some ways - taking the things like bikes, crosswalks, and traffic - are a bit more chaotic than a climbing crag. Yes, rock fall can be random at a crag, but at well established crags that get a lot of people, it’s pretty rare. Bike and crosswalk safety so often has to do with cars, and other peoples ability (or inability) to manage those heavy, fast machines well.
We believe teaching kids to think about risk - in a world full of risks that are both large and small - is a healthy thing and a necessary thing. If we can provide a sphere of their life where risk is obvious, like climbing, the habits we develop of evaluating risks and taking appropriately mitigating actions can translate to the places where risk is less obvious. And if you ask me, less obvious risks can be more dangerous, like anything you don’t see coming. Imagine the risks that are more complicated and which we confront through adolescence and early adulthood: drinking, sex, career choices, etc. If life is full of progressions, we think starting a macro-progression of being able to think about and handle risks can start “as early as our kids are ready.”
On a final, but now only mildly related note: for you gear junkies out there, if you are wondering what the tube-style and brake-assisting belay devices are that we like to use, you can find them, here: