Jayne Dowle: An unlucky break that teaches lessons in life

Our Jack took a big risk last week. He attempted a somersault over the top – yes, that’s right, over the top – of the trampoline net in the garden. He broke both his wrists as he landed on the grass.

So here he is, two arms in plaster for the next month at least. No school. No goalkeeping, although he is perfecting the art of keepy-uppy. No cricket. No swimming. We’ve got a house full of get well cards from his shocked friends and family, enough chocolate to keep us going til Christmas, and the trampoline is still in the garden. You might think we are mad. Possibly, we are. My friend, who is a paramedic, says that every single one of them should be banned.

But we’re not getting rid of it. It is out of bounds to all other kids until Jack has recovered, and when he does get better there are going to be rules – such as no attempting to jump over the net.

What kind of message would it send to Jack and his younger sister if we were to chop up the blasted thing and burn it? It would say that if we, his parents, can’t handle risk, there is no way that they are going to learn how to cope with it either.

I don’t want this to sound irresponsible. What I really want is the very opposite, and for it be as responsible as possible. The fact is, if my son doesn’t throw himself up and down on a trampoline, he will find some other way to test himself. It might involve climbing the trees in the garden, or balancing on the wall, or bombing down the slope on his skateboard head-first. That’s the kind of kid he is. And we wouldn’t want him any other way. At least he plays out.

According to the charity Play England, only a fifth of children regularly play outdoors, one third are thought to have never built a den or climbed a tree, and one in 10 have never ridden a bike. Jack loves the laptop and computer games as much as any child, but I don’t want a pale weakling for a son. I want a lad who can handle himself.

I could follow him round the garden in a continuous process of risk assessment, but I don’t think it would do either of us much good. And what if he goes to the skate-park or the swimming pool with someone else?

I need him to be able to assess what his own safe limits are, and to have the confidence to stick to them. Peer pressure is a terrifying thing, and so many children grow up without knowing when and how to say “no”. At the moment, Jack is not old enough to disappear off for long without a supervising adult, but next year he will be going to secondary school, and then the brakes will be off for good.

So, if I am to fulfil my role as a parent, this time is crucial to allow him to find his own feet. He is on the precipice between childhood and adolescence. For him, every day is about testing himself, finding out what he is capable of. If my immediate reaction is to ban everything potentially dangerous he comes into contact with, then we’re going to have a very tricky decade ahead of us until he becomes a fully-fledged adult.

I joke that I will be following him on his first lads’ holiday, but I hope that by the time he has an adult passport he will be mature enough not to get smashed out of his head as soon as the plane touches down in Malia.

And let’s be generous. It has been a learning experience for his friends too. They have been round here in their fascinated droves, signing his casts, reading out his comics aloud and helping him to eat his dinner. When we went into school to thank the class for their thoughtful cards, his teacher wisely held up Jack as an example to prove what can happen when stunts go wrong.

The experience of breaking both wrists is certainly giving him plenty of time to sit and think. In the hospital ward overnight, there was another little boy who had broken his wrist jumping down some steps, and a lad who had cracked his femur leaping off a wall.

Nothing brings home the serious consequences of an accident more than the sight of the child in the opposite bed encased in plaster because he thought he could fly.

Nine-year-old boys believe they are invincible. Risk is something parents bang on about, not something they need to concern themselves with. But if Jack has learned nothing else from this experience, he knows now that life is not like a video game. When you fall over, you don’t necessarily get up.