How to Retrain Your Kid to Be More Careful

Dear Kid Whisperer, 

My eight-year-old son is a clumsily dangerous person. He will literally walk into things, even walls. He drops stuff and breaks things. He thinks it’s funny. My wife and I spend a lot of time almost playing lifeguard making sure that he doesn’t break anything, walk into anything, or fall from anything. He’s been evaluated and no one can find anything physical causing this. No matter how much we lecture about safety, he doesn’t care. Last week, I think we hit rock bottom. While walking backwards on a dock (after we told him not to) he fell off the dock into the bay. It was very scary, and I’m desperate. I don’t know what else to do. 

You and your wife are systematically training your kid to walk off into the ocean. 

Your son, like all healthy humans who have ever lived on this planet, started using attention-seeking behaviors during his first seconds on Earth. On that first day, he was forced out of a very comfortable, familiar, warm place into a new, uncomfortable, unfamiliar, cold place. He cried in an effort to get someone to put him back in there. But, unless you had a very unusual birth plan, he was instead swaddled, and made warm and comfortable in the new world where he now resides. This gave him his first post-birth feelings of safety. 

This need is now a subconscious connection, but it’s still there. We all have it. As an infant, when you only have needs, as opposed to wants, the getting of attention from a caregiver can literally be the difference between life and death. Crying gets the attention that leads to becoming warm enough, fed enough, or loved enough to survive and thrive. 

That’s good. 

But when you and your wife, as a matter of habit, give attention to your kid every time he is not sufficiently careful, you are reinforcing not being careful by giving it undue, immediate attention.  

That’s bad. 

Here’s how I would retrain your kid to become more careful over time, instead of systematically training him to hurt himself. 

Kid and Kid Whisperer are walking down a hallway, and not a dock, because Kid walking on a dock is not yet a good idea. Kid starts doing The Dougie while walking backwards down the hall. 

Kid Whisperer (without turning around, moving his eyes from the middle distance, or slowing his pace): Dude. Think. 

Kid walks forwards for five seconds, and then walks backwards again while doing The Dab with his eyes closed. 

Kid Whisperer (eyes and body still forward, pace unchanged): Dude. How do we walk down hallways? 

Kid: LIKE THIS! 

Kid moonwalks backwards, and dismounts into something he probably saw on Tiktok. He runs into a wall and falls down. 

Kid: I’ve done it again. 

Kid Whisperer keeps walking as prescribed. As he boards an elevator, he uses a quick glance to see that there is no blood on or around Kid. He then holds the elevator while looking at the ground.  

Kid Whisperer: Dude. This is unfortunate. I’m going to help you do some learning later. 

Later, during a time convenient to Kid Whisperer and not necessarily convenient to Kid, Kid Whisperer spends significant time allowing Kid the opportunity to practice walking safely from point “A” to point “B”. Kid Whisperer demonstrates safe walking once per lifetime. Kid is required to walk safely between the two points 100 times. Safe walking repetitions are counted. Unsafe ones are not. Unsafe walking is otherwise ignored. Until all repetitions are complete, Kid’s social obligations are put on hold indefinitely.  

Safe walking repetitions are often encouraged by the systematized giving of attention when Kid is walking safely. For this, Kid Whisperer simply says, “I noticed you walking safely.” This process will need to be done multiple times. This will, slowly and over time (but maybe faster than you think), make Kid more safe, hopefully before he seriously injures himself or someone else.