Extreme Parents Take Kids On Dangerously Wild Adventures For Fun

If you watched “Sunday Night” a few months ago, you might have been introduced to a new trend called Extreme Parenting.

It’s a new style of parenting that backflips from the modern norm of Helicopter Parenting, and leave some parents with serious nightmares.

James Castrission used to be a pretty well-known name in Australia. In some circles, he still might be. He’s known as one of Australia’s most fearless adventurers. In 2007, he crossed the Tasman on a kayak with his best mate, Justin Jones, a distance of 3318km. Then in 2012, the two completed the longest unsupported polar expedition, walking from the edge of Antarctica to the South Pole and back, a whopping 2275km.

Then he became a dad.

When James’ son, Jack was born, him and partner, Mia made a conscious decision to become a part of a growing parenting movement the world over. They call themselves ‘extreme parents’ and encourage their kids to get out of the house and away from the screens by giving them an opportunity to challenge themselves, and face real-world risks.

To James, this is an issue he feels couldn’t be more important. He explained why he embraced extreme parenting on a recent interview on Sunday Night:

“A huge body of research has come out showing a direct correlation with spending time in nature, pushing a kids boundaries and a whole lot of great developmental benefits.

Although a lot of parents want to protect their children, by smothering them in these highly controlled low risk environments we are actually doing more damage than good for them”

With this in mind, James loves nothing more than taking little 4-year-old Jack out for days of adventuring in the Blue Mountains. When he was just four months old, he had his first overnight bush walk, but now that he’s reached toddler-hood, he has upgraded to canyoning, hiking and abseiling.

Jack’s mum, Mia is absolutely behind the adventures, saying that it’s clear to her that the confidence that Jack is building on these extreme parenting outings is going to carry through to his whole life, and she feels happy to challenge him.

“Let them go out and achieve the best out of themselves and, of course that’s love,” she said.

Experts Weigh In

Dr. Gary Banks, a clinical psychologist specialising in the development of children, isn’t a fan of the Castrission’s approach, or the concept of extreme parenting on a whole. He believes that by getting Jack involved in these kinds of activities, his parents are taking unecessary risks with his life:

“Unless I’m mistaken, children do not have the capacity to cross a road. Their brains are not remotely wired up at this point to make any of those calculations,” Dr Banks told Sunday Night.

However, Desiree Silva, the head Paediatrician in Perth’s Joondalup Hospital is absolutely in agreement with the approach that the Castrission’s, and many other parents, are choosing to take. She says that it’s her opinion that the overprotection of children does lead to problems with behaviour.

“What concerns me is that there are so many young kids now who are under the age of six for example who are on anti-depressants and on anti ADHD medications”¦ maybe if they did something more outside and connected with nature they would probably have less of these issues of anxiety and depression.”

However, she says that not all parents need to embrace ‘extreme parenting’, and that what they should be focused on instead is the concept of ‘sensible risk’.

“I think taking sensible risk is very reasonable thing to do. You don’t have to be climbing mountains and abseiling, you can just get outside into your backyard”

What do you think of the extreme parenting trend?