Teens’ Risk-Taking Can Be Very Positive

There was Jill, a 14-year-old who loved her parents but found life “boring” - things were much better when she ran away and met members of the Rainbow Family of Living Light on the street.

Together, this group - Jill and one woman and three men over 18 - camped at an inactive Army base, planning to take off before police took her away.

And there was Mark, a 13-year-old boy who beat up his mother, and Maura, a 17-year-old soccer player who found momentary relief from her overbearing father by cutting herself up with razor blades.

These are among the cases treated by child and adolescent psychiatrist Lynn E. Ponton, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California at San Francisco, as reported in her book “The Romance of Risk” (Basic Books, $25).

Obviously, these kids are risk-takers. But so are all teenagers, simply by their nature, says Ponton.

Parents think of “risk-taking” as bad, dangerous - driving drunk, having unprotected sex and so on. There’s the flip side, which adults generally don’t think of: “positive risk-taking.”

Examples of positive risks: outdoor activities, such as climbing, rafting, bike racing - “many sports that are not strictly competitive but encourage individual and group challenge”; creative pursuits, such as drama or writing; running for office in student government; doing volunteer work.

“Initiation rites, such as bat mitzvahs, or ceremonies that involve learning,” Ponton says.

Also, taking social risks, such as going to dances, getting involved in social groups, “the opportunity to get together with others - all of those things the culture has let drop aside” are important, Ponton says - organized, supervised activities.

“I would really like to change the way our country looks at our teenagers,” Ponton says, “and to start to see them as a tremendous resource, a source of energy. To get excited about risk-taking instead of dreading it.”

Teenagers in the flood-struck Midwest last year, working in community relief, helped themselves figure out what kind of people they are going to be. That is the necessity of risk-taking.

“Kids know they’re risk-taking,” she says. “When I’ve surveyed hundreds of girls and boys about risk-taking, kids get it right away,” offering, for example, “When I stood up in front of the class and gave that speech, that was the most risk-taking thing I ever did.”

Parents have great influence on what kinds of risks their teenagers will take, Ponton says. Adolescents copy their parents’ style.

“We often beg off that,” Ponton says. “We think that the friends set the standards for risk-taking.”

Parents, ideally, will begin to think in terms of risk early on. How will kids spend their time? Parents should deliberately plan time, and trips, to serve the purpose of giving kids positive challenges.

There should be clear talk about risk: “Get them ready.” You want them to realize there are consequences early on.

Then when they’re 16, it’s easy to point out: “Nobody’s there to help you put on your seat belt. You have to make the choice. You explain to them the same thing applies,” for example, to smoking marijuana and using drugs, Ponton says.

If there is any indication a child is involved with danger - smoking dope, having unprotected sex - “parents have to intervene,” Ponton says.