Why Kids Need Heroic Adventures

Through such self-directed adventures, kids develop self-respect and self-efficacy. They learn to think of themselves as the heroes of their own story, and not as victims to be forever afflicted and saved by others.

Children can be trusted to seek out challenges, because they have an instinctual love of growth-inducing adventure. If they didn't, our species would not have survived very long. Indeed, kids have an uncanny sense for developmentally-optimal levels of adventure. Anything too easy and familiar becomes boring; the child feels trapped in a realm of stale, excessive order. Anything too overwhelming creates anxiety; the child feels lost in a realm of excessive chaos for which he's not ready. The child comes alive and enters a state of flow when the creative tension between skill and challenge, order and chaos, yin and yang, is just right for growth. The hero-child instinctively seeks out treasure guarded by dragons of just the right size.