Kids overcome fear of risk through play. Make their play too safe, and they don’t learn to assess risk.
Makes sense, when I was 12, I climbed up the outside of Parnell Tower (it was only 50′ high back then). I did it again after the tower was rebuilt, when I was 14. Both times, I raced friends of mine to the top, while our parents watched from below.
When my daughter was 11, she climbed Colorado’s famous Long’s Peak along with her mom, her brother and me (Dad). I recall the end of that 16 mile, many thousands of feet up/down day quite well. My 15 year old son and my daughter raced the last half mile to sign the Park Ranger registry first, while mom and dad limped behind. My son kept calling his more energetic sister an “inhuman mutant freak,” much to her delight.
And when we returned to our rented cabin in Estes Park, the 60+ year old woman next door told us she had climbed it more than 100 times since her childhood.