Cultivating courage: why we teach children to be fearless

There is a wealth of benefits which stem from healthy self-confidence. Self-confidence is a tool that can help you manage your fears, tackle life's challenges with more certainty and maintain a positive mental attitude. There is, however, one trait which is even stronger than confidence. Fearlessness.

We know that overcoming fears or anxieties is an essential part of what it means to grow up. Understanding our emotions and how to identify and communicate them is a core component of social-emotional learning.

From the age of 4, children at Wandsworth Prep develop a deep fondness of the fresh air, exploring and playing with mother nature’s tools. At Forest School, they build forts with dirt, leaves and branches and happily hike and splash through mud and streams. Older children readily launch themselves, harnessed, in to the metaphorical unknown, from a 30 feet platform during the summer term residentials.

Walk through our doors of any given day, and you will notice a great deal of ‘doing’; eight-year-olds bringing a canvas to life with bright purples and greens; members of our Year 6 leadership team perfecting their public speaking skills; our youngest children building a space ship with the focus and confidence one would expect from a NASA launch. Wandsworth Prep is not a place of no fear at all, but a place where our children can safely face their fears.

Fearlessness enables people to accomplish the unbelievable, even the unfathomable. At Wandsworth Prep, we want our children to stretch themselves, reach for the impossible and achieve the exceptional. For us, there are two choices when faced with fear: Forget Everything And Run or Face Everything And Rise; we choose the latter.