The risk of children failing to achieve full manual competence.

This point is simply an extension of the above, but it’s important enough to warrant its own entry.

Along with more full-body physical skills, kids also need to learn how to skillfully do things with their hands. And just like broader physical competence, manual competence is earned through direct experience — by actually manipulating tools and objects.

There’s a lot that can be accomplished by swiping things with one’s fingertips these days, but a child should still learn hands-on skills that require the palms and wrists as well — even “dangerous” ones. Every kid should arrive at adulthood knowing how to safely wield a kitchen and pocket knife, use matches, swing a hammer, tend a fire, and so on.

In learning these things, there’s risk in their burning themselves or bludgeoning their thumb, sure. But in failing to, there’s risk in their growing up without the belief that they can perceptively shape the world, manipulate its raw materials, fix its broken things, and gain mastery over its basic elements — that they can be effective in the world in a tangible way.

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