Why kids aren't scared of falling

Turns out, their little brains are wired to be way braver than ours

By Smartasaurus· 2 min read Future-bending

If you put a nine-month-old baby on a glass table suspended…

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The short version

Turns out, their little brains are wired to be way braver than ours
The physics of their own bodies act like a rigged game.
This suggests that our fear of death isn't a hardwired instinct, but a learned habit.

If you place a nine-month-old on a glass table suspended over a canyon, they will likely crawl right off the edge while laughing. They aren't being brave; their brains literally cannot see the drop as a threat.

To a toddler, a balcony railing is not a warning sign, but an "affordance"—a physical invitation to play. While their eyes see the depth perfectly well, their brain has not yet installed the software that translates "far away" into "falling hurts."

Humans aren't born with a fear of heights. We have to download that terror through a brutal process of trial and error. Until a child has logged enough hours falling on flat ground, the neural circuitry for "cliff" remains a blank circuit board.

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