Children who dare too much: child psychotherapy and extreme risk seeking

Extreme risk-seeking behaviours are commonly observed in children. By using observational and clinical material, the precocity of these behaviours is investigated. The author supports the model of an existing connection between the modalities involved in the formation of anticipatory representations and risk-seeking behaviours. The idea that the necessary mental mechanism for anticipating events and predicting risks are formed as early as in the first year of life is also supported. The risk-taker child uses extreme risk seeking as a defensive tool to keep painful emotions out of the way. Every risky action is an attempt to repair those malfunctioning mental mechanisms necessary for the anticipatory process. The development of the capacity for mentalisation during childhood and adolescence enables one to structure more evolved anticipatory mechanisms, progressively less based on action and increasingly more on reflective thought. Children who dare too much or too often are driven by rudimentary or damaged anticipatory mechanisms. The importance of the model for the child psychotherapist working with daredevil children is underlined. Special emphasis is given to dissociation, enactment in the therapeutic relationship and the complex relationship between the psychotherapist and the parents of these risk-seeking young patients.