Taking risks – is it a learned behaviour?

One of my favourite things to do in new cities of late are food tours – they often showcase gems that you might otherwise miss both in terms of eating establishments and food.

Over the years I’ve become a lot more adventuresome. I had forgotten how bad I used to be with food until I was confronted by a holdout on a food tour. Unwilling to try olives, anchovies were disgusting, the tour was not a fun experience for someone unwilling to take on risk.

This made me think of the kids I teach – there are some that will always be willing to try something new and different and those who stick to what they know. Some will learn to negotiate risks and be rewarded. Others will eventually learn to  try something new and be disappointed, but chalk the experience up to learning. Yet there are others who stop taking risks or aren’t ready to take  leap into the unknown, at least not yet.

All we can do is offer up the olives, eventually one day they might find out that they quite like them.