Dad, would you let your kids lick a 9-volt battery? In this episode of Gear Daddy, Daddy Troy sits down with Gever Tulley, author of the activity book "Fifty Dangerous Things (you should let your children do)" who explains why it's okay. This book features numerous activities for kids, such as burning things with a magnifying glass, that can be used to teach science and learn about hazards. Check out the video to learn more about the book. DadLabs Ep. 618 is brought to you by BabyBjorn.

Daddy Troy: Hey welcome back to Gear Daddy, I'm Daddy Troy. And today I'm with Gever Tulley. He's the author of "Fifty Dangerous Things (you should let your children do)". Beyond just being an activity book, a great activity book mind you, it's also a call to action for parents that we live in a scripted world of manufactured products and we can get out of that and actually do two things. Number one, we can return to some things that are basic for us as human beings, like playing with fire. And also take apart modern technology and actually figure out how it works.
Gever Tulley: Exactly.
Daddy Troy: And one of my questions when I pitch this at parties with friends or when I'm hanging out on play dates, they always want to know, okay, what do you mean dangerous? Tell me the most dangerous thing. Or tell me, is my kid really gonna get hurt or not?
Gever: Right. Parents have lost some of the skill of talking to their children about danger in a rational way. And it's a little like when you're first trying to talk to a child about sex or drugs or any of these other sort of hazards of life that they might run into. The book provides a context for parents and their kids to really talk about what the risks are in an activity, how to recognize them, how to mitigate them, and how to really predict where the danger might come from. In that sense, it's kind of a work book for parents as much as kids.
Daddy Troy: Give me one of the dangerous things that you've talked about.
Gever: Burn things with a magnifying glass. Parents often, when you say this, they immediately imagine the house on fire. But really, the activity is to talk to kids about what is and isn't flammable. Let them play with that idea in a safe area, on a concrete or dirt patch.
Daddy Troy: And so your partner helped you with it? Julie Spiegler?
Gever: Yeah that's right.
Daddy Troy: What would a parent find in the book? Obviously, it's an activity book, it's prescriptive, it can tell a parent what to do but what would I see when I open the book proper?
Gever: Well there's really two big sections to the book. There's the section of the topics and the actual details of how to do it. This includes serious warnings about the possible hazards, not just the hazard symbols, but some real guidelines about how to recognize the moments of risk in the activity and how to mitigate those. There's a brief how-to that is kinds of a guideline for how to undertake theta activity. And to really set the child up for the other discoveries that are not called out in the how-to.
Daddy Troy: It also has the feel of a lab book in that there's a section here you can see for field notes and children are encouraged to take notes.
Gever: At the back of the book is an appendix called Why. Why should I let my child lick a 9-volt battery? It's really written to the parent or the educator. For every topic, it has a few of the good reasons, we thought, you ought to undertake these activities.
Daddy Troy: For example?
Gever: For example, why lick a 9-volt battery? Direct stimulation of the nerves in your tongue with that battery actually illustrates to the child the idea that information from our senses is carried electrically. That tingling sensation and that funny taste that you get, that which we call metallic, is the illustration of that nerve mechanism and kids really get into that. They'll try different parts of their body and they'll discover that really the tongue is the only place you can feel that. What usually ensues is kind of a discussion of well why is the tongue the only place and then it gets into conductivity and voltage and all of those electrical topics come with it.
Daddy Troy: Where can people get this?
Gever: Well, right now it's mostly available on Amazon. We've got distribution deals with a few independent book sellers.
Daddy Troy: Super. Well thanks a lot Gever for coming in. I appreciate it. And this is part one of a two part series. Next week we're going to be talking about your organization called the Tinkering School. Stick around for that. We'll see you next time on Gear Daddy and all week long at DadLabs.com.