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Ben Fogle’s wife sets up ‘accidents’ so kids can learn life lessons

The couple think kids need to learn the hard way

When you’re a parent, you try to teach your kids lessons that they can take through life.

But some mums and dads have some rather unusual ways of preparing their wee ones for the future.

Take Ben Fogle’s wife, for example.

Marina has revealed that she has some very controversial ways of teaching their kids Ludo, seven, and daughter Iona, six, how to overcome their biggest fears.

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Writing for the Mail On Sunday, Mrs Fogle has revealed that to teach her little ones how to avoid accidents she has actually created scenarios for them so they could learn about life the hard way.

“I’ve always been a fan of pushing my children out of their comfort zone,” she explained.

“Overcoming fear is one of life’s most important experiences, and the buzz you get from it is utterly empowering.

“But challenging your children like this today isn’t as straightforward as you might imagine.”

She added that she thinks that some parents are just too cautious when it comes to bringing up their children .

“Modern parents are plagued by advice, cautions and horror stories that scare us into preventing our children from taking calculated risks. This hasn’t always been the case.”

So, for example, in order to teach her toddler Iona that walking down stairs could have dangerous aspects to it, she encouraged her little girl to manoeuvre a set of stairs on her own, without any assistance.

And as she did, the little one lost her footing and started to tumble.

“I was obviously there to catch her and make sure she didn’t hurt herself, but the shock frightened her,” Marina said.

“She cried for a bit but it was the last time she tried to go headfirst down the stairs.”

Ben’s wife also said that she and Ben once gave the children whittling knives as Christmas presents which she said taught them about the danger of knives.

“[They] provided them with hours of entertainment while the (superficial) cuts taught them much better than we could have done to respect knives,” she said.

Meanwhile, dad Ben recently revealed that he has taught his two children how to start fires with magnifying glasses.

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“My five and seven-year-old have got knives, whittling knives, they’ve got a sharp blade…to whittle wood,” Ben revealed earlier this year.

“They’ve had those for years now,

“We make fire. They do everything. We treat them like grown-ups.

“One of the reasons that we are all so obsessed with fire is that when we are children we’re told to ‘stay clear of fire, don’t take that match, fire is dangerous.”


Christian Guiltenane
Freelance Writer