THE young son of British TV adventurer Bear Grylls appears to already be following in his famous father's footsteps - rescuing a little girl from a river after she fell in.

Grylls, the star of internationally popular show Man vs Wild, told how seven-year-old son Jesse was able to drag the girl out of the water to safety, the Daily Mail reported today.

"They [the children] were in a little base in a stream and she fell in," Grylls said. "And - I wasn't there, you know, and the story grows and grows every time he tells me - but he did rescue her and he was proud as punch to have dragged her out."

Giving an insight into the unique difficulties of raising kids while being a globally recognised death-defying survivalist, the 37-year-old said he worries how his career influences his three children - Jesse, Marmaduke, 5, and Huckleberry, 4.

"Their headmaster took me aside and said, 'It's great that they might know how to take the door off a helicopter and deal with a snake bite, but it would be really great if they focused a little more on the mathematics,'" he said.

"For a long time, I never wanted them to be too aware of what I do. I relaxed that when all their friends were talking about me in the playground, and they were the only ones not to have seen the program. But getting the balance right is hard.

"Do I want them to grow up to be me? No, actually. I'm unemployable in the real world. I don't want that for them."

Grylls is famed for pushing himself to the limit in extreme conditions, including crossing the icy Atlantic in an inflatable boat, flying a powered paraglider above Mount Everest, sleeping inside a camel carcass and eating yak eyeballs whilst in Siberia.

Man vs Wild first aired on the Discovery Channel in 2006 and went on to become the No.1 cable show in America.

Read more on Bear Grylls at the Daily Mail.