Playgrounds too safe?

Pi1otguy

Pi1otguy

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Fox McCloud
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/43810459
article said:
...the critics say that these playgrounds may stunt emotional development, leaving children with anxieties and fears that are ultimately worse than a broken bone.
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More importantly, I believe that kids that grow up without dangerous items/situations may have a tough time recognizing and mitigating danger later in life. No one should make it to adulthood without a scar.
 
Pi1otguy said:
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/43810459


More importantly, I believe that kids that grow up without dangerous items/situations may have a tough time recognizing and mitigating danger later in life. No one should make it to adulthood without a scar.
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I think you have a point: A whole lot of life is risk management. If you never have the early experience, you wouldn't know risk until it bites you.

Heh - we watched that movie "Babies". The American and Japanese kid were coddled, the other two kids had to figure things out for themselves.
 
Kids still go to playgrounds? All the playgrounds I've seen in the last dozen years have been empty. Kids live in video games nowadays - there's always a reset when you get killed, so obviously nothing bad can happen in real life and if it does, that's what insurance is for.

Just give them an old barn on a working farm to play in. It'll thin out the population by a major percentage and the rest will be well rounded decent kids.
 
fgcason said:
Kids still go to playgrounds? All the playgrounds I've seen in the last dozen years have been empty.
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You sure that's not just the parental fear of the "stranger danger" and such? I seem to remember my mom letting me play outside without constant overwatch. OTOH, let me return my little cousin with a few scraps or after an alleged near death and there's help to pay from auntie. :rolleyes:
 
Pi1otguy said:
You sure that's not just the parental fear of the "stranger danger" and such? I seem to remember my mom letting me play outside without constant overwatch. OTOH, let me return my little cousin with a few scraps or after an alleged near death and there's help to pay from auntie. :rolleyes:
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Oh please... The world is out to get absolutely everyone. The entire outside world is evil. Since that's the way it is now, it's best to hide inside the houses constantly, play video games, watch reruns, go outside only to go to/from the car, don't even think about going out in the back yard and made damned sure absolutely everything inside is safe so there's no risk to anyone. Be sure to put prison bars on all the house windows and doors. And keep up on the evening news every day so they can brainwash, um, so you'll be informed about all the dangers and bad things happening in the world. Nothing good happens outside.

Actually it's kind of nice people think that way. I get a whopping chunk of the world all to myself while everyone else is safe in their rabbit hutches.


Yard darts are excellent kids toys. You're either smart enough to not be near where they hit or you get what you deserve. BTW, if you throw them out of the high hay window in the working farm barn, they go a lot further before they hit the ground and bury themselves up to the fins.
 
I'm thankful my parents werent/arent overprotective. I've got quite a few bumps scratches, and getting more by the day
 
My parents (especially ma) was really protective and really sweated me even biking to school (which was probably all of 5 blocks away in the suburbs). I did ridiculously stupid things on the playground like run up metal slides covered with ice in the winter while kids at the top tried to kick us back down!:idea:

You can't watch your kids 100% of the time for 100% of their life. Sooner or later they WILL do unsafe things. It's like I always say, "If you don't watch the violence how are you going to be desensitized to it?" :lol: Seriously, I'm going to try my hardest to let my kid have some fun.
 
Sooner or later they WILL do unsafe things.
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And if they've been exposed to less than safe conditions before that, they're likely to have a decent chance of surviving the unsafe situation they got themselves into.


I'm in a moderately BIG playground right now. I'm going to go play for a while where other people have a hard time surviving. No wimps. No clowns. No idgets. No guardrails. No safety designed anything. Lots of extremely unsafe natural designs. Survival is up to you.
 
I think that all of this is a recent development. I am 29, and growing up in the late 80s-early 90s the neighborhood kids and I were almost always outside on bicycles, rollerblades, or foot. We'd build jumps in ravines for our impossibly heavy and unwieldy bikes and come home with skinned elbows at least once a week. My elbows are still scarred. Helmets were something we didn't deal with. Let's not even mention the bottle rocket fights.
Now, kids aren't allowed outside without protective gear. They wear helmets for nearly everything, including skiing (!). Kids on skates now wear knee, elbow, head, and wrist protection... like dorky little gladiators. Instead of having playtime, kids are driven from one adult-sanctioned activity to the next (hockey practice to violin lessons to the math tutor, et cetera).
My point is that American children now are infantilized to a degree probably never seen before in human history. This is problematic because when people are conditioned to externalize responsibility and are never trained by experience to accurately assess and mitigate risk, they will grow up to be semi-mature semi-adults.
 
fgcason said:
Yard darts are excellent kids toys. You're either smart enough to not be near where they hit or you get what you deserve. BTW, if you throw them out of the high hay window in the working farm barn, they go a lot further before they hit the ground and bury themselves up to the fins.
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Sounds like the voice of experience. :D

When our son was in Little League he liked to play catcher because he knew it scared his mother.

Let the kids be kids! There's plenty of time to be adults later.
 
I am still wondering how I survived my childhood.
 
We're raising a generation of Bubble Boys (and girls). Stats indicate there are less risks to kids today, especially from strangers. The abuse/threat typically come from people they alerady know.

I rarely see kids playing outside anymore, even when the weather is perfect in the summer or on weekends. When I see them out, or riding bikes etc, its actually a shock.

If David Clark wanted to really expand their business, they'd market a kid space suit that they guilted the parents into buying. "Its for the children!" Then their gov't lobbyists could get legislation passed mandating its use. :D
 
Telemakhos said:
I think that all of this is a recent development. I am 29, and growing up in the late 80s-early 90s the neighborhood kids and I were almost always outside on bicycles, rollerblades, or foot. We'd build jumps in ravines for our impossibly heavy and unwieldy bikes and come home with skinned elbows at least once a week. My elbows are still scarred. Helmets were something we didn't deal with. Let's not even mention the bottle rocket fights.
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How do you account for surviving all that stuff?
 
Everybody is all tough and rough until their kid comes home with a huge bruise after falling off the swings at school....

(FWIW our kids shot a .22 at age 3, climbed trees, roller bladed, backpacked, canoed, and otherwise were exposed to mortal danger daily. I still don't like seeing any one of them hurt in any way -- ever)
 
Telemakhos said:
They wear helmets for nearly everything, including skiing (!).
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Careful with that one. As well as people being more overprotective, limits are being pushed. A helmet has certainly saved my life on skis before. and on a Mountain Bike more than once.
 
rpadula said:
How do you account for surviving all that stuff?
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I'd chalk it up to none of that stuff being especially perilous in the first place. And, of course, my iron constitution.
 
Mtns2Skies said:
Careful with that one. As well as people being more overprotective, limits are being pushed. A helmet has certainly saved my life on skis before. and on a Mountain Bike more than once.
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Well, there's skiing, and then there's jump out of a helicopter into a halfpipe skiing, where everyone is wearing baggy pants, drinking Mountain Dew, and doing sweet jumps.
I was referring to the recent phenomenon where chubby kids wear helmets to do the "pie wedge" slide down the bunny hill. If those kids are pushing any limits, it's the amount of hot cocoa and junk food they can slam down in lodge.
 
Telemakhos said:
I was referring to the recent phenomenon where chubby kids wear helmets to do the "pie wedge" slide down the bunny hill. If those kids are pushing any limits, it's the amount of hot cocoa and junk food they can slam down in lodge.
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haha yeah no kidding. I tend to push 60mph on skis, helmets and spine protectors get useful then :wink2:
 
Mtns2Skies said:
haha yeah no kidding. I tend to push 60mph on skis, helmets and spine protectors get useful then :wink2:
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I think we're on the same page here.
By the way, I'm way too chickensh-t to attempt 60 mph on skis. Maybe the "coddled youth' thing does apply to me, after all.
 
Telemakhos said:
I think we're on the same page here.
By the way, I'm way too chickensh-t to attempt 60 mph on skis. Maybe the "coddled youth' thing does apply to me, after all.
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Hell, I'm still trying to figure out how to not go 60....
 
weilke said:
I am still wondering how I survived my childhood.
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I know how I survived mine. The Law Of Averages took one look at what we were doing and said "you've gotta be kidding me!!! you survived THAT!!!!?!!?!?!...someone is going to have to die to balance that one out." Then some poor innocent totally healthy kid in perfect safety somewhere thousands of miles away fell over dead for no apparent reason.
I think I inadvertently killed a lot of kids that way.


Hell, I'm still trying to figure out how to not go 60....
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It's SNOW. Fall down.

Tree hard. Snow soft. Act accordingly.
 
Wow... I remember setting the playground on fire, sliding down a hill after falling (more like being thrown) off my mountain bike. My stopping point for that adventure was in several blackberry bushes. I did several stupid things as a kid. I was not fit by any stretch... not much has changed I guess. I am 24; my youngest sibling is 6 it is interesting to see how differently she is being raised.
 
fgcason said:
I know how I survived mine. The Law Of Averages took one look at what we were doing and said "you've gotta be kidding me!!! you survived THAT!!!!?!!?!?!...someone is going to have to die to balance that one out." Then some poor innocent totally healthy kid in perfect safety somewhere thousands of miles away fell over dead for no apparent reason.
I think I inadvertently killed a lot of kids that way.
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Lol.

There may be some truth to that. I did all kinds of things and the worst I ever took from it was a couple of broken ribs and a little tear in my kidney ;) . The dorky neighbors kid otoh who never got out from behind his C64 tried to check whether it was raining by leaning out from a second story balcony and made it to the patio below head first. He was never quite the same after the ICU stay, oh wait, he WAS exactly the same he had been all along.
 
ki4lzk said:
Wow... I remember setting the playground on fire,
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On fire ? We blew it up ! The pharmacist ratted us out when we bought his entire supply of potassium permanganate :rofl: .
 
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