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Anyone over 30 should be dead

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Ben:
I saw a segment on Fox News right before reading this thread. It talked about how schools all over the country are removing "standard" playground equipment (e.g., jungle gyms, swings, monkey bars) and replacing them with "safe" alternatives: Swings that have arc limits, covered slides so kids can't fall out (with 3 foot thick sawdust at the bottom so they don't get hurt from the drop), and plastic everything so they can't be hurt by metal or wood.

The counter-argument to doing so happened to be exactly what a friend and I were talking about the other day. If you cocoon kids, how will they learn to experience life? Our conversation stemmed from seeing a dad run after his two or so year old (or whatever "just walking" age is) girl telling her (rightly) to stop running down a sidewalk like crazy or she'd fall and hurt herself. So what if she did fall? In that particular circumstance, she might have ended up with some scrapes or even bleeding, which no parent wants their kids to have, but wouldn't she have also learned a very valuable lesson about what happens when you overstretch your abilities -- something that might be one of many, many hard, but valuable life lessons she'll learn?

Obviously there are  limits to this philosophy (letting a kid stick a knife in an electric socket for instance), but falling off the jungle gym ( I did that a couple of times -- slow learner and all), or having a couple of kids pile on you after you get to the bottom of the slide, are small, but valuable experiences that help kids learn that life ain't always fair or safe.

Also on a tangent, Typhoon said:

--- Quote ---The last thing I ever wanted to have to face was my mom after she received a phone call from someone else saying I was being a brat.Hokey smokes was that ever right! All the parents in my neighborhood had equal authority to take care of problem kids, and my punishment was always much worse if my parents got a misbehavior report from someone else's parents than if they caught me misbehaving themselves.

mtnbkr:

--- Quote ---Our conversation stemmed from seeing a dad run after his two or so year old (or whatever "just walking" age is) girl telling her (rightly) to stop running down a sidewalk like crazy or she'd fall and hurt herself. So what if she did fall?In the space of a year, my daughter broke the same arm twice, once from climbing (and falling) on the couch and the other time from running (and tripping) across the living room floor.  I agree that you have to let them experience life themselves, but I cringe when I see her running across pavement or sidewalks because I do not want to drive her to the emergency room again.

Chris

Ben:
Oh, believe me, I'd be cringing too. My friend and I were I think, examining things sort of from a Darwinian point of view. Kinda coming down to, "How much protection is too much?" and "How might being too overprotective (like the playground thing on the news) negatively impact kids later in life?"

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