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Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

nytimes.com

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Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#31

Post by gumby »

An example from the '00s: We sent our kid to a German school in Menlo Park. He immediately loved it on the first visit because the under-5s' playground was full of old wood with splinters and dangerous tools (hammers, saws etc) and the little kids could cause all sorts of ruckus, like building dams and flooding them.

But the reality of a foreign-language school is that you need more than just "nationals" (people who speak German at home or have one German-speaking spouse in a couple) to make the finances work. And quite a few American parents were and are interested because of the quality of education. But once their kids were enrolled, many of them wanted more safety, more discipline, a less casual attitude to kids getting naked, and academic work assigned to preschoolers which is not part of the German pedagogy.

All of which made me wonder "why did you choose this school? And if you chose it for its results, why challenge the process that gets those results?" But indeed, by the early 201Xs, the playground had been neutralized into the same old anodyne sterility of the public parks.

(Amazingly, Silicon Valley has two German schools within a few miles of each other; one is subsidized by the government, the other is not so you get to pick your ideology. But it does split the customer base).

Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#32

Post by tempguy9999 »

I can't find it, but a few years ago one of the leading members of RoSPA (The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, " rel="nofollow">https://www.rospa.com>) came onto BBC radio 4 and argued their job wasn't to prevent all accidents, that some were unavoidable and society shouldn't try for perfect safety.

It was a pleasure to hear.

Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#33

Post by radiorental »

I have a zipline in my back yard, when I first put it up it was roughly 80' long, my kids were 4 & 6 and I would manage them because (a) be a parent and (b) they were careless/clueless AF.

I extended the zipline to 200' this spring, it goes over about 50' of water. They're 6 & 8 now, they hook themselves up and do all the safety checks I showed them once. Literally once.

They also have full access to my workshop, they respect it and ask before cutting off their fingers.

I think we underestimate the young mind's respect for responsibility when we give it to them. Conversely, if you protect your child from everything, they do not develop the skills that ask inherent questions such as 'how can this thing I'm about to do grow wrong? What is my plan if it does go south?'

Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#34

Post by quakenul »

lb1lf wrote: post #2

This, this, a thousand times this. Life is about evaluating risk. You need to learn it at some point. A playground is as good a place as any. By all means, make them safe enough that kids won't get maimed or killed - but keeping kids from ever falling far enough to feel any real pain is probably counter- productive in the long term. Sigh. My eldest kid's kindergarten advertised themselves as an outdoor experience thi…

> By all means, make them safe enough that kids won't get maimed or killed - but keeping kids from ever falling far enough to feel any real pain is probably counter- productive in the long term.

There is no room between "overprotection" and "freedom", that guarantees safety from harm. Serious accidents have to be accepted before they even happen.

A scary prospect for many parents, I am sure.

Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#35

Post by eridius »

badcede wrote: post #4

"Grown-ups have taken all the fun out of being a kid just to save a few thousand lives." https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/2017/04/06/george-carlin-you-a...

Tell that to the kids who died playing in unsafe conditions.

One can certainly argue that we've gone too far in the direction of removing all risk of injury. But saving lives? Absolutely the right thing to do! One preventable death is one death too many.

The goal here should be "controlled risk". Not no risk at all, but controlled risk in well-understood conditions to ensure that kids can still experiment and have fun without risking death or permanent injury. This article mentions kids having access to hammers and nails and planks to build stuff. That's controlled risk; they could hurt themselves, but they're not going to kill themselves (at least, not by accident). But you wouldn't give them a nail gun.

Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#36

Post by bitwize »

When I was a kid, my elementary school had an elaborate playground. The standard swings, slides, and monkey bars -- with sand underneath for a soft landing -- were supplemented with numerous structures built out of old tires, including tire geodesic domes to serve as spaceships or houses and a tower built out of giant tractor tires packed with sand and a wooden spire in the middle to serve as a watchtower, ship's mast, or Decepticon base. Central to this tire wonderland was TireTown, a huge two-story fortification with many rooms, tire bridges to two smaller tire outposts and poles to slide down for a quick escape.

But of course, this is southern Connecticut, where people have their lawyers on speed dial. TireTown and its accoutrements were a lawsuit waiting to happen. When I surveyed my old school on Google Maps a few years ago, they were all gone, replaced with a much smaller standard playground.

Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#37

Post by [deleted] »

umvi wrote: post #21

You're right - anything that provokes fear or outrage gets instant attention. Everything else doesn't. North Korea imprisoning a single idiot American who crossed the border = national dialogue because it's outrageous School shooting where 3 people die = national dialogue on gun control because it's outrageous. DUI accident that kills a family of 5 = small blurb in local news because it's not outrageous (even if it s…

[deleted]

Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#38

Post by castlecrasher2 »

eridius wrote: post #35
badcede wrote: post #4

"Grown-ups have taken all the fun out of being a kid just to save a few thousand lives." https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/2017/04/06/george-carlin-you-a...

Tell that to the kids who died playing in unsafe conditions. One can certainly argue that we've gone too far in the direction of removing all risk of injury. But saving lives? Absolutely the right thing to do! One preventable death is one death too many. The goal here should be "controlled risk". Not no risk at all, but controlled risk in well-understood conditions to ensure that kids can still experiment and have fu…

>But saving lives? Absolutely the right thing to do!

I'm suddenly reminded of the game SOMA and every other "the ends justify the means" AI story where unspeakable horrors come from mottos like "save all lives at all costs."

Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#39

Post by agotterer »

dawnerd wrote: post #18

This is essentially how I grew up. Was free to use just about any tool I wanted. We dug holes, built tree houses ourselves, you name it. At one point we even built two different sheds, just us kids without any adult really helping. I don't recall if any of us even got hurt doing this. I also think cities moving towards higher density with little to no yards for full homes isn't helping.

I have a very vivid memory of being between 8 and 10 years old and building a play house unsupervised with a friend. We used all sorts of power tools and materials. It was a blast and the play house came out awesome.

Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#40

Post by ChuckMcM »

daenz wrote: post #11
devchix wrote: post #9

A recent episode of 99% Invisible: Play Mountain looked at how the playground got to be safe and boring. "A two-year-old boy named Frank Nelson was climbing a 12-foot-tall slide in a Chicago park when he slipped through a railing and hit his head so hard that it caused permanent brain damage. The park system of Chicago was sued and had to pay out millions of dollars to Nelson’s family. At that time, in the late 70s,…

You hit the nail on the head. From the article: >“Many agencies fear being sued if a child gets hurt,” said Teri Hendy, the president of an Ohio-based playground consultancy, Site Masters. Ms. Hendy blamed outdated federal rules on playground design developed decades ago by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. She favors more flexible guidelines, arguing that playgrounds don’t have to be boring to be safe. We got…

The reality is different though.

There is nothing in this world quite so soul crushingly painful as having your child die while doing something that the parent and perhaps people in general, consider to be 'safe.'

For me, it took some time to fall madly and deeply in love with my spouse, and to my surprise I developed that attachment instantly to my children. That same sort of passion that you would do anything to keep them safe, to help them grow up to be the people you want them to be.

When a child dies doing something that "should" have been ok, it creates a searing, wrenching, soul destroying since of loss and guilt and anger and pain. No waiver, no explanation of statistics, no explanation of preventative measures, nothing can salve that wound. And so parents, even ones of limited means, have been known to invest everything they have, time, money, energy, into making someone pay in the hopes it will make the grieving parent feel slightly less pain.

It doesn't make for less pain of course, only time and distance can mute the pain, but that can't be explained either because the desire to do something is irrationally over powering.

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