This came to my mind about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seWHLTt3oNQ
First, I was surprised, then I read the comments.
Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous
41–50 of 275 posts
Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous
#42Along these lines, Bay Area folks might be interested in Camp Tipsy, the crazy campout run by Chicken John where people build boats from junk and try (not) to sink them. Lots of opportunity for kids to get in (the right amount of) trouble.
It's coming up in a few weeks: http://camptipsy.com/
(I'm not involved, just a frequent attendee - it's fun)
Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 Hendy blamed outdated federal rules on playground design developed decades ago by the Consumer Product Safety Commission.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 ke…
Your child could have slipped when getting off a train and permanently injured themselves, or in any other number of ways.
Low probability high severity events trigger a cognitive bias that makes people attempt to make things '100% safe'. There are two problems with that.
1: nothing can ever be made 100% safe so those low probability high impact events still happen from time to time.
2: making things safe hits a steep diminishing returns curve after some point, and the opportunity cost of creating said safety level starts to outweigh the benefits of not creating it.
Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous
#44"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…
>One preventable death is one too many
The problem is right here, what is the society acceptable definition of preventable? Keeping all children in hermetic bubbles would prevent all child deaths due to disease, but weaken their immune system so much that the minute they come out they would get sick and die as an adult. In effect all these safety efforts are creating mental hermetic bubbles that fucks their future mental state when they finally achieve independence.
Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous
#45A 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…
why do people sue? Because of the ridiculous cost of healthcare. At any given public school, how many of those kids' parents have $15k - $50k to cover an orthopedic injury, ambulance/ER/surgery/overnight hospital bill ?
It's the same for the zero-tolerance fighting policies. Kids aren't allowed to fight back because the insurance company figured out that 4 hands throwing punches are worse than 2. The hospital bill is the same price whether the person with the broken nose is the bully or the victim.
Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous
#46I’m going to a festival next weekend where they have a building area for the kids. They give them wood, nails hammers and saws and set them free. It’s just awesome.
My kids were in a makerspace last year. It was adult supervised, but they had access to power tools, laser cutters, and so on.
Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous
#47The only anecdote I can share about this comes from the time my family was touring a local day camp. On the tour, they showed us everything: archery, fishing, swimming, ropes, and everything else you could think of. At one point, we came to a massive, 10 foot high pile of dirt. The kids immediately ran for the dirt pile and the parents' reactions were a 50/50 mix of "Awesome" or "What are you building here?" I knew t…
Me and a mate used to go out into the local woods, find little streams, and dam them.
Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous
#48As a kid we would visit some elderly relatives who lived in a much older neighborhood than our home's new suburban sprawl.
The park there had slides made of steel which towered above the area homes. It was awesome and made those relatives my favorite to visit until the town modernized the park and got rid of all the remotely risky stuff in the process.
But shortly after that I discovered skateboards and stairs, and the joys of evading the local community college police. Maybe it's OK that the parks are neutered, we can still find risk if we want it.
Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous
#49This came to my mind about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seWHLTt3oNQ First, I was surprised, then I read the comments.
What do the comments say? Only one is in English and that's the only language I can read.
Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous
#50How many extra lives are lost to obesity because children never learn how fun it is to move outdoors? Everything is so safe and non-fun. Of course the deaths 3 decades down the line are not attributed to overly safe playgrounds and overprotective parents and nobody gets sued. So there is no need to fix this...