31–40 of 154 posts
Safetyism is a contributing cause, but children have far fewer siblings than they used to. This means it's harder to go outside semi-supervised, and parents are more protective of their kids because there are fewer of them. Differences in reproductive strategies result in differences of parental care.
At one playground, there are these rings you crawl through to go from one part to another. The rings are attached by chains and the gaps between them are wide enough to slide through. I wish I had a picture these things were so awesome.
There are other playgrounds with ropes and climbing walls with significant height on them like 12 feet.
This wasn’t the case back east and in California.
I love it and so do my kids. Boo boos are boo boos. They’ll be fine.
Freedom is being allowed to get run over in the street!
I know the article focuses on the UK and what I'm about to state has little to do with the UK, but as a suburban US dad with three children I feel compelled to share that drivers are what keep me from feeling comfortable letting my seven and four year old play outside unsupervised. I've seen so many incidents of (young?) drivers tearing through sleepy suburban streets at highway speeds here in Maryland that I specifi…
Automated enforcement tech should be widespread and incur license revocations and salary/wealth-adjusted fines left and right.
Safety laws are written in blood. Whenever a new regulation is passed, it is often in reaction to some horrendous accident.
A lot of the comments below are of Boomers who played with unsafe toys or took risks, but they also had some limited supervision from at least one parent.
In 2023, both parents are working, so supervision is much more limited.
On top of that, like another poster mentioned - cars are fairly dangerous now, and plenty of young drivers are driving pretty massive hunks of machinery that didn't necessarily exist in the 70s or 80s.
Edit:
Gotta love people 20-30 years older than me downvoting me to oblivion.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Completely agree, the point of life isn't to reduce risk to zero - it's to make life wildly abundant and beautiful. Joy and creativity should be prioritized heavily over safety. That doesn't mean you don't have safety as a priority, it just means joy should factor more heavily into the equation. I doubt much progress and improvement would be made simply by increasing lifespan. Comparatively, if you inspire a generati…
Super nice. What books/ideas do you recommend?
I guess if I was to contribute an idea that I think more people should adopt, it's that I believe people are most happy when their existence improves others lives. To that end I think we should optimize towards having the most healthy years with the most freedom to explore ways to be useful and bring joy to others. That means being frugal and investing wisely and focusing on the delayed gratification that early retirement will bring.
I find that it's hard to give from a place just surviving, but if you can delay gratification and work hard towards being in a place of surplus, you'll have a lot to offer and hopefully that leads to a very joyful and meaningful life.
I know the article focuses on the UK and what I'm about to state has little to do with the UK, but as a suburban US dad with three children I feel compelled to share that drivers are what keep me from feeling comfortable letting my seven and four year old play outside unsupervised. I've seen so many incidents of (young?) drivers tearing through sleepy suburban streets at highway speeds here in Maryland that I specifi…
If you haven’t taught your kids to not impulsively run after balls into streets, that’s on you. Even my 3 year old knows better than to walk into a street after a ball. I literally watched him stop and look both ways yesterday too before walking in to grab his ball.
Yes, drivers should slow down in neighborhoods but an ounce of prevention is always better than a pound of cure. You have more control over your kids than the crazies that exist in this world.
I know the article focuses on the UK and what I'm about to state has little to do with the UK, but as a suburban US dad with three children I feel compelled to share that drivers are what keep me from feeling comfortable letting my seven and four year old play outside unsupervised. I've seen so many incidents of (young?) drivers tearing through sleepy suburban streets at highway speeds here in Maryland that I specifi…
IMO traffic violations should be punished way, way, way more severely than they are. In the US, licenses do need to be easy to get otherwise you lock people out of society (unfortunately), but they don't need to be easy to keep and you should drive with constant awareness that you will be taken to the cleaners for mishaps. Automated enforcement tech should be widespread and incur license revocations and salary/wealth…
I know the article focuses on the UK and what I'm about to state has little to do with the UK, but as a suburban US dad with three children I feel compelled to share that drivers are what keep me from feeling comfortable letting my seven and four year old play outside unsupervised. I've seen so many incidents of (young?) drivers tearing through sleepy suburban streets at highway speeds here in Maryland that I specifi…
Not blaming you for picking what works for your family, it's just a "tragedy of the commons" scenario. Old fashioned streetcar-suburb cities that are just dense, gridded traffic are safer.
For example, in Toronto:
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/our-most-dangerous-streets-...
Since the article is paywalled, here's the Tweet showing the dangerous-intersections map:
https://twitter.com/TorontoStar/status/1509864492703916037
And here's a blogpost showing the age of neighborhoods built:
https://idragovic.wordpress.com/2016/05/24/toronto-building-...
So basically, at least in the case of Toronto, postwar suburbs with winding and dead-end residential roads with wide, high-speed corridors produce dangerous intersections.
I know the article focuses on the UK and what I'm about to state has little to do with the UK, but as a suburban US dad with three children I feel compelled to share that drivers are what keep me from feeling comfortable letting my seven and four year old play outside unsupervised. I've seen so many incidents of (young?) drivers tearing through sleepy suburban streets at highway speeds here in Maryland that I specifi…
Your memory must be bad because I remember cars driving down my suburban street at highway speeds in the mid 90s. The lesson imparted as a kid was to always look both ways, assume no one sees you, and get in and out quickly. If you haven’t taught your kids to not impulsively run after balls into streets, that’s on you. Even my 3 year old knows better than to walk into a street after a ball. I literally watched him st…