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Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

nytimes.com

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Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#91

Post by dllthomas »

Something1234 wrote: post #71
dllthomas wrote: post #17

Can we get the spinny-thing-of-death back?

The Merry Go Round?

Not the Merry Go Round.

https://playgroundology.wordpress.com/2018/06/29/whats-in-a-...

A glorious, if occasional, feature of my childhood. We did refer to it that way, I think organically (perhaps just looking back and not at the time - I can't recall). I found the article about it by googling the phrase!

I'm not sure how I'd feel about my own child on it, to be honest. I'm more bummed that he isn't allowed to climb any of the disused locomotive engines that are still present (but now fenced off) at a number of playgrounds.

Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#92

Post by seanmcdirmid »

bargl wrote: post #68
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> School shooting where 3 people die = national dialogue on gun control because it's outrageous. I'm sorry, what country is this? The one I live in its just "thoughts and prayers" when that happens.

I do not understand the attack on "thoughts and prayers." There are plenty of people sending "thoughts and prayers" who also support gun control. I get that it calls out the hypocrisy of Christians who don't support gun control, but it also seems like an overly broad attack. What does someone who both believes gun control is necessary and wants to send "thoughts and prayers" do? I think the idea of gun control is a t…

It isn't the "thoughts and prayers" part by itself, it is the "thoughts and prayers" offered by politicians and then absolutely nothing else. Even Christians can find it hypocritical:

> "Prayer that doesn't lead to concrete action toward our brothers is a fruitless and incomplete prayer. [...] Prayer and action must always be profoundly united"

- Pope Francis. (grabbed from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughts_and_prayers)

Otherwise, that to many people the phrase has become synonymous with willful inaction is just collateral damage.

It doesn't even call out the hypocrisy of christians that don't support gun control. They can believe in other ways forward, like arming all kids with guns and having them practice lots of active shooter drills, or whatever, but it is the "it is not that bad, let's not worry about it" attitude that makes people angry. The original comment I was replying to talked about a "having a national dialogue on gun control", which simply hasn't happened.

Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#93

Post by craftinator »

redff0000 wrote: post #43
ChuckMcM wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 stee…

Another thought that adds to this viewpoint: slightly more dangerous playgrounds teach kids how to play more safely, and they grow into adults who also know how to play responsibly. Kids who never get a chance to develop good balance (with the immediate feedback of bruises and scrapes) will not be as good at avoiding falls and other physical dangers as those who have good balance. They also won't know their own physical limits, and won't know which activities are too dangerous.

Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#94

Post by TimTheTinker »

bargl wrote: post #68
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> School shooting where 3 people die = national dialogue on gun control because it's outrageous. I'm sorry, what country is this? The one I live in its just "thoughts and prayers" when that happens.

I do not understand the attack on "thoughts and prayers." There are plenty of people sending "thoughts and prayers" who also support gun control. I get that it calls out the hypocrisy of Christians who don't support gun control, but it also seems like an overly broad attack. What does someone who both believes gun control is necessary and wants to send "thoughts and prayers" do? I think the idea of gun control is a t…

> hypocrisy of Christians who don't support gun control

I don't see how the two equate to hypocrisy. A friend of mine (a Christian) is strongly opposed to gun control. He has a concealed carry license and carries everywhere, because he wants to have the means to protect himself and his loved ones from an active shooter, if necessary. He cites "if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns," and feels personally affronted by gun control legislation.

That, and he prays regularly for others. I for one would not accuse him of hypocrisy on that basis.

Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#95

Post by magicalhippo »

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,…

A friend of mine designs playgrounds for kids, and is very good at it (his designs win 90+% of the competitive bids he enters).

He's also worked hard to put in place a playground safety inspector certification system over here.

One of his core ideas is that there are two types of safety: subjective safety and objective safety.

For example, kids quickly learn that falling from a height is painful, and experiences such as that teaches them how to evaluate their own safety when say climbing. This is the subjective safety.

However they're usually not going to be able to correctly evaluate the safety of climbing a playhouse where they might get their head stuck between two planks because the opening between the planks were just right for their heads to fit, but not their bodies. Or that the hood drawstring in their jacket can get stuck in small wedges and openings, especially dangerous near slides. Such issues go under the objective safety.

Now, his point is that you can make playgrounds which are objectively very safe, without making them any less exciting. Part of the excitement comes from allowing the kids to explore their subjective safety boundaries, but a lot comes from the design itself.

He often works with one of the major suppliers of playground equipment on their new designs, but a large part of his secret sauce is how he places that equipment on the playground. Many playground designers (which at least here are mostly landscape architects) seem to just put one piece there and another over there, without giving much thought to facilitating the flow of spontaneous play from one piece of equipment to the next.

Anyway, he could explain this a lot better than me. I just help him out with some presentations and such every now and then.

Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#96

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

sooper wrote: post #84
bargl wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not understand the attack on "thoughts and prayers." There are plenty of people sending "thoughts and prayers" who also support gun control. I get that it calls out the hypocrisy of Christians who don't support gun control, but it also seems like an overly broad attack. What does someone who both believes gun control is necessary and wants to send "thoughts and prayers" do? I think the idea of gun control is a t…

My (non-US) understanding of the outrage is that they feel that the person saying it is not actually going to actually keep the victims in their thoughts and prayers...

Even if they did, what good would it do?

Unless your a friend or immediate family member there is sweet fuck all you can do to console someone in a time of grief.

Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#97

Post by mherdeg »

I was watching some kids in our local playground climb pretty high in some of our local trees and wondering whether this a good idea, and came across this writeup on risky play: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/freedom-learn/201404...

Modern parents who keep up to date on the parenting zeitgeist will have been exposed to the complementary idea to risky play that instead of saying "Be careful!" to a kid, you can instead ask "Do you feel safe?", helping emphasize what it is that you actually care about and helping your kid develop their gut feeling for what is/isn't a good idea. (See one writeup of this at https://rhythmsofplay.com/get-outside-connect-climb-a-tree/ but a Web search for ["do you feel safe" "be careful"] will find lots of people saying essentially the same thing).

I wonder what the zeitgeist will say in 10 or 20 years - given what everyone is thinking now, where will they be in a little while when we've had a chance to reflect on what we've tried and how it's gone?.

Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#99

Post by nemo1618 »

wizardforhire wrote: post #74
ChuckMcM wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

“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.'” Actually there is and by several orders of magnitude more painful, and it is this: Watching these same parents scream safety, proclaiming the presciouness of their children while simultaneously condemning…

Ridiculous. The two are not even remotely comparable.

Re: Making Playgrounds a Little More Dangerous

#100

Post by ausbah »

tomatotomato37 wrote: post #44
eridius wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 me…

>Keeping all children in hermetic bubbles

To me that's kind of a facious slippery slope argument. Of course it isn't worth it to completely lock down a person's life in the name "safety" or "their own good", but when you can take measures that guarantee a greater degree of safety with only a thin, marginal reduction in freedom, "living", or whatever you wish to call it (if any reducation at all) - of course it is worth it.

To me this would be something like restricting people's right to drive on public roads when we have a fully autonomious network of vehicles (however long that will take). Sure people are a bit more restricted in their freedom to man a vehicle, but on the other hand you could (and this is what I am wagering) completely eliminate the ~95% of vehicle accidents and deaths caused by humans.

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