http://www.theatlantic.com/features/arch...ne/358631/

For the TL;DR crowd:

"Modern playgrounds are made by lawyers and safety engineers instead of children's educators. Kids aren't exposed to enough risk and are poorer for it in terms of mental health."

An interesting point made in the article repeatedly is the mantra that parents MUST watch their kids all the time. At a certain age, I'd say under 5 or 6, yes, kids do need watched alot, they're frigging dangerous!

BUT, even then, as a parent of 3 kids, there really is this mantra that kids need to be WATCHED all the time. If I don't watch them enough and something happens to them, I must be a bad parent.

Lots of interesting stats in the article. Thought I'd share.

That is interesting. Kids are growing up in an increasing sheltered world. I've heard that some elementary schools in the US now have a zero touching policy. How can boys grow up properly without wrestling and play fighting at lunch time?

I remember growing up, my parents would drop us off for the day at the ski hill, the water slides, the public swimming pool etc. I was probably 10 years old and my brother was 8 at the time. We survived no problem. I always hear the counter argument that "it's a different world today". I don't know what I think about that.

Are there any monkey bars around anymore?

I don't troll schools or parks so don't really know but recall hearing they were ripping them out years ago.

I ran under a bridge and busted my head wide open and knocked myself durring recess. I turned out decent! These kids are pussys

Unfortunately I never had a brother growing up, but luckily I had a very active childhood. Growing up in the 90s in a major city where parks were fun, kids still played outside, etc. I used to ride my bike for hours, climb trees till the branches would crack, and go to the "dangerous" park. The parks we had then were great! I used to come home and brag about all my bruises. Its sad seeing the parks I played in being demolished....

Actually the fact that the boys aren't allowed to roughhouse with each other is cited as a negative in the article.

Game from my youth-Smear the queer

Probably get expelled for that now.

When I first had kids, I made a conscious decision not to be a 'helicopter parent'. When I take them out to the park or playground, I see other parents following their kids around, never letting them get out of arms reach. I just sit down and let them do their thing. Besides the odd scratch or cut, they haven't been hurt yet.

Another thing I've noticed that I think is related, is just how anti-social kids are these days. My girl is a very bubbly, friendly girl and if she sees another kid, she'll always go up and say hi - but half the time, the other kids just don't know what to do. They just stand there like an idiot, looking like "WTF?' I don't know this girl, why is she talking to me?" Then they'll go back to playing with their friggin parent, instead of playing with kids their own age.

I reckon it's the whole "stranger danger" thing that's been drummed into them, by parents who think theres a paedophile lurking around every corner, just waiting for them to turn their back so they can abduct their child. That's what you get from mass media.

Quote: (04-07-2014 11:39 PM)Snowplow Wrote:  

Unfortunately I never had a brother growing up, but luckily I had a very active childhood. Growing up in the 90s in a major city where parks were fun, kids still played outside, etc. I used to ride my bike for hours, climb trees till the branches would crack, and go to the "dangerous" park. The parks we had then were great! I used to come home and brag about all my bruises. Its sad seeing the parks I played in being demolished....

Guess who's responsible? It's the busybody mommies forming groups that appear before your local city council and badger the council wo/men into passing stupid by-laws which subsequently leads to a pussy-like park with round/soft edges.

Written by Hanna Rosin of "The End of Men" fame:



The most telling part comes at the end when she talks about her own son, Gideon.

Quote:Quote:

In my experience, Gideon is very finicky about water. He hates to have even a drop land on his sleeve while he’s brushing his teeth. I hadn’t rented a car on this trip, and the woman who’d been driving us around had left for a while. I started scheming how to get him new clothes. Could I knock on one of the neighbors’ doors? Ask Christian to get his father? Or, failing that, persuade Gideon to sit a while with the big boys by the fire?

Quote: (04-07-2014 11:37 PM)Hotwheels Wrote:  

Are there any monkey bars around anymore?

There are still monkey bars in my neighbourhood parks but probably not for much longer.

I was actually training with them at one stage for Tough Mudder. One day, I just struggled through a few sets when this little boy (7-8 y.o) rode over on his bike, jumped up and showed me how it's done. He flew through the bars like a real monkey, bloody kids are good at that! He was really enjoying it when his helicopter mum flew over, yelled at him for endangering himself and dragged him home.

Poor boy, what's the bet he'll grow up fat and weak?

Holy shit - I love this.


Look at this. This kid on the right is doing backflips off of an old mattress.




Women (and the PC world) don't really understand the value of risk. As men we all understand that risk is what has made us who we are: whether it's getting shot down by that HB10, dropping a deadlift you aren't strong enough to 1RM, or pushing for a raise when you don't know if you deserve one.

Risk is what's missing from this generation. Everything is so calculated and analyzed that there is no risk anymore. You can go onto the internet and find out the answer to anything without taking a risk and finding out for yourself. There are reviews for everything out there, that you can never make a bad decision if you do enough research.

Risk is what women who are trying to increase women engineer numbers are missing. I'm graduating in Chemical Engineering this year, and yes, there are women. But no, none of them understand risk. Everytime I work with guys, we take the same path. Determine what to do, try it all the way through, potentially fail, and push through until the finish. We mess up a lot and it's a very dirty approach, but guess what, it works. The women, on the other hand, waste hours of time analyzing the situation () and then choosing the best way to solve the problem. Fuck that. I was at a leadership conference once and we had to do this "group building activity" where we built a tower to support an egg using only a set list of materials. We delegated for a while, but after I realized we had 10 minutes left, I said "guys fuck planning, we need to put something on the ground STAT before time runs out." Not only were we the only group to build something sturdy, but we reached the height specification and held the egg perfectly. This is called satisficing, and is a huge component to my success.

I digress. This is what Goldie Blox is missing. I hate Goldie Blox. I think it's such a terrible idea and I loved when I heard it failed. Problem solving skills, along with many skills, are learned through failure. I know for a fact that my problem solving skills were NOT created through following the instructions on lego sets. My skills were made when me and my goofball friends said "hey what if we tried to build a plane out of Hagrid's house?"

Kids these days are not being raised correctly. I have many young cousins, and some of them come home from school, do their homework, play video games until they have to go to bed, and then hit the sack. It's terrible. Parents are shielding their kids from the real world and are doing them a major disservice. If I ever have kids, I am going to push them to go outside and scrape their knees till they can't walk. I will wait at home anticipating the kids to come crying home, to see their mom worried, just so I can give my son a pat on the back for taking a risk.

A few months ago I went for a walk to my old primary school which I left in 2002. Back then (which is not a particularly long time ago) we had a playground/fort that had existed since the 80s many bars and jungle-gym’s around the school plus area’s of bush with tall old tree’s which we used to climb up.
I remember when I was 7 years old playing a game with some other kids where we jumped off a roof onto the wood chips, the game was to see who could jump off the highest point. I jumped off at a height of about 4 meters which seemed very high at the time but landed badly and sprained my wrist and ankle. The other kids told me to stop being such a wimp and get up which I did. I didn’t tell any of the teachers and carried on as normal for the rest of the day, until I got home (via walking) when it really started to hurt.
Another kid once jumped off the monkey bars and landed on the wooden playground so hard that he went right through the wood and broke his tibia bone. That kind of thing happened somewhat regularly and the attitude of the teachers at the time was of acceptance that this is what kids do.
On my return visit however it was clear that safety is the number one priority now. The old playground/fort was gone, so was many of the monkey bars that once existed and all area’s around the school had gates and fences. Finally the old bush areas are now completely out of bounds with high fences all around them. It was almost unbelievable to me the change of attitude regarding kids safety all in the space of 12 years. Kids nowadays will grow up completely safe but with no concept on how to deal with uncomfortable or dangerous moments in their life.