Taking the fun out of fun......

AA - I understand the fear of hurting your own child or seeing him get hurt when you're in charge, but I would hope you're allowing him to do thing that have the possibility of minor/moderate injury (potential but not likelihood of broken bones is about where I understand drawing the line. Kid playing whack-the-sister with the t-ball bat is cool, kid trying to fly out of the tree is not).

My parents were great about letting me do things like climb trees, play on "dangerous" trampolines and rollerblades and basically run around like the hyperactive kid I was. My biggest issue with these stories of "protecting" the kid is parents have swung into the realm of overprotective.

In the grand scheme of things, a broken wrist isn't the end of the world. Sure, you don't want it to happen, but if you keep the kid off the trampoline and out of rollerblades and from running too fast and out of trees and all that in order to prevent the broken wrist, you're depriving him of so much more that you're giving him, you know?

It's a hard balance, and I'm sure I'll struggle with it if/when I have kids. But people in that article seem to think minor broken things, stitches, sore ankles and the like are the end of the world for a kid and should be prevented at all costs. I think that philosophy in the long run causes much more harm than good.

 

Very true. I lived in a very blue collar suburb as a kid, but you could get anywhere on side streets and such. I would be off on my bike and gone all day.

In the suburb I live in now, there is nowhere out of the suburb I would let my kids go. You'd have to drive miles down a busy, four-lane road.

It's a shame. Riding to the baseball field or school to see if anyone was there to play a pickup game or McDonald's was always something to do.

 

I actually broke my nose playing kick the can. Let's be careful out there.

 

Anybody-whether you're 6 or 60 who doesn't wear a bike helmet is flat-out stupid.

A friend of mine once commented--it was a throw-away line-"The difference between us as parents and our parents is ours basically ignored us.".

 

I had three broken wrists, about a total of 20 stitches, a broken ankle and countless other bumps and bruises -- including burning my hand while trying to shoot a Polish Cannon made out of those old metal tennis cans duct taped together.........and I loved every minute of my childhood.

My son was recently screwing around on the monkey bars at school and fell off and broke his wrist. My daughter tore up her foot riding a bike and wrecking. Both are doing fine and neither is scarred for life.

They are kids, kids get hurt, they bump their heads and they occassionally break bones.

You do what you can to prevent it but you don't lose your mind trying to control things you can't control.

 

On the suburban street I grew up on in the 70s, there were no kids my age (all were much older or much younger). None of my friends lived close by, so someone's parents had to drive us around. When my friends came over, though (they were not called playdates then), we were all over the street, in the woods, etc. My parents had a vague idea where we were, but weren't watching over us. By the time we were 12 or so we took public transportation to the mall that was 40 minutes away all the time. I can't imagine parents letting kids do that now.

Here's an interesting thing: my mom grew up in the Bronx. She wasn't allowed to cross their street (and it wasn't a main one) unless my grandmother was leaning out the window and watching until she was 12! Sounds like my grandmother would have fit right into today's parenting style.

 

Unflippinbelievable.... Canadian kids don't learn to ride bikes till they are 12?


I know... I know.. but at least I know I'm an asshole

 

Artist/Band: Bucky Covington
Lyrics for Song: A Different World

We were born to mothers who smoked and drank
Our cribs were covered in lead based paint
No child proof lids no seat belts in cars
Rode bikes with no helmets and still here we are, still here we are
We got daddy’s belt when we misbehaved
Had three TV channels you got up to change
No video games and no satellite
All we had were friends and they were outside, playin’ outside

Chorus
It was a different life
When we were boys and girls
Not just a different time
It was a different world

School always started the same every day
The pledge of allegiance then someone would pray
Not every kid made the team when they tried
We got disappointed and that was all right, we turned out all right

Chorus

Bridge
No bottled water, we drank from a garden hose
And every Sunday, all the stores were closed