Posted on 10/26/2013 8:35:29 AM PDT by bigbob
Last weekend I was on a soft foam playground with my little girl, and I reflected on how different things were when I was a kid, shortly after dinosaurs roamed the earth. Playgrounds then were asphalt-covered, jagged-edged death traps for kids, but we didn’t know any differently and our parents weren’t freaked out about it. I vividly remember once hanging upside down from monkey bars and dropping onto concrete directly on my head (now that I think about it, that hit probably explains quite a bit about me). It’s a wonder that my generation survived childhood. What concerns me today is that my daughter’s generation will grow up so coddled that it won’t survive adulthood.
One New Hampshire elementary school has banned the game of tag during recess, because the contact is potentially harmful. “We want them running, we want them jumping and releasing the energy, but just in a safe way,” said principal Patricia Beaulieu. “They’re allowed to play soccer… basketball, there’s jump ropes, there’s different balls they can play with, different foursquare games out there.”
A middle school in Port Washington, New York recently banned footballs, soccer balls, baseballs and lacrosse balls on its playgrounds, because those “hard” balls are potentially injurious. Seriously? Theoretically, anything – or nothing – can be potentially injurious. A kid could break a wrist just by falling awkwardly. I support the idea of switching out dangerous playground asphalt for a bouncy, foamy substitute; but are we really helping our children by restricting their sporting activity to the bland safety of pitching Nerf balls underhanded?
In that same paranoid vein, the Postal Service announced it was scrapping a line of stamps depicting children in various forms of play such as skipping rope, walking and jogging, dribbling a basketball, etc. The reason? It received “concerns” from the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition over apparently “unsafe” acts shown on three of the stamps: a cannonball dive into a pool, skateboarding without kneepads, and a headstand without a helmet (somehow they overlooked the horrifying images of a batter without a helmet, a girl teetering one-legged on a slippery rock, and a soccer player without kneepads). Apparently the Council feared the stamps would inspire kids to perform potentially dangerous acts – as if youngsters these days even know what a stamp is.
And then there are the senseless extremes of politically correct, anti-gun hysteria, in which schoolchildren all over the country are being suspended, labeled a “terrorist threat,” and even required to undergo psychiatric evaluation – not for bringing weapons to school, but for even pretending to play with guns or gesturing like a gun with index finger and thumb. One seven-year-old was suspended because he accidentally shaped a breakfast pastry to resemble a gun, according to his teacher, who was literally reduced to tears by the trauma.
We now aggressively confront bullying, which is a positive thing – except that children who physically defend themselves from bullies are being punished as well, as if self-defense is equally reprehensible. Sometimes in the real world, the only thing bullies understand is a dose of their own medicine, and our children need to be ready for this reality and to grasp the moral distinction.
“It’s really about [children] being healthy and their well-being,” said the New Hampshire elementary school principal Beaulieu. I think not. I believe that all this is about lawsuit avoidance and an intentional effort to mold American children into risk-averse, compliant, helpless pacifists that can be easily controlled by the state. Whatever the reason, we are creating a generation of wimps.
By contrast, let’s examine childrearing in history’s most aggressive warrior culture, ancient Sparta. If a Spartan baby didn’t start out life fit enough, it was abandoned to die. Soldiers took boys from their mothers at age 7 and housed them in a dormitory to begin their training as a ruthless killing force. They endured harsh physical discipline, and learned to endure pain and survive deprivation. Sparta needed strong mothers to produce strong warriors, so girls too were removed from the home at 7 and trained in wrestling, gymnastics, fighting, and endurance.
Not a parenting strategy I recommend. But in our overprotective zeal to create ultra-safe environments and to brainwash the bold, competitive, independent American spirit out of impressionable young generations, we are creating citizens who will be unable to handle adversity or defend themselves on a personal or national level. Sure, there is some relief in knowing that my children will grow up on playgrounds that aren’t simply concussions waiting to happen; but I want them mentally and physically prepared for life’s inevitable scrapes and bruises, and fearless enough to take down bullies without Daddy’s help.
“And then there are the senseless extremes of politically correct, anti-gun hysteria, in which schoolchildren all over the country are being suspended, labeled a “terrorist threat,” and even required to undergo psychiatric evaluation – not for bringing weapons to school, but for even pretending to play with guns or gesturing like a gun with index finger and thumb. One seven-year-old was suspended because he accidentally shaped a breakfast pastry to resemble a gun, according to his teacher, who was literally reduced to tears by the trauma. “
I took one of my grandsons to Lexington,MA a few years ago. We were in the gift shop and a little boy picked up one of the toy muskets that were for sale. The father went NUTS !!!!
My generation were children in WWII-—all we did was “shoot” each other,drop bombs,throw grenades etc. We turned out just fine.
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With everyone being turned into a marshmellow, one wonders what will happen when the time comes for a need for warriors to defend our country.
I’d like to see an educational institution I’ll call “Manup.” It would teach kids Judo, hiking, camping, hunting and above all make them conscious of liberal attempts to train their independence and aggression out of them. (Oh, they’d play dodge ball, football,base ball and (here’s the horrifying part) KEEP SCORE!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rqv38fP7cr0
Regards,
I think I remember playing tag in the school playground. Sometimes we just touched the other guy, but sometimes, if we were in the mood, we’d trip him up. And that turned into “I’ll get back at him!”
The good thing is that you learned to roll when you unexpectedly fell, and that has served me well in later life.
I did this exact same thing and all the teacher did was to examine my head and say, "looks like you have quite a bump there, young man!" and that was the end of it. We also road in the backs of pickups and in cars without seat belts. Wonder how we made it to adulthood?
Isaiah 3:2 does say that God will take away “the mighty man and the man of war” from a disobedient nation.
We turned out just fine.
*******
Not according to the liberals. They believe we are a bunch of barbaric warmongers.
Hard to believe isn’t it? We climbed trees and made tree-houses (I still have a scar from falling out of one), stepped on nails and got tetanus shots, got so sunburned we couldn’t stand to put a shirt on for days, swam in all kinds of yukky water, and settled disagreements by slugfests out behind the bike racks ;-) Not to mention our BB guns, chemistry sets, vacuum-tube radios, and soap-box racers!
The irony is, today a kid can be killed lying in bed asleep by a stray bullet - something we never could have imagined was possible.
One of those ‘Internet lists’ circulates occasionally about surviving as kid in the 1950s.
Those kinds of lists are pretty interesting and those of us in that age group know what they are talking about.
Crap, still early I guess. Post #8 road should be rode.
Yep, I remember playing war games as a boy. We would choose up teams, and somebody would be the “Jerrys” and somebody would be the “Japs”. Completely politically incorrect, but those were words we used when pretending to fight World War II.
Good post.
I remember spending a lot of time in my youth playing what was called murderball. Basically rugby with no rules whatsoever; just hold onto the ball for as long as you can and taunt the other “players” for not being able to take it away from you. Keep playing until everyone is physically exhausted. It was good traing for life’s challenges. lol
And yet they don't fear us. Why? Quite a paradox, ain't it? They label us as "dangerous", "religious zealots", "haters" and countless other lies, but at the same time rely on us keeping our self control while they spew forth their spittle-laced diatribes. Any thoughts?
One of our sons worked as a camp counselor this past summer. They had extreme sports camps among others. My son was merciless in playing extreme dodgeball with those children. We had friends whose sons attended the extreme camps. They are not raising little wusses and neither are we.
Our oldest son used to play wall ball in middle school. He threw around 85+ mph in those years. He and another friend would end up playing alone because they threw so hard. One of the school counselors brought them a softer ball so they wouldn’t fatally hurt anyone.
I would argue that the liberals do fear the Tea Party. They spend an inordinate amount of time spewing vitriol against it.
Tell you what - if someone were to put a business plan together for a camp like that (and get a smart lawyer to allow them to run it without getting sued every time some kid got a hangnail) - I’ll bet they’d have more business than they could handle.
We’ve raised at least 3 already.
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