years ago, neighbor ask me why i keep seeding and fixing the yard where the kids ride their bikes like a race track and just not let them ride on the lawn? i told him right now i'm raising children... i have the rest of my life to raise grass.
Posted on 02/17/2007 4:56:22 PM PST by saquin
Children who are cooped up indoors and prevented from playing freely suffer from "cabin fever" and are more likely to go off the rails, according to a Government adviser on children's play.
Parents and officials who believe their job is to eliminate risk from children's lives rob youngsters of the chance to develop vital skills and resilience, Tim Gill, the former director of Play England, will say this week at a seminar at the Royal Society for the Arts.
His comments come days after Bracebridge Heath Primary School, near Lincoln, was criticised for banning the game of tag at playtime because it was too boisterous, and Burnham Grammar School, in Buckinghamshire, clamped down on lunchtime kickabouts in case passers-by were hit by a football.
Headmasters have also been condemned for banning snowball fights and closing their schools in snowy weather because they feared pupils and staff might fall.
The impulse to be overly protective is having dire consequences for Britain's children, Mr Gill will say. "Children need their own space to make their own mistakes, deal with other children and push boundaries - the skills they once learnt playing in the streets or in the fields," he told The Sunday Telegraph. advertisement
"Now parents don't allow children to play out or walk to school and are scared to take their eyes of them in the park. Schools ban tag and conkers and are even banning running in the playground because of some misperception about the compensation culture.
"Not giving children space is disastrous. We are creating a kind of cabin fever. Some teenagers are out of control because they have never had these opportunities. Life is getting harder for children from all backgrounds. Some of the reason is the lack of opportunities to develop self-efficacy, the ability to self-regulate their behaviour."
Mr Gill, who led a Government-commissioned review of children's play, said teams working with young offenders reported that many had spent their lives watching television or hanging round estates and had never played outside.
"They've never been to the beach or to the park. Their opportunities to learn right from wrong, without adult intervention, to develop their everyday morality, have been severely curtailed. They have not learnt how to react if someone is making a fool of them or what to do if someone is challenging them. So much of those interactions you have to work out for yourself. Because they haven't learnt these skills when they were younger, by the time some children are teenagers they escalate situations and get their retaliation in first."
Officialdom was adding to over-protection. "Bureau-cracy and paperwork mean people are forced to complete long checklists that are more about covering people's backs than making things safer," he said.
Similar concerns have been expressed by Digby Jones, the Government's skills envoy and former director-general of CBI, and Prince Philip. Even the health and safety industry has attacked organisations that use it as an excuse to ban everyday activities. Lisa Fowlie, the president of the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health, said: "To ban football on the grounds of safety will deprive kids of the opportunity to let off steam and benefit from exercise. Football has been a playground sport for generations. Banning it is a gross over-reaction."
My gut feeling is that the percentages are the same, but because we have more people in the U.S., there are more of everything. Without an instant nation-wide and world-wide media like we have now, we just didn't hear about all the bad things 30 - 40 - 50 - 60 years ago.
When we would do something daring or risky my mom used to say in all seriousness " if you kill yourself don't come crying to me"
years ago, neighbor ask me why i keep seeding and fixing the yard where the kids ride their bikes like a race track and just not let them ride on the lawn? i told him right now i'm raising children... i have the rest of my life to raise grass.
Honestly, I do the same thing.
Lots of activities.
We are not in a bad neighborhood but there was a woman raped behind a CVS not far from us.
No way do my kids roam.
We moved from the city to a more rural area. Suddenly no one wore bicycle helmets, kids climbed trees and swung from ropes, kids ran barefoot, even if occassionally getting a cut or into something yucky. Children weren't corralled for mandatory sunscreen sessions, they drank water out of the hose and they wrestle and horseplay in the yard.
Took some getting used to, but I like it.
My childhood left me and my sisters with plenty of battle scars but I wouldn't change a thing.
What about the dad factor? DH lets the kids do stuff that scares the stuffing out of me, but he laughts it off. Maybe it takes the balance of Mom and Dad -- Mom the scaredy-cat and Dad saying, "Hey, I got a job for you ..."
The scariest moments I've had have involved DS1 -- DH let him drive the tractor while we loaded the wagon with hay. Watching him start the tractor on a hill using the clutch and brakes kind of scared me. DS1 was 8 at the time.
That said ... the school canceled two days last week ... because it was too cold. Never happened for us!
In the US, I call this "The Cult of Nice". It is not just physical over-protection, it is also intellectual and emotional shielding to such a degree that the children are at first neurotically dysfunctional, then later, either obsessed with morbidity or sociopathic.
Normal children reject such over-protection, and in time it will often lead to their rejection of their parents, their children seeing them as weak, undependable creatures.
The most obvious deprivation is that teachers are forbidden to teach information that is "not nice", on the assumption that learning about things that are "not nice" will make you "not nice". But students are quick to spot these acts of omission, and it disturbs many of them deeply.
What is so horrible and awful that teachers are afraid to teach us about it? The mind runs wild, having seen horrific things on TV and in the movies. What is worse that that?
The students crave honesty. The luckier ones learn about "not nice" things at home, and from that point see their teachers as weak and foolish.
Emotionally, being stunted in your growth because of parental fear cannot but have terrible consequences in your behavior around others. Either their children will never develop healthy relationships, they will be too submissive or dominant and abusive. Or some other unpleasant emotional type.
In the final analysis, one can either raise their children to be like wild animals or domestic animals. Domestic animals never mature emotionally, which makes them docile, tame and easy to control. Ironically, many of these parents would prefer that their children be that way. That they are peaceful and cooperative all the way to the abattoir, than that they should run wild and free.
Maybe there were just as many pedophiles then. Some neighbor did try to molest my cousin, a guy exposed himself to us kids walking home from school down on the railroad tracks. I did tell my mother about that one, and she called he police which I didn't know until much later. I thought he was just doing you know. We went to the bathroom behind trees all the time.
The worst thing I heard of was in sixth grade. We had a tv personality who played the guitar, a kid show, Cowboy Blank (in case it really didn't happen). Anyway, they had him at a kid party, and he took a little girl home. She was excited to get a ride home with Cowboy Blank. He raped her. She was so traumatized she couldn't talk for days my mom said. The story was he left town.
But my father was very safety conscious, always lecturing me. My mom was more laid back. One summer I carried home a snake and came to the side screen door. "Mom, guess what I've got". "Blank, if you've go a snake out there (don't know how she guessed) and bring it in the house, I'll knock your block off!".
And my mom was a freak about health stuff, don't want to go into it. I was just telling my daughter about some stuff. I got pneumonia and didn't tell anybody until I couldn't hide it any longer. Three days I was so weak and sick I could hardly walk, kept going, ended up in the hospital, shots round the clock, think the new drug streptomyacin saved me, penicillin wasn't doing a thing. There are a lot of things I never told my parents, some kids tried to push me off a bridge, I don't know why I was like that. So many things happened I never told until I got past 50 or so, too late to tell my parents.
I have seen plenty here on FR advocating that short leash. If something tragic happens, the parents are always the first to be blamed for not keeping a closer eye on their child.
A short leash is fine as long as it isn't used with a choke collar.
I think about how I grew up. I am not sure I even saw my mom in the morning, and was outside all day. I may not have seen her until supper time.
With my kids, I watch fairly closely, but they do not have a similar experience. If I let them be like that someone would definitely report me to social services. I think that is probably the biggest fear and problem with today's parenting.
This guy was definitely off the rails on a crazy train...
~ Blue Jays ~
There is an enormous difference between playing outside under parental supervision and being left to wander aimlessly which this government adviser is clearly trying to obfuscate. Anyone can look up the number of convicted sex offenders in there area (mapsexoffenders.com) but they should remember that this is just the tip of the iceberg and doesn't count those who were convicted prior to tracking statutes, plea bargained to other charges, moved without re-registering, or the rapists with double digit IQ's who never got caught. Throwing one's children to the wolves is mortal negligence, regardless of what any "government expert" has to say.
When I was young we lived way out in the sticks and there was one neighbor boy about my age. When I was in about the 3rd grade we moved to the tiny town (about 300 people) where my grandparents and great grandparents lived.
I had a pretty good childhood even with the divorce of my parents.
The freedom to organize play such as a game of baseball was routine when I was a child. No adults were present. We figured out the teams, the rules, and spent hours playing the game. I'm talking 8 to 12 years old. we learned a lot about getting along. Much of out non school time passed by like this. I'd say we learned the ethics of work a lot earlier than kids will today. Most of us got jobs as teenagers. A kid today won't get a job until they are out of college. I'd say the process made us more conservative at an earlier age. I hope this young generation can hold itself together.
True, as one poster said, America didn't have so many nuts and criminals loose like there is today. That is one reason the leashes are too short today.
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