[mhking]

I guess when we stood up and jumped out of swings, we all ended up maimed...

[mhking]

"Hold muh beer 'n watch this!" PING....

If you want on or off this list, please let me know!

[Paleo Conservative]

I bet the long term problems caused by childhood obesity will be much greater than injuries from playgrounds.

[speedy]

Yeah, see-saws taught good lessons about not being a sucker. Seems kind of ridiculous in an age where kids fly through the air on skateboards that they're worried about jungle gyms.

[EggsAckley]

Near the bottom of the article, the 'fess up:

“The sad fact, though, is that the injuries really haven’t come down significantly. Whether that’s because there are many more playgrounds in use today and more children using them, I don’t know.”

[Archangelsk]

Fred Reed (http://www.fredoneverything.net) usually rants about this every month or so. My take on this is that the baby boomers are jealous of everyone who is having more fun than them because then they would have to accept the fact that they are no longer the hip, with it generation.

[LiteKeeper]

INTSUM

[TomGuy]

Anyone over the age of 40 should never have survived childhood--according to these socialist liberal do-gooders who want to run every aspect of our lives and keep us so cocooned that we are safe from every known evil. [Of course, by being cocooned, we have no concept of the outer life--so the socialists will take care of that for us and be our great and good leaders. How generous of them.]

[Dont Mention the War]

The dates mentioned in this article mesh perfectly with my memories. I know that in my school district, the merry-go-rounds and monkey bars were yanked out of every elementary school in the county only a year or so after I made the jump to junior high, so we're talking around 1982 or so.

And for what it's worth, I did see a LOT of kids get hurt on those things on a regular basis. But they were usually kids I didn't like, so I thought they deserved it. ;)

[Prodigal Son]

The one mother:

She would not allow her daughter on the giant slide she loved as a girl.

I can only shake my head at this. How's your kid going to learn to fend for itself if you won't even let it play in the same manner that you did when you were its age?

We were like little animals when we played as children. The monkey bar fights were probably the tamest thing we would ever do. Great fun- great for improving your grip. Everything else was invariably some form of war involving projectiles, escape and evasion etc. You can't learn to dodge a hurtling rock until you have a few "hurtled" at you.

Ach well, useless to complain.

[gitmo]

It is hard to find those kid-powered merry-go-rounds that used to give giddy gut-level lessons in centrifugal force.

I loved those things. But the best fun was a grapevine hanging from a tree limb over a 50 foot gully.

[squidly]

I suppose I should assume that playing smeer the queer is no longer encouraged.

[Ben Bolt]

I used to swing higher than the crossbar and at the height of my swing leap off doing flying side kicks . That was so much fun !

Seems like these days many adults & kids are risk adverse . Its to bad because I think it builds character .

[Kozak]

Yeah I remember trying to time my jump from the swing so that I got the maximum boost, you wanted to leave with the swing just reaching it's farthest point. Man could you catch some major air! I know pretty stupid, but it was fun at the time....

[McGavin999]

And then these morons wonder why there's an obesity problem with children. They can't play anymore, all that's left for them is either computer games or TV. Yeah, kids got hurt, so what, that was part of growing up. If you didn't have scabs on your knees and elbows there was something wrong with you.

I heard the other day they were thinking about re-introducing PE to schools, I didn't realize they had stopped. Can't we throw out all these NEA idiots and get our country back to normal?

[winodog]

They have built skateboard parks all over the valley. I took my kid to one yesterday. There was almost one hundred kids on boards, skates and bikes going in every direction running into each other and maybe 5 had helmets on.
These "parks" are much more dangerous then anything we had back then.
Kids have to much to do inside with cable TV, video games and the puter.
When I was my kids age I was out the door when I woke up and came home for lunch and dinner. I was outside till bedtime even when it was 110 degrees out.
The kids nowadays stay in till its almost dark and they dont explore like we use to.
My son will not drink tapwater. He has to have bottled water. When my parents took us to the mts, we opened the car door and were gone. Mom and dad had to usually come find us. When I lived in SC same thing. We were not allowed in the woods and thats where we spent all our time.
Kids today do not know how to have fun unless it involves money.

[steplock]

Give thanks to all the LAWYERS who have made this lack of fun possible.

Lawyers = Politicians = SCUM

[ladylib]

I read recently where there will be no more diving boards and pools will be about five feet deep at public pools because of high insurance premiums.

I talked to an owner of a motel on Cape Cod who removed the diving board from his pool because of the insurance.

[PatrioticAmerican]

NO child shall be hurt. Of course, no child will grow up, ever. Today's "adults" are proof of that, and it will only get worse.

[fnord]

I especially liked jumping out of the big, tall swing sets. You could fly about 30 feet.

I'm guessing tetherball and dodgeball are absolutely verbotten.

[Scenic Sounds]

What do y'all think? Do you think that you could come up with some fun ways to make playgrounds more dangerous for kids?

The last time I took my grandson to the park I wound up having to rescue him from the top of a tree he climbed. LOL