Published today in the Daily Telegraph in the UK: www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/9201083/National-Trust-Super-Rangers-to-teach-children-50-things-to-do-outdoors.html

In reaction to this study, a non-profit is promoting a list of 50 things every child should do before they are 11 3/4. On the list: skim a stone, fly a kite, throw some snow, find some frogspawn.

Seriously? When did parents lose the plot? I can't blame this lack of adventure on the kids. Did 'Health and Safety' regulate the basic enjoyment out of growing up? If so, I'm glad I was a child of the 70s.

Another third will blame the city if their kids fall off them trees!

Growing up, I was always reminded that my father had a young sister (technically my aunt) in the 1920s that was climbing a fig tree, with the other kids, she fell and died.

In my town, people are constantly suing the city for tripping on the sidewalk, or for falling into a raised beach fire pit labeled "hot coals" or even getting hit by a Frisbee. All lawsuits that paid big money.

The U.S. version appeared here.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/science/19tierney.html?scp=2&sq=playground&st=cse

Oh well... I guess I am lucky I didn't die when I was a kid with all the risky activities we engaged in :)

Many social scientists are suggesting this coddling is creating a generation of people who have not cultivated the ability to asses risk. The kids have not been allowed to find out things for themselves while unsupervised and thus have never made the mistakes needed to asses risk at a level that increases as they get older and should be taking bigger and bigger risks. Some claim the result will be fear of failure, and looking for someone else to do things for and provide for them.

"Many social scientists are suggesting this coddling is creating a generation of people who have not cultivated the ability to asses risk"
Yes next they will tell us that teenagers that have never been in the kitchen alone cannot cook...

Never mind about social scientists and creating a generation , you can see that effect right here at BPL right now.

Kind of reminds me of over-sanitising the house, filling the air with chemical sprays, keeping the windows shut with air conditioning on all the time ,eating processed food and then wondering why we have more allergies..
Next some brilliant mind will tell us that if you stay in bed for three years straight you may have problems running for a while after that.

Scientists? How about common sense ?
Franco
Since my comments maybe a bit obscure at time...
Decades ago (and probably for centuries before that...) when a child or a young person could not do something that was pretty simple (like tying shoelaces..) and was not legally an imbecile, the comment used to be "he is an only child" regardless it it were or not.
The implication was that the parents had done everything for that one so he himself was incapable of doing anything.
Not beign exposed to any risk is along the same line.
Nothing new under the sun...

Edited by Franco on 04/18/2012 23:26:19 MDT.

Good grief we definately coddle our kids too much these days. I got my first knife at age 7 and a hunting knife that could have done serious damage at age 8. We were always out in the woods on some kids adventure. Somehow I didn't kill myself.

I remember when I worked at summer camp I was something of a "rock star," all the kids (at least all the boys) thought I was cool. The reason was simple. I was the one who let them make fires and use pocket knives. Actaully those were just the most popular things we did. We also staged big battles with foam swords. We camped out under the stars. We went on commando missions at night. We rode skateboards in the cabins and played in the mud. We painted our faces with charcoal and played hide and seek in the woods. We went to the big kids paintball field and oragnized a big game of capture the flag there. I had a lot of fun but it was kinda sad too. The reason the kids thought it was so awesome was becasue most of them had never done anything like that at home.

My daughter climbing "The Tree"!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWhaulYjDng&feature=youtu.be

I see it in Boy Scouts all the time. Kids who don't know which side of a knife to cut with, or who don't know how to strike a match. Told me his parents didn't let him play with matches. I told him we're not playing, we're lighting a stove. Funny, most of those kids all go to the same private school.

Edited by skinewmexico on 04/19/2012 23:56:49 MDT.

I have a 14 yr old nephew, my sister does not allow him to light the gas stove in the kitchen. He has to boil water or make a cheese melt sandwich in the microwave with a touch button.

My other nephew is 8 yrs old, he's not mentally retarded, he was potty trained at age 6, his mom (my sister) still wipes his behind, if she is not there, he does not wipe. He's a sissy mamma's boy. They put him in the boy scouts to man-up, but all he does is drink the red punch, get wired on sugar and run around. He hasn't learned a thing, not even how to wear his uniform right. their household has no rules, no boundaries, no consequences.

I'm not in favor of excessive intrusive laws, but conditioning and nurturing a kid into being a wuss and arrested development should be child-abuse or neglect.

At his same age (8 yrs old) I vividly recall watching a German WW-2 war movie with my dad, and the next day, I created my own secret encryption code.

At his same age (8 yrs old) I vividly recall watching a German WW-2 war movie with my dad, and the next day, I created my own secret encryption code."

now uh daze they're looking for codes to crack Call of Duty 3, why learn about World Wars when you can go kill Nazis with the flick of a PS3 button?

Really frustrating times we live in....

The failure to adequately asses risk is something I see all the time. I work at a university and see kids walk under swaying redwood branches during a wind storm, walk in the middle of a service road with headphones on, walk barefoot in and out of research facilities...the list goes on and on. Concerning.

Thom, your daughter is awesome and you are a great dad!

"The failure to adequately asses risk is something I see all the time. I work at a university and see kids walk under swaying redwood branches during a wind storm, walk in the middle of a service road with headphones on, walk barefoot in and out of research facilities...the list goes on and on. Concerning."

Yes, but that is what happens when kids are raised in a suffocating, all protective cocoon. When you are given the freedom to go out and run around, and get into all sorts of mischief as a kid, you very quickly learn to assess risk the hard way. Hopefully, not ultimately hard, but enough to teach you to PAY ATTENTION. In my cohort, a couple of kids paid the ultimate price and, in the process, reinforced the habit we had all pretty much internalized by that time thru various mishaps involving broken bones, scrapes, bruises, burns, run ins with various organs of authority, etc. It may sound callous and unfeeling, but I think that way of growing up produced adults far better prepared to handle whatever life threw at them. When I look around today and see so many clearly clueless, pallid, overweight young adults wandering around in a daze, if they even bother to get up off their butts at all, I thank my lucky stars I was born wen I was. This is a generalization to which we all can find exceptions but, IME, it accurately reflects the conditions that prevail for far too many young people today.

Okay so what happens when an over protected kid goes off to college? If they havne't learned good decision making skills in grade school they'll have to develop them the hard way as young adults (in a place where the consequences of bad decisions tend to be more severe).

When I was 14 I went to work in the kitchen at a small summer camp. Some of the guys there as campers where about my age and a lot of them were "good kids" at home around their parents (I knew some of the families). Once the parents were gone they were totally different kids. Obviously the "helicopter parenting" only worked as long as mom and dad were there to enforce the rules. I certainly wasn't perfect but I'd had enough experiences and mentoring from my dad that I knew how to NOT get in too much trouble.

"At his same age (8 yrs old) I vividly recall watching a German WW-2 war movie with my dad, and the next day, I created my own secret encryption code."
Ha, I used to do this with my friend in elementary school! We would pass notes in class with "secret" message codes based on some kind of language we made up.

I fell out of a tree I was climbing and broke by tib/fib last June.

Afterward, my mom said to me, "well, you're not just going to never climb trees, right?"

Brings back a memory. Mom had me take my youngest brother to the park. He asks "Is it OK if I climb that tree?" "That" tree was about 2 feet in diameter and the first branch was about 20 feet up .... no chance he can climb it, right? "Sure", I say.

About 10 feet from that tree was a skinny tree with plenty branches. He goes up that tree like a monkey until he's a little more than 20 ft up and starts getting it swaying until it's getting within leaping distance of the branch on the big tree ... so now he's a flying squirrel in addition to being a monkey. Soon he's in the upper branches of the big tree.

My thought process? "He's gonna die and then dad's gonna kill me!" I'm in no hurry for that so I let him climb until he's tired of it and climbs back down to that lowest branch. He squats staring at the smaller tree for about a minute (seemed like an eternity), does the flying squirrel thing again and didn't miss the little tree. 15 seconds later he's back on the ground.

I never again under estimated that little brother.

I commend Thom's daughter both for her climbing skills and her choice of trees!

Our kids climbed trees, I never discouraged them.

my kids will be living in the trees, if people don't start paying attention

I think accidental deaths of kids is down. I look at me parents families and it was not uncommon for a kid to have died in a farming accident or drowned or got shot in a hunting accident or a car accident.

The world has gotten safer. Have we crossed over the line ? Some definately have but there have been benefits along the way.