The war against tag
Today on my yahoo news update I have read that several schools have banned the game tag and other unsupervised games where children can be hurt. This is a recent development on the war against all fun during recess whatsoever, after people have found that dodge ball is "exlusionary and dangerous" not to0 long ago.
Now I am all for safety, but let's be honest. What can a kid do that won't get them potentially hurt? Take a five year old for example, a five year old boy can't clean his room without needing three band-aids afterwords. Some kids look alot like Bruce Willis at the end of a Diehard movie when they get together, because kids can play a bit rough. So I am all for schools wanting to be safe.
Our school outlawed tackle or rough contact sports when I was a kid, so we learned to play touch football and tag style games. Some kids still tag you with a little too much zeal, and those kids were either removed from the game or you learned not to play with those kids. In 6 years of recess I never drank milk at a strange lunch table, got hit over the head with a blackjack, and woke up in a field being press ganged into a game of tag. You can't really be forced into playing tag, if someone tags you and you go on the swings... it kind of defeats the purpose.
I can only think that the reason to blame with recess turning into an excercise yard at a Shawshank prison has something to do with lawyers. I don't mean all lawyers of course, I have met some very nice lawyers. So lawyers in general is probably not accurate, so I will be specific...Sleazy lawyers. Lawyers that can bring 20 million dollar trauma and emotional suffering lawsuits against an elementry school because a kid threw up on a merry go round.
I will not go into my rant on the legal profession in general or on the people that hire lawyers of that depraved nature that would hire a lawyer that would take that case. (Many lawyers actually turn down cases because they are trivial and petty...good to know isn't it.)
What I will say is that being a kid can be tough, and all the laws and rules can't seem to and never will protect kids from getting hurt. It is part of growing up, and while many parents would do anything they could to keep their child from ever getting hurt, as silly as it sounds for me to say this...it is important for a child to experience such things for good or ill at times.
I have had friends with over protective parents, and while they did not get booboos like other children, they also were taught not to take risks and to ever try anything new. I have seen the results in two opposite ends.
Some of these kids lived in mortal fear of doing anything new in fear of pain or upsetting their parents, which is all part of becoming an adult is learning how to survive in a world with other people. One of these kids lived with his mother until she died of natural causes and is afraid of people outside his family and will still never leave his home unless he had to. Taking care of your children to help them grow is good, protecting them and sheltering them from reality makes them codependant on you forever because they don't learn to live on their own. Some parents have to think that someday I will not be there for my child, and then what will my child have to do.
Then you got the other side of the coin, you have parents that shelter their kids for years and then one day the kids figure out that they are missing out on something. This happens alot for college kids the first time they get away from their parents. Taking my classmate Jesse for example. When he was at home he was a straight A student, his parents never let him hang out with other kids, his family was his only social life he had...He went away to college 5 states away and in about a week he was in the hospital getting treated for alcohol poisoning.
So you can sign a disclaimer if that is what it takes to keep the lawyers happy, and you can talk to your kids and teach them the dangers and be a strict parent. Remember though you can't whitewash and sanitize the world for your children, and you can't keep the world away from your children together no matter how much you try. So teach them young and lead them while they are young, and even if they think you are a complete moron when they hit their teenage years they will eventually learn the values you taught them. It will make them better people in the long run, you have to believe it. My parents found out recently that their is hope for their kid yet.
So teach them to be safe, but let them play. They got to get hurt once in a while, they need to stretch their wings and sometimes you have to let them out of the nest. In the long run it's the best protection you can give them.
Thanks for coming by.
Now I am all for safety, but let's be honest. What can a kid do that won't get them potentially hurt? Take a five year old for example, a five year old boy can't clean his room without needing three band-aids afterwords. Some kids look alot like Bruce Willis at the end of a Diehard movie when they get together, because kids can play a bit rough. So I am all for schools wanting to be safe.
Our school outlawed tackle or rough contact sports when I was a kid, so we learned to play touch football and tag style games. Some kids still tag you with a little too much zeal, and those kids were either removed from the game or you learned not to play with those kids. In 6 years of recess I never drank milk at a strange lunch table, got hit over the head with a blackjack, and woke up in a field being press ganged into a game of tag. You can't really be forced into playing tag, if someone tags you and you go on the swings... it kind of defeats the purpose.
I can only think that the reason to blame with recess turning into an excercise yard at a Shawshank prison has something to do with lawyers. I don't mean all lawyers of course, I have met some very nice lawyers. So lawyers in general is probably not accurate, so I will be specific...Sleazy lawyers. Lawyers that can bring 20 million dollar trauma and emotional suffering lawsuits against an elementry school because a kid threw up on a merry go round.
I will not go into my rant on the legal profession in general or on the people that hire lawyers of that depraved nature that would hire a lawyer that would take that case. (Many lawyers actually turn down cases because they are trivial and petty...good to know isn't it.)
What I will say is that being a kid can be tough, and all the laws and rules can't seem to and never will protect kids from getting hurt. It is part of growing up, and while many parents would do anything they could to keep their child from ever getting hurt, as silly as it sounds for me to say this...it is important for a child to experience such things for good or ill at times.
I have had friends with over protective parents, and while they did not get booboos like other children, they also were taught not to take risks and to ever try anything new. I have seen the results in two opposite ends.
Some of these kids lived in mortal fear of doing anything new in fear of pain or upsetting their parents, which is all part of becoming an adult is learning how to survive in a world with other people. One of these kids lived with his mother until she died of natural causes and is afraid of people outside his family and will still never leave his home unless he had to. Taking care of your children to help them grow is good, protecting them and sheltering them from reality makes them codependant on you forever because they don't learn to live on their own. Some parents have to think that someday I will not be there for my child, and then what will my child have to do.
Then you got the other side of the coin, you have parents that shelter their kids for years and then one day the kids figure out that they are missing out on something. This happens alot for college kids the first time they get away from their parents. Taking my classmate Jesse for example. When he was at home he was a straight A student, his parents never let him hang out with other kids, his family was his only social life he had...He went away to college 5 states away and in about a week he was in the hospital getting treated for alcohol poisoning.
So you can sign a disclaimer if that is what it takes to keep the lawyers happy, and you can talk to your kids and teach them the dangers and be a strict parent. Remember though you can't whitewash and sanitize the world for your children, and you can't keep the world away from your children together no matter how much you try. So teach them young and lead them while they are young, and even if they think you are a complete moron when they hit their teenage years they will eventually learn the values you taught them. It will make them better people in the long run, you have to believe it. My parents found out recently that their is hope for their kid yet.
So teach them to be safe, but let them play. They got to get hurt once in a while, they need to stretch their wings and sometimes you have to let them out of the nest. In the long run it's the best protection you can give them.
Thanks for coming by.
Labels: rants, social tripe
posted by Janus Torrell at 10:59 AM
5 Comments:
How typical. I stood here and read this entire thing, waiting for the line to begin to move (assuming that it would, too). It always takes me awhile, because I read slow.
But this is NOT the DMV, I now realize, so now I got to go back out and come in the right door, wherever the heck they put it.
Eh. I should forget the whole tag deal and just get a bicycle.
yw Lorinda, thanks for coming by. It's a hard thing to do, because every thing in our gut says "I don't want them to go through that, because I did." When my niece Ellie says the same things and knows everything about everything like I did when I was her age, it is hard to trust and have faith that she will grow out of eventually
What's really terrible Harry is when you finally get to the front of the line and the guy with the mustache that issues you the tags goes on his coffee break and you end up waiting in line until your new stickers expire.
My guy has no mustache, he wailed!
Wailed? I would tell ya it is worth a longer trip to the DMV in Belvidere, line is usually short and no wailers...they got this great place with Chicken fingers and beer too.
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