More idiocy: making playgrounds really, REALLY safe.

[buttmunch]

The jungle gym, the carousel, the monkey bars... Chances are that the mention of these playground staples brings up fond memories. But they may be memories your grandchildren will never get to share.

Some playground equipment and games are coming under fire from people who think they put children at risk of hurting their bodies and minds.

In school districts across the country, grade-school students are forbidden to play contact sports during recess. In Cheyenne, Wyo., and Spokane, Wash., the ban even includes the first playground game most children learn first: tag. And even on the playgrounds themselves, changes have been afoot that make any new parent wonder if his or her kids are skipping around in an alien landscape.

Gone are the gravel-carpeted, spidery, rusting metal constructs that the kids of the 1960s and 1970s hung, spun and jumped from. They've been replaced by rubber mats, foam-covered equipment, simplified forms and Day-Glo colors.

"If children are the most precious commodity we have, then we don't understand why people don't make the play areas safe for children to grow up on," said Donna Thompson of the National Program for Playground Safety, based in Cedar Falls, Iowa. "Getting hurt on a playground is not a rite of passage to be an adult."

According to the NPPS, founded by the University of Northern Iowa and partially funded by the Centers for Disease Control's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, a child is treated in an emergency room every two-and-a-half minutes because of a playground-related accident; 15 children die each year in an incident related to play. Each year, more than 200,000 children are hurt on playground equipment, with about three-fourths of those in public playgrounds.

Thompson said she thinks places without newer, safety-emphasized playgrounds "do not want to take the money and time to deal with the safety issues. They would rather use the money to do something else, and in the long haul, it's going to cost less to make the playgrounds safe than to go to court. I think it also shows that adults are more important than children."

And it's not just the equipment itself, according to some safety experts and those who decide what's allowed on the playground.

The government on Wednesday released a study that said playgrounds should have a shock-absorbent surface such as mulch or wood chips under the equipment, and said playground ladder rungs and guard rails should be spaced in such a fashion that children can't become trapped between them. The Consumer Product Safety Commission also said parents should look for exposed bolts, S hooks and other playground equipment hardware that can catch on children's clothing.

In the report, the government also encouraged parents to avoid buying clothing with hood and neck drawstrings that can catch on playground and other equipment, putting the wearer at risk of strangling.

Play that involves touching can also easily degenerate into aggressive physicality, some say — and those games that involve using other children as targets almost invite bullying.

The furor over dodgeball a couple years ago may have been good for a couple yucks from the likes of Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn, but it's no laughing matter for the schools that still ban it, or for the National Association for Sport and Physical Education based in Reston, Va. Spokeswoman Paula Keyes Kun pointed out that the group's position — opposing dodgeball in physical education programs — hasn't changed.

"Dodgeball does provide a means of practicing some important physical skills — running, dodging, throwing, and catching. However, there are many activities that allow practice of these skills without using human targets or eliminating students from play," the NASPE official dodgeball position paper states.

"The students who are eliminated first in dodgeball are typically the ones who most need to be active and practice their skills. Many times these students are also the ones with the least amount of confidence in their physical abilities. Being targeted because they are the 'weaker' players, and being hit by a hard-thrown ball, does not help kids to develop confidence.

"Some kids may like it — the most skilled, the most confident. But many do not! Certainly not the student who gets hit hard in the stomach, head, or groin. And it is not appropriate to teach our children that you win by hurting others," it continues.

But others say the devotion to safety may be come at the price of losing some of childhood's magic.

"The newer playgrounds all look the same. It's boring, for kids and parents," said Mindy, a 33-year-old communications consultant and mother of two in Cincinnati, Ohio who asked that her last name not be used. "I've also noticed new signs at playgrounds that state the 'recommended age' for each playground. I guess cities need to protect themselves, but where have common sense and good judgment gone? It's an unfortunate reflection of a sue-happy society where parents are more concerned with the 'what-ifs' when they should be concentrating more on supervising their children."

But Kenny Kramm, a Bethesda, Md. businessman and father, said it wasn't that simple.

Kramm said it's not always simply a matter of parents paying better attention on playgrounds. He and his wife founded Hadley's Parks Inc., which worked to make playgrounds across the country safer and more accessible to handicapped children.

"Safer playgrounds aren't an excuse for parents to be lazy," he said. "But I don't think there are many parents who, when they go to a park, actually go on the equipment with the children and take the fall with them. These things may seem minute, but when it happens to your family, it's not minute. It's not good parenting to say kids will be kids."

And Thompson said nostalgia for a parent's own childhood isn't an argument against doing everything possible to make today's playgrounds safer.

"It's like saying, 'When I was growing up, we didn't use seatbelts and I survived,'" she said. "Well, we know that seatbelts have made things a lot safer. The logic is ridiculous."

Jay E. Noffsinger, a pediatrician and professor of pediatrics at Saint Louis University School of Medicine, said playground accidents aren't as epidemic as some may be led to believe.

"More often than not, the injuries come not from playgrounds but things kids do on their own, like inline skating, skateboards," he said. "Injuries on playgrounds would not be the majority of injuries in doctor's offices around the country."

And those parents and groups who overemphasize playground safety, he said, may actually be doing more harm than good by scaring their children from playing at all.

"The much bigger problem in this country is sedentarianism and not being active, and though I would be in favor of people looking at making playgrounds safer, there may be an overemphasis on that rather than the fact that we need to be having more of them and encouraging physical participation with kids in any activity we can get them into," Noffsinger said.

"We need to be encouraging physical activity in any form, rather than legislating rules about the safety thereof."

Tom Norquist, president of the International Play Equipment Manufacturers Association based in Harrisburg, Pa., agreed. Playgrounds are safer than ever, he said, but that's meaningless if kids aren't developing their brains through play.

"Playground safety is only one cog of the wheel when it comes to a good playground environment," he said.

"Right now the focus is on safety, and it really needs to be the developmental value of play. We need to get more playgrounds out there and more opportunities for kids to play, and have them meet industry compliance and safety guidelines, but not shun kids away from them because of the safety guidelines."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,210351,00.html

You know, as a mother of two young ones, I'm all for safety but at the same time, I think kids need to learn thier own limits. And they won't do that if they're swaddled in figurative cotten thier entire childhoods. And don't even get me started on the dodge ball discussion. Those kids who excell at dodge ball might be the same kids who suck at math, thus need some area where they can get a self-esteem boost. After reading this, I'm back to looking into starting my own country. Thankfully, my kids attend a great school with all sorts of dangerous playground equipment and they love, love, love it. Yup, they scrape thier knees and sometimes fall and get bruised. What a horrible thing to happen to them, eh?

[sputnik]

these people have too much time on their hands and seem to think they can protect children from ever experiencing pain or a scraped knee or anything unpleasant. that'll make for well-adjusted adults later on in life...
maybe they can just stick them in sterile padded rooms, that way they'll really be safe.

[buttmunch]

I say the parents need to be put in a padded cell until they come to their senses.

[pierresgirl]

I was just telling my 6 year old about the time a girl in my K class broke her arm falling off of the monkey bars and we all thought it was the coolest thing! Her school just got a new playscape last spring but they left out the old stuff too. Kids get hurt all the time, whether it's at home or on the playground. It's part of life.

[buttmunch]

My kid fell yesterday running on a sidewalk. Scraped his knee pretty badly and cried for what felt like forever. Now he's proud of his bandages and I can put off suing the city for not laying down child-safe asphalt.

[Grimmlok]

I'm sorry, don't playgrounds usually have a shock absorbing material under the structures called SAND? Hello?

Christ on a crutch, if you take the FUN out of PLAYgrounds, kids won't fucking PLAY, and then they'll get even more obese than they are now. So a kid falls down. Boo frickety hoo. So a kid falls off something.. they don't exactly have the best motor co-ordination, and PLAYING HELPS WITH THAT.

and come ON.. picking on dodgeball? If your kid is a blimp he's gonna get hit. That's just how it is. He takes up more space and is a bigger, fatter, slower moving target.

Maybe when your little zeppelin comes home crying about how much he sucks at it because HE"S A BIG FUCKING FATTY, you'll put the little porker on a diet/exercise regimen!

Fuck, whynot just keep your kids inside, glued to a chair if you're worried that precious might hurt him/herself.

Parents are fucking retards today. Seriously. Don't they remember their own childhoods?

[MgMMD]

It sounds like people are preying on parents guilt to make $$$$.

Let your kids PLAY and get bumped and bruised. Seriously! A knee scrape is not indicative of future trauma.

[buttmunch]

Glad to see I'm not the only one who thinks today's parents are completely bonkers. One of my kids was at a daycare a long time ago that wouldn't let the kids play in the yard because it was dirt and they hadn't been able to seed or sod it in time. When I asked why playing in the dirt was a problem, the head teacher said a group of parents were afraid thier kids WOULD GET TOO DIRTY. Yup...because we know that kids die from too much dirt, just like they melt in the rain.

[Laurent]

And don't even get me started on the dodge ball discussion. Those kids who excell at dodge ball might be the same kids who suck at math, thus need some area where they can get a self-esteem boost.

Couldn't agree more. I think it's ridiculous that people won't accept that not all kids are good at every single thing. I was watching some 9/10 year olds play in their "world series" baseball game the other day and when it was over they gave all the kids the same trophy. Nothing special for the winners because they "didn't want the other kids to feel like they weren't winners." Well, um, they didn't win.

I don't think it's healthy or realistic to bolster confidence with bullshit platitudes. No one gets a raise at work when their co-worker succeeds, so why start all this entitled shit early on.

[buttmunch]

I've seen the whole 'everyone gets a medal' thing any number of times. The kids all throw them away because they basically know it's bullshit and they know who really won. Kids aren't stupid and shouldn't be treated as such. They're also not immune to normal human emotions such as wanting to win, being sad when they don't...nor should they be. These are normal things.

[Grimmlok]

So they're effectively excising the competitive spirit out of group activities, the very thing that makes human beings drive to improve, learn and grow.

Fantastic. Can't wait for this generation to grow up into the biggest age-group of whiners and pukeball entitlement crybabies.

[SVZ]

The next generation of kids will be cool, or maybe the one after that. After they realize growing kids in bubbles doesn't work.

[Grimmlok]

By then we'll be in our 80's and anybody under 60 will be playing on our lawns or causing too much racket for our ears.

[SVZ]

hopefully we'll have laser guns by then

i mean how much of a challenge would it be to shoot at a kid who hasn't played dodge ball?

[Grimmlok]

Considering they'll all have those little scooters that the infirm and morbidly obese have, quite difficult. Those things can really boot it when you want them to.