> Opportunities to engage in outdoor free play—and risky play in particular—have declined significantly in recent years, in part because safety measures have sought to prevent all play-related injuries rather than focusing on serious and fatal injuries.
Of course. "injuries" don't matter, only serious and fatal ones do. A scratch is nothing and is healed in a couple of days. Even breaking a leg should not be considered serious. It's annoying, esp. for the parents, but it's in no way life-threatening.
Although I'm sure it has happened, it seems unlikely that any kind of play in a playground could result in serious injury or death. Let the kids play outside. And don't force them to put a coat in cold weather if they don't want to! Let them decide!
I'm in the middle of this right now with a 2 year old. Allowing your child to make decisions you disagree with has many down stream consequences, like what food they eat, what time they go to bed, how much screen time they watch, whether they sit at the table to eat.
How's that gonna go when it's time say "don't force them to do their homework, let them decide!"?
It's not about the coat, though the coat can be a matter of life or death in the case of a car accident or the sudden unexpected incapacitation of the parent, it's about following instructions and setting boundaries and being able to make the necessary decisions as a parent.
As a parent of twenty somethings,I would advise parents not to pressure their kids to do anything much unless it's really stupid dangerous (not just dangerous). Wouldn't/didn't pressure them to do homework. Bit my tongue as they jumped of rocks into seething oceans and rocketed down mountain trails beside ravines. Half of the battle of parenting is not passing on your own fears to the kids.
Giving the child some autonomy doesn't mean that you need to follow antiauthoritarian parenting schemes. It might even make it easier to convince the child to do the things that are important if you don't pressure them about things that are not important.
I'd say drawing a line in the sand where you don't need to is not about the coat or the slippery slope it doesn't cause if you don't do it.. It is about needing to be a helicopter parent because you have lost their respect.
> it seems unlikely that any kind of play in a playground could result in serious injury or death.
I think more important than the setting is ensuring they know how to play safely. Third most common cause of death is accidental self inflicted injuries. A lot of those are falls.
The kind of injury I imagine to happen on playgrounds does normally just need time to heal. Maybe a cast and some pain killers. Doesn't seem to generate a lot of profit for big medicine.
Correlated but not exactly the same is being out & playing without adult supervision.
Kids being out and running into emotional challenging situations allows them to learn and deals with emotions & anxiety are very important for later life.
I've been thinking a lot about this. What age would you let your child go out on errands by themselves?
When I was 7, in France, I'd walk a kilometer by myself to go on errands like going to the baker. I have a friend living in Tokyo who let his daughter go on errands around 5 years old (but Japan in particular is very accepting of this). We live in Hong Kong, here, I think the age is more around 8 or 9 years old.
I rode my bike to school in Middle School because it was so close a bus didn’t come. When I started High School it was a 2-3 miles away but I continued doing it until I had a car.
My friends and I would ride our bikes or walk everywhere we wanted during the day from 11/12 on. We would ride to a pharmacy weekly and get a snack or a small item for my mom.
Can't access the website, but sounds like the German approach [1]. In the past years, I can see that some new playgrounds being built in my area in France also incorporate more risks, which is nice.
Which area in France? we went back to France during the holidays to visit my parents near Perpignan and I was really disappointed at how bad the playgrounds were.
Compared to playgrounds when I was a child in the 80s, they were much safer, there was no sand, only that black bouncing floor (which might be toxic) and above all there was very little to do.
Same when we visited our friends in Toulouse.
It was much worse than the playgounds we have in Hong Kong that at least have decent slides, climbing bars, etc...
One thing that I've noticed is missing from both countries though are swings. We have them in Hong Kong but instead of just being a flat piece of wood on which you can stand, sit and do other things, it's more of a safety seat like you'd see in a baby chair.
I submitted a story about a slide for kids: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38442577. And the only comment was about how it would lead to lawsuits. This is a slide, something kids have used for 100+ years.
Modern large scale conflicts are still very labour intensive.
Israel has a tech-driven/advanced military but is still using hundreds of thousands of troops in Gaza. Ukraine / Russia use even more against each other.
The Royal Navy is currently unable to deploy an aircraft carrier to the Red Sea because of staffing issues, despite the UK's $70 billion defence budget. [1]
I'd recommend watching Perun's YouTube channel if you're interested in specific labour requirements of militaries [2]
Article was short on details, like ages and age-appropriate activities. When can I let my child roam his city neighborhood? That would be extremely helpful.
You as a parent probably know best when you can trust your child enough. Children are very different from each other, especially during the first ten years.
If you're waiting for your city to change, it's too late. Your kids will have grown up.
You need to move to a place where unsupervised outdoor play at young ages is encouraged. These places do in fact exist in the US.
The common reaction to this is that you can't just get up and move your family. We'll this is still a choice and we all set priorities on what is important.
I'd start with googling best places to raise a family and start digging in. I'm sure the lists change from year to year. I recently moved and started this way.
Also, there is no utopia so the "best place to raise a family" in the US might have other negatives, you just need to prioritize.
A low-traffic (no through-traffic) suburban area with a park or parks within easy walking distance and bike paths. I can think of lots of areas like that around here (northern California) and I'm sure elsewhere.
We live in such a neighborhood and it has been excellent for kids. They can walk or bike to the park in less than a minute, there are multiple playgrounds and large fields to run around.
If you are from the US, good luck. Here in Europe you often see kids alone in the city, either to go to school or to solve some sort of educational riddle they need to solve by finding the right place in small groups of three kids or something
I went to school alone since I was 7. As far as I know in much of the US people would probably sue you if your kid went alone.
It all depends. Some towns (or parts of towns) are walkable and some are really not.
In my town there are certainly young kids (i.e. elementary school age) who walk or bike to school on their own. Sometimes there are parents walking with them, but I think they do it because they enjoy a walk with their child rather than any real concern for safety. There are crossing guards at walkways where kids will need to cross busier roads.
In other areas, schools are just too far away to walk, or there are other difficulties such as major roadways with a lot of traffic. Then kids ride a bus or parents take them.
Cambridge, MA, USA public schools will allow children to leave unsupervised starting in third grade, which is 8 turning 9. Seems like a reasonable baseline.
One of the many reasons we moved our young children from the UK to Scandinavia was to improve their childhood by reducing hazards & risks whilst also being in an environment that was more acceptable of those risks. (The paper distinguishes risks vs hazards as something the child can perceive & control vs something they can't, like a car or unsafe equipment).
My children had whittling knives from age 5, built their own fires when we went on walks, could explore into the small woodlands on their own soon after and walked home from school at age 7. None of this would have been socially acceptable in a UK city but was pretty much standard in Oslo. Our children still feel safe and also feel confident doing things themselves. Our level of stress about our children seems to be lower than my friends elsewhere, who have a risk avoidance mindset, living in a society that highlights any potential risk as to be totally avoided and bad parenting if a child is exposed to any risk.
Occasionally you hear stories from the US about parents being arrested for letting their children walk down the street alone or play in the local park by themselves and that seems crazy to most of the rest of the world.
> The paper distinguishes risks vs hazards as something the child can perceive & control vs something they can't, like a car or unsafe equipment
I knew someone who worked with designing playgrounds here in Norway, and his focus was on this. He called it subjective safety vs objective safety.
The idea was to maximize objective safety while allowing the kids a lot of room to explore the subjective safety.
This could be say a climbing wall which was tall enough to be challenging, but ensuring the equipment and ground was designed and maintained[1] such that there was no risk of permanent injury should a kid fall from the top.
As most kids love a challenge this induced them to play freely in a natural way, which lead to other benefits including social aspects like reduction of bullying.
"such that there was no risk of permanent injury should a kid fall from the top"
I debate that this is possible. You can minimize the dangers (like having no solid rock underneath, but sand), but with bad luck(and skill) even a small fall can break a neck.
But it is very important, that children indeed fall often, so they learn how to fall without hurting themself. It is up to us to provide a place that is a reasonable environment for it. But kids should also climb trees in a forest - and you cannot clear every ground. Life comes with risk. But if you remove all risk for them, they won't be prepared for the risks they cannot avoid.
> I debate that this is possible. You can minimize the dangers (like having no solid rock underneath, but sand), but with bad luck(and skill) even a small fall can break a neck.
When you are a child you need a LOT of bad luck to achieve that (in contrast to being an adult), if the playground is properly designed.
True, children are fortunately really flexible and have soft bones (and heal fast). But serious injury is still possible and that rules out "no risk of permanent injury". Main danger would be probably the older kid falling on top of a toddler playing underneath. Or someone forgot a wooden stick there - and the result is a eye loss. But even under perfect clean conditions - bad injury with a fall is possible, even when falling on soft sand.
All of this can happen, nonetheless in a properly designed playground the worst thing that a 2 meters fall can do to a child/kid is probably a broken arm or leg. Maybe if they fall full flat on their back something worse can happen, but usually the body tends to put the bottom as the first point of contact.
Traumatic brain injuries, pretty much impossible to completely eliminate the risk of. These can be permanent and life altering. Land on your butt and roll back fast hitting your head on the wall. Done. Rare, but it happens.
My subthread started with "you need a LOT of bad luck". You can have a lot of bad luck, just like people can have a lot of good luck. It's not impossible but you should not plan your life around it.
I think about the playground at my childhood elementary school. Swings, jungle gyms, overhead ladders, teeter-totters, all the usual stuff -- in an area paved with either asphalt or crushed stone. Beyond that was a grassy field where you could just run, wander around, play ball, etc. There were a few trees around the perimeter that got a lot of climbing.
Yes you could fall and get hurt. You learned to not do that.
It's possible, but that doesn't mean it should be made impossible. Anecdotal but I've not heard of any "child falls from playground climbing thing and dies" stories. Not from the ones you describe anyway:
There was an 11 year old that died last year, but that was in a professional climbing hall; I'm not sure what happened but they were supposed to be secured. But that was a 13 meter drop, and the fifth incident like that in a 30 year timespan.
And there was a 4 year old that died after falling three meters from a bouncy castle in an indoor play area; the owners of the venue were pulled up on the unsafe conditions in 2013, but due to various mistakes they only got the report nearly a year later and did not remove the dangerous thing until the child fell off and died.
kids chose the level of risk, if you replace grass with rubber tiles they will jump of intentionally. The tiles will break your fall after all. Surely the grown ups have thought this through, I can trust them. Then imitation puts the process on steroids and they all start doing it.
There is no reversing the process, the "upgrades" must continue all over the world. The grown ups aren't thinking at all, they just do what the other kids do. Stuff like conquer markets.
Maybe if you lift Karin over your head, throw her onto the rubber tiles and say: If this was concrete I wouldn't have done that.
I've noticed that with group decision making it's always best to argue for more safety, its a winning argument. The argument doesn't need to be valid. The fact that you're defending safety is enough.
"Goal and intention ... there is no risk of permanent injury."
This not. If you design proper and guide the small children enough, you can achieve no permanent injuries with some luck (for a specific playground over some time), but you cannot rule it out, that eventually something very bad might happen and this would just give parents false security.
I have seen this actually quite often. Young parents who assume, that the playground is totally safe, so they let then children do really risky things without realizing the danger - and this is dangerous. I mean children should do risky things and other people(mainly the grandparents) freak out when they see, what my small kids are allowed to do. But as a climber and parkour enthusiast - I guide and assist them first, till I know, they can handle this particular new situation and I try to raise their awareness of what they are capable and when they should rather stop or shout for help. And of course, I am near, so I can assist in critical situations. But I know that accidents will happen. And they did, but luckily nothing serious so far (because I was there). But I know, that I am not in 100% control of the situation all the time, just not possible. But if I would be scared because of the remaining <0.1% - my nervousness would affect them and make them insecure. Fear makes knees shaky ... and then they fall.
Here's what the standard[1] that holds in EU says:
The aim of this standard is first and foremost to prevent accidents with a disabling or fatal consequence, and secondly to lessen serious consequences caused by the occasional mishap that inevitably will occur in children's pursuit of expanding their level of competence, be it socially, intellectually or physically.
This part of EN 1176 specifies general safety requirements for permanently installed public playground equipment and surfacing. Additional safety requirements for specific pieces of playground equipment are specified in subsequent parts of this standard.
This part of EN 1176 covers playground equipment for all children. It has been prepared with full recognition of the need for supervision of young children and of less able or less competent children.
"The aim of this standard is first and foremost to prevent accidents with a disabling or fatal consequence, and secondly to lessen serious consequences caused by the occasional mishap that inevitably will occur in children's pursuit of expanding their level of competence, be it socially, intellectually or physically."
Sounds very reasonable to me, with no unrealistic goals. I think we should be careful to not argue about semantics ... my point above was just about the absolut statement of "no risk of permanent injury should a kid fall from the top". The way you written it (I did not follow the link) - it said 100% safe. If you meant "very close to 100%", what is what people usually do with natural language, then there is no disagreement.
Ah, but we are also on a pedantic nerd site here, with many people wishing for more accuracy in common language..
And formal language for regulations are also not natural language and accuracy matters there, so I assumed the quote above from your friend was more in this style. Let's leave it at that :)
That is funny, (or not really), because I also have a cold with infection of some nerves and my brain is partly scrambled by painkillers. Hope you get well soon!
> Young parents who assume, that the playground is totally safe, so they let then children do really risky things without realizing the danger
Some parents just want to let the kids loose on the playground and then {do something} completely absorbed from reality, without raising the eyes and taking a look.
Yes, me too sometimes. But only after I verified, that my children are comfortable with the scenario (on a new playground, we have not been before).
But what I meant was for example parents encouraging their toddlers to do unsave stuff. Like riding down a steep slide, where they could fall off left or right from it. (And some toddlers apparently did fall out - because now there is no more slide, it really wasn't a safe toy for all kids, but slightly older kids 3+, could ride it without problems).
I spoke to some of those parents and they really were not aware of the dangers, they just assumed a slide is made save for all kids. And they were thankful for the warning.
There’s a lesson in there for adults too, with things like life changes and job changes. A lot of things that feel subjectively risky are not actually risky. You want to make sure the downside is covered but then aggressively take paths with high information discovery and variance.
Also I see a lot of playgrounds that are designed according to the rule that "if you can reach the thing on your own, you are old enough to handle the risks of the thing".
It's quite brilliant. Very small children up to almost teenagers can play on the same structure and challenge themselves in appropriate ways for their skill, because of the initial skill threshold in reaching the more risky parts.
I'm the first to admit that even as an adult I have had fun on those, by climbing the exteriors and leaping across long gaps. I hope it benefits my children that I can play with them that way.
The channel Not Just Bikes did a video on this, he had the same experience as you.[1]
Growing up in Germany myself, I also feel that this trend is getting noticable here.
I have no data on this, but I feel like safer cars lead to higher speeds and therefore perceived higher risk from a pedestrian/children point of view. The fact that there are more cars and they are bigger, while speed enforcement is basically non-existent (because freedom) are probably also doing their part.
Why, because people are rushing to beat the moment when charged go up during peak hour?
Personally, I find that Singapore's prevalence of pay-per-minute car shares (because buying a car is so expensive) coupled with the inexperienced drivers who tend to use them causes a lot more risky behavior.
> Why, because people are rushing to beat the moment when charged go up during peak hour?
No, because congestion charging keeps traffic flowing nicely at all times. Congestion would otherwise slow innercity traffic down to a crawl at best and a jam at worst.
> Personally, I find that Singapore's prevalence of pay-per-minute car shares (because buying a car is so expensive) coupled with the inexperienced drivers who tend to use them causes a lot more risky behavior.
I don't see that many shared cars on the road to make much of a difference? They certainly exist, of course. When I hear specific complaints it's often often about cab (or grab) drivers, and occasionally about bus drivers imported from PRC.
---
In any case, here I'm not objecting against anyone's specific bad behaviour, but mostly that we have so many stroads; and that cars drive fast (even the legal speed limit is very life threateningly dangerous to pedestrians).
I mostly like the walking experience inside of HDB complexes, with the void decks, little shops, and everything being pedestrianised and open to the general public. But the big stroads in between them are deadly.
Yes. And our congestion charge is explicitly adjusted upwards dynamically, when average speeds drop below a certain limit. (And is adjusted downwards, when average speeds are high enough.)
It's an awesome system, if all you care about is keeping traffic flowing. It does exactly what it was supposed to be doing. Works beautifully.
In Norway, when I (24) went to kindergarten my dad used to call to tell them to let me out the gate when it was time for me to go home. When I started at school I got walked only the couple of first times so that I would learn the way. After that you would most commonly walk alone or with classmates and friends who lived close to you.
As a Norwegian I would say something that is a big trait of Norwegian/Scandinavian culture that seperates it from many other parts of the world other than being very high trust societies, is independency. Young people get very independent at a young age. And parents don't meddle in their lives to the same extent as in many other countries. Politics also enables this by giving grants and loans to students, which makes the majority of people economically independent from their parents at 18/19.
> Politics also enables this by giving grants and loans to students, which makes the majority of people economically independent from their parents at 18/19.
Can you elaborate on these grants and loans? What are they for? When do they start?
Whereas higher education is free in most of europe, you are still usually reliant on getting sent money from your parents to finance your living expenses. In Scandinavia you are not dependant on having parents with money to pursue higher education.
If you get accepted to a University, you apply and you'll get equivalent of 13-14k usd every year of study to cover living expenses.
Up to 40% of it gets converted to a grant, depending on how many of your classes you passed. The loan is also under very favorable conditions, interest free while studying, very low interest after finished, usually paid over 20 years, and you can postpone payment up to 36 times (3 years) whenever you want.
Another thing about the loan: My understanding (as an immigrant) is that the loan can be forgiven completely if you move, live, and work up north for a number of years.
Folks have some trouble where I am, and I have 'days' during the winter. Sure, they are 4.5 hours long in December and the sunlight is poor, but I technically have days.
That said, I'd be willing to try it for a couple of years, if anything just for the experience. Dark winters are a lot and the weather can be pretty brutal with ocean storms and wind and stuff, but I think clear winter nights would be beautiful more regularly than Trondheim.
My wife and I take the approach of allowing our kids take risks too. Even though it is not that socially acceptable. If people want to judge me for letting my 4yo boy help with building and lighting a fire, then let them.
There is so many things you can do in the home as a parent to encourage kids to take controllable risks. My oldest was helping his mother with knife-work in the kitchen from as early as 3. I also removed the enclosure net from the trampoline in our backyard. I buy bicycles for my kids as early as possible. I rough-and-tumble with my kids on an almost daily basis.
Of course there are limits. We try to keep it age appropriate, around some dangerous areas (fire, deep water, the road) we always keep them supervised. We teach them about the dangers. We teach them how to manage the risks.
Luckily my brother-in-law also removed the enclosure net on their backyard trampoline after he saw that my kids were OK jumping on an open trampoline. So it seems our attitude is starting to have a positive affect on the families around us.
What is the perceived benefit to removing a trampoline enclosure, though? It doesn't make the kids have more fun, it just makes the activity riskier (and trampolines are pretty much death traps). I say this as someone who had one as a kid (no enclosure) and would probably buy one for my kids (with enclosure).
Huh, interesting that this is the hill I have to die on. If I google "are trampolines death traps" the results seem to be about 50/50 yes/no.
Anyway, here are the benefits:
1) More freedom, as they can get on the trampoline from any side instead of just the entrance. This Makes for more interesting games on/around the trampoline.
2) Easier for a parent to get to them when necessary.
3) I also jump on the trampoline.
4) Without the net, there is more to the trampoline than just a place to jump (ties in with point 1). E.g. We had our family dinner on the trampoline more than once.
5) The increased risk makes it more fun. Kids have and enjoy adrenaline too.
To answer the drawbacks (increased risk):
1) I also got hurt falling from a trampoline once as a teen, that was because I behaved the way a teen boy would.
2) The kids know where the dangerous parts of the trampoline is (i.e. near the sides).
A big pit works fine if you remove the legs from a standard trampoline. The downside is that you do not feel like you are bouncing as high, because you don't get to start with the extra 4 feet in elevation.
Death trap is the rooftop of an 12-story apartment building, yet I had enough sense not to try my luck too much, because I knew firsthand how easy you can perform an uncontrollable falling manoeuvre.
Is there a downside of having an enclosure net around a trampoline?
Asking because I did hurt myself badly once as an adult when using a non-enclosed trampoline with a hard ground next to it.
I don't see what kids could benefit from when not having the enclosure
The thing that immediately pops into mind is that learning to be careful when there's a moderate risk of injury makes people better at finding the limits in dangerous activities that they'll face later in life without going too far.
This is assuming that being careful and finding the limits of a dangerous activity without being injured is a skill that needs practice, but that doesn't seem like too much of a stretch.
You could test this by seeing if kids who had trampoline enclosures were less likely to hurt themselves seriously as an adult.
The UK used to be like that in the 70's, when it was a high trust environment.
I used to walk half a mile to the shops at age 7 or 8 to complete an errand, people left their children in pushchairs (or dogs) outside of shops etc. I wish I knew what changed the UK for the worse.
Well yes, but even in the 1990s, I remember talk by parents at the primary school gate along the lines of:
"Did you hear [child Y] tried to get pulled into a van?"
And it was talked about like a casual fact-of-life hazard which just happens sometimes.
In the 1990s I had an absurd amount of freedom to roam, walked myself to school from age 6 and had very little oversight. It wasn't safe, not by a LONG way, as the area was very poor and rough.
It did give me both hugely valuable life tools and an adulthood of inappropriate anxiety and hightened response to small threats.
I feel like we should work to give children the skills without the threat being so high that it causes long-term issues in adulthood. Children need safety to grow well.
Jesus. How far we've fallen. I certainly remember kids being left outside shops growing up in the 80s.
However, reading that I had a involuntary reaction of disgust just thinking about it. I certainly wouldn't dream of doing it with my own kids and suspect the reaction would be to call the police if I did.
There's "natural" hazards and human-induced ones. One paragraph of the article mentions parents in a poor neighbourhood not letting their kids play outside due to "discarded needles, homeless people sleeping in parks, and proximity to the sex trade and drug users". If that's the kind of world outside your apartment block, it might be a reasonable choice to stay indoors. If it's a woodland where kids might slip and fall of a log they're balancing on, that's a different matter.
The use of "risk" here is not the one I'm used to; the way pretty much everyone in risk management uses it is the product of likelihood and severity. I understand that they need different words for "hazard a child can deal with" and "hazard a child can't deal with", but the work "risk" is already taken.
> One paragraph of the article mentions parents in a poor neighbourhood not letting their kids play outside due to "discarded needles, homeless people sleeping in parks, and proximity to the sex trade and drug users".
I lived in a very nice neighborhood in a large East Coast US city, and all but the "sex trade" where things my child was exposed to daily. Hiding my child from them or not letting him walk to school with a friend because of them didn't feel particularly useful, so learning how to navigate that environment was the approach we took.
> How is proximity to homeless people sleeping in parks and sex workers a problem for kids?
Is there a name for this type of question, which is framed in such an ingenuous way that almost any reasonable answer to it will make that person seem like an intolerant and uptight monster who doesn't tolerate their small kids playing around sex-workers giving a punter a handjob in the bushes?
Following Hanlon's razor, it's probably just a genuine lack of imagination. Grand parent poster might have only lived in areas where homeless people and sex workers were quiet and nonthreatening, so they can't imagine an area where violent incidents involving these populations are frequent. Obviously context matters and any argument without concrete examples is futile.
Yeah, this. Where I live, sex workers don't give handjobs out in the public (as far as I am aware). And homeless people are often friendly and helpful to kids.
Where is this mythical place? You replied to a comment with "discarded needles, homeless people sleeping in parks, and proximity to the sex trade and drug users"
This presumes that this is all happening out on the streets, not in some specialized area where sex workers are in the privacy of their home/business.
I challenge any sane place that allows homeless to sleep in kids parks as a safe place to live.
You could have checked the age of my account. Lazy accusation...
Why would homeless people not be friendly to kids? They have nothing to fear from them and they can not really use them to extract something they want. Homeless people are humans too who like to feel joy. Kids can bring joy. So I have genuinely seen multiple homeless people being nice to kids.
Maybe we have a different environment imagined.
I was talking about rather rich central Europe, where you never really see more than 5 homeless people at once. Sex workers on the street are limited to certain areas and times of day. Outside these times they can only meet customers inside.
So kids living in areas nearby are normally not influenced by sex work.
Sorry if you feel trolled, but it seems I couldn't imagine what a shithole you guys seem to be living in.
The US has other types of homeless, nothing like you describe. The dissonance is simply because you and the other commenter have wastly different experience and haven't seen "the other side", not because any one of you is wrong or trolling.
I didn't have kids until I moved to Iceland but it's pretty idyllic for them here as well. We live in downtown Reykjavik and its perfectly safe for them to walk to and from school alone and do stuff around town together. I'm not sure how that differs to the UK now but my childhood was filled with building tree houses in farmers fields and that sort of thing and I can't really see them growing up differently even if we had to move back.
Not convinced. My 8,10yr kids love climbing trees. Also in the last few days it's been so windy that we often get a tree or branches falling into the road!
Plenty of people do this in the UK, just not in the inner cities. Oslo is a nice place though and a friend of mine just moved to Bergen with young kids. It's pretty chill in the UK if you don't live in London and have enough money to live in a nice suburb.
> None of this would have been socially acceptable in a UK city
I guess it depends on the city? We used to cycle with my friends everywhere when I grew up in the UK, and build dens and treehouses in the forest. I'm only 25 now.
I totally agree on it being an important experience though. Independence and exploration are absolutely key to how I have turned out, I think.
> My children had whittling knives from age 5, built their own fires when we went on walks, could explore into the small woodlands on their own soon after and walked home from school at age 7.
You can still do the former if you find a proper Scout group and the latter if you live in the right area. But it's a shame you need to actively look for these opportunities now.
Kids need riskier play, so that the military can get more recruits. Only about 23% of American kids qualify for the US military.[2] With a war with either Russia or China coming up, we'll need more fresh meat for the grinder.
I thought you were exaggerating but skimming, it is chilling how that 2nd link just says the quiet part loud:
> The powerful effect of incentive plans (independent of quotas) was documented in an older
study of Army guidance counselors.22 A key responsibility of guidance counselors is to channel
applicants into the Army’s priority occupations. During the period under study, guidance
counselors were under an incentive plan that offered counselors additional points for selling a
high-priority occupation. The study found that simply offering five more incentive plan points
for selling a particular occupation was more than twice as effective as offering an enlistment
bonus to a recruit. That is, it was more effective to give the seller (the guidance counselor) an
incentive to “sell” the occupation than it was to give the buyer (the recruit) an incentive to “buy”
the occupation.
Nice to know that government funded studies show tricking people is more effective than convincing or bargaining with them in good faith
"Second, the services should offer more people enlistment bonuses and increase the dollar amounts of those bonuses. Research shows that enlistment bonuses expand the supply of recruits overall and have an especially large effect when targeted to recruits who choose to train in critical specialties"
And the paragraph immediately preceding that one:
"An important aspect of recruiter management is an incentive system that provides recruiters
with incentives to be productive. Research shows that these incentive systems affect recruiter
productivity in terms of the quality, number, and timing of enlistments.20 Recruiters are
incentivized to increase effort when these plans are designed properly, but the plans can have
perverse unintended effects if not designed well. For example, one study found that Army recruit
screening was poorer at the end of the recruiting month, when recruiters are incentivized to meet
their monthly recruiting missions."
I fail to see where anybody is being tricked in your quote.
Research has indicated that Americans are progressively becoming more risk adverse, obese, and more injury prone over time. If only 23% of Americans qualify for military service now that number will become much smaller in the future. The potential rarity of viable recruits could become a new unexpected driver of personal wealth as military service becomes a new form wealthy exceptionalism available only to those gifted few.
Huh? My read is, this basically says there's no reason to give a recruit bonuses for priority (like say, undesirable and dangerous front line) work. It's more effective incentivizing the recruiter (like maybe he could just forget to mention other work is even available).
There is no way this incentive structure leads to honesty for recruiter or upward mobility for the recruit
Where are you getting from that anyone was tricked?
To me, it seems more like the obvious-with-hindsight observation that when you delegate your side of the negotiations to someone else (the guidance counselor) it's not enough to offer a good deal to the counterparty, you also need to motivate your own negotiator.
E.g. one possible explanation for the observed effect is that the guidance counselors without incentive plan points simply failed to mention the enlistment bonus, rendering it ineffective.
See my comment to sibling. Bad for any "consumer" if any sales process works this way really, but if we're talking "guidance" for career paths or life and death, this just seems insanely hostile and abusive
So it doesn't look like soldier is a particularly 'life and death' profession in the US compared to the rest of the country; even though the stereotype of soldiering being dangerous exists.
A study hopefully displays their findings truthfully. This was a result they found.
The government is not obligated to implement the dishonest incentive structure just because a study found it to be effective.
Now whether they did so or not I don’t know. I hope not because it is the sort of thing that works in the short term and drastically undermines trust in the long term.
Terminology: "Guidance counselor" means "recruiting sergeant" here.[1]
This is not about school guidance counselors. It's about someone who works in an Army recruiting station. These are military HR people.
"Guidance" means matching up potential recruit skills and open Army jobs.
I'd like to read the original analysis. My concern isn't about cannon fodder provision but about all round health. Kids growing up with exercise and a penchant for adventure are IMO better placed to succeed in life (long term health benefits, bravery etc.) but not so if they break their legs all the time falling off of things. It's not obvious to me how to balance these things.
The links you provide, as far as I can skim, don't weigh in on the tradeoff.
To be honest, even the risk of injury is minor, kids are incredibly resilient (I was at least).
Wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment and far too many kids these days are growing up raised entirely by electronics.
I recall my parents shutting off the electronics and forcing us outside, which was a huge boon. My dad was also always down to go on adventures and get dirty.
Well, sure, kids mostly bounce back. But there must be a point beyond which the health hazards outweigh "character building". I just wonder where it is.
Climbing a climbing frame? Surely fine. A ladder? Most likely. Climbing a tree? Probably fine, though also depends. Climbing onto a steep roof? Uh oh. Soloing El Cap? I'll leave that to grown ups.
I think the paper addressed this but what we consider risky play now is so sanitized. I am pretty sure climbing a tree is more than fine even 30 years ago.
I grew up in a different century ("no blood no foul"), so for me the english question "Are you OK?" should normally be answered with "yes" unless there are significant quantities of blood or bones are broken. (I guess a more explicit equivalent would be "are you in need of medical assistance?")
Is this still the protocol among anglophone children, or has it changed during the intervening decades?
Admittedly there is a resurgence of understanding the benefits of risk taking, but to demonstrate the status quo, a school outing to a museum requires a risk assessment to be made, weight the benefits of, well, a school trip, against risks of walking on streets etc.
I'm glad to be living where I do, then: here school kids are absolutely expected to be walking on the streets —up until they get bikes, anyway— four times per day.
See, I don't care about the society here, just my own n=2 sample. There is an optimal policy with regards to risk taking, it surely involves taking more risks than socially acceptable, but how much? Is my question.
> Kids growing up with exercise and a penchant for adventure are IMO better placed to succeed in life (long term health benefits, bravery etc.) but not so if they break their legs all the time falling off of things. It's not obvious to me how to balance these things.
Kids breaking their legs all the time falling off of things has never been a problem at any point in history. This suggests that no effort is needed to ensure that it isn't a problem in the future. You don't need protections against things that don't ever happen.
Kids losing life and limb to accidents did happen in the past, and the rates might be higher than what we want to tolerate today. We certainly don't tolerate the child mortality rates of previous ages (though most of those were caused by disease, of course).
So while I agree with what you are arguing for, I don't think your argument is valid by itself.
I broke my leg once in my youth, it wasn't that bad. Edit: I should remark though, that this was a very clean break, some it might not be representative of the average broken bone.
Some broken limbs carry a lifelong disability, or at least material reduction in limb function. I don't know what proportion, and hence how to weight that against "adventure".
That's a really cynical take. Early experience in learning how to fall correctly is important for safety as you get older.
Dan John, in Intervention, talks about how a lot of movement patterning is developed during youth, and thus encourages a broad range of activities. This includes learning to tumble.
Not just safety. There's research showing that improved physical skills like balancing, coordination and so on at an early age correlates with improved performance in school.
now many hackernews residents are parents the conspiracy theorising about the government trying to get to theirs and theirs kids precious bodily fluids is even more neurotic
It is possible that this is some big conspiracy to increase the number of fit, military age folks in the short term, it seems unlikely.
If there were ever to be any kind of “meat grinding” war, it would be escalated to aircraft, drones, and long range missiles pretty quickly I think, with a relatively small number of infantry losses through active combat.
There are also a significant number of people who believe that risky play (or the lack of it) is resulting in mental health issues in today’s young adults, who are finding themselves inexperienced in dealing with feelings of fear, unfamiliar with perseverance and delayed gratification, and are also as you have noted, physically out of shape.
Just because “teenagers being fitter” would benefit the military does not mean that’s the purpose of encouraging riskier play.
Our doctrine was built around aircraft, suppression of enemy air defenses, and then domination through missiles and total air superiority. We flew more combat sorties on Day 1 of Desert Storm than both of these nations have flown in two years of this conflict. Soviet (and by extension both of these nations) doctrine places emphasis on overwhelming manpower, artillery, and air defense.
We have an order of magnitude more combat aircraft of all classes than both of these nations combined. We have more AH-64s that are allocated just to training than both of these nations have helicopters in active service combined.
Ukraine is already giving Russia's AD systems a run for their money using our hand-me-downs from 30 or more years ago. Their aircraft have no stealth technology, ancient avionics, ancient targeting systems, last-generation anti-radiation missiles.
Russian AD systems stand zero chance against modern SEAD doctrine: we can see this in effect every time Ukraine uses decoy-based saturation attacks combined with cruise missiles. They simply do not have enough capable batteries to sustain a meaningful air defense when faced with a financially-superior adversary. We have tens of thousands of AGM-88 HARMs in stock: Russia has less than 2000 estimated S-300/S-400 acquisition radars.
Nuclear weapons are Russia's only real military trump card; Russia would cease to exist if confined to conventional munitions in a "peer" conflict. There exists exactly zero chance we end up in a Ukraine style meat grinder, we're deploying nuclear weapons long before that happens.
Also: Ukraine isn't engaged in total war and has no ability to wage it. The United States would (and has in past conflicts) engage in strategic bombing campaigns on absolutely every single manufacturing facility, every supply chain, in every complicit nation. In a US-Russia or US-China conflict, Iran doesn't get to sell drones or any other munitions without receiving 40 tons of JDAMs on their manufacturing facilities.
> The United States would (and has in past conflicts) engage in strategic bombing campaigns on absolutely every single manufacturing facility, every supply chain, in every complicit nation. In a US-Russia or US-China conflict, Iran doesn't get to sell drones or any other munitions without receiving 40 tons of JDAMs on their manufacturing facilities.
It depends on which country it is and how many of them there are. China and the Soviet Union were both helping Vietnam, for example.
Note that heavy industry can be very resilient against bombing; during WW2, the allies dropped over 30 kilotons of conventional bombs on and around the german Leunawerke, which were still running at double digit percentage efficiency; modern targetting and improved explosives would obviously help, but disabling manufacturing by bombs is not as trivial as one might assume!
TL;DR 40 tons of JDAMs are not enough to achieve anything lasting.
Perhaps, but are they as effective as laser guided arms we had even in Iraq?
I can still remember watching original video of a laser guided bomb/missle hitting the exact right spot to get to the depths of the target to later cause massive damage.
Russia is not Iraq. There's no equivalent of Saudi Arabia next to Russia to launch the initial attacks from. A large portion of Russia's military industrial complex is far inland, the only weapons that have a long enough flight path are nuclear capable and Russia would immediately send out nukes.
How many days on station do you think an Aircraft carrier would make it in the baltic before it's torpedoed to the bottom of the sea?
According to Wikipedia, we have "some 3,700 M1A1, M1A2 SEPv2/v3 in storage". So we have literally thousands of main battle tanks we will never use we could just give them. It's a meat grinder because we're making it so.
We have enough active military equipment to fight land wars with two superpowers simultaneously. We have enough of all equipment to give to Ukraine. Not lease or sell, just get them to win without losing so many people. Fuck, give them a carrier group. Rain tomahawks down on St Petersburg and Moscow. Destroy every oil terminal and arms factory.
How so? Naively it seems to me that aircraft, drones, and long range missiles could do more harm to non military parts of a country compared to a foot army.
First, these kinds of remote attacks don't take territory and therefore have sharply limited impact on the conflict. The ceiling on what they can accomplish is very low.
Second, they are cheaper and lower-risk for the attacking party, representing a lower level of commitment to the conflict. The potential for loss to the attacker is also very low.
Moving from a high-investment, high-risk, high-reward strategy to a low-investment, low-risk, low-reward strategy is hard to describe as an "escalation".
> Naively it seems to me that aircraft, drones, and long range missiles could do more harm to non military parts of a country compared to a foot army.
You're not alone. I have read that many people in the West were genuinely confused as to how the Tutsi genocide could have been accomplished with machetes. But foot armies are more than capable of inflicting whatever level of destruction you have in mind.
I'm not sure why the riskier play would address any of the issues actually linked there: https://prod-media.asvabprogram.com/CEP_PDF_Contents/Qualifi... If they want systemic solutions, then sorting out healthcare, mental health care, not charging weed users, and maybe replacing the corn subsidies could have a bigger impact...
What happens on the playground has way more steps separating it from enlistment criteria then any of those. It would be like counting on 5th order effects working just right.
I believe my country is most often the aggressor in the wars it has participated in. Without a big enough stick, aggression for material gain is a worse gamble.
I'm not saying no military is needed, but it has become the proverbial hammer.
Inflamatory comment from a completely new account. Not surprised.
It's frustrating that anyone can conjure up an absolute fantasy and other members of the community have to waste their time on this. Shame you weren't flagged for this baseless comment.
THE biggest danger to children is cars. Not pit bulls or crazy people. Gigantic cars that are so big that the driver cannot see out of them in front of their own bumper.
Everything else is not really worth the effort in comparison.
All the way back in kindergarten, we went on walks to places and us kids, ages 4-6, were taught how to navigate safely. Stay on the sidewalk, wait for the green light. Look left, right, left again (unless you're in the UK. I guess...)
Under these conditions, I don't understand why it matters how big the car is. Teach your children not to cross the road.
I spent hours roaming the streets on my bike as a kid in Germany, now I hear my coworkers saying things like "I don't leave my 10 year old unsupervised for more than 10 minutes. If I have to go somewhere, he's coming with me."
I don't know if you're right or wrong about this but do you have some kind of statistics to back this up?
To me, your claim rings somewhat false. I can think of many children that had injuries of all kinds but only know of one who was hit by a car--a car that was a small sedan and didn't have any issue seeing the pedestrian because it was "too tall".
I live in New York City where it's not unusual to see cars going places they're not allowed, including parks. The problem is not the ruleset, it's the fact that automobile operators don't comply with the rules and nobody enforces them. Every day I see an automobile on a sidewalk or driving through the blocked off sections of the park I live next to in order to bypass traffic.
Cars are weapons and should be severely limited on public roads, especially in terms of speed (all cars should have speed governors).
NYC is not an example of a place to raise a family. There are so many things that make it very inconvenient for families it is exactly why people tend to move out.
Of course it can be done and happens every day. But it is a horrible example for anything family related.
NYC is the greatest place to raise children IMO. The best of everything: you can live car-free, high density of opportunities, educational services, activities, art, culture, etc.
EDIT: Okay, arguably some places like maybe the Netherlands (which has excellent anti-car infra) are better, but I've seen it all at this point and I am convinced NYC is still the best, even though there are too many cars and too much surface area is dedicated to cars.
Eh, that's a pretty big vehicle. Does that still actually count as a _car_? ;-) It's fine for regular European or Japanese vehicles, of course.
But... people do drive American trucks like that out in the countryside as utility vehicles. Where there's a bit of room to maneuver, it can be done.
And of course, outside Amsterdam city center: you've got all-paved-roads even in the countryside (well maintained with few potholes), reasonable speed limits, highways that stay dry even when it rains, traffic lights that let you through the moment they see you coming (at an empty intersection at least), traffic jam detector systems, highway entrances and exits that you can take on cruise control -as opposed to trying to kill you- (I'm looking at you, Germany ;-) ), and much much more!
* https://youtu.be/SDXB0CY2tSQ?t=437 (business parks... people in the comments were kind of riled up about this particular traffic light. Would work fine with an F150 ;-) )
> Eh, that's a pretty big vehicle. Does that still actually count as a _car_?
The 2 best selling vehicle models in the USA are the Ford F-series and Chevy equivalent (Silverado), according to some sources[1][2]. I agree they're absurd for what are effectively overpowered wheelchairs that make you fat and reduce your IQ[3], but it is what it is.
You should try getting out of NYC and understand how the rest of the country actually works. Try visiting Nebraska or Ohio and learn where your food comes from. Ask one of the multi generational farmers who drive a truck and ask about their IQ.
Thoughts and posts like yours are why conservative popularity is increasing, why so hostile?
90% of the people who salivate over these giant death machines aren't using them for hauling goods or farm work. Where I grew up, people get very excited about owning pickup trucks because they view them as status symbols (bigger is better mentality). Thankfully I escaped that terrible culture, but NYC still has too many unnecessary cars.
>90% of the people who salivate over these giant death machines aren't using them for hauling goods or farm work.
Sorry for being blunt, but where you grew up brainwashed you. Or you are young and very naive or like to speak in hyperbole.
The most sold vehicle in the US is being used for work purposes and has been since the truck was invented. There are many people that drive trucks outside of work, but you are very misinformed.
I lived in NYC for 20+ years without a car. On a hot summer night walking close to Holland tunnel brought rage to me as well. Hopefully the much needed congestion pricing will help.
Cars are obviously not weapons, they are vehicles. The definition of weapon is something which primary use case is to kill or maim. The primary use case of a car is transportation.
Do you say that a pencil is a weapon? You could stab yourself by accident with a pencil.
If you use a pencil to stab someone, yes it's a weapon. If I use a shovel to kill someone, it's a weapon. If I use a pillow to suffocate someone, it's a weapon. If I drive a car into a person and kill them because I don't feel like following the rules, yes it's a weapon.
Cars not only have the direct immediate effect as weapons (i.e., using them to drive into/over people), but they also have significant second and third order effects such as the pollution from emissions, tires, production and supply chains, destruction of the environment from road construction, cement production emissions, and so on and so forth. There are also the health effects of people forgetting how to use their bodies to move themselves, being isolated inside an insulated box such that nobody interacts with those around them, which leads people to be hostile, aggressive, violent, and so on.
How often in your life were you really threatened by crazy people or pitbulls?
As a kid that played without parental oversight we met every crazy person and every dog in town. This is still quite normal in the area I grew up in and I have never heard from anybody ever being seriously hurt by a dog or a crazy person in our area. Avoiding dangerous situations is something kids have to learn, and kids are not stupid. It is much more common that kids are too afraid than kids not having respect in the presence of a noticed danger.
That being said, many places in the US are downright kid-hostile, often because a failure to deal with social, economic, mental problems adequately or have good spacing concepts where people outside of cars count something.
A few times per week. Many people here have aggressive dogs and zero control over them.
Dog bite is a serous injury that requires hospital visit and painful antibiotics for several days. Saying anything else is a bs!
> Avoiding dangerous situations is something kids have to learn, and kids are not stupid
You can not avoid dogs! They are everywhere, are larger, faster and with zero responsibility! There is adult who owns the dog! Putting blame and responsibility on kids is foolish! Staying indoor is only logical solution!
> are too afraid
... Kid provoked the dog attack by being afraid... My favorite excuse.
Kids need to go outdoors on their own to grow up. They need to extend the radius in which they be active on their own. You can't lock kids until they go to college or university. Otherwise they become young adults unfit to live an independent live.
> Kids are staying at home voluntary, because they are shit scared of dogs and crazies!!
What city do you live in?
Never seen or heard of such a place, but I'm not going to pretend to know every city in the world, so very curious to know where the town is overrun by dogs and crazy people running after you (if nothing else, so I don't visit).
Most civilized countries got their shit together and found rules with hefty fees to avoid this issue. See Italy who even DNA tests shit to fee the owners.
In most of Europe you don't find shit like this anymore, gladly. When I was young it was still common (yet nothing that stopped us from playing outside)
Writing this from France where literally nobody cares about dog shit, still.
so many spaces are not friendly for play because there's dog shit around.
I don't know which country you're in, but certainly where I live people have gotten a lot better at picking up after their dogs since I was a kid. Growing up people let their dogs shit wherever and basically never picked it up. Today virtually everybody picks up after dogs.
I can't tell here whether it's true or not but many complain about it getting worse around COVID. I moved during it so it's hard to tell but it's pretty bad. It's annoying to always have to look at the pavement while walking around.
I remember this being somewhat of an issue as a kid in the same area but it's hard to gauge how it's changed because I was a kid then and a parent now.
there always was dog shit around, at least where I grew up.
what there wasn't: computers, consoles, smartphones and sooo many cars. in my old neighbourhood places I used to roam around have all been taken over by parked cars.
I think you need to recalibrate your perceptions; the world (including the US) is about as safe as it's ever been. And I don't think hypocritical is the right choice of word anyway.
This varies a lot from area to area, but I agree that dogs can be a serious problem. I went hiking in Montana last year, and saw a LOT of dogs on the trails that were not leashed. They were well trained, not aggressive and minded their own business. In contrast, a lot of dog owners near me have zero control of their dogs, and don't seem to understand that they have any responsibility. I have had numerous run ins on the street or in public parks where I end up standing between my kids and an aggressive, unleashed, uncontrolled dog. Its owners call to it pitifully from twenty yards away while it tries to dodge around me to eat one of my kids. I've always dismissed the concealed-carry set as a bunch of LARPers, but man, this shit is out of control.
Of course. "injuries" don't matter, only serious and fatal ones do. A scratch is nothing and is healed in a couple of days. Even breaking a leg should not be considered serious. It's annoying, esp. for the parents, but it's in no way life-threatening.
Although I'm sure it has happened, it seems unlikely that any kind of play in a playground could result in serious injury or death. Let the kids play outside. And don't force them to put a coat in cold weather if they don't want to! Let them decide!