Friday, August 13, 2004
Children in Danger?:
Reports out that children suffer the most accidents while using playgrounds. What really surprises me about this report is the need for the report itself. If I was asked to guess where most child injuries occurred, my first guess would be on a playground. Is it really so much of a mystery that kids get hurt while playing? I would suggest that the odds of getting hurt go up proportionally with the level of activity of the child in question. There are many dangers we face when growing up. Children have a great ability to recover from injury. I would hazard to say that it's a part of life- not something that should be addressed by new policy. What would they have us do? Ban playgrounds because kids get hurt there. Or better yet... re-design them so that no kid could ever get hurt there. We could just make them sit in chairs for their whole lives to prevent any risk! Big tip.... in order to grow and learn, kids must take certain risks to test their abilities and learn their limits. Take all this away and they do not advance. If we spend enough time and energy to rid the world of these risks we will cease to evolve and will become stagnant. Kids run, fall, bump heads, break bones, wrestle, fight, learn, etc. In other words, they live and learn. This is all part of growing up. Take away all the risks and you take away all the fun. It's really a question of managing risks..... another thing they learn in the process.
Reports out that children suffer the most accidents while using playgrounds. What really surprises me about this report is the need for the report itself. If I was asked to guess where most child injuries occurred, my first guess would be on a playground. Is it really so much of a mystery that kids get hurt while playing? I would suggest that the odds of getting hurt go up proportionally with the level of activity of the child in question. There are many dangers we face when growing up. Children have a great ability to recover from injury. I would hazard to say that it's a part of life- not something that should be addressed by new policy. What would they have us do? Ban playgrounds because kids get hurt there. Or better yet... re-design them so that no kid could ever get hurt there. We could just make them sit in chairs for their whole lives to prevent any risk! Big tip.... in order to grow and learn, kids must take certain risks to test their abilities and learn their limits. Take all this away and they do not advance. If we spend enough time and energy to rid the world of these risks we will cease to evolve and will become stagnant. Kids run, fall, bump heads, break bones, wrestle, fight, learn, etc. In other words, they live and learn. This is all part of growing up. Take away all the risks and you take away all the fun. It's really a question of managing risks..... another thing they learn in the process.
# posted by Wil Smith : 3:06 a.m.
