damn lawyers
sorry Sue, not directed at you. Here are some snippets from a disturbing article in the sun-sentinel.com I'm obviously amazed at how parents can moan that their children are inactive; yet they support this kind of development. I've got a story to add to this as well - these newfangled plastic playgrounds are a ROYAL PAIN to set up! Eesh. I was at a friend's place and the 'dad' had assembled the playhouse wrong. We had two kids telling us "uncle Tony, that's not right...", "its backwards!" etc. It took us more than 30minutes to rearrange 6 giant pieces of plastic (the four walls, an inner piece, and a slide). Whatever happened to those nice monkey-gyms made outta wood? ... anyway read on:
Andrea Levin is grateful that Broward County schools care about her daughter's safety. But this year when they posted a sign that demanded "no running" on the playground, it seemed like overkill.
Broward's "Rules of the Playground" signs, bought from an equipment catalogue and displayed at all 137 elementary schools in the district, are just one of several steps taken to cut down on injuries and the lawsuits they inspire.
How about swings or those hand-pulled merry-go-rounds?
"Nope. They've got moving parts. Moving parts on equipment is the number one cause of injury on the playgrounds."
Teeter-totters?
"Nope. That's moving too."
Sandboxes?
"Well, I have to be careful about animals" turning them into litter boxes.
Cement crawl tubes?
"Vagrants. The longer they are, the higher possibility that a vagrant could stay in them. We have shorter ones now that are made out of plastic or fiberglass."
Broward playgrounds aren't the only ones to avoid equipment that most adults remember. Swings, merry-go-rounds, teeter-totters and other old standards are vanishing from schools and parks around the country, according to the National Program for Playground Safety.
"Kids aren't using them the way they're supposed to," said the agency's director, Donna Thompson, who led a national effort to get rid of animal swings two years ago. "I'm pleased that a lot of these are disappearing."
"We could do a lot more if we didn't have to watch our back every single second," said Graziose, who has led a playground safety committee for 17 years. "We sometimes get a letter from the attorney before we even get an accident report from the school."
Since 1999, Broward County schools paid out about $561,000 to settle 189 claims for playground accidents, about 5 percent of the amount the district spent on all injury claims in that time. To keep those numbers low, Graziose said, he needs to keep thinking of ways to make playgrounds safe.
"Play is one of children's chief vehicles for development," Frost said. "Right now it looks like we're developing a nation of wimps."
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no sh-t.
posted by feistydaichi @ 12:55 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
i was at the playgrounds last weekend... i did notice some changes in the latest playground trends.. the most obvious one is instead of gravel and peppbles the main "floor" that's under the slide sets are now bouncy material that LOOKED like gravel. i didn't see any concrete tunnels or teeter-totter, no merry-go-rounds or sandboxes. instead there were plastic like statues that kids can sit on, and various other monkey-bar type of things but all the chains were encased in plastic so u dont get your fingers caught anymore between chain links.
i guess it is a safer playground than in our time... how come OUR parents never pushed for this when we were young? were we not worthy of safer playground? or are the kids nowadays so fragile they need further protection than back in our days?
i think the kids today are more sensitive, i'm not sure if it's a self fulfilling prophecy kind of thing. for example now a days kids are allergic to everything - peanuts, pollen, cats, dogs... back in MY times, there might be 1 or 2 kids in the class allergic to something, but it's not the norm. is it a matter of making our environments at home so "clean" and drinking bottled water so "pure" that the kids' bodies now can't fight the "natural" elements, so they grow up with bodies that can't defend as well as kids who rough and tumble like NORMAL kids used to do??
I just find it sad that our children will not grow up knowing what we had. (ie. swings, slides etc.) I don't think our parents pushed for "changes" because we *were* the first ones to experience these "playgrounds". I think I clipped out the part in the article that mentioned that these were built during wartime; or shortly thereafter. I'm sure modern plastics, and people involving themselves in design/occupational therapy weren't around back then. blah blah.
As for allergies - I think I'm going to get a little defensive on this one. I spent A LOT of time outdoors as a kid, and still do. But my seasonal allergies are terrible - its really annoying when you're biking in 25C+ weather at 36km/h+ in a pack and need to blow your nose. Pollution is a major factor in air quality. I think a lot more people are allergic to dust and dander because of the horrid ventilation system in most "energy efficient" buildings. They keep the air trapped in so tight, nothing gets in OR out.
Food allergies - I think its still only a small percentage of the population that is affected, but people are more aware. My coach (who is fairly laissez-faire) is pretty anal about what her son can eat. Apparently you've got to be pretty careful - peanut butter, soy, milk, etc. But what this avoids are parents who have sick children and don't know what to do. I'm sure many children used to die because of these reactions but were never understood. I still think allergies are widely misunderstood and misdiagnosed. Some people have very little reactions to the skin tests (I hate) but can have fatal encounters with allergens.
And don't think we're not spoiled - what do you think would happen if some variant of smallpox came around the corner? Friend of mine also got diagnosed with some parasite (worms of some kind). But as a friend of ours explained, (she's a genetic counselor(?) - she talks to parents who have high risks of conceiving a child with a genetic problem) even these parasites, that we used to co-exist with used to help our bodies become stronger are so infrequently encountered (anti-bacterial soap) that in the large scheme of things, we're probably worse off. Anyway, I'm ranting - and I'm supposed to be testing...
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