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tag ban

Modified said:
I've been amazed to find out how many people in my neighborhood have children. Apparently, 90% of them never go outside. Apart from playing outside, they don't seem to do any yard work either. There are people with two or three teenage kids who do their own yard work, walk their dogs, go for walks and bike rides, yet the kids never show their faces.
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Yeah, I actually had a neighbor imply I was a bad parent because my kids play in the back yard almost all day. On another thread I posted a recent account of my pediatrician being happy my little boy has bruises all over the place, saying that the "healthy norm" had become a rare find in her practice!

Yeah, we're awful. Send the kids outside to play, walk to the Dairy Freeze (a mile round trip) if they want an ice cream cone, kids tanned and bruised from antics, an "outing" is a walk/bike ride/fishing trip/walk to park, no broadcast TV, limited supervised computer time. The worst.
 
Miss Anthrope said:
Yeah, I actually had a neighbor imply I was a bad parent because my kids play in the back yard almost all day. On another thread I posted a recent account of my pediatrician being happy my little boy has bruises all over the place, saying that the "healthy norm" had become a rare find in her practice!

Yeah, we're awful. Send the kids outside to play, walk to the Dairy Freeze (a mile round trip) if they want an ice cream cone, kids tanned and bruised from antics, an "outing" is a walk/bike ride/fishing trip/walk to park, no broadcast TV, limited supervised computer time. The worst.
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A lot of people who don't do much phyiscal activity slowly develop the idea that people are made of glass, and the slightest bump will kill them. Most kids actually do have a brain and some natural survival instincts of their own, so it's not like they're going to purposefuly stab themselves with broken glass the moment you turn your back.
 
EGarrett said:
Most kids actually do have a brain and some natural survival instincts of their own, so it's not like they're going to purposefuly stab themselves with broken glass the moment you turn your back.
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Of course not.

They stab the other children with broken glass the moment you turn your back. Their survival instincts tell them that a) it's going to hurt, so do it to someone else, and b) don't let mom see you do it, or else it will wind up hurting.
 
geni said:
So not actualty fit to funtion in the 21st century?
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Jeesh Geni! Oh noes, I'm raising Luddites!

My daughter: She's not limited if she's using office, researching school work, learning Photoshop, or animating her own cartoons and games in Flash (she's ten, btw). She IS limited and supervised when she's playing WoW or otherwise surfing. She has better than average computer skills. Having a myspace page or playing games all day does not actually prepare one for the workforce.

By also being incredibly active and not allowed to be a couch potato or other form of human vegetable, she will be fit to live a lot longer into the 21st century than most of her peers.

As for the little guy I mentioned, why, yes, I think 20 minutes on toddler games per day is plenty for a three year old. He can use a mouse, navigate a child's site and understand functions. Should that time not be limited and supervised?
 
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Miss Anthrope, you sound like my parents were (which, btw, is a good thing) - of course, that was in the days of Amstrad and DOS. Not long ago, mind you!

See, this is what I don't understand - when I was in primary school, I walked everywhere that was close enough...friend's houses, the shops, etc. Even in secondary school in a new house I played outside with the other kids on the street - keep in mind we're talking very late 90s and early millenium here, not the 'good ole days'. And yet, even though I know there are more kids living on that street now than there were when I was that age, they're sight-unseen most of the time.

I just don't get it...when did outside stop being fun?
 
LashL said:
I dare. Why did you hate tag?
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Well, I had a heart condition when I was a kid (and I still do). Running tired me out very quickly. As such, not only could I not run for long but, since my legs were underdeveloped from not getting enough exercise, I couldn't even run well for the short time I had. In any game of tag, I was always caught early and, as "it," I was never able to catch anyone.

Doesn't it just break your heart?


ETA: And did that have any influence upon why you became a "tagger" later in life? :D
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Yes. Yes, it did.
 
Loss Leader said:
Well, I had a heart condition when I was a kid (and I still do). Running tired me out very quickly. As such, not only could I not run for long but, since my legs were underdeveloped from not getting enough exercise, I couldn't even run well for the short time I had. In any game of tag, I was always caught early and, as "it," I was never able to catch anyone.

Doesn't it just break your heart?
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At my school, there was a kid in a similar situation who couldn't run very well but when he got tagged, I did a pretty convincing job of 'inadvertently' getting tagged by him so that (a) he was not humiliated; (b) he didn't feel as though he couldn't catch anyone; and (c) the game continued. I would then tag one of the idiots who were laughing at the kid who couldn't run very well, and I often knocked said idiot down in my overzealous 'tagging', just to make a point. Funny, I never once got in trouble for it, either. :D.
 
LashL said:
At my school, there was a kid in a similar situation who couldn't run very well but when he got tagged, I did a pretty convincing job of 'inadvertently' getting tagged by him so that (a) he was not humiliated; (b) he didn't feel as though he couldn't catch anyone; and (c) the game continued.
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Proving conclusively that Canadians are pathological in their niceness.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Back in my day, children were too busy working in the coal mines to play any sort of games at all. A child making two cents a week working nineteen hour shifts as a coal bucket hauler could never afford fancy lead pipes like you spoiled rotten kids. And even if they did find some pipes, there's no way they'd have the strength left to swing them, after an honest days' slaving.
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Oh, you fancy lot with your jobs, you make me PUKE!!! We could only wish we had jobs, so we'd have some money to cough up when the older kids beat and robbed us! If we had a penny or two for them, they'd only break our skulls; but if we didn't there was hell to pay! And COAL! You had COAL!? If we wanted to be warm, we had to take turns throwing each other on the fire! Believe you me, when it was your turn to be thrown on the fire, you better hope it was a warm day! You can take your fancy coal and jobs and shove them!
 
EGarrett said:
A lot of people who don't do much phyiscal activity slowly develop the idea that people are made of glass, and the slightest bump will kill them.
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One of my friends growing had some sort of condition that made his bones weak, and he probably spent 1/4 of his young life with a cast over a broken bone, usually one arm or the other (the condition was later corrected, I don't know the details). Despite that, he spent all his free time outside with the rest of us, doing things that would, without a doubt, eventually lead to the next broken bone. Keeping him inside to protect him is not something most parents in those days would have seriously considered.
 
A recent poll in the UK found that:

just under half the adults questioned (43 per cent) thought that 14 was the earliest age at which children should be allowed to go out unsupervised. The adults, however, had almost all been left to their own devices when they were aged 10 or under.

Evidence presented to the inquiry from the Home Office and Department for Education and Skills backed up the findings. Two thirds (67 per cent) of eight to ten-year-olds have never been to a shop or the park by themselves, along with a quarter (24 per cent) of 11 to 15-year-olds. A further third of eight to ten-year-olds have never played outside without an adult being present, the departments said.
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http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article1884426.ece

But strangely, that chat outside the nursery that my son goes to was all about how ridiculous this was and that kids shouldn't be wrapped in cotton wool and should be allowed to explore etc. Is the tide turning, or is my son's nursery unrepresentative for some reason?
 
Miss Anthrope said:
Jeesh Geni! Oh noes, I'm raising Luddites!

My daughter: She's not limited if she's using office, researching school work, learning Photoshop, or animating her own cartoons and games in Flash (she's ten, btw). She IS limited and supervised when she's playing WoW or otherwise surfing. She has better than average computer skills. Having a myspace page or playing games all day does not actually prepare one for the workforce.
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But does she have a natural fear of .ru?
 
TragicMonkey said:
Of course not.

They stab the other children with broken glass the moment you turn your back. Their survival instincts tell them that a) it's going to hurt, so do it to someone else, and b) don't let mom see you do it, or else it will wind up hurting.
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I played unsupervised with my friends all the time, and the worst that happened (even with a trampoline and us trying to emulate wrestling moves) was someone getting hit in the head with a large frisbee, which I don't think gave them more then a bruise.

Not that we should've been emulating wrestling moves either, and there was a close call or two, but that took a combination of bad factors. Kids not purposefully doing dangerous stuff they saw on TV on a raised metal platform wouldn't be at risk.
 
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