Playing Is Always Unsafe
No. 1: This is why I try not to blame "helicopter parents" for hovering. They live in a culture that sees a climb up the slide as Free Solo 2. This kind of LSD-level distortion is reinforced through propaganda like this school note. It simultaneously inflates the possibility of danger AND turns the job of parent into something new and all-encompassing. In 2024 America, your child is unsafe anytime their heinie hits the mulch chips, so you must be with them lest that horror occur. Have a nice life! Bring snacks! And if you're not there, the school will receive "reports."
No. 2: There's an alternative to outdoor play that does not require a parent giving up all their free time. In this alternate world, kids can hang out with friends, talk, joke, climb, slide, ride and play to their hearts' content. Heck, they can fly, and turn into dragons and meet real people from across the world. And it fits in their pocket! Every minute they are prohibited from playing in the real world is another minute they can be on a screen. If kids' real-world playtime is limited to parents' real-world free time, phones become their default playground.
And it's default (ha, ha) of policies like this.
Obviously, the school is worried about risk and lawsuits. And yet, it was just last week that polite, careful CANADA woke up from its own safety coma. After years of things like decommissioning beloved toboggan hills, requiring helmets on the playground and investigating parents who let their kids under-age-12 walk around unsupervised, the Canadian Paediatric Society announced that, actually, kids NEED "risky play."
Why? Because their mental and physical health has been plummeting all the years they've been getting "safer."
If a culture is trying to err on the side of safety, it cannot ignore the downside of prohibiting kids from playing at the local playground without a security detail.
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Lenore Skenazy is president of Let Grow, a contributing writer at Reason.com, and author of "Has the World Gone Skenazy?" To learn more about Lenore Skenazy (Lskenazy@yahoo.com) and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
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