Let kids be kids!!!!!!!!!!! Good Lord!!!

[Billy Rotten]

This sounds once again like lawyers sucking the life out of life.

 

[verte76]

Is there anything left on the planet that lawyers can't screw up??

 

[Bono'sTyee]

I remember when I was in seventh grade in shop class and I was using a scroll saw to cut a piece of wood for a birdhouse or something and I got too cocky and shoved the piece in real hard and cut my thumb. I didn't even feel it until I saw all the blood. Then of course I screamed and someone shut the machine off but by then my thumb was so deep I had to basically slide it against the blade to get it out. Don't know what that has to do with recess but it hurt like hell. No one used the machine for a while cause they were scared but by the next day everyone moved on.

 

[maycocksean]

Post your "scary" experiences.

I guess I was pretty lucky as a kid. (Or maybe just really nerdy). I've never broken a bone or even had a sprain.

As an adult, I did fall through a hole in the grating at the top of an abandoned lighthouse here on Saipan. Only one leg went through the grating. It caught on the pieces of the grate sticking out. Hurt like hell and tore up my leg pretty bad.

Oh, and when I was living on the tiny island of Chuuk in the Pacfiic, I was gored in the leg by a pig. I was the laughingstock of the island after that. The scariest part was the trip to the hospital afterwards.

 

[TheQuiet1]

Well would you believe that some schools over here have banned kids throwing paper aeroplanes on the grounds that they might just hit someone in the eye!

Don't forget about wearing safety glasses whilst playing conkers or the pear tree that got cut down in case fruit fell onto passers-by.

I remember when you used to hear about Americans suing cigarette companies because they'd got cancer after 50 years of smoking or suing MacDonald's because after dining out on Big Macs every day for 5 years they became morbidly obese. People laughed, said "Only in America! That'd would never happen here!". Well, now who's laughing? The UK has gone from a place where suing somewhere/one was practically unheard of and usually a practice purely for the rich; to a place where (at least if the papers are anything to go by, which I'd question) it seems everyone is at it.

But my real problem with wrapping kids in cotton wool isn't worry about them growing up to be wimps or restricting their childhood(kids will still find ways to hurt themselves regardless. It's a known fact. ). It's the message it sends out. The message that accidents don't happen. The message that everything is always someone else's fault, never your own. The message that there's money to be made from misfortune. Take dazzlingamy for example. I mean no offence by this (in fact, I'd hope she'd agree with me) but if she'd seriously hurt herself by leaping off one of those roofs, it would've been her own bloody stupid fault (Certainly that would've been my parents reaction anyway! ) and a perfect opportunity to learn why leaping off roofs is not the best of ideas...

Nowadays kids in the same position will no doubt have been brought up to blame someone else (the other kids made me do it. School never taught me falling from heights was dangerous. Etc.). You see it reported all the time that juvenile delinquents show no remorse in court and don't see how they (not school, not the state, not even their family) are responsible for their own actions and as a consequence will just do it again, and again, and again. I'm not for a moment trying to suggest that juvenile delinquency is caused by this suing culture but I do feel that the way today's society downplays (to the point of erasing) personal responsibility as an issue of real concern.