Erm, well, I live in a red heartland state, and I can assure you that "pussyass" playground safety litigation is alive and well here, although I haven't heard of tag being banned yet.
Dreadsox said:
I strongly get upset when I see it characterized as caving in. The 80% who should be vocal aren't.
Do the 80% usually know about it when those kinds of things happen? We would certainly be vocal about it if we knew someone was trying to ban Harry Potter from our school library, but I'm not sure we'd necessarily hear about it if they were.
But, I don't think this situation is really analogous to playground safety politics--campaigning parents is one thing, litigating parents something else. I shake my head when I hear about parents suing over minor injuries, but to be honest I'm not sure I'd be willing to go knock on their door (again, assuming I even knew about it) and say, "You know, I don't think you should be suing the school over this--so your kid needed a few stitches, big whoop, c'est la vie."
Greenlight said:
One of my sons was actually hurt playing tag at school a few weeks ago and broke his glasses. I was a bit annoyed that I had to fork out for a new frame but I would never dream of suing the school or call for a ban on tag. You can't wrap children in cotton wool and I'd much prefer they get the chance to play such games, have fun and learn about risks even if they get a few bumps and bruises along the way. I'm sure that the vast majority of parents would agree with this but you only need one or two to make a fuss and with the current climate where schools are worried about litigation, the views of a minority sadly often affect the majority.
Our oldest son actually severed a major artery (from a compound elbow fracture) falling off the monkey bars onto the hard dirt below when he was in preschool. He almost bled to death and there was some minor permanent nerve damage, although overall he healed up fine. And we didn't sue either, although we would've lobbied hard to get them to install loose-fill under all the climbing equipment after that--which as it turned out wasn't necessary, because the directors were frightened enough themselves by the incident that they went ahead and did it anyway. We certainly wouldn't have wanted to them to ban all climbing equipment, running on the dirt etc. or anything because of it though; basically our feeling was, This happens--kids fall, they break bones, it's a reasonable precaution to provide a softer surface beneath anything where they might fall from a height, but even then they'll still fall and bang themselves up, and that's OK, even with the everpresent risk of some freak complication; we don't attempt to make our kids live in some cocoon at home, and we wouldn't ask the school to do that either. In general, I wish more parents would take this route--think about how likely what happened to their child is to happen to another's, weigh the likely preventive benefits (and how serious the risk of injury is) against any crimp it might put in enjoyment of play, then lobby to get the school to enact whatever reasonable precautions against further such incidents...rather than suing. Like I said, though, I don't know that I'd feel comfortable attacking fellow parents who chose to sue after their child was injured--and if anyone had come to us shortly after our son was injured and urged us not to sue, I think I'd likely have blown up and told them to go fuck themselves, even though we weren't in fact considering suing.
I understand that schools aren't the bad guy here, but it's not that easy to challenge parents' attitudes either, and the consequences of litigation can add up fast.
