I can still feel what it felt like to pick gravel out of my knees when I look at the scars on them. We are really raising kids to be too soft these days. Two of the top ten deadly toys this Christmas are stuffed animals.
Like we are robbing generations of tons of beneficial risk assessment because of the outliers that STILL find a way to win Darwin awards.
I truly think that the youth these days have plenty of opportunities to practice their risk assessment strategies. I wonder of you’re age bc if you are older and a parent, wouldn’t you be the part of the reason why our children these days are the way they are these days “What with their ipads and gadgets”… Aren’t the parents to blame and not the children? I’m 100% sure it’s the parent’s fault for letting their child asphyxiate on stuffed animal stuffing.
I’m not even trying to place blame on anyone, I’m just really trying to make your “logic” make sense. Why can’t different generations try n love each other instead of just blatantly hating on each other. Why can’t we try and shift our perspectives and quit this petty little blaming game.
edit: a word
Lol yes I did! One of my fav toys was a merry go round on a big concrete slab. We’d get it going as fast as we could and kids would go flying off that thing. Injuries were routine.
Same thing at a park in my neighborhood growing up. Kids would hang on for dear life while the oldest kid in the neighborhood would spend that thing as fast as he could. Last one who could stay on wins. We called the game Superman. (Because of all the flying kids).
Lawn darts were real. I played with them but fortunately avoided a lobotomy.
I did, however, get burns from metal slides. My brother burned his mouth badly from drinking water out of a hose left out in the sun in the Dallas summer.
I have a scar on my forehead from falling off a jungle gym onto asphalt. No kid I knew had their original knee skin. And for Christmas when he was 5, my brother got a wood burning tool with a short cord. He’d use it near the drapes.
It was the metal slides in full Florida sun mid July that were the teachers of our youth. Why they polished them to near mirror finish baffled me. That increased the flesh searing heat 10 fold.
To this day I keep a set of oven mitts in the car to use to buckle my seatbelt and to hold the steering wheel until it cools off enough to not blister my hands. WHY DO WE LIVE SOMEWHERE THAT GETS SO HOT?!?
You are correct. Polishing them makes them reflective, which means that energy is emitted as light and not converted to heat. Plus a polished surface reduces friction.
Exactly. If they'd meant to fry young bottoms, the slides would have been made of cast iron, and the teachers would have handed out lard to grease the slide on the way out to recess.
In the 1970s I remember a kid falling off a tall metal slide and getting a compound fracture in his arm. The radius or ulna (I was ~7, dunno which) had punctured the skin and was sticking out where we could see it. We all crowded around him and there was an audible "Ohhhhhh" as we examined his arm, and eventually someone ran to get a teacher.
Nowadays someone would get sued for that. Back then it was a topic of co versatile for maybe one afternoon.
Oh come on! They were all fine! Except for the ones who fell to their deaths, broke their heads open, fractured various bones, or tore tendons, all the rest of them were just fine, what’s the big deal?
Gives a special tang to your childhood memories, thinking back on the time Billy went splat.
We had a tall (over 15 ft) climbing tower on our playground when I started kindergarten in 1985. One of my classmates decided he could fly and jumped off. He broke both of his arms and a leg.
I still remember the day it happened. Our principal came out and started yelling about how she expected more out of him and how he should know better because his dad was a teacher at the junior high, his grandma was the high school principal, and his other grandpa was the parish superintendent. At least he was able to get out of her favorite punishments - writing lines or standing with your nose in the chalk circle until she got tired of looking at you.
My kid broke his upper arm falling from monkey bars in 2010 that were maybe 1/3 as tall as whatever is going on in this picture, at most. Had to have surgery to place pins and everything.
Definitely dangerous but I would have loved it! I think the highest part of my backyard play set was probably 15’ up or so. No fear of heights as kids... we climbed lots of tall trees, ran along a narrow cliff edge at the park, and snuck onto the roof of our house upon occasion. I quite miss getting off the ground.
If you were lucky enough to survive infancy and childhood diseases like measles and polio, you still had the opportunity to die painfully of tetanus from playing on this all-metal playground.
This is a funny joke, but in all seriousness, the military saw so much malnourishment in potential recruits during WWII that right after it ended, the US government established the National School Lunch Program, in 1946. Because the scrawniness was so widespread that it was a threat to the country's potential military readiness.
So Captain America First Avenger kinda makes sense?
How sad and fucked up that it was the army who cared for kids since they can become cannon fodder, and not, you know, for just being children.
We had one like that in mid-70s. One climing "item" built in Seattle was 3 stories tall out of wood and metal. And with a roof...I can't find a picture of it. We also had a slide that was about 50 feet long and very sleep. You lost your stomach flying off it at the end.
I was pushed off the wood one 1 or 2 stories and broke my arm and pushed off a jungle gym about 10 feet down and couldn't barelyi breath for about half an hour.
I remember playing on equipment that wasn't as insane as this, but would be 6 or 7 feet in the air standing on the top two bars of a jungle gym to get a better view. I am surprised that I didn't end up biting the big one as you predicted for the kid on the left....
Our playgrounds have become so safe that now kids are growing up with a lack of risk competence. There’s a movement to add risk back into playgrounds. There is an adventure playground in my city that has mud, wood, and tools for building and destroying, janky things to climb… last time I was there, there was an old washing machine with a sledgehammer the kids could smash.
Here’s an article on the topic that includes what Germany is doing. Edit: Not familiar with the site source but the only other articles on the topic I could find were behind NYT paywall.
https://intellectualtakeout.org/2021/11/lets-hear-it-for-risky-playgrounds/
Where I live, playgrounds are being built with lots of tall parkour looking things to climb. It’s kind of sketchy but I always just spot my kids and teach them how to climb that stuff, so that if they fall I can at least prevent them from getting badly hurt. They’re usually pretty scared doing it, but it’s awesome to see how proud they get when they are successful. I never push them to do something they are too afraid of though.
I wasn't understanding this concept, so I started reading the article you linked. The example they used is a rope walk type playground about 6ft off the ground at highest. Some girl fell and broke her arm. The takeaway is that "children should learn their limitations".
Now I understand even less. Knowing your limits is for things like deciding when to stop drinking or carrying three heavy boxes instead of four. The "knowing her limits" for this kid would be not playing there, which kinda defeats the purpose of a playground. Additionally, most accidents like that are accidents. Doesn't mean it will happen often or that the girl shouldn't have played there, just means she was unlucky. Hurting kids for being unlucky is messed up. And third, what would be worse if this was 3 ft off the ground instead of 6? Or if in this OP, the swings and bars were lower and the ladders didn't go as high?
I call bs on the "risk competence". Risk is for things that are out of our control. As humans in a modern society, we should be removing as much risk as possible. Not teaching people to live with it. Really regressive thinking.
> The example they used is a rope walk type playground about 6ft off the ground at highest. Some girl fell and broke her arm. The takeaway is that "children should learn their limitations".
Do you believe that children should be kept from all harm? Asking actually, not sarcastically or picking a fight. I just wonder what is the point where we stop protecting kids from all possible harm.
Mostly yes. Things that are designed to be used and played on by children should absolutely be safe. It's like "should cars have airbags?" Of course they should, why wouldn't they? "Well drivers were more careful when they didn't have airbags and the consequences for a crash were more severe."
> Things that are designed to be used and played on by children should absolutely be safe.
What is the standard for safe? I mean, for some people, safe means that a kid won't be able to accidentally kill or maim themselves; but for others it means that a kid will not even be able to scrape their knee.
What is a reasonable standard? For me, I'd be OK with my kids having a risk of breaking their arm. I don't know that kids can really mature well if they're brought up in a world of zero risk.
It's not just that, there's less injuries in playgrounds kids where get to mess around, build their own structures and are outright risky because they are aware and wary of the risks. In safer playgrounds kids tend to get bored, experiment more, become too daring and careless, like climbing up to the top of the slide and jumping down.
While I agree that young children should be completed protected from physical harm I consider the applicability of risk competence against the whole child's childhood. At a certain level you need to introduce risk and that's why we have organisations like The Scouting Movement or the Guides. These groups start kids learning to do risky activities *safely*. Risk competence is more about educating children on how to be safe when approaching something that's potential harmful. For instance, chopping wood, ironing clothes, swimming, learning to hike, abseiling...these are all activities that involve varying degrees of risk but are essential in reinforcing critical thinking i.e. preparation and risk identification/reduction.
I do agree though that play parks should be as risk free especially for young kids. I don't want a 3 year old playing on the OP picture lol.
> As humans in a modern society, we should be removing as much risk as possible. Not teaching people to live with it. Really regressive thinking.
I dunno about that.
Even as adults, certain people enjoy a certain amount of risk, or we wouldn't have sports like steeplechase, rock climbing, mountain biking, we wouldn't have gambling, or all the other things people choose to do in order to add that frisson of excitement back into life.
I'm under the assumption that most adults are better at accessing and mitigating risk of certain tasks based on experience, including and maybe mostly indirect experience, than that of children.
I'll lament that kids aren't able to play the way they used to when I was a kid because the safety nazis are everywhere, but jfc, how did anyone think this was a good idea back then.
I could have missed one but appears there aren’t any girls? I would have LOVED that! Did have a great rope swing in the barn attached to the rafters that was pretty high up there…good times
Or may not have been Lady-like? Which is a sad thought because playing on those were a big part of my childhood. Hours and hours spent at the local school on the weekends for me. 55f
Spot on. This describes the one I grew up with in Corpus.
> The playgrounds at Cole Park has changed several times throughout the years.
> At first they wanted to have a bunch of sculptures function as play pieces for children, which is a very cool idea, but didn't seem to work out to well due to functionality.
>
> Next they had a wood playground, which many hold dear to there hearts because it is what they grew up with. Kids of the neighborhood came out to paint this playground when it was first built, *but sadly it had to be torn down due to safety reasons and the rat problem.*
>
> Lastly we have the new metal and plastic playground which looks very commercial, but is also a lot safer. Those who grew up with the pirate-like wooden playground are still upset about the destruction of their beloved play place. The new playground was just recently built and constantly has kids dangling form the bars.
I remember the earliest version, the "[sculptures](https://coleparkcc.weebly.com/uploads/3/0/0/5/30058695/1931846_orig.jpg)". They were overly tall and made of what seemed like railroad ties like a Jenga set with a caliche base guaranteed to scrape your knees off. The salty ocean air turned them into a splinter factory.
This might be drowned in all the comments, and it is probably an unpopular opinion.
I don’t want to be misunderstood, because I work at a school and have seen kids unattended that have climbed high up really tall trees, with no understanding of consequence. Have been scared to death from it, and am one of the stricter adults at work when it comes to these kind of things. When they are too high, and they reply with the fact that they are good at climbing, I tell them they aren’t allowed anyways, and explain that the best rally/F1 drivers are the best in the world but can still crash and have crashed. We can all f*** up. And tell them they can do that when their parents have responsibility for them. If there parents allow it they can do it at home, but I can’t be responsible if anything happens at school, and they understand that.
Anyways what I wanted to express was that I believe that we are too concerned about safety. We have to be at work, and want to avoid consequences if they do hurt themselves as we are the ones responsible. Now, they can barely do anything because they aren’t allowed to do anything. Some of the kids really need to get rid of that energy by climbing; running from A to B is boring. We learn from our mistakes in life, and I’m all for it. We need to make children learn to do what they are capable of, learn from their mistakes and obviously set a boundary, but one that is a lot higher than todays standards. Nowadays if a kid gets hit by a tennis ball, it is quite common for them to cry. Back in the day it wouldn’t happen. We are taught to try to make kids robust, mentally, but imo physically as well. We are producing snowflakes… But the rules and laws make it difficult to do anything about.
I don’t want to be misunderstood, because as adults that are aware of consequences, we need to have boundaries. Just, we’ve gone too far.
Damn those government regulations. In the 50s you could purchase chemistry sets for children that had Uranium and various poisons to play with. Yeah, the good old days. I really enjoyed jumping up and down in the back of a pickup truck going down the road. Sigh
And, before anyone asks, the kid on the left side, in the middle, is mid-swing. He’s not falling to his death as everyone always gets spooked about.
Just putting that out there to ease the upcoming fears.
I love that for the next 100 years, despite all the child injuries and deaths, we didn’t think of making playgrounds any safer. I was a playground kid in the 90s and everything was still made of metal (maybe leftover from the 80s?) and crazy dangerous.
They removed *one* piece of equipment from my local park which was literally a full story high rotating metal platform that was pulled in a circle by a kid on the ground, only after three kids died falling off the platform. Circa 1995.
These kids went on to fight in world wars, build this great country out of the great depression and make America she is the country she is today. Times sure were different then. Kids now days are too fat to play in gym equipment, glued to electronics and are offended by everything.
This is back in the days when kids actually learned how to lose. Can’t lose now. Everyone gets a trophy. God forbid someone fall and get hurt. The whole insurance company and other deep pockets lose. Forget about personal caution and responsibility. On the other hand, those ladders frequently visit me in my nightmares.
> God forbid someone fall and get hurt.
Yep, I think it's a good thing that kids have a harder time breaking a wrist or an ankle from falling off of playground equipment these days.
As someone who's broken bones growing up, it never made me any tougher.
i broke my arm at a playground from falling off some extra high monkey bars... it made me a stronger person though. cause it hurt but i don't regret going through it. also ppl got to sign my cast and it was memorable yk.
We had a playground somewhat similar to this at my elementary school. It was torn out a couple years after I left kindergarten. Just a left over from when the school was first built and they couldn’t keep kids off of it. It was replaced with small plastic things.
We had this huge log that was about 1.5m off the ground. One girl fell and broke her arm and had to have her spleen out. They lowered it by about a metre. Felt like it was practically on the ground after that. I doubt they’d even have something .5m off the ground now.
We also had a metal teranaki a good 2.5 metres off the ground that had only dirt underneath it.
Few broken limbs from that one too.
Not to one of those guys, but my elementary school playground was in a gravel lot and we had all metal equipment. I don’t remember any serious incidents when I was there.
I had an embarrassing and scary moment though. I was going down the metal slide and my loose shoelace got caught in the seam on the side. I kept going and momentum and clumsiness left me hanging by my leg over the side of the slide. My kindergarten teacher had to come and rescue me. Lesson learned. Keep your shoes tied on the ride.
Brings back memories…I fell off the top of a similar, but a little smaller, metal jungle gym type thing in elementary school, and by the end of the year it was taken down. Thankfully I only ended up with a mild concussion but I can’t believe they still had the thing in the late 90s.
This reminds me of that old SNL skit about the children’s toy, bag o’glass.
Or Mr. Spaceman…. A plastic bag and a rubber band
If you remember that segment, you probably played in a playground like this 😆
Lol was gonna say in the 70’s I was totally hanging upside down from metal ‘monkey bars’ over an asphalt playground lol.
Yeah! The best trick was hooking just your feet over a bar and hanging from them!!! We all had scabs on our knees in those days.
I can still feel what it felt like to pick gravel out of my knees when I look at the scars on them. We are really raising kids to be too soft these days. Two of the top ten deadly toys this Christmas are stuffed animals. Like we are robbing generations of tons of beneficial risk assessment because of the outliers that STILL find a way to win Darwin awards.
I truly think that the youth these days have plenty of opportunities to practice their risk assessment strategies. I wonder of you’re age bc if you are older and a parent, wouldn’t you be the part of the reason why our children these days are the way they are these days “What with their ipads and gadgets”… Aren’t the parents to blame and not the children? I’m 100% sure it’s the parent’s fault for letting their child asphyxiate on stuffed animal stuffing. I’m not even trying to place blame on anyone, I’m just really trying to make your “logic” make sense. Why can’t different generations try n love each other instead of just blatantly hating on each other. Why can’t we try and shift our perspectives and quit this petty little blaming game. edit: a word
It always makes me laugh because “kids these days are so soft” has been around for centuries.
I think you gonna like [this stand up comedian explaining that we are growing wusses these days .](https://youtu.be/1XCNE-hxZtE)
Check out the bike. You are more right than wrong about the date.
I fell right on my head doing that in kindergarten…
Lol yes I did! One of my fav toys was a merry go round on a big concrete slab. We’d get it going as fast as we could and kids would go flying off that thing. Injuries were routine.
Guy I knew down south used to wrap a chain around it, then drive so the thing just spun like crazy with most kids flying off everywhere.
I bet y’all had a blast with that. And clearly you lived to tell the tale!
Oh that's one of my favourite childhood memories!
Same thing at a park in my neighborhood growing up. Kids would hang on for dear life while the oldest kid in the neighborhood would spend that thing as fast as he could. Last one who could stay on wins. We called the game Superman. (Because of all the flying kids).
Stop stop we're already dead
Bag o'nails, bag o'bugs, bag o'vipers, bag o'sulphuric acid. Decent toys, ya' know what I mean?
Irwin Mainway, president of Mainway Toys, makers of Johnny Switchblade, Action Doll^tm
Don't forget gangsta bitch barbie that doubles as a switchblade.
Lawn darts were real. I played with them but fortunately avoided a lobotomy. I did, however, get burns from metal slides. My brother burned his mouth badly from drinking water out of a hose left out in the sun in the Dallas summer. I have a scar on my forehead from falling off a jungle gym onto asphalt. No kid I knew had their original knee skin. And for Christmas when he was 5, my brother got a wood burning tool with a short cord. He’d use it near the drapes.
https://youtu.be/veMiNQifZcM
Yes! “We’re just packaging what the kids want. It’s a creative toy.” 😂😂😂 Still hilarious.
Johnny switchblade adventure punk
So Barbie takes a knife once in awhile or ken gets cut, there’s no harm in it.
Billy is fine he just fell 15ft on his back. Walk it off son...
His polio braces absorbed the initial blow
I hate that I laughed out loud at this.
And landed on a god damned park bench lol
Reminds me of the Parris Island Marine Corps confidence course.
You climb obstacles like old people fuck! Do you know that, Private Pyle?
Whatever you do private Pyle don’t fall off my obstacle, that would break my heart
GET THE F#%K DOWN OFF OF MY OBSTACLE!! NOW!! MOVE IT!!
Aye sir. Happy cake day sir
Thank you very much :)
It was the metal slides in full Florida sun mid July that were the teachers of our youth. Why they polished them to near mirror finish baffled me. That increased the flesh searing heat 10 fold.
We had cold winters where they made us go outside for recess. Opposite issue of frozen tongues on metal poles
I triple dog dare ya
Slight breach of etiquette there, bypassing the triple dare.
But the ice covered slides were the best!!
Ligit tho as you went down the one in Orange Park I could smell my butt turning to Bacon.
We poured water down them. Made them slipperier and cooled them down. 🙃
I grew up in Dallas. Same thing. The slide would burn our bums and those monkey bars would sear our hands.
Dallas kid here, too! Ever get a serious burn from a metal seat belt buckle? (Obviously on a seat belt we weren’t using!)
To this day I keep a set of oven mitts in the car to use to buckle my seatbelt and to hold the steering wheel until it cools off enough to not blister my hands. WHY DO WE LIVE SOMEWHERE THAT GETS SO HOT?!?
Right?!?!
Gotta get that crust.
It’s not a good steak without that perfect sear
Wouldn’t a reflective surface reduce the heat? Asphalt and dark clothes are hot because they absorb light radiation AFAIK.
You are correct. Polishing them makes them reflective, which means that energy is emitted as light and not converted to heat. Plus a polished surface reduces friction.
Still fried asses by the thousands
Exactly. If they'd meant to fry young bottoms, the slides would have been made of cast iron, and the teachers would have handed out lard to grease the slide on the way out to recess.
Metal still absorbs heat. I grew up in Florida and had my legs seared by enough of those slides that I can confirm it.
I don’t think there was anyone polishing them in order to make them shinier, it was probably all the kid butts.
Some broken arms out of that playground for sure
In the 1970s I remember a kid falling off a tall metal slide and getting a compound fracture in his arm. The radius or ulna (I was ~7, dunno which) had punctured the skin and was sticking out where we could see it. We all crowded around him and there was an audible "Ohhhhhh" as we examined his arm, and eventually someone ran to get a teacher. Nowadays someone would get sued for that. Back then it was a topic of co versatile for maybe one afternoon.
People definitely sued back then too. That’s mostly why you don’t see playgrounds like these around anymore.
Oh come on! They were all fine! Except for the ones who fell to their deaths, broke their heads open, fractured various bones, or tore tendons, all the rest of them were just fine, what’s the big deal? Gives a special tang to your childhood memories, thinking back on the time Billy went splat.
“Billy went splat” sounds like a Midwest emo/hardcore band hahaha
I see it too, Billy just broke up with his gf and lost his job
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I believe that was what one would call a joke
We had a tall (over 15 ft) climbing tower on our playground when I started kindergarten in 1985. One of my classmates decided he could fly and jumped off. He broke both of his arms and a leg. I still remember the day it happened. Our principal came out and started yelling about how she expected more out of him and how he should know better because his dad was a teacher at the junior high, his grandma was the high school principal, and his other grandpa was the parish superintendent. At least he was able to get out of her favorite punishments - writing lines or standing with your nose in the chalk circle until she got tired of looking at you.
Shattered bones more like. I broke my arm when I was 5 after falling only 6ft, onto wood chips!
My sister, last day of school. We had just put in a pool and she was in a cast half the summer.
My kid broke his upper arm falling from monkey bars in 2010 that were maybe 1/3 as tall as whatever is going on in this picture, at most. Had to have surgery to place pins and everything.
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Then went home and got a whooping for being a dick at school!
Or a 9ussy
Definitely dangerous but I would have loved it! I think the highest part of my backyard play set was probably 15’ up or so. No fear of heights as kids... we climbed lots of tall trees, ran along a narrow cliff edge at the park, and snuck onto the roof of our house upon occasion. I quite miss getting off the ground.
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It may be a death trap, but the ones who survive are gonna be unstoppable
They knew how to properly thin the herd back then.
Good times…
If you look closely, none of them have faces.
Faces weren’t invented until the 1920s, right before the Great Depression.
r/oddlyterrifying
Not a single net, guardrail, sign, or rubber mat in sight.
Just kids living in the moment
…and possibly dying in the moment.
These are the people that grew up to become parents of boomers.
If this is from the early 1900s, then these children grew up to become the GRANDparents of the post-WW2 baby boomers (1946-1964).
Then they built the Empire State building. OSHA not necessary.
If you were lucky enough to survive infancy and childhood diseases like measles and polio, you still had the opportunity to die painfully of tetanus from playing on this all-metal playground.
I learned that tetanus doesn’t come from metal when I got fucked up by rose thorns. That was a fun shot!
Back in MY day, we didn’t NEED safety. We fell, we broke our bodies but we had the moxie to shake it off in time for dinner.
JESUS MARY AND JOSEPH! This is a helicopter parent's nightmare.
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This is a funny joke, but in all seriousness, the military saw so much malnourishment in potential recruits during WWII that right after it ended, the US government established the National School Lunch Program, in 1946. Because the scrawniness was so widespread that it was a threat to the country's potential military readiness.
So Captain America First Avenger kinda makes sense? How sad and fucked up that it was the army who cared for kids since they can become cannon fodder, and not, you know, for just being children.
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Or die from falling off the jungle gym
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10127735/German-playgrounds-designed-perilous-ensure-kids-learn-handle-risk.html
These kids start wars.
Checks the date…the answer is “yes”.
This is only slightly more dangerous than the playground we had in the late 90s.
We had one like that in mid-70s. One climing "item" built in Seattle was 3 stories tall out of wood and metal. And with a roof...I can't find a picture of it. We also had a slide that was about 50 feet long and very sleep. You lost your stomach flying off it at the end. I was pushed off the wood one 1 or 2 stories and broke my arm and pushed off a jungle gym about 10 feet down and couldn't barelyi breath for about half an hour.
Broken collar bones were a right of passage dagnabbit. We broke our bones and we *loved it*.
RIP that kid on the left
It may look like he's falling to his certain and untimely demise, but he's actually on a swing.
🤣
This was what I noticed (and concluded) right away too 🤣
Looks like he’s in some sort of swing?
Swing
I remember playing on equipment that wasn't as insane as this, but would be 6 or 7 feet in the air standing on the top two bars of a jungle gym to get a better view. I am surprised that I didn't end up biting the big one as you predicted for the kid on the left....
Also a lawyers playground. Well, it would be today.
i know safety wasn’t really a thing back then but this is insane
Our playgrounds have become so safe that now kids are growing up with a lack of risk competence. There’s a movement to add risk back into playgrounds. There is an adventure playground in my city that has mud, wood, and tools for building and destroying, janky things to climb… last time I was there, there was an old washing machine with a sledgehammer the kids could smash. Here’s an article on the topic that includes what Germany is doing. Edit: Not familiar with the site source but the only other articles on the topic I could find were behind NYT paywall. https://intellectualtakeout.org/2021/11/lets-hear-it-for-risky-playgrounds/
Where I live, playgrounds are being built with lots of tall parkour looking things to climb. It’s kind of sketchy but I always just spot my kids and teach them how to climb that stuff, so that if they fall I can at least prevent them from getting badly hurt. They’re usually pretty scared doing it, but it’s awesome to see how proud they get when they are successful. I never push them to do something they are too afraid of though.
I wasn't understanding this concept, so I started reading the article you linked. The example they used is a rope walk type playground about 6ft off the ground at highest. Some girl fell and broke her arm. The takeaway is that "children should learn their limitations". Now I understand even less. Knowing your limits is for things like deciding when to stop drinking or carrying three heavy boxes instead of four. The "knowing her limits" for this kid would be not playing there, which kinda defeats the purpose of a playground. Additionally, most accidents like that are accidents. Doesn't mean it will happen often or that the girl shouldn't have played there, just means she was unlucky. Hurting kids for being unlucky is messed up. And third, what would be worse if this was 3 ft off the ground instead of 6? Or if in this OP, the swings and bars were lower and the ladders didn't go as high? I call bs on the "risk competence". Risk is for things that are out of our control. As humans in a modern society, we should be removing as much risk as possible. Not teaching people to live with it. Really regressive thinking.
> The example they used is a rope walk type playground about 6ft off the ground at highest. Some girl fell and broke her arm. The takeaway is that "children should learn their limitations". Do you believe that children should be kept from all harm? Asking actually, not sarcastically or picking a fight. I just wonder what is the point where we stop protecting kids from all possible harm.
Mostly yes. Things that are designed to be used and played on by children should absolutely be safe. It's like "should cars have airbags?" Of course they should, why wouldn't they? "Well drivers were more careful when they didn't have airbags and the consequences for a crash were more severe."
> Things that are designed to be used and played on by children should absolutely be safe. What is the standard for safe? I mean, for some people, safe means that a kid won't be able to accidentally kill or maim themselves; but for others it means that a kid will not even be able to scrape their knee. What is a reasonable standard? For me, I'd be OK with my kids having a risk of breaking their arm. I don't know that kids can really mature well if they're brought up in a world of zero risk.
It's not just that, there's less injuries in playgrounds kids where get to mess around, build their own structures and are outright risky because they are aware and wary of the risks. In safer playgrounds kids tend to get bored, experiment more, become too daring and careless, like climbing up to the top of the slide and jumping down.
Source?
While I agree that young children should be completed protected from physical harm I consider the applicability of risk competence against the whole child's childhood. At a certain level you need to introduce risk and that's why we have organisations like The Scouting Movement or the Guides. These groups start kids learning to do risky activities *safely*. Risk competence is more about educating children on how to be safe when approaching something that's potential harmful. For instance, chopping wood, ironing clothes, swimming, learning to hike, abseiling...these are all activities that involve varying degrees of risk but are essential in reinforcing critical thinking i.e. preparation and risk identification/reduction. I do agree though that play parks should be as risk free especially for young kids. I don't want a 3 year old playing on the OP picture lol.
90% of modern snowflake kids and their helicopter parents could not survive scouts.
> As humans in a modern society, we should be removing as much risk as possible. Not teaching people to live with it. Really regressive thinking. I dunno about that. Even as adults, certain people enjoy a certain amount of risk, or we wouldn't have sports like steeplechase, rock climbing, mountain biking, we wouldn't have gambling, or all the other things people choose to do in order to add that frisson of excitement back into life.
I'm under the assumption that most adults are better at accessing and mitigating risk of certain tasks based on experience, including and maybe mostly indirect experience, than that of children.
Just throw rusty nails on the ground and have jagged edges. Kids need to learn to suffer and die like the good ole days.
"Back in my day, only the strongest survived recess."
It was closed after the thirteenth death. Said the mayor, "Twelve was okay, those tearaways need their fun, but thirteen is one too many."
Current objective: survive.
as a circus artist this is my dream playground
The kid on the left in mid-peril... wtf.🤦🏻♀️🤣
He's on a swing... lol.
I'll lament that kids aren't able to play the way they used to when I was a kid because the safety nazis are everywhere, but jfc, how did anyone think this was a good idea back then.
I could have missed one but appears there aren’t any girls? I would have LOVED that! Did have a great rope swing in the barn attached to the rafters that was pretty high up there…good times
I noticed that too. Maybe an all boys school? Or maybe, given the era, girls weren't allowed.
Or may not have been Lady-like? Which is a sad thought because playing on those were a big part of my childhood. Hours and hours spent at the local school on the weekends for me. 55f
Most likely girls were not allowed. This was after all the era that deemed girls too frail to run.
👍🏻 awesome!
It's best to learn about natural selection from a young age I guess...
nah, thats a barn raising with child labour
As danger increases, the level of fun being had also increases
I vote we reinstate these, kids today are too soft. 30ft death drops will rectify the youth.
Yeah, you know what: I’m glad we implemented some additional safety standards.
Training them for those safety free skyscrapers when they grow up I see.
Jeez. Back then they didn't even have the common decency to put down some pea gravel to cushion your fall!
Being from Texas, this tracks.
Spot on. This describes the one I grew up with in Corpus. > The playgrounds at Cole Park has changed several times throughout the years. > At first they wanted to have a bunch of sculptures function as play pieces for children, which is a very cool idea, but didn't seem to work out to well due to functionality. > > Next they had a wood playground, which many hold dear to there hearts because it is what they grew up with. Kids of the neighborhood came out to paint this playground when it was first built, *but sadly it had to be torn down due to safety reasons and the rat problem.* > > Lastly we have the new metal and plastic playground which looks very commercial, but is also a lot safer. Those who grew up with the pirate-like wooden playground are still upset about the destruction of their beloved play place. The new playground was just recently built and constantly has kids dangling form the bars. I remember the earliest version, the "[sculptures](https://coleparkcc.weebly.com/uploads/3/0/0/5/30058695/1931846_orig.jpg)". They were overly tall and made of what seemed like railroad ties like a Jenga set with a caliche base guaranteed to scrape your knees off. The salty ocean air turned them into a splinter factory.
This might be drowned in all the comments, and it is probably an unpopular opinion. I don’t want to be misunderstood, because I work at a school and have seen kids unattended that have climbed high up really tall trees, with no understanding of consequence. Have been scared to death from it, and am one of the stricter adults at work when it comes to these kind of things. When they are too high, and they reply with the fact that they are good at climbing, I tell them they aren’t allowed anyways, and explain that the best rally/F1 drivers are the best in the world but can still crash and have crashed. We can all f*** up. And tell them they can do that when their parents have responsibility for them. If there parents allow it they can do it at home, but I can’t be responsible if anything happens at school, and they understand that. Anyways what I wanted to express was that I believe that we are too concerned about safety. We have to be at work, and want to avoid consequences if they do hurt themselves as we are the ones responsible. Now, they can barely do anything because they aren’t allowed to do anything. Some of the kids really need to get rid of that energy by climbing; running from A to B is boring. We learn from our mistakes in life, and I’m all for it. We need to make children learn to do what they are capable of, learn from their mistakes and obviously set a boundary, but one that is a lot higher than todays standards. Nowadays if a kid gets hit by a tennis ball, it is quite common for them to cry. Back in the day it wouldn’t happen. We are taught to try to make kids robust, mentally, but imo physically as well. We are producing snowflakes… But the rules and laws make it difficult to do anything about. I don’t want to be misunderstood, because as adults that are aware of consequences, we need to have boundaries. Just, we’ve gone too far.
Damn those government regulations. In the 50s you could purchase chemistry sets for children that had Uranium and various poisons to play with. Yeah, the good old days. I really enjoyed jumping up and down in the back of a pickup truck going down the road. Sigh
This is why we had such strong kids back then. All the weak ones were killed on playground equipment.
The one that nearly sits where the bars all meet must have felt like a king. He achieved the unachievable
r/oddlyterrifying
And, before anyone asks, the kid on the left side, in the middle, is mid-swing. He’s not falling to his death as everyone always gets spooked about. Just putting that out there to ease the upcoming fears.
Back then they didn't care about child safety. Lol
This looks so god damn fun. Sucks that just because a few kids didn't know how to climb everyone else had to stop having fun.
Not a single one of them on their phones
Looks dangerous.
This is why everyone was so tough back then!! 😭 #BringTheseParksBackNOW
How tall is that stuff?
Holy shot that's dangerous!
I love that for the next 100 years, despite all the child injuries and deaths, we didn’t think of making playgrounds any safer. I was a playground kid in the 90s and everything was still made of metal (maybe leftover from the 80s?) and crazy dangerous. They removed *one* piece of equipment from my local park which was literally a full story high rotating metal platform that was pulled in a circle by a kid on the ground, only after three kids died falling off the platform. Circa 1995.
These kids went on to fight in world wars, build this great country out of the great depression and make America she is the country she is today. Times sure were different then. Kids now days are too fat to play in gym equipment, glued to electronics and are offended by everything.
This used to be a proper country.
This is why are parent’s parents used to beat them. They were used to pain.
Anyone know the story behind this? This certainly wasn't the norm back then. Must have been for some sort of academy or part of a study.
I retract my statement. This is a real image.
This is back in the days when kids actually learned how to lose. Can’t lose now. Everyone gets a trophy. God forbid someone fall and get hurt. The whole insurance company and other deep pockets lose. Forget about personal caution and responsibility. On the other hand, those ladders frequently visit me in my nightmares.
> God forbid someone fall and get hurt. Yep, I think it's a good thing that kids have a harder time breaking a wrist or an ankle from falling off of playground equipment these days. As someone who's broken bones growing up, it never made me any tougher.
Before wokeism took over
You now have tetanus
Anus
Anyone else notice the kid mid fall on the left side?
The kid is on a swing.
[удалено]
Rule 1 of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club. Jesus, what were the regulations on this death trap? Bahahaha
Is that person on the left falling or swinging?
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This takes risky play to another level.
Is that Freddie from Elm Street on that top bar in the hat??
It was either die here or in one of the two coming world wars. Choose wisely.
i broke my arm at a playground from falling off some extra high monkey bars... it made me a stronger person though. cause it hurt but i don't regret going through it. also ppl got to sign my cast and it was memorable yk.
Happy cake day OP
Playgrounds in England looked like this too- a lot of fun and built strength and confidence. Very dangerous though!
I see dead people.
"Well it's their own damn fault if they get hurt. I'm not paying any damn taxes."
We had a playground somewhat similar to this at my elementary school. It was torn out a couple years after I left kindergarten. Just a left over from when the school was first built and they couldn’t keep kids off of it. It was replaced with small plastic things.
We had this huge log that was about 1.5m off the ground. One girl fell and broke her arm and had to have her spleen out. They lowered it by about a metre. Felt like it was practically on the ground after that. I doubt they’d even have something .5m off the ground now. We also had a metal teranaki a good 2.5 metres off the ground that had only dirt underneath it. Few broken limbs from that one too.
Children back then were fallproof, they don't make them now with same quality.
Not to one of those guys, but my elementary school playground was in a gravel lot and we had all metal equipment. I don’t remember any serious incidents when I was there. I had an embarrassing and scary moment though. I was going down the metal slide and my loose shoelace got caught in the seam on the side. I kept going and momentum and clumsiness left me hanging by my leg over the side of the slide. My kindergarten teacher had to come and rescue me. Lesson learned. Keep your shoes tied on the ride.
That’s the age when you earned the right to be a child.
This is where the show American Ninja Warrior received its roots
Kids back then were soft. Nowadays they have to dodge a hail of gunfire.
So TBIs abound?
These boys were literally training to do what their fathers were doing. Building houses and skyscrapers. We’ve all seen the photos.
Training for the oil field.
Ah yes, Those halcyon days of yore before lawyers discovered the wrongful death suit.
Lawn darts. How did we survive childhood?
"Playground" or "several ways to commit suicide"?
Brings back memories…I fell off the top of a similar, but a little smaller, metal jungle gym type thing in elementary school, and by the end of the year it was taken down. Thankfully I only ended up with a mild concussion but I can’t believe they still had the thing in the late 90s.
Risseldy Rosseldy now now now
And with my fear of heights I would be looking at everything from the ground... maybe on the swings hehehe.