Christ, we're raising Eloi.

Ken,
No kidding. What's next? State-sponsored therapy for the little dears because they don't have a white-gloved valet to place their napkins across their laps at lunchtime? 'Cause, you know, someone heard Suzie has one of those at home and it's not fair that the other kids don't.

For this one, I'm going with the sue happy schmucks. But "they gonna sue us!" is becoming an all too easy excuse to use, too. Hell, for nearly all my major recess injuries, one of my parents was my teacher at the time.

I hope at some point it reaches the absurdity that they have to ban non-pureed school provided lunches because not enough kids chew 32 times per bite, thus creating a choking liability.

Emily - I remember maybe last year some stupid-ass parental group had petitioned their school district to make the children play "tug of peace" rather than "tug of war" at recess.

Tug of peace??

Dumbest thing I've ever heard. Makes me mad!

The average IQ in America is surely falling by the year. That's a scary thought.

Sheila,
HOLY.

FUCKING.

SHIT.

Jeff is right. Tug this, you dumb pieces of shit.

"Tug of peace?" What's next, Smear the Straight?

I can't blame the school in this, much as I'd like to. Their collective ass is on the line every time a kid draws breath on their premises. (And sometimes off.) Paranoia beats the hell out of litigation.

Which in no way abrogates my desire to flay the sue-happy asshats who created a climate like this.

In the long run, it's just cheaper to bubble-wrap the entire premises than worry about what happens if a kid trips in a hallway, or gets a paper cut, or has trauma for being told to sit up straight.

This is the direct fault of parents who were too damn mollycoddled when they were kids, and now want to spoil sport for the whole world. "My son feels safer now," indeed. You probably also prop up Junior at political rallies, as if he has an opinion about needle exchange programs and property tax relief at the age of seven.

No more "Keep Away" I guess. Now they have to call it, "Toss the ball back and forth while one person gets their required daily exercise running back and forth, seemingly without purpose."

This mentality effects the military also, we used to go on distance runs where the entire company would running at a nice, slow pace and the person in the back of the formation would sprint to the front and you'd continue this for the entire run. This used to be called an Indian Run. Now they call it last person up or something like that.

This has got to be one of the fucking most pathetic fucking pansy ass fucking things Ive read all fucking week.

oops. sorry, I forgot it aint Friday.

'Tis okay, Val. That's pretty much what crossed my mind when I first read it.

Those damn 95% of lawyers give the good ones like Dave a bad name.

I agree with Joel and Marc...this is the school responding to a real threat. It's the sue-happy blow hards that are to blame.

And the one's who lose are the kids. They are missing out on the childhood experience and they are NOT learning the socila skills they will need to succeed in life.

What is going to happen when these over-protected darlings become adults? Who is their parent going to sue when they can't hold down a job because they haven't learned effective teamwork skills, or they are too fearful to leave their own homes without a coat of armor?

Stop it with the frivolous lawsuits already and let people live their lives. Not every bad thing that happens in the world needs to have a fall guy!

Actually, this has repercussions beyond the schoolyard. And Nightfly is right: "This is the direct fault of parents who were too damn mollycoddled when they were kids, and now want to spoil sport for the whole world."

In my department, we've been warned to expect that in the near future, we will have to make "waiver forms" for our field trips to let the students know about "hazards" they might face - everything from getting bit by fire ants to a meteorite falling on their heads.

I'm sorry, but I'm not prescient enough to be able to predict all the horrors that may befall my students. My advice to them re: hazards is pretty general, but it's worked well for me: "Don't be stupid." In other words: don't stick your hand in a hole you think might contain a snake. Don't try to impress the girls in class by climbing up a tree and leaping out of it. Don't eat a plant I've told you is poisonous. Don't whizz on an electric fence.

It's ridiculous. My opinion is: if you're going into the biological sciences, you damn well better be tough enough to tolerate a little discomfort or a little risk. (Of course - for students with serious bee sting allergies and the like we do take extra care. But I'm talking about the crazy things like "If you hike in the forest, you need to know that a branch could fall on your head." Durr. And if you sit too close to the tv, and there's an earthquake, the tv might fall on you.)

I have friends with small children, and they EXPECT stitches and broken bones to be part of the deal. In fact, they pretty much shrugged off the first instance of stitches with, "Boys will be boys." I think THOSE kids are gonna grow up just fine.

Kids aren't fragile. They're just smaller than us. These people are raising a generation of timid, mincing twits.

ain't that the truth, Shannon. One of my favorite scenes is when a little kid falls and quickly looks around to see if anyone is looking before they begin wailing. I can't help but leave the room laughing when that happens.

Don't try to impress the girls in class by climbing up a tree and leaping out of it.

Do you at least give them an alternative means of impressing the girls? Because, really, that's all life is about for guys.

If anything, kids are LESS fragile than we are, especially when it comes to falling. They have a shorter distance to fall, so they don't have as much time to accelerate, which means they're not going as fast when they hit. The weight far less than we do(especially some of us), so the mass part of the energy behind their falls is ALSO reduced. Plus their bodies aren't as old and brittle as ours.

KG,

They're not just looking to see if anyone saw, they're gauging reactions. If as a parent you smile and reassure them, unless it's one of those rare serious falls, they usually shrug it off.

Having said that, my 21-month old tried to do a dive head first off out bed onto the floor today, and I mean a dive -- not merely falling, nd it would have been one of the rare truly ugly incidents -- he launched himself from the middle of the bed and was following a perfect ballisting trajectory when I caught his leg in mid-flight. Amazing how fast a fat man can move when his child's safety is in quuestion.

Yes...Sous is right. There have been studies done where they have asked parents (or parental-figures) to respond differently to minor kiddie mishaps in a test playroom. The parents who have the attitude of "you're not hurt" or "gee, that was funny, how you fell down and got right back up" had kids who didn't cry, later on, after minor mishaps.

The parents who raced over and told the kids they were "poor dears" and fussed over them wound up with kids that were crybabies over every dang little thing.

As for impressing the girls: These guys are like 18 and 20. If they haven't learned alternate ways of impressing the girls that don't risk them a closed-head injury, then I figure they probably shouldn't be breeding anyway.

Ken, Emily - TOTALLY off topic here - but wanted to let you know Ive changed blog addresses. I am now at:

http://www.wanderingconfluence.com

I tried to keep the same domain, but had to leave off the 'a' so if you hand type the correction, please make note of that. :D I finally got into Moveable Type! YAY! I missed this programming so much! Am still tweaking the header and other widgets, but I think Ive got it (almost) the way I want it.

Thanks, Sharon. Links updated. ;)

ballisting? quuestion? Geez, how tired was I?

About as tired as a guy with kids and evening classes ought to be. Nice catch on the 21-month old, btw.

Shannon - "Mincing Twits," hahahahaha! I think I saw them downtown opening for the White Stripes last week.

Actually, it's the other way around -- morning classes, and I care for The Lad in the afternoon and evening, The Feared Redhead works till 8 PM. But thanks for the encouragement.

There was a brief snippet on TV recently about "adults" playing the games of their "lost youth," including kick-ball and dodge-ball. However the adults pictured in the bit were post-college 20-somethings, and with better arms than an 11-yr old about the last people I'd want to play dodge-ball with.

DC,
I don't know if it was the same one you saw, but I recently saw a similar snippet about "leagues" of all these childhood sports popping up for adults. Hell, I won't knock it. I'd probably really enjoy an afternoon of playing dodgeball. It's good exercize and can help get a large amount of aggression out of your system that's a normal result of day-to-day life.

That's something else that bugs me about having sports like that banned. They are, the occassional small bruise or fall aside, harmless ways to let kids work out their aggressions and feelings of anger. We've spent the last couple of decades banning these sports for their "violence, degredation and exclusion," to quote the eponymous film, and yet we still wonder why the only way the rare kid deals with his anger is to walk into his school with a gun and plug his classmates. For all the idiotic morons who blame video games, MTV and film violence, I have to wonder if it never dawned on them that these kids had no other outlet for these very human feelings because they've been coddled all their lives and taught that pain, competition and suffering on ANY level are things that are their birthright to never, ever have to experience.

Right after the movie came out, some friends and I had a vigorous game of dodgeball. It was a blast, though I don't think I hurt for three days afterwards when I was a kid.

Emily, I had not thought about it that way, but that's quite a brilliant insight.

Maybe the way to stop school shootings is to let kids play dodgeball and tag and tug of war and smear the queer (And yeah, it's a rude name, but it's a fun game).

I will say I kind of hated dodgeball in high school but that was because some idiot came up with the idea of playing it with volleyballs. Volleyballs raise painful welts, especially if a couple of the guys on the other team are the star pitchers on the school baseball team...But with a slightly softer ball, yeah....

Heh. I wonder if we could work up some kind of good slogan..."Play Dodgeball...save a kid" or somesuch.

Emily, that's exactly it. Recess was originally a time when all the chaotic, short-fused, pent-up energy was released - so that afterwards kids could go back inside and concentrate on subject-matter, relieved of the tension that makes for a short attention-span.
Nowdays it's another Edu-pedagogical exercise in non-threatening collectivism.

You know what else baffles me, DC? That people are wondering why it is that kids today are suffering from a blight of obesity. Could it be because schools make them stand still and hold hands and talk about peace and harmony instead of running and playing at recess? Gee, YA THINK?!?!? They'll spend all this time arguing about how schools should not be allowed to sell sodas and higher fatty foods in their dumbfounded stupidity as to why all of our kids are bloaters and yet not manage to clue in at ALL that their pathetic, over-protective, collectivist mindset is practically KILLING their children whose hearts are all going to explode by the time they're 20 because, heaven forbid, they get some exercize. No, they might bruise something or make Johnny feel bad because he's not as fast as Joey.

Hell in a handbasket.

The grubs that feed the Collective need to be fat and juicy.

Fucking lawyers. Unbelievable. ;-)

Kill 'em all, Dave!