Are There Too Many Safety Rules For Kids?

Merry-go-rounds, seesaws and tall metal slides are gone. East Valley schools also forbid tackle football, jumping off swings and hanging upside down from monkey bars. Students can still play tag — but they must "power walk" or skip at some schools because running is too dangerous. Pioneer Elementary School in Gilbert prohibits tag altogether.

And that’s just the beginning of the rules that principals, playground aides and lawmakers have created in recent years to keep schoolchildren safe.

Johnson Elementary School in Mesa banned flip-flops this semester to protect children from twisted ankles and stubbed toes. Sonoran Sky Elementary School in the Paradise Valley Unified School District requires children to wear hats when they go outdoors — a response to a new state law that requires public schools to teach about skin cancer. State lawmakers also passed a junk food ban this year to protect children from obesity.

And the Mesa Unified School District installed fences around its high schools this summer to keep students inside and protect them from lunchtime traffic crashes.
Gilbert parent Cindy Duffy said she agrees with some of the precautions, but she said many schools go too far in dictating what children can and cannot do.
"I think they’re taking away kids’ creativity," Duffy said. "Schools are telling them how to play, and that’s their creative time."

But Deb Pangrazi, program specialist for elementary physical education in the Mesa district, said educators have learned from all the broken bones and other injuries.

Rhonda Clements, past president of the American Association for the Child’s Right to Play, disagreed. She said too many safety rules rob children of a chance to explore their world and take healthy risks.

"We’re seeing way too much adult-structured activity, and children aren’t free to make their own decisions," said Clements, director of graduate physical education at Manhattanville College in New York. "Sometimes children have to learn through trial and error."

"When they lowered the height of slides, kids began to jump off the top of the slide," she said. "A child is naturally going to find a way for that risk taking, and if we don’t give them that chance, we’ll have a society of children that are totally sheltered."
Chandler Christian School fifth-grader Kenzie McGinnis, 10, said she would welcome more playground freedom. She said she misses games such as dodgeball, which her school prohibits.

"We also can’t play tag on the playground equipment, which is really fun," Kenzie said. "I wish I could because it’s fun."

MODERN PLAYGROUND

School maintenance workers in Mesa used to design and build their own playground gear for students.

But the wood splintered, pieces came loose and metal bars grew hot in the Arizona sun.
Susan Hudson, education director for the National Program for Playground Safety, said the first playground regulations emerged in 1981.
"You want to make sure that kids aren’t going to get their head entrapped in guardrails, that there is adequate surfacing under and around the playground equipment," she said. "That there aren’t pinch points or loose nuts or bolts, entrapment areas or entanglement areas."
She said the notion that height increases the fun factor is not always true.
"What you have done with height is only increase the risk, but you have done nothing to increase the challenge," Hudson said. "That’s why kids start to misuse the equipment. They will go down the slide backward or climb up the slide chute. What the child is trying to do is increase the complexity of the task. Rather than worrying about if fun has been taken out, (we should look at) what we are doing for the child. Maybe it means a different design of the playgrounds of the 21st century that don’t look like the playgrounds of the 19th century."

REVAMPING P.E.

T.J. Jackson, 47, has taught physical education in the Mesa district for more than two decades and has seen many changes.
He said teachers today not only protect children from injury but also from hurt feelings.
Students used to share one basketball and took turns shooting baskets. Now, he said, teachers give children their own balls so they can focus on their skills and not worry about classmates making fun of them if they don’t perform as well.
"We want to (teach) in a way that nobody’s going to walk out of here humiliated or hurt," said Jackson, a teacher at Hale Elementary School.
During a recent class, Jackson had his first-graders toss colorful yarn balls into the air. The balls are softer than the beanbags the school sometimes uses, he said, and the children feel comfortable tossing them because they know the balls won’t hurt if they fail to catch them.
"We’re looking out for the masses," Jackson said. "I don’t think we can be too safe."

‘LITIGATION HAPPY SOCIETY’
Jackson acknowledged that trip-and-fall lawsuits have also influenced safety rules.
"I don’t know what caused teeter-totters to go, but I bet it was litigation," he said. "It doesn’t take much for people to go that route."
Lawsuits have meant fewer swing sets in places such as Scottsdale.
"I think swings were the one piece of playground equipment that went by the wayside," said Scottsdale Unified School District governing board president Christine Schild, who also is an attorney. "Too many kids got killed or had brain damage as a result of falling off swings and hitting their heads on the ground."
Paradise Valley district spokeswoman Judi Willis said playgrounds in her district are reviewed for safety by the Valley Schools Insurance Trust, an intergovernmental risk retention pool that provides liability coverage to several Valley school districts.
The group also provides training for all Paradise Valley playground aides, said risk management supervisor Tom Bock.
"When I was a kid, we played on the swings and stuff and there was no sand underneath us, and no one cared," Bock said. "If you fell and got hurt, you went to the doctor and got it taken care of. Now there is more supervision — but there are still losses. We’re a litigation happy society."
Gilbert parent Chad McGinnis said he understands the influence of lawsuits on school safety rules.
"The way our society is with lawsuits and everything, I don’t blame them from doing it," said McGinnis, who has three children attending Chandler Christian School.

NO END TO INJURIES
But the precautions might not be working.
Bock said he has heard that students today have more serious playground injuries when they fall, as compared to 20 years ago.
"Now when a kid falls, they break something — whereas 20 years ago, they didn’t," he said. "The equipment and grounds were much worse than they are today, with sand and wood chips and that rubber stuff, yet the injuries are often worse."
He said perhaps childhood obesity and lack of exercise could mean that students today are less fit and, therefore, more likely to fall the wrong way and injure themselves.
Each year about 200,000 children age 15 and younger in the U.S. are taken to emergency rooms for playgroundrelated injuries. Forty-five percent of the injuries are fractures, concussions and dislocations, he said.

Safety sampler

PROTECTING KIDS: Here are some random policies and procedures from East Valley schools:
MESA: Children use beach balls when learning volleyball at Hale Elementary School. Children must not wear flip-flops at Johnson Elementary School.
CHANDLER: Impact-absorbing wood chips cover the ground under playground equipment at San Marcos Elementary School. Bike riders must wear helmets at Bologna Elementary School and outdoor drinking fountains have chilled water to encourage students to stay hydrated. No hanging upside down at the Traditional Academy-Liberty campus.
GILBERT: The Gilbert Unified School District has cut back on the purchase of swing sets.
QUEEN CREEK: Frances Brandon-Pickett Elementary School weighed children’s backpacks this semester as a deterrent against back injuries.
SCOTTSDALE: The Scottsdale Unified School District playground safety manual bans the following activities:
• Climbing up a slide.
• Hanging by your knees on a jungle gym.
• Twisting or twirling on swings.
• More than one child at a time on a playground ladder. Contact Hayley Ringle by email, or phone (480)-898-6301

Interestingly, I live near several "inner cities" and when I drive through those neighborhoods I think it's 1955 all over again. The kids play in the street without helmuts, use hardwood baseball bats in their games and there's never an adult in sight.

I got a Crossman 760 powermaster pellet gun for Christmas when I was 11. A week later I was sitting in a highschool taking a safety course put on by the NRA. The following weekend I was sporting a Mossberg .22 and shooting at a target fifty foot away. After three years I had reached the top of the class and just missed trying out for the Olympics.

Meanwhile, my friends went on to play baseball and football and they were told by their parents to stay away from me as long as we had guns at the house.

I later moved on to dirt bikes, four wheel driving, welding, reloading, etc all before the age of eighteen.

World Proof you Kids. Don't try to Kid Proof the World. For one, it isn't possible. For another, it drains all the fun out of life.

Which the exception of bike helmets, I encourage my kids to run, jump, play and maybe skin a knee once in a while.

They got quickly bored with the safety playground at our park. It does however make a great area to seek cover when we shoot airsoft guns at each other. (eye protection, hats and no head shots)

Bike helmets are mandatory though. In a 3 week period, two friends kids ended up in the hospital with head injuries without helmets and another friend is beyond all shadow of a doubt alive because he was wearing a helmet. He shattered the helmet, but not his skull. He did suffer other serious injuries but will be good as new in a few months.

The nuns allowed us to run on our playground (it was huge!) but God forbid if you brought one of those new fangled frisbees to school. The Principal (Sister Mary Frankenstein is what we called her - she was tall! and scary) would confiscate it and you would have to do detention before you got it back.

I never understood her reluctance to allow frisbees on school grounds. She must have been "taken" as a child.

I'd actually buy into the "no flip-flops" rule. Flip-flops belong on the beach or in the shower, but for running around and such they don't protect the feet.

As far as the rest goes, if parents want to protect their kids, put the X-Box in the trash compactor and tell them to go play outside. Or don't buy one in the first place, which was my approach.

Oops! The playground my kids go to has high slides, rock climbing, mud patches to get totally immersed in if wanted, 5 bar gates to climb, chickens to chase, woods to get lost in, lizards to catch, ..........my poor children might just get hurt in their 'homeschool' playground.

Note to self, purchase more bubble wrap! LOL

I was born in 64 and have battle scars to prove it.

Ditto here, although I was born in '62. The first time I went to my current doctor, she made some comment about my scarred knees. My reply was simply "an active childhood."

American Association for the Child’s Right to Play

The fact that there is even a need for something like this is really telling about what the left has done to my country.

The solution is to put all the trial lawyers in internment camps until we can figure out what to do to them.

My first thought is mulch, to recoup at least some benefit from all the oxygen they've stolen throughout their misspent lives, then I worry that the trees and bushes so fertilized would grow up and start arguing with each other.

There's a park near my house with signs all over that say:

NO ball playing
NO bicycle riding
NO skateboarding
NO scooters

Sounds like a lot of fun, huh? And they wonder why that park is always empty. (I don't...)

Regards,

Right. The same "experts" who forbid activity take on the mission of fighting obesity and ADHD. Thus does the nanny state assure that there is always a new crisis for its minions to protect "the masses" against.

This is what happens of the feminization of society -- in particular, school administration.

And it probably is also a factor that across the board -- B.A, M.A, and Ed.D -- education students are the dumbest and laziest group in college. Most Ed.D. Candidates can't do real high-school level work.

People have pointed out that this is a cause more than an effect of juvenile obesity. Overprotective schools and parents also have a share of the blame for the explosion in asthma and allergies.

This kind of overprotective environment is one reason that medical experts worry about a serious influenza epidemic. We have a whole generation whose immune systems have lain fallow all their lives.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

The liberal nanny state....where the government wipes every tear and half the fannies and protects us from ourselves.

The ability to assess risk is learned through experience.

How in the heck are these kids gonna function if they have no experience in cause and effect, or trial and error?

I am amazed at how many parents go along with this b.s. Weren't they ever kids? Didn't they have fun racing their bikes, climbing trees, playing in the mud, and (God forbid) swinging really high and jumping out??????

NO RUNNING???WTF???

At my daughter's elementary school, they told her she couldn't play mumbly peg anymore and even said they'd take her dagger away if she brought it again.

We almost got in trouble for that in High School. A well placed spit of tobacco juice unnerved the Principal enough (grossed him out--right in front of the ol' wingtip) that he just told us to put the knife away and find something else to do.

I guess we were making too much noise playing right under his office window...

Provide plenty of covered play areas and most kids will choose to spend a lot of time in them. Much more effective than hats, and much less intrusive for the kids.

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