Originally Posted By TALL Disney Guy ATTLEBORO, Mass. -- Tag, you're out! Officials at an elementary school south of Boston have banned kids from playing tag, touch football and any other unsupervised chase game during recess for fear they'll get hurt and hold the school liable. Recess is "a time when accidents can happen," said Willett Elementary School Principal Gaylene Heppe, who approved the ban. "I think that it's unfortunate that kids' lives are micromanaged and there are social skills they'll never develop on their own," said Debbie Laferriere, who has two children at Willett, about 40 miles south of Boston. "Playing tag is just part of being a kid." Another Willett parent, Celeste D'Elia, said her son feels safer because of the rule. "I've witnessed enough near collisions," she said. <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/18/AR2006101800450.html" target="_blank">http://www.washingtonpost.com/ wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/18/AR2006101800450.html</a>
Originally Posted By Shooba What are kids supposed to do at recess now? Stand in a circle and talk politics? I played all those games as a kid, and yeah, sometimes we got hurt. I accidently gave someone a black eye playing touch football. I guess this is another victim of a lawsuit happy society?
Originally Posted By avromark Just wait until they tell you ambulation will result in injuries and ban walking. But of course they won't mention that you won't maintain proper lordosis if you slouch, that would be infringing on individual rights.
Originally Posted By knightnfrees When I saw the topic title, I thought it had something to do with banning the body spray. I'm thinkin' are kids that young wearing that stuff?
Originally Posted By mickeymeg Next they will be taking away the paper and pencils for fear of paper cuts and a sharp poke ! Its crazy that things like this are even considered ! I worry about what these kids will be like as they grow up.
Originally Posted By peeaanuut a very sad state of affairs. Kids are supposed to get hurt (not seriously of course) but it helps them to learn. They learn to test their limits and grow beyond them. These kids will be the ones that sit in a dead end job for 50 years because they are afraid they will fail if they move on. Either that they are gonna go on a mass murder spree.
Originally Posted By xrayvision Hehe...I thought this thread was about TAG! male body spray. That cool manly frangrance can influence the ladies to do wild and crazy things. Banning TAG seems somewhat extreme, both the kids game and the frangrance.
Originally Posted By TALL Disney Guy Is this a west coast thing? I had to Google "Tag" to see what this fragrance was, lol. But yup, incredibly ridiculous ban on touch games at recess.
Originally Posted By wahooskipper I grew up burning my arse on metal slides mounted on the blacktop in Southern California. How did we survive? And, egads, I never wore a helmet when I rode a bike.
Originally Posted By peeaanuut I remember my dad telling me one summer when I was sitting home. He said: "Why do you just sit at home?" "I do not have anywhere to go" "what do you mean?" "Well I dont think you would let me ride to the beach?" (the beach was 12 miles up the riverbed by bike) than he says: "Go out, have an adventure. If you get hurt, thats ok. As long as you were not doing someone those absolutely stupid" it stuck with me. Tell the kids "Have an adventure"
Originally Posted By LVCajun I rmemeber my best friend getting two teeth knocked out playing dodgeball, yet we still played the following week. It's just part of life. Doesn't anybody remember the big dome made out of hot metal and sharp bolts. We survived just fine.
Originally Posted By JohnS1 "As long as you were not doing someone those absolutely stupid" You lost me here, Peaanuut...
Originally Posted By wahooskipper I did some stupid people in my day...and I'm sure they felt the same way about me.
Originally Posted By smeeeko 4square (forget the rules but that was fun the faster you played it). dodge ball. Hand catch in front of your face keeps you from losing your teeth usually.. Then of course you have to watch out for the dodgeball sneak that would give you a leg burn while you were looking for an easy mark.. heh heh. former dodge ball sneak. ;P
Originally Posted By vbdad55 How did we ever survive: ( I looked for this e mail I saved once ) Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning. Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter AND I used to eat it raw sometimes, too. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown paper bag, not in icepack coolers, but I can't remember getting e coli. Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), no beach closures then. We all took gym, not PE... and risked permanent injury with a pair of high top Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I can't recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now. Flunking gym was not an option... even for stupid kids! I guess PE must be much harder than gym. Speaking of school, we all said prayers and sang the national anthem, and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention. We must have had horribly damaged psyches. What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything. I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself. I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, Play Station, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital TV cable stations. Oh yeah... and where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed! We played 'king of the hill' on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites, and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48-cent bottle of Mercurochrome (kids liked it better because it didn't sting like iodine did) and then we got our butt spanked. Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics, and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat. We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either because if we did, we got our butt spanked here too and then we got butt spanked again when we got home. I recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop just before he fell off. Little did his Mom know that she could have owned our house. Instead, she picked him up and swatted him for being such a goof. It was a neighborhood run amuck. To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family. How could we possibly have known that? We needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes? We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac! How did we ever survive
Originally Posted By jonvn I know someone who has had each of his three children diagnosed with a separate emotional problem. One is bipolar, another is autistic, the third has ADD. I know these kids. Nothing is wrong with any of them, other than they are kids, sullen and unpleasant teenagers. But, hey, they're labeled now...
Originally Posted By SingleParkPassholder "I did some stupid people in my day...and I'm sure they felt the same way about me." Say again?
