1st Tryout

quote:

Originally posted by wraggArm:

That leaves you with the 115/yr of “stereotypical” kidnapping. I think these numbers came from 2002. According to the 2002 Census Bureau, there were 72.1 million people under 18 yrs old in the US in 2002. Those odds are O(10E-6), which are acceptable for most safety standards, including aviation.

Those are pretty good odds given that they're way more likely to get seriously injured while actually playing sandlot baseball, or riding in the car with you to their Flute lessons.

I actually took those odds with my kids, who seemed to have made it safely into high school and college...I taught them what to watch out for and made them understand they were more vulnerable when they were alone.

Then I told them to get their little butts outside...

For the record my kids are outside playing right now. lol However I live in a really small town I'm not sure I would be that way in a larger area.

Anyway my point was WHY kids are not out at the parks by their selves. When I was a kid my parents didn't have access to information like that with a few strokes of the key board. If they did I don't imagine I would be riding my bike all over town and staying at home during the summer by my self when I was ten.

As for those statistics 115 may not be a large number but that's 115 sets of parents whose shoes I would never want to be in.

quote:

Originally posted by coach scotty:
Anyway my point was WHY kids are not out at the parks by their selves.

I wasn't calling you out, per se.

My point was really more aimed toward people who let themselves become terrorized by sensational news and unvetted statistics. We've gotten the point where we don't push ourselves and our kids to deal with risks in order to live our lives. And we respond so emotionally without thinking about what's really beneath all this data being shoved under our noses.

Then we knash our teeth and wail about how wussiefied America has become when a football game gets canceled, or the public schools cut back on physical activity during recess. We get so frustrated with how many hours our kids are spending cooped up in front of video games, but for decades we've bombarded young parents with daytime talk shows who obsess over all the horrible things outside that are to be prevented by "awareness".

I raised three kids in the Metroplex, and I truly don't believe they were ever in any more danger running around loose in those suburbs than anywhere else, or during any other point in recent history. These numbers really kind of confirm that, in my opinion.

Here's today's kid ...

I walked into Panera to meet a friend for lunch. I saw a table of five kids. They were not talking to each other. They were ignoring each other. They were on their IPhones playing games or texting other people.

This was the day after a twenty-inch snow storm. Half of my five mile drive was on streets where in the past you would have seen snow forts being built and snowball fights on a day like it was. I didn't see one kid out.

It's not just that the kid's parents don't let them out. There's too much to do without going out. As kids we had television and board games. That led to dissing each other and wrestling which led to parents making us go outside again. I say again because we played outside until our hands and feet were too cold to take it anymore.

When I see some kids obsession with their laptops, IPhones, Ipods, XBoxes and 500 cable channels I laugh at the memory of my mother thinking I was too consumed with Strat-O-Matic baseball and football. We played "Strat" after we shoveled off the basketball court or played tackle football in the street because we wouldn't scrape in the snow.

My kids are 22 and 17 now. But when they were younger they has more leeway than most kids. I subscribe to what happens now happened when I was a kid. The difference is when I was a kid we didn't have information traveling in nanoseconds via the internet and cable. Back then if a kid got abducted and killed in the midwest it wouldn't be national news. We would never hear about in the east. News had to be huge to make television if it didn't happen in your state or even the broadcast area of your television station.

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Good points RJM. It's scary to think how much change is coming down the pike at break-nano speed!

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quote:

Originally posted by RJM:
Here's today's kid ...

... I saw a table of five kids. They were not talking to each other. They were ignoring each other. They were on their IPhones playing games or texting other people...

I'm not gonna lie. In spite of my kid's great "get outside" upbringing, they still ended up in this very same place.

I agree with Woody, good points RJM! We've had friends visiting for the last few days from Australia. Last night I went up stairs to see how the kids were doing...my son was on X-Box, my daughter was texting, one of the Aussie boys was on Facebook, and his Aussie brother was playing with my son's IPOD Touch. It doesn't matter if you're living in the states, or Down Under, parents are dealing with the same thing. No doubt Woody...Change is coming down the pike at Break-Nano speed!