I FELL OFF THE JUNGLE GYM AND WHEN I WOKE UP I WAS IN HERE: A NYT special report:
are our playgrounds too safe? Would our kids learn more and develop better by getting a few scrapes every once in a while? Have you seen a traditional see-saw or playground merry-go-round lately?
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ReplyDeleteThey were trying to murder us.
when we were on vacation, the 2 year old played on the merry go round at the Wellfleet Drive in. Granted, that playground has not been upgraded since at LEAST the 60s, if that. But damn did that thing go fast.
ReplyDeleteour town recently (last 3ish years) built a new all access playground that has ramps and swings for all ability kids, and they certainly did not skimp on the terrifying terrifying heights (I do not like heights. I cannot deal with even looking at jungle gyms, and never ever could). My kid LOVES it.
I don't not love it, but only because they let some idiot on the town council ditch the gate because "it wasn't welcoming". So now I have to out and out sprint to catch my kid when he makes a break for the duck pond.
I am familiar with that mery go round. It scares the hell out of me. Not only on speed, but because it's solid metal and gets hot as hell during the day.
ReplyDeleteWe were in Mendocino, and the playground at the community center has an almost old-school see-saw -- no springs in the mechanism, but a large tire buried in the ground under each seat, so you can't really slam each other into the ground. It was also VERY high off the ground. We took the kids (1 and 3) on it, each one in an adult lap, since we figured it was their only chance ever to do so, but it was pretty scary.
ReplyDeleteWhat are those horizontal ladders called? I think we call them monkey bars, but not the big structure, the long vertical rungs that you go hand-over-hand over. Anway, when we were kids, we played a recess game on those called "mosquito" that involved trying to pass each other on the monkey bars, with the most common tactic being to wrap your legs around your opponent and try to yank them off to the ground so you could pass.
ReplyDeleteCome to think of it, I think that game got banned . . .
Monkey bars.
ReplyDeletethe (freakishly strong) 4 year old pushing her little brother, her dad, me and my kiddo had that thing going LIGHT SPEED. I do not get dizzy on spinning rides and I thought I was going to fly off and puke. The two year old, however LOVED IT.
ReplyDeleteIn second grade (1977-78) we got a Geodesic Dome. The first day -- maybe even the first recess -- some kid broke his arm. And no one raised an eyebrow.
ReplyDeleteOf course, even the safe stuff can get you hurt if you work at it. We played a game on the slide where you tried to hit the guy on the bottom of the slide before he stood up. It was impossible, provided you didn't slip standing up. I did and got smashed in the back, thrown forward, and got a broken thumb and a minor concussion out of the deal.
There are old-school merry-go-rounds at a couple of Pittsburgh playgrounds I know of: Mellon and Anderson (Schenley). Both are in very poor repair -- the one at Mellon especially -- and they are quite popular.
ReplyDeleteI grew up in Monterey where the awesome Dennis the Menace Park is, and spent so many hours there as a kid. But (if you watch the video) you can see that some stuff has changed and IMO (and it may just be nostalgia) it was SO MUCH BETTER when I was a kid than it is now when they made it so completely risk-free.
ReplyDeleteOne of the big slides, that they still have a version of, used to be incredibly wide, so you could sit with 5 or 6 of your friends and race each other down. Not anymore. I'm not sure if they still have the hedge maze (and this was pre-Harry Potter) but that was awesome too, for racing around, hide-and-go-seek, etc. It's not in the video and I think I read somewhere it's gone -- and how a hedge maze is dangerous I don't know. At least you can still climb all over the locomotive engine.
The one thing they had that I will admit was crazy (but we LOVED IT) was this rotating sculpture thing we always referred to as the helicopter, and you basically had to stand on the ledge that was fairly high up for kids, and just step onto it as it rotated around and either step back onto the ledge to exit it, or leap off a sort of plank into the sand. But none of us ever got hurt, beyond a skinned knee or something.
Now it's all up to code and everything, and I'm sure is still fun for kids, but my brother and I complain about the removal of some of the more dangerous parts of that park every time we're home. Granted, neither of us have kids.
I grew up next door to a small park. Between the basketball court and the Liitle League sized baseball/softball diamond, we had monkey bars, a barely functioning see-saw, swings (which the township parks department hung up the last day of school and took them down the day before the first day) and this very odd slide.
ReplyDeleteIt was a trapezoid supported along the bottom, the sides and the back.The slide back down was angled at about 45° or so. And, there wasn't a ladder up to the top. There were a bunch of handles along the sides, so you had to climb up it to slide back down.
These days, I wish I had that playground next door to me, since I'd be in much better shape!
The combo of this thread and the Action Park thread are making me nostalgic for my (apparently dangerous) childhood and sad that my future kids won't get to defy death in such amazing ways. We totally had a geodesic dome (that kids fell off of all the time) in our elementary school playground as well as several other not-up-to-code structures...
ReplyDeleteMy elementary school had a tire playground. It was made up out of old tires arranged into various structures to climb on. It was very fun, but probably very dangerous. The tires got very hot in the sun, and bees nested and lived inside the tires often. It's since been replaced by something more traditional and seemingly safer.
ReplyDeleteThe park near my parents' house used to have some giant concrete pipe sections -- at least six feet in diameter to climb on and around. The town has replaced that with something much more purpose-built as playground equipment.
We called it "Take Down," I believe. I think it also got banned, but at my first elementary school (small, maybe 80 kids in the class) there were still 3-4 broken arms a year on them, which when you consider the size, is a 10% rate amongst the male students. The injury rate was probably a lot higher, since when there was something to break your fall, it was an inch or so of woodchips.
ReplyDeleteWe had a geodesic dome too. That thing seemed so high up at the top, in my memory.
ReplyDeleteWe had a set of monkey bars at our elementary school. My older sister and younger brother broke their arms on the thing eleven years apart, and my younger sister landed on her head falling off the thing. I miraculously escaped unscathed. My parents never said boo to the school about it.
ReplyDeleteBig believer in the value of exposing kids to risk and danger, playground-style. That said, I am totally the parent that has to fight every impulse to tell my kids to be careful eighteen times per hour. To reconcile these aspects of myself I send them to camp, where I know they get that thrill of freedom and light recklessness, but I don't have to watch it go down (literally).
ReplyDeleteWe had an old school swing set in my backyard - basically two triangles connected by a 6 inch tube across the top. We used to try to WALK across the tube like a balance beam that was basically 8 feet off the ground. And sometimes it was part of a timed obstacle course we set up across three backyards that involved fence climbing, assorted monkey bar tricks, wood pile balancing, running up slides. Our parents never stopped us - worst injury was a splinter and a puncture wound from a rusty nail...
ReplyDeleteThat wasn't an Al Qaeda training video! It was an audition tape for The Amazing Race!
ReplyDeleteRest assured, Maret, that that playground still has enough menace in it to scare the bejesus out of today's parents. We took the spacies there after a trip to the aquarium a few years ago, and we still enjoy the looks of horror we get from our fellow bay area parents when we describe the crazy high metal climbing structure, bridge, etc. And our kids loved the maze!
ReplyDeleteThis whole thread is making me feel very bad about the fact that I basically wrap my kids in pillows and helmets before I let them try any playground equipment.
ReplyDeleteI haven't seen a traditional teeter-totter in YEARS, but we do have one playground here with a small merry-go-round. It's a frocking miracle that thing hasn't been ripped out yet.
ReplyDelete