Friday, April 27, 2012

X is for X-rays



Falling builds character. 

I used to use that line a lot when I didn’t have kids.  I find I don’t say it too often anymore.  I still believe it, I just have a harder time wanting to see my kids build character that way.  Broken bones are not the end of the world.  That’s why the designed xray machines, to figure out the problem and then fix it.  Let your kids play.  Teach them to be safe.  But broken bones??? Hmmm...

Notice the changes in your local playground over the past ten years. Where are the swings, the teeter-totters, the old climbing apparatus? Now there is a bed of cotton balls surrounded by a safety-net. Has our love of insurance, law-suits and fear itself brought us to this point? Is that why we are content to have our children sitting on the edge of their bed playing X-Box (two more x's!) because carpal tunnel is an okay child affliction but a broken wrist is not? Are we subtracting parental common sense and adding safety bars to take its place?

Who do we blame? Pass the mirror.

7 comments:

RHYTHM AND RHYME said...

Good x post Ron, my youngest son was accident prone as a child, breaking legs, arms thank God for x-rays.

Yvonne.

liz young said...

I totally agree. My grandsons have to wear safety helmets to ride a bike, so they don't go out as much as they might. The US and the UK seems to have caught Litigation Madness, to the extent that even conkers and marbles are banned. Ridiculous.

Dennis and Valerie said...

This is a great sentence: "Is that why we are content to have our children sitting on the edge of their bed playing X-Box (two more x's!) because carpal tunnel is an okay child affliction but a broken wrist is not?"

Anonymous said...

On the other hand! Broken bones make you have to sit on the edge of the bed!
gramma

Marta Szemik said...

I don't like the x-ray machine, but I do agree with you. I remember falling off the monkey bars as a child on my face, scraping half of it off (hanging upside down). My daughter broke her arm last summer simply falling off right side up and landing on it.

Hilary Melton-Butcher said...

Hi Ron .. gosh it's not us. Bureaucrats dreaming up some other ridiculous idea - talk about mollycoddling ..

Get them out in the fresh air, dreaming of fairies, or dragons .. and playing with mud .. what else is going to keep them safe later in life - not antibiotics -- they won't help then.

A visit to the hospital never did anyone any harm .. usually!

Cheers Hilary

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