New Playground

we were there last night. It’s really nice and clean….be nice if it’s stay that way.

Yeah, we’ll see. The problem with this new one and the old one is that there is no one there to monitor. You’d think that parents would… but I have been there where there are older kids that are “abusing” the playground. You know how on the old one it was printed right on the structures “DO NOT CLIMB” in English and Spanish… it didn’t work!

yeah, the 12 year olds jumping off of the top of the “do not climb” signs, landing inches away from crawling infants was annoying. lisa almost got into a fight with a parent once…

maybe the new equipment will prevent abuse. there’s never been a problem at the oaks mall, but that’s because the climbing stuff is low and the non-climbing stuff is steep and very high, so you can’t actually jump off of it.

that one seems a little better

We were there again yesterday and it was AWFUL! First off there was no school, so there were a lot of kids considering it was during the day. The older kids didn’t seem to want to play on the stuff but just RAN AROUND like crazy! Of coarse, with their shoes on too! And parents? Yeah, right- I think they just dropped their kids off!

Well, I have to confess that our kids would usually be climbing all over the old one every time we went. They weren’t wearing shoes though, and I think they were generally pretty careful about the other kids.

I think one problem is we (as a society) are just a lot more paranoid these days. I heard a story the other day about kids not even being allowed to play tag at school anymore. WAY back when I was a kid (and I’m not old or anything) kids would run around and play rough, sometimes beating the crap out of each other, and it was all in good fun. Sure someone would get a bone broken every now and then, but no one would sue. Now we are raising a generation of sissies.

we’re just raising a generation of kids who’s parents never tell them no. if there’s a sign that says, “don’t climb,” and you let your kids climb, you are teaching them to not respect others’ property. you are teaching them that they are more important than anyone else.

we are raising a generation of litigators because it seems like the threat of being sued is the only thing that seems to cause people to stop and think about someone else for half a second.

i agree with you on the tag thing, but i think this is different. when a baby cries because they are accidentally kicked, they’re not being a sissy.

Sure, I agree that the kids still should respect the rules, and I wouldn’t call a baby a sissy. I was mostly just saying that having the no climbing rules to begin with is pretty lame. I think that you could allow climbing and most of the babies and other kids would still be alright.

If they wouldn’t, then I think there is a bigger issue of teaching kids to be considerate and respect other people (while playing or whatever) rather than only respecting signs (which of course they should also do), because in “real life” they won’t have signs everywhere telling them to treat people right.

so you agree that kids should respect the rules, just not your kids?

Where did you get that? All people should respect the rules. Especially our kids. I never saw the no climbing sign. Why would you have a playground with no climbing? Silly.

As far as the kids whose parents tell them “no”, most parents tell their kids “no”, not many follow through and actually make them obey.

I never said our kids shouldn’t respect the rules; I “confessed” that in this instance they didn’t. Read it again.

The old playground did have a height limit (not sure if there was an age one but probably). The height limit for this one is 42 inches, Avery is 38 inches already! Basically the old and new playgrounds were both made for LITTLE KIDS, I mean pre-school age! In a perfect world they would have built 2 playgrounds; one for the little kids and one for the older kids.
I think the play area in the mall is too small for jumping off stuff anyway. The new one is even smaller, which I think they did on purpose to deter kids from playing tag and such. It didn’t work!

i did read it again before i commented and decided that because you justified their actions immediately after the confession and that you let them climb the stuff to begin with, you were permitting them to break the rules and did not have regrets about it. i was going to say all that before, but decided to not be a sissy and just call you out as i read it.

Yeah, I guess I was being pretty dismissive of it.

Perhaps I should say I have the same level of regret about that as I do about occasionally exceeding the speed limit on the freeway, under safe conditions.

Is it still wrong? Sure. Do I lose any sleep over it? No. Should I take it more seriously? Probably.

My main point was that while I acknowledge that the rules do exist for a reason, I think it’s unfortunate that some of them (like this one) even need to be written down at all. It would be great if we (kids and adults alike) could take a more common sense approach to things and just be mindful of the others around us, without having to have a list of stuff that everyone can or can’t do just because of the careless actions of a few.

This is just an ethics issue and we should all assess our actions because as we break our ethical responsiblity we loose part of our souls.

Dan!

Yes?

 looks fun to play there, huh

The li’l girl seems to enjoy the improved indoor playground!!   If it is given a “candy theme”, then she would probably like it more. I couldn’t help but notice her long rainbow socks. It fits her well, hehe.