{"id":9164,"date":"2014-03-20T11:31:35","date_gmt":"2014-03-20T18:31:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=9164"},"modified":"2014-03-20T11:31:35","modified_gmt":"2014-03-20T18:31:35","slug":"the-risks-of-childhood-a-lunchtime-musing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=9164","title":{"rendered":"The Risks of Childhood &#8211; A Lunchtime Musing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-6612\" alt=\"userpic=bushbaby\" src=\"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/userpicbushbaby.jpg\" width=\"100\" height=\"74\" align=\"right\" hspace=\"5\" vspace=\"5\" \/>One of the things I do in real life is assess risk. Humans, it turns out, are horrible at assessing risk. For example, would you rather have your child visit a home with a swimming pool, or a home that had a gun. In today&#8217;s society, most people would think the house without a gun is safe, but <em>statistically<\/em> more children are killed by swimming pools than guns in the home. There&#8217;s a greater risk in that house with the pool.<\/p>\n<p>I mention all of this because of an article that Google News highlighted during my lunch reading: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/features\/archive\/2014\/03\/hey-parents-leave-those-kids-alone\/358631\/?google_editors_picks=true\">The Overprotected Kid<\/a>. This article explores how we have stripped childhood of its risks, and in doing so, stifled the inquisitive and exploratory nature of children. It focuses on the playground as a metaphor for the over-protection. I know that when I was young I never went to the playground (and certainly, if I did, its structures weren&#8217;t safe). The most fun was just exploring through the nearby Ballona Wetlands (the &#8220;swamp&#8221;), or building structures in a nearby vacant lot, or just walking and exploring a neighborhood. This exercised the body and the mind. Today, that rarely happens &#8212; we have homogenized playgrounds with standardized safe structures. There&#8217;s no danger, no risk &#8230; and so we never teach our children to accurately judge risk and determine their personal risk tolerance level.<\/p>\n<p>I think about this often. When I went to camp, we were trucked to the beach in a stake-truck with a corrugated iron bottom, all squeezed in. Today they go in school buses with safety belt. We didn&#8217;t need no stinking belts &#8212; we were so tight in the back that if the truck turned over, we would still be where we were. Today?<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes, for all our desire to eliminate risk from our environment, all we succeed in doing is making life less fun. Taking a reasonable risk &#8212; and succeeding &#8212; is one of the joys of life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the things I do in real life is assess risk. Humans, it turns out, are horrible at assessing risk. For example, would you rather have your child visit a home with a swimming pool, or a home that had a gun. In today&#8217;s society, most people would think the house without a gun <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=9164\">Read More &#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[408],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musings-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9164"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9165,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9164\/revisions\/9165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}