From Psychology Today, by Hara Estroff Marano: “Parents are going to ludicrous lengths to take the bumps out of life for their children. However, parental hyperconcern has the net effect of making kids more fragile; that may be why they’re breaking down in record numbers.”
More summer reading: “A Nation of Wimps”
From Psychology Today, by Hara Estroff Marano: “Parents are going to ludicrous lengths to take the bumps out of life for their children. However, parental hyperconcern has the net effect of making kids more fragile; that may be why they’re breaking down in record numbers.”
4 Comments
Not mentioned in the article is the impact of lawyers and lawsuits. As a kid I can remember for the first time gingerly climbing up a high slide at a local playground. No real guard rails and certainly nothing to keep me from falling. Soon I was dashing up and down in joyful abandon.
My initial fears were, of course, justified. I could have fallen and hurt myself badly. But I didn’t and learned that I could take care of myself in dangerous situations. It’s a lesson every kid should have the chance to learn.
When I see playgrounds today with low, plastic slides that leave no way to fall, I shake my head. Not good, not good at all. No wonder these kids call home for every tiny little crisis.
–Michael W. Perrry, author of the soon-out Chesterton on War: G. K. Chesterton Looks at Militarism and Pacifism.
To prepare for some defense expert testimony on a childhood injury, I sat at a public park playground in an upper middle class area, for an hour, to assess the child standard of due roughness of play.
I saw 6 fights, countless falls, horseplay excesses, screaming parents, and this. A father climbed to the top of the sliding board with his 2 year old son. The other son fell on the ground below, and started crying. The father climbed down to tend to him. He forgot the 2 year old at the top of the ladder. That one turned around and stepped off the top of the ladder into the air, at about 7 feet off the ground. He bounced on his rear on a middle rung, on another, then to the ground on all fours. He got up, and ran around to his brother and Dad.
Playgrounds have more action than an action movie. There is no chance that lawyer wimpified parents can prevent kids’ learning the hard way.
The defendant won in my case.
Where do you live? In Seattle, I don’t even see playgrounds with slides that permit falls. Kids climb in plasticized interior spaces and exit to slide (not very far) in situations where only an expert gymnist could manage a fall.
More important, your posting demonstrates the very point I was making. You were preparing “expert defense testimony,” hence there was an upcoming trial where “countless falls” and “horseplay excesses” were points of costly contention. (Note the testimonial spin attached to both expressions. The falls could actually be counted and excessive is a relative term.) Obviously, the easiest and most effective way for a city or school to get rid of such disputes is to remove any playground equipment involving risk, however minor. That’s the point I was making.
Perhaps most distrubing of all is the slippery slope that lies behind the remark about “horseplay excesses.” Kids, when they love the horseplay, don’t consider it excessive, and when they don’t, they need to learn how to deal with it themselves. Indeed, one of the points of the Psychology Today article was that adult supervision of games deprives children of the opportunity to learn how to settle disputes among themselves.
Neither I nor the Psychology Today article argue that life can be without risk. There’s virtually no way to prevent people-on-people violence (or parental stupidity, as in the case of the father of this two-year-old). And, more appropriately, at present there is no way to prevent lawyers from brutally and dishonestly threatening non-lawyers in a bid to enrich themselves. Those are part of the facts of life.
But when we eliminate certain risks, when we fuss and fret to prevent the usual childhood bumps and scrapes, we when make life’s difficulties points of legal contention (enriching lawyers and legal experts, impoverishing the rest of us), then we fail to help children develop the internal resources they need to cope with the nastiness of life. In this matter, both parents and our legal system share the blame. Psychology Today was stressing the first; I was stressing the second.
And this really has reached the point of silliness. Just this week I saw a boy of about two, closely guarded by his mother, riding a tricycle on a sidewalk with a helmet on. The odd thing is that, for a child that age, walking is more hazardous than a low-slung tricycle.
–Mike Perry, Seattle
Mike: My testimony was in a ridiculous lawsuit. It was over 5 years ago. You may be right about today.
It was uncertain the incident ever happened, since records failed to contain it. Only the girl remembered it. The boy remembered it after extensive questioning. Then he recounted how sorry he was, and tried to help her. No one else had seen anything of the sort. None of it likely even happened.
A minority boy hit a white girl on top of the head in a pool, so she likely just sank a little. The staff had failed to expel him from the program after he had been warned not to touch her, as required by day camp standards of due care, they claimed. They liked each other, were hanging out in various camp situations.
No loss of consciousness. No complaint at the time of the incident. Workup done weeks later was normal. She had headaches and dizziness. These were more likely the effects of the medicine given to her for her “brain injury” by the plaintiff expert. They stopped when the medicine was stopped.
I wanted to file a complaint with the licensing board because he caused her symptoms, made money off his iatrogenic symptoms, and falsely blamed them on a minor non-injury. I learned, the Supreme Court said, such testimony is immune and protected by an absolute litigation privilege. I did not want to file a frivolous complaint myself, so I did nothing.
After this injury, her special ed teacher said she no longer needed extra help with reading. So she actually improved. Her grades were A’s, no B’s for her. A model student. She did organized sports. Her hobby? Stock market simulation electronic games, in 4th grade.
The claim was for $3 mil for brain damage.
Get outta here. Jury agreed. Defense costs I calculated from the 3 day trial, testing and testimony I knew about? Likely mid to high 5 figures.