I was a kid on the playground in the late '80s/early '90s, and I agree with SD. We did have mulch to soften landings (and prevent bleeding), but part of growing up was learning how to use all the cool stuff on the playground with minimal injury. Best lesson I learned: don't play on the metal slide in the summer wearing anything other than long pants. I'm all for safety, but cushioning every playground surface takes away an important aspect of growing up: taking on and overcoming challenges. It was a big day for me when I was big and strong enough to go all the way across the monkey bars without falling. More than not learning calculated risk-taking, these kids are being "saved" from the feeling that comes when you achieve something you previously couldn't.

"To minimize suffering and to maximize security were natural and proper ends of society and Caesar. But then they became the only ends, somehow, and the only basis of law—a perversion. Inevitably, then, in seeking only them, we found only their opposites: maximum suffering and minimum security."

— Walter M. Miller (A Canticle for Leibowitz)

The playground was where I learned I could not fly--via any available means of propulsion--even with a cape on.

Jumping from the top of the monkey bars, getting catapulted off a seesaw, leaping from a swing at the highest point in its arc, and hurling myself myself from a spinning merry-go-round all resulted in the same thing: Ow.

I do remember my parents bemoaning even in the 80s that playgrounds were losing some of their most fun attractions.

When my sister and I grew up the most fun playground was a place we called "grandfather park." (It was near our grandparent's place, grandad was a woodworker, obviously he built it - at least in six year old logic). There was some spectacular ways to hurt yourself. It had the tallest swings in the whole wide world, slides that would take you three days to climb, and a wooden arch with pegs to climb that spanned the county. All of this stretched over sand which hurt like a motherfucker if you landed on it after a fall. Then one year we went to visit and it was replaced with this modular plastic monstrosity that you see in the yard behind every school.

Somee years after that my sister and I found out that the modular plastic thing was a great place to get high the night before family thanksgiving.

>> "Often playgrounds are designed by engineers who have no knowledge of children,"

Well that's just a stupid statement. It's not the design engineer's fault. They're just creating what they've been asked to, very safe playgrounds. That obviously requires a detailed knowledge of children.

While I agree that we've gone overboard trying to protect kids. This woman doesn't seem to have any good ideas towards an alternative.

I was born in '80, and we still had the good stuff at the playground when I was little: Merry-go-rounds that you could be flung from, super-tall slides, tall swings, see-saws, one of those climbing-dome things... I remember when those things started to disappear. I think I was 5 or so. I'm pretty sure that my brother, who was born in '85, never got to play on a merry go round at all.

Ah, kids these days.

Why in my day, not only did we have asphalt and sand, but also concrete and broken glass.

And you wonder why I'm an ornery bastard?

;-)

While I agree that we've gone overboard trying to protect kids. This woman doesn't seem to have any good ideas towards an alternative.

Uh - how about going back to the old style of playground? I especially hate the sling-style swing seat that they use everywhere today. Besides making it harder to jump out of, it hurts to sit in.

We had the Jungle Gym over asphalt at my elementary school, as SD posted, and I don't recall any serious injuries there. Also Monkey bars over (hard) dirt, 10-foot-high swings, a Merry-go-Round, see-saws long enough to put you 4 feet of the ground at the top, and a couple of slides. Every once in a while you would get a minor injury (I cut my finger on the chain on the swing when I changed my mind on jumping at the last second), but I think there were only one or two broken bones the entire 6 years I was there.

Ah, the old merry-go-round. I was 12 (1973) and the strongest of the kids in my neighborhood. It was my job to get in the middle of the merry-go-round and push, while all the others sat on the edge. As we went faster and faster, they would hang on the outer vertical bars and let their bodies strech out horizontally from the centrifugal force. Then they would let go and fly off, hitting the ground and rolling to a stop in the grass. I would either jump up on the bars or drop to the ground until the merry-go-round stopped. Sometimes I would even get a turn on the rim!

I always pushed as hard as I could (especially to impress the cute little girl who lived on the next block). There were also monkey bars, a giant slide, and wooden swings we would always jump from. There were never any injuries that I recall other than an occasional splinter (which we would usually remove by ourselves). Once I jumped off the roof of the storage shed, about 10 feet. THAT hurt, but I wasn't injured.

We did all kinds of other stuff in the woods, fields, and streams near my house, not to mention lots of wild bike riding. Sports in the street, too. ("Time out! Car coming!") Lots of cuts and scrapes (with a fair number of stitches) but to this day I've never had a broken bone worse than a finger.

I'm trying to teach my granddaughter to be fearless. At 17 months she's willing to take risks and has a fair idea what's possible to her and what's not.

AS I AM WRITING THIS, my granddaughter is trying to climb a bookcase in a doctor's office waiting room. My son is with her and stopping her, though not overreacting.

The Safety Nazis can bite my merry-go-round pushin' ass.

I am just glad to see any kind of playground right now. Here they took them out of all the schools. I often took my kiddos to the fast food joints for their playgrounds, but now most of them have been removed too. Hmmm. I wonder why obesity is a problem.

I remember the old playgrounds. Metal through and through, and of course we used sweaters to shield our skin from overheated metal when the days were hot (which was usually always, in Tucson).

Sweaters also helped us swing and flip around the bars faster. We had sand beneath us, but also giant blocks of cement where the poles were rooted.

We used to swing as high as we could, with the ultimate goal being to flip all the way around, but finally just launching oneself as far as we could while still landing on two feet. Now the swings are plastic, and too short to do any real damage.

As a kid, my best friend accidentally busted her head open at my house. A few tears and stitches later, we were both at a tupperware party, and some kid accidentally kicked her in the head/stiches (he was on a swing). A few tears, and a looksy-over by my dad later, and we were back in the throes of playtime.

Doesn't seem to work that way anymore.

Meanwhile, back in Idaho... the week after this was filmed they (7 year olds) were doing the confidence course 35 feet up in the air (that time with safety harnesses.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1E0-XFcbTG8

(Note the scouts who all have passed a test carry knives on their belts.)

Oh and we had a sort of unspoken hierarchy, where we automatically watched out for those who were younger, smaller, and more vulnerable than ourselves, so when shit went down, appropriate actions were taken to prevent or mitigate damage.

And we always knew when to get an adult. We weren't dumbasses.

ah, y'all are forgetting the first design requirement of the modern playground:

1]Must be designed to avoid lawsuits.

when you take that requirment into account, everything else becomes clear.

My mom never sued the schools for my having 'negative on that orbital trajectory, Houston' off of the really big swings... and after I got stiches in my lip from falling on the asphalt, I was grounded for a week. "DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MUCH THE DOCTOR COST?!?" I can still hear my mom's words some long period of time later. [35+ years, I think].

People just have this idea that prevention of any ill in the world is actually a good thing. I think many people have forgotten what reasonable is...

I dunno, Amy, L.A. has fantastic playgrounds where kids jump off climbing structures thinking they can fly through the air, just like in the old days. Softer landing surfaces aside, my kid's had plenty of scrapes and badge-of-honor bruises to show for it. The swings go just as high, balancing on the teeter totter is still tough.

I think this nostalgia for steel equipment that baked in the summer sun is silly. Same for gravel. Every major American city I've visited has playgrounds that put the rusty ones of my childhood to shame. You don't have to risk breaking an arm to test your limits, and sometimes commandeering a water spewing pirate ship is a way cooler way to spend a 90-degree afternoon.

http://www.redtri.com/los-angeles/11-awesome-los-angeles-playgrounds-for-kids

Wow, you mean they still allow kids to play outside? I would have thought they sat home swaddled in bubble wrap. :D

I totally agree that playgrounds now are terrible, when they're even available. I was born in 1982, in Tucson, and I recall with fondness the lovely playground we had in the park behind the school/church I attended: a huge welded steel all-in-one structure: seesaws, swings, a huge slide, the whole nine yards. Monkey bars and climbing gyms, too. (Like Meloni, I too remember using a sweater or a jacket to shield skin from being burnt on the sheet-metal slide that had been baking in the sun all day) Sadly, the seesaws were removed when I was about 6 or 7, and the whole thing was scrapped after 1996 or so, but it was fantastic to grow up with the kind of opportunities for playing that I had.

I work for the biggest school district in the city, and one loss I lament more than any other piece of playground equipment is: swings. The district has removed the swings from every elementary school, and the only place you can find them now is some of the city parks. Oddly enough, the one school I've seen which still has good playground equipment is the Arizona State School for the Deaf and Blind. The elementary school playground still has all of the good old stuff, even a merry-go-round! Go figure.

I have certainly noticed the effects of the lack of good opportunities for playing amongst the children I teach. They are far less able/inclined to take appropriate risks, to play with each other informally or appropriately, and they are far more squeamish about bugs/dirt/grass/nature in general than I recall children being. And needless to say, at least half of them are overweight/obese.

You city slickers disgust me. You had all the fun stuff.

When I grew up in the country side I used to ride about a mile to my friends house at age 8.

I didn't have any parks. So about age 10 I had to go wander through the woods. That was up and down the sides of hills.

I bet if that happened today -- the parents would be locked up for neglect.