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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (20804)	8/7/2001 1:07:45 AM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

I have mixed feelings about the issue of banning rough play among boys, though I realize that liability issues may make it necessary during school areas. I played equipment-free impromptu tackle football all through my childhood, and loved it. Kids did get hurt. Kids also got hurt climbing trees, riding bikes, and running races up and down staircases, among many other things. If you're going to ban activities that get kids hurt, you'll end up banning boyhood altogether. I also feel a lot of misgivings about the kind of excessively supervised play that we see in these bizarre over-organized athletic programs for kids. I'm sure they are safer, in the sense that all the kids have protective equipment, there are referees, etc. But it always seems to me that these things are organized more for the adults than for the kids. I think kids need to get together and play more on their own. Where adult supervision is present, I think it should be much less intrusive than it generally is. Last school year some friends and I set up an impromptu youth soccer program. It was pretty unstructured: we'd warm up, run, do skill drills for 45 minutes, then break into teams and play scrimmage games. The teams would be different every time. No uniforms, just colored blouses that were turned in after each section. We'd keep track of kids that were getting upset with each other and make sure they were on the same team next time round. The kids had a blast, but some of the parents didn't get it. They wanted a uniform, a team name, statistics. They wanted to cheer. We'll do it again the same way next year.