catholicsphere

Officials at an elementary school south of Boston have banned kids from playing tag, touch football and any other unsupervised chase game during recess for fear they’ll get hurt and hold the school liable.

Huh?!

Recess is “a time when accidents can happen,” said Willett Elementary School Principal Gaylene Heppe, who approved the ban.

I remember growing up when getting hurt was just a fact of life, and if you got hurt, you chalked it up as an experience, and you were better for it. Everything these days is organized. Walk through any neighborhood and you won’t find kids playing a pickup game of baseball at the local field. People are rushing their kids from ball game to soccer game to gymnastics or ballet or karate, or whatever else.

It’s unfortunate that we have become such a litigious society, we can’t let kids get the minor bumps, bruises, scrapes and cuts that are inevitable in play. Sure, we don’t want our kids to get hurt — I hated when my daughter came to me crying after falling out of a wagon and breaking her arm, but never did it cross my mind to even so much as yell at the neighbor kid who was pulling the wagon when she fell out, let alone sue them!

Parents want to protect their kids, but bumps, bruises, scrapes and sprains are a part of life, especially as kids go through awkward stages. It’s just too bad that many kids will never know the fun of tag, dodgeball and other such games because of overprotective adults and a society that has to blame somebody for accidents.

And then we’ll talk about how overweight and obese kids are becoming …

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[tags]school, recess, sports, ban, kids, play, litigation, games, fun, news[/tags]