Please Think Of The Children- Learning By Doing

This is a subject that has been a thorn in my paw for a long time. Every where you look there are examples of institutions, especially schools, trying to accommodate individuals that are screaming "PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!" Unfortunately, this is usually manifesting in more and more examples of ways that kids are being prevented from being kids. Schools today have ridiculous rules preventing kids from doing totally normal things like running on the play ground or jumping off of swings, or, my personal favorite, the increasingly popular "Hands off" policies that even punish kids for helping other kids up when they fall down.

I totally understand the schools' positions. They have limited operational funds already. They can't afford to have those funds cut because they are defending themselves against law suits from angry parents whose kids are injured on school grounds. So I want to say outright that I do not want to criticize the schools who are only trying to protect themselves as well as they can.

My anger is directed at the people that make these policies necessary. It is not the school's responsibility to wrap your kids in bubble wrap and protect them from every possible bump and scrape. Kids do dumb things and sometimes it gets them hurt, but it is an essential part of the learning process to have the freedom to try some of those things.

Learning to make good decisions requires that you have the freedom to make bad ones. Maybe it's just me, but it makes far more sense to me to let them do that when they are kids and the choices that they make have more controllable consequences. Let them run on the playground- if they run into something and get hurt, maybe they will learn to watch where they are going.

And another thing, let them fight back when someone hurts them- there isn't always going to be a teacher/parent/adult to protect them- sooner or later they have to learn how to fight for themselves. I have just about had it up to here with the stupid rules that punish kids who are being bullied and decide to fight back just as much as the kids doing the bullying. I know a kid who was constantly being bullied before his mom decided to home-school him and the final straw in her decision was when her son was jumped by a group of 4 older kids as he was coming out of the gym. The older kids jumping him was bad enough, but what really pissed her off was that because during the ensuing struggle her son threw one of the other boys off his back and into a wall, her son was suspended for just as long as the other kids. Since when was self-defense not ok?  I'm sorry for all you parents of bullies out there who don't want your kid to get hurt, but if your 13 yr old hits my 11 yr old, I would applaud my kid for turning around and returning the favor.   In my opinion, any person that thinks that it would be better for that same 11yr old to curl up and take the beating needs to be brought up on child abuse charges.