Daelnet
by John Sheard

Here is an article from the U.K. that brings to mind my childhood growing up in rural Wales, and how different it is for children (especially my own boys growing up in NYC) growing up today.

(snip)
But the news that filled me with joy was a report from the organisation which virtually founded the health and safety movement, and which has never been overtaken by the modern, politically correct hysteria which monopolises the subject in Westminster and on our local councils.

I am talking here of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA), whose activities I started reporting as a cub reporter some 50 years ago, and which is till going strong. And the reason for that, I believe, is that its workings and policies are governed by simple common sense.



This week’s RoSPA report drew a bead on modern parents who wrap their children in cotton wool, keeping them at home to watch television or playing computer games, rather than their being out and about playing with other children and learning that, from time to time, life can mean some hard knocks.

This stands them in good stead later in life, said society spokesman Peter Cornall: “When children spend time in the great outdoors, getting muddy, getting wet, getting stung by nettles, they learn important, life-long lessons” even if it means “scraping knees, grazing elbows and bumping heads.”

This wonderful observation, coming as it does from a proper health and safety body with an established and much admired track record, was not made simply for the sake of it. RoSPA is campaigning for more “wilderness” areas to be created, unlike formal parks, particularly in towns and cities so that children can be children.

I won’t say boys will be boys because of my many scars from childhood comes one from a head wound inflicted by my sister with a broomstick when we were playing knights and dragons. Being four years younger, I was the dragon that day… and St Georgina won as usual.
I have a scar on my left inside thigh where I buried my jack-knife when I was cutting arrows for my home-made bow and I broke my once stubby little nose twice, once on a sledge, once on (or rather off) my bike. People gazing on my honk now rarely believe that it was once perfect.

Amazingly enough, I never broke a bone and those scars, although scary at the time, still cause me to smile when I get the odd glimpse of them in the mirror. Those smiles come with a glow of warmth in honour of my nigh-on perfect childhood, virtually all of it spent outdoors climbing trees, damming streams and, yes, lighting fires (although that did get you into trouble).

In the 20-odd years I later spent working for national newspapers in some pretty awful slums- including four spent covering the Ulster Troubles - I kept myself totally scar-free. I would like to believe that RoSPA is right in my case, because when you have hurt yourself a little bit as a child you take seriously the steps needed to avoid being hurt as an adult.

And anyway, what are a few cuts and bruises when compared to the incomparable freedom of running wild with your friends beyond the eyes and ears of interfering grown-ups? I would willingly break a leg to have a few of those days again.

SOURCE

Bookmark It

Hide Sites