Hacker News Reader

Comment by brazzy | Hacker News Reader

So 10,000 children grow up happier and learning proper risk taking behaviour... and one dies from strangulation when going down a slide with a rope in hand (happened last week in my city)... and one is quadriplegic for life after jumping into a murky lake (friend of my cousin)...

Do we really, really just want to accept those risks? I don't think that's easy to answer...

View on HN

1. What about all the kids whose lives are ruined by bullying, some of which commit suicide?

2. Why not ban skiing (etc) because lots of people get paralyzed or die doing it?

3. Why not just ban everything even slightly fun, because fun things usually entail some risk?

> Why not ban skiing (etc) because lots of people get paralyzed or die doing it?

do ski resorts let schoolchildren onto the slopes without any kind of parental consent? I believe children aren't considered in the same way we do adults for a reason.

Where did I say there shouldn't be parental consent? But it should be (as much as possible) on an individual basis (like ski slopes) rather than a collective one.

Consent? We're talking about the child's life, here! We can't just let parents consent to letting their child take massive risks! You can't "consent" that your child can jump into a murky lake or go down a slide with a rope in hand, so you certainly can't consent to letting them do something as reckless as skiiing.

Yes. That is, in fact, a very easy answer. You're either strongly underestimating the consequences of bullying or strongly overestimating the effectiveness of legislation or regulation.

Of course not. There's no risk too small for preventing. We should have kids wrapped up in bubble-wrap and never near any activity that could harm them - even a paper can give you a paper-cut which can then get infected and the kid would die of sepsis - true story, I've heard it from a guy that heard it from a guy that worked with a brother of the kid who went into school with the kid that heard it from his cousin who saw it in his own eyes! So clearly, no safety measures are ever enough - because think of the children! They could die! Do you want kids to die? What kind of a monster are you? If you don't want kids to die, then you should support any safety measure if it has even a minuscule imaginary chance of preventing some harm. No matter how much it hurts real kids' development in the overwhelming majority of cases.

Kids have been getting paralyzed from jumping into pools and lakes since forever, and the "going down a slide with a rope," strangulation thing sounds a little rare to even think twice about.

Whaaaaaat?

It isn't really that rare. Happens. I've seen real life stories on tv before. Kids who don't understand strangulation playing around. plus accidents with clothes.

http://www.health.ny.gov/prevention/injury_prevention/childr...

>Remove all drawstrings from your child's clothes and make he/she is not wearing any necklaces or scarves while playing; these items could get caught on equipment and strangle a child.

Real examples

http://www.parentdish.co.uk/2014/01/16/toddler-was-strangled...

http://mynorthwest.com/11/729311/Sammamish-girl-strangled-by...

http://m.ksl.com/index/story/sid/17978696?mobile_direct=y

http://cantonrep.com/x1777806810/Dublin-boy-6-strangled-by-r...

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2009/05/20/734942/mom-saves...

Clothing drawstrings seems like a different (and well-known) thing, but those other stories still seem freakish to me. Maybe I'm out of touch, is there a common "rope and slide" maneuver that kids like to do these days?

What makes you assume that those risks would be eliminated by more oversight, more rules or more control?

It is for me. Maybe we should target a death rate for childhood like we target inflation. If it gets too low, we should allow children more freedoms until we get the mortality rate back up.

There are two things I know to be true about humans.

1- Humans think they are good at risk assessment 2- Humans are very bad at risk assessment

In particular, humans suck at dealing with very big or very small numbers.

Yes! Yes, we do. Because there is no way to prevent bad things happening. All the foam padding and cotton wool in the world won't prevent the occasional kid dying or being badly injured; if nothing else, there will always be at least a few abusive parents. You can't save everyone, but you can do a hell of a lot of damage trying -- and, callous as you might think it, the mishaps you cite carry useful lessons of their own for those who survive.

Yes, it's called evolution the kid that can't figure out he is doing something very dangerous does't end up having children of his own.

I know this sounds very harsh but it's not like there is another way to teach this to children. They need to figure it out on their own.

All parents wish they could wrap their children in cotton but the reality is they can't do that forever it's best children lern about risk early.

I don't know why you are being downvoted. Humans are physical creatures as much as thinkers, and not letting kids find physical limits is going to have severe effects on their ability to think and take creative risks with their minds.

That's... not how evolution works.

FYI evolution hardwired us to take relatively massive risks during adolescence.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com