[dominicr]

One of the many reasons we moved our young children from the UK to Scandinavia was to improve their childhood by reducing hazards & risks whilst also being in an environment that was more acceptable of those risks. (The paper distinguishes risks vs hazards as something the child can perceive & control vs something they can't, like a car or unsafe equipment).

My children had whittling knives from age 5, built their own fires when we went on walks, could explore into the small woodlands on their own soon after and walked home from school at age 7. None of this would have been socially acceptable in a UK city but was pretty much standard in Oslo. Our children still feel safe and also feel confident doing things themselves. Our level of stress about our children seems to be lower than my friends elsewhere, who have a risk avoidance mindset, living in a society that highlights any potential risk as to be totally avoided and bad parenting if a child is exposed to any risk.

Occasionally you hear stories from the US about parents being arrested for letting their children walk down the street alone or play in the local park by themselves and that seems crazy to most of the rest of the world.

[magicalhippo]

> The paper distinguishes risks vs hazards as something the child can perceive & control vs something they can't, like a car or unsafe equipment

I knew someone who worked with designing playgrounds here in Norway, and his focus was on this. He called it subjective safety vs objective safety.

The idea was to maximize objective safety while allowing the kids a lot of room to explore the subjective safety.

This could be say a climbing wall which was tall enough to be challenging, but ensuring the equipment and ground was designed and maintained[1] such that there was no risk of permanent injury should a kid fall from the top.

As most kids love a challenge this induced them to play freely in a natural way, which lead to other benefits including social aspects like reduction of bullying.

[1]: https://www.bsigroup.com/contentassets/fd0e8cd7dd174774890cd...

[lukan]

"such that there was no risk of permanent injury should a kid fall from the top"

I debate that this is possible. You can minimize the dangers (like having no solid rock underneath, but sand), but with bad luck(and skill) even a small fall can break a neck.

But it is very important, that children indeed fall often, so they learn how to fall without hurting themself. It is up to us to provide a place that is a reasonable environment for it. But kids should also climb trees in a forest - and you cannot clear every ground. Life comes with risk. But if you remove all risk for them, they won't be prepared for the risks they cannot avoid.

[darkwater]

> I debate that this is possible. You can minimize the dangers (like having no solid rock underneath, but sand), but with bad luck(and skill) even a small fall can break a neck.

When you are a child you need a LOT of bad luck to achieve that (in contrast to being an adult), if the playground is properly designed.

[lukan]

True, children are fortunately really flexible and have soft bones (and heal fast). But serious injury is still possible and that rules out "no risk of permanent injury". Main danger would be probably the older kid falling on top of a toddler playing underneath. Or someone forgot a wooden stick there - and the result is a eye loss. But even under perfect clean conditions - bad injury with a fall is possible, even when falling on soft sand.

[osigurdson]

One can imagine all manner of horrors. The greatest risk is an unlived life.

[darkwater]

All of this can happen, nonetheless in a properly designed playground the worst thing that a 2 meters fall can do to a child/kid is probably a broken arm or leg. Maybe if they fall full flat on their back something worse can happen, but usually the body tends to put the bottom as the first point of contact.

[jtbayly]

Traumatic brain injuries, pretty much impossible to completely eliminate the risk of. These can be permanent and life altering. Land on your butt and roll back fast hitting your head on the wall. Done. Rare, but it happens.

[SoftTalker]

I think about the playground at my childhood elementary school. Swings, jungle gyms, overhead ladders, teeter-totters, all the usual stuff -- in an area paved with either asphalt or crushed stone. Beyond that was a grassy field where you could just run, wander around, play ball, etc. There were a few trees around the perimeter that got a lot of climbing.

Yes you could fall and get hurt. You learned to not do that.

[Cthulhu_]

It's possible, but that doesn't mean it should be made impossible. Anecdotal but I've not heard of any "child falls from playground climbing thing and dies" stories. Not from the ones you describe anyway:

There was an 11 year old that died last year, but that was in a professional climbing hall; I'm not sure what happened but they were supposed to be secured. But that was a 13 meter drop, and the fifth incident like that in a 30 year timespan.

And there was a 4 year old that died after falling three meters from a bouncy castle in an indoor play area; the owners of the venue were pulled up on the unsafe conditions in 2013, but due to various mistakes they only got the report nearly a year later and did not remove the dangerous thing until the child fell off and died.

[ponderings]

kids chose the level of risk, if you replace grass with rubber tiles they will jump of intentionally. The tiles will break your fall after all. Surely the grown ups have thought this through, I can trust them. Then imitation puts the process on steroids and they all start doing it.

There is no reversing the process, the "upgrades" must continue all over the world. The grown ups aren't thinking at all, they just do what the other kids do. Stuff like conquer markets.

Maybe if you lift Karin over your head, throw her onto the rubber tiles and say: If this was concrete I wouldn't have done that.

[magicalhippo]

> I debate that this is possible.

Sure, in practice. But the goal and intention of the standards for playground safety here is that there is no risk of permanent injury.

[lukan]

Hm, I see this as part of the same trend/problem. Why have unrealistic goals at all, in the name of safety?

Why is the goal not realistic, to minimize the risk?

Even if the whole playground would be made of soft foam - then still 2 kids could bump into each other and one loose its eye.

[Fricken]

I've noticed that with group decision making it's always best to argue for more safety, its a winning argument. The argument doesn't need to be valid. The fact that you're defending safety is enough.

[spacebanana7]

I've noticed this rhetorical dynamic in software too.

In group discussions around testing, security & scalability the maximalist approaches are really hard to argue against in meetings.

The person who objects to the max safety approach can easily come off as an uncaring gambler whilst the advocate comes off as idealistic at worst.

[serf]

> Why have unrealistic goals at all, in the name of safety?

because "Only 2 out of 200,000 kids will be permanently maimed" is a harder sell to the public than the impossible "Our goal is zero injuries.".

[lukan]

"Our goal is zero injuries."

This I would sign, too.

"Goal and intention ... there is no risk of permanent injury."

This not. If you design proper and guide the small children enough, you can achieve no permanent injuries with some luck (for a specific playground over some time), but you cannot rule it out, that eventually something very bad might happen and this would just give parents false security.

I have seen this actually quite often. Young parents who assume, that the playground is totally safe, so they let then children do really risky things without realizing the danger - and this is dangerous. I mean children should do risky things and other people(mainly the grandparents) freak out when they see, what my small kids are allowed to do. But as a climber and parkour enthusiast - I guide and assist them first, till I know, they can handle this particular new situation and I try to raise their awareness of what they are capable and when they should rather stop or shout for help. And of course, I am near, so I can assist in critical situations. But I know that accidents will happen. And they did, but luckily nothing serious so far (because I was there). But I know, that I am not in 100% control of the situation all the time, just not possible. But if I would be scared because of the remaining <0.1% - my nervousness would affect them and make them insecure. Fear makes knees shaky ... and then they fall.

[jtbayly]

The entire point of the article is that this is wrong.

[highfrequency]

There’s a lesson in there for adults too, with things like life changes and job changes. A lot of things that feel subjectively risky are not actually risky. You want to make sure the downside is covered but then aggressively take paths with high information discovery and variance.

[kqr]

Also I see a lot of playgrounds that are designed according to the rule that "if you can reach the thing on your own, you are old enough to handle the risks of the thing".

It's quite brilliant. Very small children up to almost teenagers can play on the same structure and challenge themselves in appropriate ways for their skill, because of the initial skill threshold in reaching the more risky parts.

I'm the first to admit that even as an adult I have had fun on those, by climbing the exteriors and leaping across long gaps. I hope it benefits my children that I can play with them that way.

[V__]

The channel Not Just Bikes did a video on this, he had the same experience as you.[1]

Growing up in Germany myself, I also feel that this trend is getting noticable here.

I have no data on this, but I feel like safer cars lead to higher speeds and therefore perceived higher risk from a pedestrian/children point of view. The fact that there are more cars and they are bigger, while speed enforcement is basically non-existent (because freedom) are probably also doing their part.

[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?si=mV7kT0Oj2z6ic18L

[eru]

We have a similar problem in Singapore.

Unfortunately, there's on policy that I otherwise really like, congestion charging, that contributes to faster average car speeds.

[resolutebat]

Why, because people are rushing to beat the moment when charged go up during peak hour?

Personally, I find that Singapore's prevalence of pay-per-minute car shares (because buying a car is so expensive) coupled with the inexperienced drivers who tend to use them causes a lot more risky behavior.

[eru]

> Why, because people are rushing to beat the moment when charged go up during peak hour?

No, because congestion charging keeps traffic flowing nicely at all times. Congestion would otherwise slow innercity traffic down to a crawl at best and a jam at worst.

> Personally, I find that Singapore's prevalence of pay-per-minute car shares (because buying a car is so expensive) coupled with the inexperienced drivers who tend to use them causes a lot more risky behavior.

I don't see that many shared cars on the road to make much of a difference? They certainly exist, of course. When I hear specific complaints it's often often about cab (or grab) drivers, and occasionally about bus drivers imported from PRC.

---

In any case, here I'm not objecting against anyone's specific bad behaviour, but mostly that we have so many stroads; and that cars drive fast (even the legal speed limit is very life threateningly dangerous to pedestrians).

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroad

I mostly like the walking experience inside of HDB complexes, with the void decks, little shops, and everything being pedestrianised and open to the general public. But the big stroads in between them are deadly.

[acover]

Because when there's no traffic people drive faster.

[eru]

Yes. And our congestion charge is explicitly adjusted upwards dynamically, when average speeds drop below a certain limit. (And is adjusted downwards, when average speeds are high enough.)

It's an awesome system, if all you care about is keeping traffic flowing. It does exactly what it was supposed to be doing. Works beautifully.

[tordrt]

In Norway, when I (24) went to kindergarten my dad used to call to tell them to let me out the gate when it was time for me to go home. When I started at school I got walked only the couple of first times so that I would learn the way. After that you would most commonly walk alone or with classmates and friends who lived close to you.

As a Norwegian I would say something that is a big trait of Norwegian/Scandinavian culture that seperates it from many other parts of the world other than being very high trust societies, is independency. Young people get very independent at a young age. And parents don't meddle in their lives to the same extent as in many other countries. Politics also enables this by giving grants and loans to students, which makes the majority of people economically independent from their parents at 18/19.

[voisin]

> Politics also enables this by giving grants and loans to students, which makes the majority of people economically independent from their parents at 18/19.

Can you elaborate on these grants and loans? What are they for? When do they start?

[tordrt]

Whereas higher education is free in most of europe, you are still usually reliant on getting sent money from your parents to finance your living expenses. In Scandinavia you are not dependant on having parents with money to pursue higher education.

If you get accepted to a University, you apply and you'll get equivalent of 13-14k usd every year of study to cover living expenses.

Up to 40% of it gets converted to a grant, depending on how many of your classes you passed. The loan is also under very favorable conditions, interest free while studying, very low interest after finished, usually paid over 20 years, and you can postpone payment up to 36 times (3 years) whenever you want.

[Broken_Hippo]

Another thing about the loan: My understanding (as an immigrant) is that the loan can be forgiven completely if you move, live, and work up north for a number of years.

[tordrt]

Yeah, up to 3000$ a year. Essentially as long as you live there, your monthly payments are deleted.

Not enough to be worth it in my opinion, the dark winters are too much man

[Broken_Hippo]

I've heard stories!

Folks have some trouble where I am, and I have 'days' during the winter. Sure, they are 4.5 hours long in December and the sunlight is poor, but I technically have days.

That said, I'd be willing to try it for a couple of years, if anything just for the experience. Dark winters are a lot and the weather can be pretty brutal with ocean storms and wind and stuff, but I think clear winter nights would be beautiful more regularly than Trondheim.

[debok]

My wife and I take the approach of allowing our kids take risks too. Even though it is not that socially acceptable. If people want to judge me for letting my 4yo boy help with building and lighting a fire, then let them.

There is so many things you can do in the home as a parent to encourage kids to take controllable risks. My oldest was helping his mother with knife-work in the kitchen from as early as 3. I also removed the enclosure net from the trampoline in our backyard. I buy bicycles for my kids as early as possible. I rough-and-tumble with my kids on an almost daily basis.

Of course there are limits. We try to keep it age appropriate, around some dangerous areas (fire, deep water, the road) we always keep them supervised. We teach them about the dangers. We teach them how to manage the risks.

Luckily my brother-in-law also removed the enclosure net on their backyard trampoline after he saw that my kids were OK jumping on an open trampoline. So it seems our attitude is starting to have a positive affect on the families around us.

[thorslilcuz]

What is the perceived benefit to removing a trampoline enclosure, though? It doesn't make the kids have more fun, it just makes the activity riskier (and trampolines are pretty much death traps). I say this as someone who had one as a kid (no enclosure) and would probably buy one for my kids (with enclosure).

[debok]

Huh, interesting that this is the hill I have to die on. If I google "are trampolines death traps" the results seem to be about 50/50 yes/no.

Anyway, here are the benefits:

1) More freedom, as they can get on the trampoline from any side instead of just the entrance. This Makes for more interesting games on/around the trampoline.

2) Easier for a parent to get to them when necessary.

3) I also jump on the trampoline.

4) Without the net, there is more to the trampoline than just a place to jump (ties in with point 1). E.g. We had our family dinner on the trampoline more than once.

5) The increased risk makes it more fun. Kids have and enjoy adrenaline too.

To answer the drawbacks (increased risk):

1) I also got hurt falling from a trampoline once as a teen, that was because I behaved the way a teen boy would.

2) The kids know where the dangerous parts of the trampoline is (i.e. near the sides).

[swader999]

We went no enclosure, built into the ground with an upgraded mat for better bounce. Kids loved it.

[voisin]

Built into the ground sounds interesting. Did you just dig a big pit or is this a special trampoline designed for this?

[opwieurposiu]

A big pit works fine if you remove the legs from a standard trampoline. The downside is that you do not feel like you are bouncing as high, because you don't get to start with the extra 4 feet in elevation.

[bigfudge]

We just dug a pit. it needs to be deeper than you think though (or well drained) or you get wet feet in the winter!

[swader999]

It was a trampoline designed for this type of install. The frame bolted onto a retaining wall type rectangle I built.

[justsomehnguy]

Death trap is the rooftop of an 12-story apartment building, yet I had enough sense not to try my luck too much, because I knew firsthand how easy you can perform an uncontrollable falling manoeuvre.

[master-lincoln]

Is there a downside of having an enclosure net around a trampoline? Asking because I did hurt myself badly once as an adult when using a non-enclosed trampoline with a hard ground next to it. I don't see what kids could benefit from when not having the enclosure

[Kamq]

The thing that immediately pops into mind is that learning to be careful when there's a moderate risk of injury makes people better at finding the limits in dangerous activities that they'll face later in life without going too far.

This is assuming that being careful and finding the limits of a dangerous activity without being injured is a skill that needs practice, but that doesn't seem like too much of a stretch.

You could test this by seeing if kids who had trampoline enclosures were less likely to hurt themselves seriously as an adult.

[jtbayly]

I recall reading that enclosures made no difference to injury rates on trampolines.

We have an enclosed one, and the kids love it, because it allows them to play games with balls on the trampoline.

[debok]

See my answer to your sibling comment by thorslilcuz.

Kamq also makes a good point.

[gadders]

The UK used to be like that in the 70's, when it was a high trust environment.

I used to walk half a mile to the shops at age 7 or 8 to complete an errand, people left their children in pushchairs (or dogs) outside of shops etc. I wish I knew what changed the UK for the worse.

[sirsinsalot]

Well yes, but even in the 1990s, I remember talk by parents at the primary school gate along the lines of:

"Did you hear [child Y] tried to get pulled into a van?"

And it was talked about like a casual fact-of-life hazard which just happens sometimes.

In the 1990s I had an absurd amount of freedom to roam, walked myself to school from age 6 and had very little oversight. It wasn't safe, not by a LONG way, as the area was very poor and rough.

It did give me both hugely valuable life tools and an adulthood of inappropriate anxiety and hightened response to small threats.

I feel like we should work to give children the skills without the threat being so high that it causes long-term issues in adulthood. Children need safety to grow well.

[gadders]

I think another difference of then vs now is that adults would look out for other people's kids.

[VBprogrammer]

Jesus. How far we've fallen. I certainly remember kids being left outside shops growing up in the 80s.

However, reading that I had a involuntary reaction of disgust just thinking about it. I certainly wouldn't dream of doing it with my own kids and suspect the reaction would be to call the police if I did.

[red_admiral]

There's "natural" hazards and human-induced ones. One paragraph of the article mentions parents in a poor neighbourhood not letting their kids play outside due to "discarded needles, homeless people sleeping in parks, and proximity to the sex trade and drug users". If that's the kind of world outside your apartment block, it might be a reasonable choice to stay indoors. If it's a woodland where kids might slip and fall of a log they're balancing on, that's a different matter.

The use of "risk" here is not the one I'm used to; the way pretty much everyone in risk management uses it is the product of likelihood and severity. I understand that they need different words for "hazard a child can deal with" and "hazard a child can't deal with", but the work "risk" is already taken.

[fatnoah]

> One paragraph of the article mentions parents in a poor neighbourhood not letting their kids play outside due to "discarded needles, homeless people sleeping in parks, and proximity to the sex trade and drug users".

I lived in a very nice neighborhood in a large East Coast US city, and all but the "sex trade" where things my child was exposed to daily. Hiding my child from them or not letting him walk to school with a friend because of them didn't feel particularly useful, so learning how to navigate that environment was the approach we took.

[master-lincoln]

How is proximity to homeless people sleeping in parks and sex workers a problem for kids?

[stringsandchars]

> How is proximity to homeless people sleeping in parks and sex workers a problem for kids?

Is there a name for this type of question, which is framed in such an ingenuous way that almost any reasonable answer to it will make that person seem like an intolerant and uptight monster who doesn't tolerate their small kids playing around sex-workers giving a punter a handjob in the bushes?

[reflexco]

Following Hanlon's razor, it's probably just a genuine lack of imagination. Grand parent poster might have only lived in areas where homeless people and sex workers were quiet and nonthreatening, so they can't imagine an area where violent incidents involving these populations are frequent. Obviously context matters and any argument without concrete examples is futile.

[master-lincoln]

Yeah, this. Where I live, sex workers don't give handjobs out in the public (as far as I am aware). And homeless people are often friendly and helpful to kids.

[mlrtime]

Where is this mythical place? You replied to a comment with "discarded needles, homeless people sleeping in parks, and proximity to the sex trade and drug users"

This presumes that this is all happening out on the streets, not in some specialized area where sex workers are in the privacy of their home/business.

I challenge any sane place that allows homeless to sleep in kids parks as a safe place to live.

[trgdr]

I haven't lived _everywhere_, but I can personally attest that is definitely not true in SF, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Philly, NYC, Seattle, or Raleigh.

I have never lived in a city where the argument you're attempting could be made in good faith.

[stringsandchars]

> ...And homeless people are often friendly and helpful to kids.

OK now I get it. Virtue signalling.

[Solvency]

LOL. Great novelty account. Fine trolling.

[ejb999]

>>Is there a name for this type of question,

Yes, it is called trolling - please don't feed the trolls.

[spacebanana7]

I don't think it's mere proximity, but any unsupervised interaction with untrusted adults is a problem for children.

A child playing football could readily disturb a sleeping homeless person or upset the commerce between sex workers & their clients.

Neither interaction would be pleasant for a child - and both could easily become unsafe.

[meheleventyone]

I didn't have kids until I moved to Iceland but it's pretty idyllic for them here as well. We live in downtown Reykjavik and its perfectly safe for them to walk to and from school alone and do stuff around town together. I'm not sure how that differs to the UK now but my childhood was filled with building tree houses in farmers fields and that sort of thing and I can't really see them growing up differently even if we had to move back.

[blitzar]

> building tree houses

Child in the UK now - "whats a tree?"

[thorin]

Not convinced. My 8,10yr kids love climbing trees. Also in the last few days it's been so windy that we often get a tree or branches falling into the road!

[thorin]

Plenty of people do this in the UK, just not in the inner cities. Oslo is a nice place though and a friend of mine just moved to Bergen with young kids. It's pretty chill in the UK if you don't live in London and have enough money to live in a nice suburb.

[123pie123]

My kids (and their friends) have all done simlar things, in the UK - including home schooling/ scouts

Moving to Norway was not required, just needed to get out of big cities

[RugnirViking]

> None of this would have been socially acceptable in a UK city

I guess it depends on the city? We used to cycle with my friends everywhere when I grew up in the UK, and build dens and treehouses in the forest. I'm only 25 now.

I totally agree on it being an important experience though. Independence and exploration are absolutely key to how I have turned out, I think.

[ck425]

> My children had whittling knives from age 5, built their own fires when we went on walks, could explore into the small woodlands on their own soon after and walked home from school at age 7.

You can still do the former if you find a proper Scout group and the latter if you live in the right area. But it's a shame you need to actively look for these opportunities now.

[mlrtime]

I was in the Scouts and have positive memories. However it seems even the Scouts are tarnished as safe from instances of pedos.

Not saying it isn't safe by perpetuating the worry, but this is what happens.

[rjsw]

Those activities were socially acceptable in the UK 50 years ago.