"We need to ask ourselves whether it is better for a child to break a wrist falling out of a tree, or to get a repetitive strain wrist injury at a young age from using a computer or video games console," RoSPA said.I know when I was young, especially during summer vacations, we would all disappear after eating breakfast and our mothers would be lucky to see us back for dinner.
"When children spend time in the great outdoors, getting muddy, getting wet, getting stung by nettles, they learn important lessons -- what hurts, what is slippery, what you can trip over or fall from," he said.
We climbed trees, prowled construction sites, climbed on top of the school roof and generally made our own adventures.
I remember getting together with a couple of buddies, with flashlights and tape (to mark our way back) and exploring a long passage of storm drain that ran from a drainage ditch towards the general vicinity of the local hospital.
We waged small wars on each other with our air rifles and spent hours down by the shores of Lake Ontario. We cooked hotdogs and (egads... e.coli) hamburger meat over fires we started with driftwood.
And strangely enough... nobody died.
That doesn't seem to be how it works any more... and our over-scheduled, technologically savvy but too often overweight kids may be the worse for it.
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