posted
Well guys, what do you want me to do. I wasn't in charge of him. I wasn't appointed in charge of him. I had no power over him. I just told him what could happen and it happened.
He was in charge of himself and I have a feeling he did learn something. He had a chance to test his limits doing something that was very very unlikely that he would get seriously hurt and he did and went past them. He now has a better idea of his comfort zone.
Posts: 247 | Registered: Jun 2003
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posted
damn it you guys. No body put the ten year old on the zip line except the ten year old. Ten year olds aren't stupid (unless they are). I guess there is no way we can argue this because we have differant definitions of nessisary risk. no risk is really nessisary if you really want to get into it.
That is what any responsible adult would have done under the circumstances.
His parents may have then come, seen the setup, and made it more safe. A thick leather or nylon strap with a handle would have made it so he didn't even get rope burn.
Posts: 3495 | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
I'm eighteen, some of my best friends are several years younger than me, some of them do stuff with their parent's permission that I'd be scared to death to do.
I like the idea of a happy medium, and I think that's what most parents have with their children. There are always going to be people out there who take it to extremes, they aren't the majority; I'm guessing most kids in America have an upbringing much like Lor's was.
Posts: 4655 | Registered: Jan 2002
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posted
[QUOTEWhat I'm curious is about is this - what would an UNnecessary risk be, to you? ] [/QUOTE]
well, an example of an unnecessary risk would be drinking a bottle of whisky then trying to drive home. Nothing is benefited from it.
An unnecessary risk to me is a risk taken when there is a good possiblity someone coud get seriously(like worse than broken bones) for little pay off
Posts: 247 | Registered: Jun 2003
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posted
"Dude, broken bones aren't the benign injury you are making them out to be," says the 32 yr old with arthritis in her shoulder for the rest of her life. She didn't even have to break the bone, just bruised herself in just the wrong place.
It hurts every single day. I'm still alive. I'll probably live until I'm 90, but I would prefer to be pain free.
Posts: 3495 | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
Brettly, are you male or female. i didn't catch that. And you clearly don't remember/understand how children think.
Posts: 247 | Registered: Jun 2003
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Children have a screwed up concept of life and death. They don't think about death and they don't understand it. Teens are just learning and trying to re-organize their brains at the same time.
Obviously, the payoff for those high-risk experiences is the adrenaline. I engage in high-risk activities for the adrenaline and the chance to push my body physically as far as it'll go before it gives me the finger.
Would I let one of my ten year old clients engage in any of those activities?
Gosh no.
Do I encourage my ten year old clients to go out and push themselves? Of course. Sports is a great chance for that. I work in an urban area, so natural risk-taking is few unless they participate in sports of some kind.
*wonders if Kayla would take parenting advice from her* Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
And you do? You speak for all children? Strange then how your thoughts don't resonate with most of us, despite the fact we were all kids once, some not so long ago.
Posts: 5422 | Registered: Dec 2001
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Every child needs a chance to test thier limits. It is an important part of growing up. This doesn't mean they have to seek out new dangers to replace the risk that used to be part of every day life. As a kid I did a lot of potentially dangerous things.
I fell out of innumerous trees, I jumped off a second story roof using grocery sacks for a parachute to land on the cement sidewalk and do it again...several times in fact until some adult walked by and told me I had to stop. My cousin and I made a raft to float down a flooded river in January. We got sucked under a snag, I'm still not sure how we managed to pull loose and swim to shore but we did, and then we had to walk home soaking wet in the snow. To us the greatest danger was an adult finding out about the dangers we had put ourselves in. They always seemed to react irrationally when they found out what we'd done.
Then one summer my cousin went on vacation to Hawaii with his family. He was climbing a cliff near a river (another of our favorite pastimes) that was flooded with rain. His siblings were behind him a bit, and when they finally caught up he was gone. Two days later Search and Rescue divers recovered his body from an underwater cave at the base of the cliff.
So to sum it up, just because you survive one or ten or even a hundred foolish stunts doesn't mean you are guaranteed to survive them all. Looking back on it I wish my parents (and his) had noticed a little more. We could have had just as much fun if there had been an adult or even older kid around to let us do the slightly less dangerous and keep us from doing the potentially deadly.
In the case of the zipline Lor should just have found something better than a stick to go down it. The kid was guaranteed to get a rope burn if he wasn't balanced on it right and he could have tipped sideways, fell and landed in such a way as to break something. Another length of rope about three feet long with knot or loop to hang on to on both sides would have been safer and still should have slid pretty well depending on what kind of rope it was, because no matter what you're doing it's always more fun if you don't get hurt.
Posts: 349 | Registered: May 2003
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quote:"Dude, broken bones aren't the benign injury you are making them out to be," says the 32 yr old with arthritis in her shoulder for the rest of her life. She didn't even have to break the bone, just bruised herself in just the wrong place.
It hurts every single day. I'm still alive. I'll probably live until I'm 90, but I would prefer to be pain free.
And of course, there are bad sprains that can do the same thing. I have permanent ligament damage in my ankle. I wasn't even doing anything reckless—just playing basketball. It hurts every single day.
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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quote:In the case of the zipline Lor should just have found something better than a stick to go down it
Allrighty then. What do you suggest to use on an island without more technology than sea kyacs, the stick worked very well when we learned to carve a notch in it.
Anyway. thats beside the point.
Posts: 247 | Registered: Jun 2003
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posted
You know what's killing me about this thread? According to Lorenz0, we're overinsulating our kids (an argument that I think can be reasonably made for some mothers -- my mother would be on that list), but if we parents followed his advice, everyone else in the world would call us terrible parents for letting them get hurt or killed.
In the pursuit of having fun and taking a risk, one of my high school classmates, a very tall, handsome young man, decided to hookiebob off the back of his friend's Jeep. It was going pretty well, he was having a great time, until they went into one of the turns of the road going about 20 or 30mph, he lost his grip on the car and flew into the other lane. Where he was hit by an oncoming car. He didn't die, though. He was lucky and was only paralyzed for life. I'm pretty sure he thought the risk was well worth the lesson learned.
Lorenz0, the long and short of this is that you have yet to acknowledge that you have *any* responsibility here. You seem to think that you have no influence over the actions of that 10 year old. I suggest, sir, that you think about who set up the line. Who was showing the other two younger kids how to use it? The point here is that you have a responsibility as an older child to look out for those younger than you, to understand that you are an influence, and that if the child is hurt while you're around, you *are* responsible. Deny it if you want, but you're *wrong*.
Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
Allright then, I take the responsibility in a calculating the risk, testing it myself, and deciding that no serious injury could come of it. And in all the times we went down it, I was proved correct.
But a ten year old should know how to make decisions for themselves because they have been in situations like this before. Ten year olds are not as stupid as most of you think. They should be out doing plenty of stuff.
Had I thought the zip line would had a good chance of seriously hurting somebody, i wouldn't even set it up let alone go on it myself.
Posts: 247 | Registered: Jun 2003
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posted
You mean to tell me all you grammar nazi's first type your post in a word processing program and then copy and paste into the "Post a Reply" utility. 'Cause if I'm not mistaken, being someone who has taught software at college, there is no such utility in IE. Sooooo please enlighten the rest of us, please.
Posts: 180 | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
At twenty-five years old I'm learning that I'm dumber than a box of rocks.
At ten years old I'm surprised I was sentient.
Kids are making connections and synapses at the speed of light, but that doesn't mean they have ANY idea what to do with their newfound information. That's the point of getting older - collecting all that information and then knowing what the heck to do with it.
Lorenz0 - I think you've been a little dogpiled, and I feel bad about that. But, from a moderately objective perspective, you haven't exactly been exhibiting an amazing amount of wisdom in your posts. Kids are not smarter than we give them credit for. Their little sponge-like brains are just beginning to understand discernment and wisdom, which are the key ingredients to avoiding danger, bodily disfigurement and death.
Luckily, kids are also almost 80% Rubbermade. If I got in half the accidents now as an adult as I did when I was a kid I think I would be quadriplegic. But, as resilient as they tend to be, there were other kids that fell from trees and rooftops, biffed it on their bikes and got caught in undercurrents in rivers that weren't nearly as fortunate as I was.
The parents you're debating with are some of the most balanced ones I've ever met. Not having kids myself, I'd totally bow to their experience. If they say, "We need a middle ground, and ten year olds on zip lines most likely isn't it," I'd strongly take WHY this is into consideration.
posted
So, had the 10 year old fallen on his head and broken his neck, you were willing and able to take full responsibility for that? How much do you make a year, Lorenz0? At not-quite-16, I'll venture that it's not enough to cover the full expenses of such an accident.
As far as 10 year olds making their own decisions, what you're really saying is that 10 year olds should be able to make wiser decisions than 15 year olds, right? Yeah, that makes sense.
Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:Yeah, JaneX, Shlomo, and Kasie are all perfect examples of age not mattering. Even Maeth (after a bit of a rough beginning) is cool. And while T_Smith nearly stopped my heart one day recounting his adventures in a squirt gun contest, he's not bad either.
Ellen, I just open my Outlook Express and paste long replies to check for errors. I usually have OE open anyway, so why not take the extra few seconds and check the spelling. It doesn't catch everything, and I don't spell check every post, but generally, I try to check the longer ones. A little courtesy never killed anyone, and if someone wants people to take them seriously, they could at least pretend to care about what they are writing. Spelling and capitalization is a good thing. That's why they teach it in school A simple system so everyone can learn the same information. If everyone spelled however they wanted, it wouldn't take long for the world to become illiterate.
Posts: 9871 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
I am just past seventeen, and I have two younger sisters, one ten, one just turned four.
I have a complaint against the judging of older people spending time with younger children. What is a family, then? My ten year old sister plays quite happily with her four year old sister. Families seperated by years are able to play together, so why can't friends be seperated by age?
Another example, my sister has a friend now aged fifteen. They write to one another, they played with one another only a few years ago. My sister is a young ten, and wouldn't understand "hanging out" but I know a ton of ten year olds who would.
Yet another example, many of the very seniors at my school are friends with the very juniors. They are seperated by four or five years.
People can be friends, as children, with people who are of different ages without being censored and regarded as odd.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
Another parent checking in, asking for a middle ground. But really I want to say, hey Brettly, we're neighbors!
Posts: 335 | Registered: Feb 2001
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Well Kayla, I suggest if you're going to be a grammar Nazi that you take the extra few second and have Word open, because it looks like this last post was critically lacking in punctuation. Posts: 180 | Registered: Jul 2003
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quote:Belle, are you saying that you wouldn't let your kids go bike rideing because of that? Of course people are goign to get hurt.
Christ people, getting hurt isn't the end of the world.
Actually, no that's not what I was saying at all. I was trying to point out that serious accidents are more common that you were making them out to be. And I was tying to illustrate that even an activity that seems to be safe (bike riding) and has been performed safely many times before can still turn dangerous in a flash.
My kids actually ride bikes every day, even the three year olds have bikes with training wheels. And yes, they get hurt - skinned knees, scrapes, bruises. But I would not allow my kids to do what we used to do - take a bike on a rough trail into woods, without any safety equipment and no adult supervision. That I would not do.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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We can tell the difference between errors made by quick typing and those made by sloppiness or laziness.
Kayla was right to suggest he polish up his typing, it will serve him well later.
Yes, we all make mistakes typing, I do all the time, but everyone knows it's not because I'm actually ignorant of the correct spelling - or worse, that I "couldn't care less."
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
Ellen, I did and there were two mistakes. Neither of them involved punctuation.
I hate Word. It doesn't seem to be intelligent enough to figure out all the rules of grammar, but if it did, I'd use it all the time, so I could figure out where the heck the commas were supposed to go. However, as it is, I can write a sentence, check it, Word tells me it's correct, then I change the commas and Word still says it's correct. Can't win for losing with that program.
quote: Ela, they make it easy.
Ellen, I just open my Outlook Express and paste long replies to check for errors. I usually have OE open anyway, so why not take the extra few seconds and check the spelling. It doesn't catch everything, and I don't spell check every post, but generally, I try to check the longer ones. A little courtesy never killed anyone, and if someone wants people to take him or her seriously, they could at least pretend to care about what they are writing. Spelling and capitalization is a good thing. That's why they teach it in school, a simple system so everyone can learn the same information. If everyone spelled however they wanted, it wouldn't take long for the world to become illiterate.
posted
Belle, so you're telling me one person's inexcusable error is a grammar Nazi's slight oversight. You're telling me to chill when Kayla's first six posts contained grammar arguments, filled with evidence of her disdain for Lorenz0's opinions based on his presentation not content.
quote:We can tell the difference between errors made by quick typing and those made by sloppiness or laziness
Oh, really how can you tell? You're making a character judgment/assassination based on this thread. You’re calling him sloppy and/or lazy. How smug! This is after all a chat board, not a business proposal. If you're going to live by the sword, you ought to be ready to die by the sword.
Posts: 180 | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
Kayla and Belle will you just admit you're not perfect. Kayla you have since re-edited this quote to correct the punctuation errors. Geez!! This is the unedited post. Can you see a difference?
quote:Ela, they make it easy.
Ellen, I just open my Outlook Express and paste long replies to check for errors. I usually have OE open anyway, so why not take the extra few seconds and check the spelling. It doesn't catch everything, and I don't spell check every post, but generally, I try to check the longer ones. A little courtesy never killed anyone, and if someone wants people to take them seriously, they could at least pretend to care about what they are writing. Spelling and capitalization is a good thing. That's why they teach it in school A simple system so everyone can learn the same information. If everyone spelled however they wanted, it wouldn't take long for the world to become illiterate.
posted
Ellen, I meant it when I said chill. You're getting awfully upset about something that doesn't merit this type of emotion.
Lorenz declared HIMSELF sloppy when it comes to typing, he said he didn't care what it was like.
He probably doesn't care so much at age 15, but it will make a difference for him later. In other words, he should start caring, or he will always be looked down upon. Whether you like it or not, people are judged by how well they communicate in writing.
Seriously, though - why is this bothering you so much? Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
Sheesh Ellen. The boy rarely uses capital letters, spelled parents incorrectly, even after having it pointed out to him, and rather than lecture parents about letting their children out of the house to risk their lives would do well to stay home and learn to SPELL SIMPLE WORDS.
I didn't say a word about his use of commas, did I? And for the record, my first post was a sarcastic barb. My second was a direct response about what my son did the last time I let him play at a friend’s house. The third was a response to you. The fourth was another telling Laurenz0 to use a dictionary. The fifth was questioning the fact that he had time to write all the posts, but not an extra 30 seconds to spell check them. The sixth was a post entirely dedicated to laughing at myself.
So, if you are going to talk about me, get your facts straight. My disdain for Laurenz0 has little to do with his spelling ability and more to do with his judgment. However, I will say the fact that he couldn't care less about making his posts easier to read for his audience says a lot about his judgment.
The re-edited paragraph was placed there to show you that Word doesn't pick up enough to make it worth using! Can't you see that? It didn't even pick up the fact that there was a question without a question mark!
I've already admitted I'm not perfect. Many times in fact. I believe it was about 6 months ago someone else asked a similar question and I posted multiple links where I had called myself an idiot. However, when others tell me I've made an error, I don't tell them I'm too lazy to bother with any of their concerns and continue to post the same incorrect thing over and over. I, unlike some, am more than happy, willing and able to learn.
Now, can you point out specific examples of incorrect grammar so I don't continue to make the same mistakes? (If you look, you might even find posts of mine where I've specifically requested grammar assistance and suggested a grammar thread, which we've had, but those never seem to answer problems that come up while posting.)
Posts: 9871 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
I was the one who asked Kayla to chill when she started down this road. You're telling me to chill and I'm telling you to chill. Let's all chill together. Do you think you can let it go now?
Posts: 180 | Registered: Jul 2003
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Belle and Kayla are right that such things are important if you want to be taken seriously. I personally know a guy who was expected to get a large promotion because his superior liked his attitude, etc. He wrote a short email expressing his excitement at the prospect of working in the new area. But he repeatedly wrote "sales" as "sells". As in, I look forward to working with you in the sellsforce. There were also numerous grammatical mistakes, etc.
He should have spell-checked or at least let someone with a college degree (e.g. most of his co-workers) proof read it.
Four years later, he has yet to be promoted, because that email made him look sub-literate.
HOWEVER, Ellen is right that you guys are making too much of this. If he wants to take more care in the future, that's fine. If he doesn't, badgering him won't help.
Posts: 9293 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
Oh, Olivet, make no mistake, I couldn't care less about Laurenz0's spelling at this point and time. I just decided to give Ellen a hard time. Especially after she misrepresented my first 6 posts and wouldn't "let it go."
Being the bigger person, I'll let it go now. I swear. After all, I can admit I'm wrong.
posted
I only stepped in because Ellen was being harsh to Kayla, whom I consider my friend. If Kayla's dropping it, then I am too. I never really cared much about Lorenz's future opportunities, I just didn't like Ellen's crusade.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
*snort* Belle and Kayla are hardly folks to tear you up over simple screw-ups. They are also the first two people to admit to mistakes. Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
Cool guys. I know. And you know I love you all. It's just that Ellen is relatively knew, and may have missed out on the subtext of some of the posts. It's kind of a running joke.
I was just trying to be kinda jokey. Hope I didn't offend. :Blinks innocently:
Posts: 9293 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
(Hi, Olivet. I will AIM soon, but I have to leave now. It was a ratty night. But thanks for being the benevolent presence here -- was cool to see you do your thing. )
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You mean to tell me all you grammar nazi's first type your post in a word processing program and then copy and paste into the "Post a Reply" utility. 'Cause if I'm not mistaken, being someone who has taught software at college, there is no such utility in IE. Sooooo please enlighten the rest of us, please.
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