Skip to main content

Playgrounds: The Rule

We really only have one “rule” regarding our kids on the playground: We don't help.

Whatever the kids are big enough to do by themselves, they’re allowed to do. If they want to climb to top of the tall slides, and go down, they can. If they need help to climb up, (because they’ve never done it before), they can’t. Not until they can do it by themselves.

More times than not, this has led to a more relaxed dad, a more centered dad, a more, "Hunh, seeing as how you can't climb the ladder to the small platform you could plunge off of, you'll be OK." sort of dad.  Occasionally things do run in the opposite direction ala, "Who knew you could climb the 12 foot tall pyramid o' ropes mounted on a merry-go-round?"  In the latter cases, risk amelioration is achieved by Casually Hanging Out close to the Area Of Highest Concern', (e.g. directly under the kid giggling on top of said rope pyramid), tactfully concealing my inner-qualms.

The system tends to get the kids to try things sooner, and builds their independence and confidence as they cruise along all on their own.  It does however, occasionally lead to issues with other parents. Recently, a panicked father found me; informed me that my 3 y.o. was climbing to the top of the highest slide, up the hill rather than on the stairs; told me that I should be more careful; and also informed me that he had enticed my kid back down with the offer of a cookie. He then stood awaiting my thanks and validation of his Playground Hero status.  My only response was to tell him that, in general, you should never ever offer someone else’s kid food from strangers.  Completely baffled, the errant dad wandered back away as my kid, now loaded with half an illicit cookie, trundled right back up the hill.

Goofy adults aside, the Rule has led to other unintended, but awesome consequences. On a hike with a group of home-schooled kids, we crested a hill to find a wall from a long-ago torn-down structure; a 10-foot long log from a fallen tree laid on the ground beside it. Intrigued, the kids immediately asked me to move the log into a crack in the wall.  They wanted to use it as a ramp. After I told them they could put the log wherever they liked, but they had to do it themselves, they tried, but couldn’t lift it. Nonplussed, they meandered off to indulge in other activities, or so it seemed.  A few minutes later they returned accompanied by a band of 8 others kids.  Together, they mounted a new attack, splitting up with five kids to either side of the offending leviathan.  With their combined effort, the log was quickly lifted into position,  A great ruckus ensued, and a tremendous time was had by the 2 to 7-year-old lifting crew as they explored their newly created playscape.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Please leave your comments on this topic:

Popular posts from this blog

The Valentine's Day Magnetic Monopole

There's an assymetry to the form of the two Maxwell's equations shown in picture 1.  While the divergence of the electric field is proportional to the electric charge density at a given point, the divergence of the magnetic field is equal to zero.  This is typically explained in the following way.  While we know that electrons, the fundamental electric charge carriers exist, evidence seems to indicate that magnetic monopoles, the particles that would carry magnetic 'charge', either don't exist, or, the energies required to create them are so high that they are exceedingly rare.  That doesn't stop us from looking for them though! Keeping with the theme of Fairbank[1] and his academic progeny over the semester break, today's post is about the discovery of a magnetic monopole candidate event by one of the Fairbank's graduate students, Blas Cabrera[2].  Cabrera was utilizing a loop type of magnetic monopole detector.  Its operation is in...
1 comment
Read more

Cool Math Tricks: Deriving the Divergence, (Del or Nabla) into New (Cylindrical) Coordinate Systems

Now available as a Kindle ebook for 99 cents ! Get a spiffy ebook, and fund more physics The following is a pretty lengthy procedure, but converting the divergence, (nabla, del) operator between coordinate systems comes up pretty often. While there are tables for converting between common coordinate systems , there seem to be fewer explanations of the procedure for deriving the conversion, so here goes! What do we actually want? To convert the Cartesian nabla to the nabla for another coordinate system, say… cylindrical coordinates. What we’ll need: 1. The Cartesian Nabla: 2. A set of equations relating the Cartesian coordinates to cylindrical coordinates: 3. A set of equations relating the Cartesian basis vectors to the basis vectors of the new coordinate system: How to do it: Use the chain rule for differentiation to convert the derivatives with respect to the Cartesian variables to derivatives with respect to the cylindrical variables. The chain ...
11 comments
Read more

More Cowbell! Record Production using Google Forms and Charts

First, the what : This article shows how to embed a new Google Form into any web page. To demonstrate ths, a chart and form that allow blog readers to control the recording levels of each instrument in Blue Oyster Cult's "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" is used. HTML code from the Google version of the form included on this page is shown and the parts that need to be modified are highlighted. Next, the why : Google recently released an e-mail form feature that allows users of Google Documents to create an e-mail a form that automatically places each user's input into an associated spreadsheet. As it turns out, with a little bit of work, the forms that are created by Google Docs can be embedded into any web page. Now, The Goods: Click on the instrument you want turned up, click the submit button and then refresh the page. Through the magic of Google Forms as soon as you click on submit and refresh this web page, the data chart will update immediately. Turn up the:...
Post a Comment
Read more