5 dangerous things you should let your kid do
 

As a counterpoint to the "manliness" thread, a video that makes sense to me (and doesn't require cursing)

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/gever_tulley_on_5_dangerous_things_for_kids.html

This reminds me of growing up as a kid...

I would wake up in the middle of the night and catch my mom sharpening the edges on the furniture.



But seriously... nine minutes twenty seconds? You expect me to sit still for nine minutes and twenty seconds? What... are you mad?

Ok so I did watch it... but my screen saver kicked in about three times.. no kidding!

Some good points made though.


Oh look... COWS!

for the adhd in the crowd, the five things are:

play with fire
own a pocket knife
throw a spear
take apart an appliance
break the DMCA

and 5.5 - drive a car (ie sitting in dad's lap)

As a dad to 2 young lads (3 & 6 yrs) I can appreciate that a lot! His camp looks really fun too.

Forgot "shoot a gun".

doncha just love it when people who don't have kids tell us how to raise ours?
Especially when they tell us we should teach our kids to break the law. Nope, no thank you. Not interested in what poser-intellectuals thinks.

I enjoyed that clip. We have sacrificed so much in the interest of safety.

My father is 83 years old. He was a machine gunner in WWII at age 16. He was an Oakland cop for 26 years. He has been shot three times and stabbed twice. He's as tough as nails. Last week he got his first traffic ticket...for not wearing a seatbelt.

Digital Millenium Copyright Act. Essentially he's saying that the DMCA is restrictive enough that it hinders creativity as well as "reasonable" use of media. He uses the example of buying a song off iTunes then burning that onto a CD. While he is actually wrong about the specific legality (the label has an agreement with iTunes and burning a CD is allowed), his broader point about breaking laws without really know it is a good one.

Technically #2 is breaking the law in most states if one of the blades is over 2.5 inches.

6. Ride down a snow covered hillside in an inner tube or toboggan (or something else with no brakes/steering).

Without knowing it. Or actively choosing to ignore it. Either one is good.

I thought, like others, 9:20 WTF? Then watched, and enjoyed, the whole thing. Probably not required viewing for some 'country folk'.

Three dangerous things you should teach your child to do:

1. Handle tools, then power tools (obviously with supervision). People who can't work with their hands are pussies.

2. Think your own thoughts. Think! People who cannot think for themselves are pussies.

3. As soon as they can reach the pedals and show interest, find a safe place and teach them to drive. Teach them to drive a stick because people who can't drive a stick are pussies.

angela

ps - apparently I think there are alot of pussies in the world...: pelicans clearly excepted! D

operate a chain saw

build a fire

build any type of go-kart, preferably with no way to stop, crash, then figure out a way to stop

understand and explore nature...turn over rocks to see what's underneath, scoop frog eggs in a brook up in your hands, put a few tiny polywogs in a jar, explore the woods, find "ancient" glass jars and such buried in the ground

:d:d:d:d

My son, who will be 8 in September, was going on and on the other week about something he wanted from the dollar store. It turned out he was after a 'Bug Box' so, come the weekend off we went with a dollar (and eight cents) to get one.

What a fantastic bucks worth of fun we had with that!

As soon as we were home he was out in the garden looking for grasshoppers and anything else he could catch. After about an hour of that he'd run out of different bugs in my yard so he wanted to go to the park down the road to see what he could find there. We tried loads of different places to see the different creatures in the different conditions, but the find of the day was a really cool toad in a pile of logs. That dollar gave about the best value for money of anything the whole weekend.

Over here, I've met sooooo many kids that get freaked out about a moth (almost any insect outside of beetles) that has wandered into the house.

Even jr. high kids. I grab the poor beast open the door/window and let it go on it's marry way (mosquitoes don't get a get of jail for free pass). I then shake my head and walk away wondering what the problem is ...



+1 on thinking

I remember the days of taking a wagon and putting a slab of lumber on it and I swear me and my friend got about 2 feet off the ground. lolo, never thought it would work. We decided that we had enough of flying after looking at our bruises :D

lol, i used to steer dad's car from the passenger seat while he was doing other stuff
my dad wasn't a slow poke in traffic either, and he didn't slow down when handing over the wheel to me. i think i was 8 at the time...

other dangerous stuff we did

fire.. lot's of it
built a raft out of empty barrels
hotwire an old Willy's jeep and drive it around town
fireworks... big'ns attach them to model planes and send them on their way
make a bow, and arrows, use em... paint guns are for ninnies
climb big walls or trees and fall off em
have forklift truck races in factories

build a potato gun

Almost perfect:cool:

I'll add make them work...real, put the laptop down and get dirt under your nails work. Work.

Also. Play a sport...after you work:)

my daughter could operate a mini excavator and skidloader by 3 1/2. shift my 4 speed before 5. she could explain how to make moonshine by 3rd grade. not much she hasn't done and even less she was kept from doing. she's been exposed to and done much much more than any of her friends, male or female. probably more than a lot of my friends also. she's had unicycles, gopeds, electric scooters, mopeds. started giving her knives before she could even open them. she wasn't a great shot with a guns but could hit the head of a nail at 15-20ft with a blow gun. she's been pulled behind boats on floats, plywood and sometimes without. she's been towed behind my truck tied with rope on gocarts, pirouges, pieces of plywood when she was way too small to keep her goggles on which was quite funny as she plowed thru ant piles, fresh cow patties and cleared the top of the levee by several feet. still in diapers and duct taped into a life preserver, we would ride the wetbike up and down the bayou. not much she wouldn't try and even less I wouldn't let her try with me watching. of course with my history of accidents, mishaps and darwin award attempts she does have a few scars here and there, but never let anything slow her down. now all grown up, she's cutting out rust and welding in panels, dropping in the engine/trans and converting to disc brakes her 66 Mustang when not working her 2 jobs or in class at university. a little bit on the wild side, she just trashes everything. mp3 players, computers, mopeds, gopeds, jeeps, etc etc. she'w even worse than me actually for pushing things way past their designed uses. maybe she was allowed to do too many things as a child because normal things just bore her to tears. luckily she's got a dad like me to show her how to do even crazier things. didn't want a sissy scared to get hurt child.. she's 180 degrees opposite. instead of trying to talk her into trying something new most kids were scared to try, you had to hold her back from taking too many chances of getting hurt.

As a kid I used to make my own gunpowder... somehow my brother got his hands on a big jar of saltpeter... we had some sulfur (for the garden?) and I would grind up charcoal briquettes... mix it together in the right proportions and poof! Got the recipe out of the world book encyclopedia.

Part of my chores (I was born in Los Angeles but my parents were farmers) was to mow the lawns and change the oil in my dad's cars... and do the brakes on the cars... WOULD YOU TRUST A TEENAGER TO DO THE BRAKES ON YOUR 1968 OLDSMOBILE? Dayum dad had some balls!