Darell Hammond Quotes

During National Playground Safety Week, I'll celebrate common-sense safety. I'll also celebrate skinned knees and bruised elbows. I'll celebrate so-called 'dangerous' playgrounds - playgrounds with see-saws, zip lines and towering slides.

Children are more restricted than ever when it comes to taking physical risks - one of the ways previous generations built resilience. Thanks to health and safety mania, leapfrog, marbles and conkers are now considered unsafe.

If your child's going to ride in a car or go swimming or play soccer, all of those things involve risk. And if your child doesn't do any of those things, then they're probably sitting too much, and that involves risk, too.

We have made it impossible for children to fall very far—and in so doing, we have robbed them of the joys of climbing high.

We all have a natural instinct to protect children from harm. It's never fun to see a child hurt, even if it's just a scraped knee. But on the other hand, children need to take on physical challenges to learn and grow, and scraped knees and other bumps and bruises teach them valuable lessons about their own limits.

When given age-appropriate challenges, children tend to take them very seriously; in fact, the more obvious the risk is, the more cautiously a child will proceed.

Yes, we can make prudent choices as parents, but we can't create an environment where there's zero risk for our children. Not only is that impossible, I don't think it's desirable, either.

Boys should not play with weapons more dangerous than they understand.

You have to be aware. Like, I'm not going to do any downhill skiing. It looks like a whole lot of fun, but I'm not going to risk breaking a leg. I want to be dancing the way I'm dancing now for 30 more years.

Children are not in a position to assess risk and safety; it must be done for them, and it must be done carefully.

...the more risks you allow children to take, the better they learn to take care of themselves. If you never let them take any risks, then I believe they become very prone to injury. Boys should be allowed to climb tall trees and walk along the tops of high walls and dive into the sea from high rocks... The same with girls. I like the type of child who takes risks. Better by far than the one who never does so.

Who knows what crumbling infrastructure lies beneath our sleeping children? Actually, many people do - they pay surveyors to take a look.

I'm the son of a pediatrician, and I do believe that the most important resource we have is our kids. And I think the most important thing for America's future is to invest more in our children.

All children have rights and those rights must be protected.

My son has taken liking for sports and is most of the time playing cricket and football. It is so much fun being with them, as I'm enjoying every phase of motherhood.

It's unfortunate when kids get hurt, but I wish parents would monitor what their kids are doing and watching. It's common sense, really.

My mom didn't let me play tackle until I was in high school. She didn't want me to get hurt.

I used to try and do backflips a lot, but I used to bang my head more often than not, so I gave it up.

Every parent wants to know that their children are protected against those who have a particular agenda until they get old enough to make decisions for themselves.

The evolution of playground equipment has been to this ever safer, less challenging, less interesting assemblies of equipment.

We want kids out in the sunshine, not inside an emergency room.

You don’t play around with the lives of children.

The last thing our children need is less protection.

Today, tomorrow and every day, we will see at least 2,000 young children killed or seriously injured on the world's roads. This is unacceptable, preventable, and we have to stop it. We have the vaccines for this disease: helmets, seatbelts, speed enforcement, safe road design. We just need to use them.

I was a product of the late '70s and early '80s, so when we think of how we're so protective of our kids now, it's sad in a way. I guess what I'm trying to say is that we limit the development of our kids in a way.