Megan McArdle 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.

...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.

No child wants to fall off a jungle gym or slide. Accidents are an unfortunate fact of life, but to lower every last slide and jungle gym to a height that would only interest a toddler is doing our children a grave disservice.

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

If Luna Marie is at the park, my child is not happy unless she's on the highest bar of the jungle gym or the tallest branch of a tree or jumping over the biggest, deepest hole.

Toddlers need to get off the soccer field and onto the playground. Children need to get out of the gym and into neighborhood stickball games. We need to give kids room to create their own rules, set their own terms, and move their bodies in their own ways.

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.

Play is as necessary to the perfect development of a child as sunshine is to the perfect development of a plant.

Children are very overprotected now, in lots of ways. We're very nervous about them. You know, people go, "Don't go outside! Or inside! Get into the cupboard with some spinach!" When I was a child they'd kick you out and you weren't expected to come back until there were bats!

In an era of parental paranoia, lawsuit mania and testing frenzy, we are failing to inspire our children's curiosity, creativity, and imagination. We are denying them opportunities to tinker, discover, and explore - in short, to play.

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.

I've always felt this, from when I was growing up to now with my son Riley. We don't let them be little. I was not a normal kid, but I had a sense of innocence far longer than we let kids.

I don't like Las Vegas. I'd rather be mountain biking or climbing.

I was really active as a kid. I was outdoors constantly.

We're so preoccupied with protecting children from disappointment and discomfort that we're inadvertently excusing them from growing up.

I never played inside as a kid - even in the rain I'd go out.

Children need to move to develop their brain; it's a natural urge. That's why boys will run after a ball and play soccer despite how many video games are available to them, and they can't help themselves from building with Lego bricks as well. They want to be creating something that's uniquely their own.

I've always been adventurous. In the summertime, my mom would lock me outside of the house and say, 'Do something, and come back later.'

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

I'm not a daredevil. I don't fly without a safety net.

I was always being athletic, climbing trees and running after boys, just being trouble. It was always in me.

I don't like taking physical risks at all. I take a lot of emotional risks, and I don't feel like I need to get on a bike or a horse or jump off of anything ever.

It's important to let kids be themselves and to let them make mistakes. Self-discovery goes a long way.

Mom would say, 'Get out of the house,' and we would just go. We had all sorts of large swings and flying foxes and various death traps throughout the forest that we'd try and do our best to hurt ourselves on. It was a great childhood in terms of being creative, I think.