Elisabeth’s Right On

I know you thought you’d never hear these words from me, but I agree with Elisabeth Hasselbeck’s take on the banning of tag and other “aggressive” playground play.

One of the lessons I’ve taken from Randy Pausch, the man who’s teaching us how to boldly face down death by focusing on life with The Last Lecture, is: If you wait long enough everyone will show you they have positive value.

I don’t usually agree with Elisabeth. But, on the issue of aggresive playground play, including tag which has recently been outlawed at recess in many areas – I 100% agree.

Why are we expecting children to grow up without bruises, scrapes or bumps?

When I was in elementary school there was no playground equipment for a while. They made a really big hill of dirt. We called it The Mountain and found a million ways to hold hands and propel, twirl, roll, hop, skip and push each other off The Mountain. This all ended the second some kid broke an arm. We were no longer allowed to play on the hill.

As children we knew the value of being allowed to continue our play outweighed the risk of broken bones.

Why can’t adults get that simple concept?

Joy’s idea that we should approach 3 year olds with psychoanalysis and role reversal is simply stupid. Sometimes we do need to step back and let kids work stuff out for themselves.

Elisabeth’s idea that children work out their problems on the playground and that kids benefit from aggressive play and learn to get along in this hand-ons way is right on. I too think kids do learn something from being bullied, teased or and getting knocked around a little.

We want to limit and supervise it, but like Elisabeth, I don’t think restricting all aggressive and active play is a good way to handle childhood. Don’t we already have enough problems with lazy children who only watch tv and play video games?

As Whoopi said, YOU call it fighting. THEY are playing!

There. See? Randy was right, I can agree with everyone about at least one thing.