Todays playgrounds are just engineered to avoid lawsuitshas nothing to do with exercising the child. At age 85 I still enjoy most of the modern day carnival rides but the swing sets on playgrounds are not comfortable because of the type of seats they have. Merry-go-rounds werescrapped by the dozen. Children may feel insecure when they first climb in our nets, but this is actually what makes the structures even safer. HAHAHAHA! After all, we are the lucky ones. These boys and girls arent just flying high like, perilously close to the steel bars at the top of the structure but there are three swings with two kids each. At Adventure Playgrounds the goal is: as safe as necessary not as safe as possible. This an idea that is more conducive to learning. They'd then run around the pole, leaping and swinging through the air. The undulating and wavelike motion of this playground attraction gleefully brought seasickness ashore. I grew up with these playgrounds and certainly survivedbut looking at them nowwow! At the same time, can we really protect kids from every danger or risk? Should others be held liable for accidents if people CHOOSE to go to the playground? Dec 26, 2016 - Berlin's playgrounds are some of the most physically challenging in the world, and German parents are fine with that. You see it hosting about 40 kids who were up to all kinds of crazy shenanigans including just hanging out 20 feet above the ground. In 1975, a medical journal wrote of some of the danger: The youngest children were at particular risk on equipment such as the wooden rocking horse or roundabout, when the speed of operation could be controlled by older children., Certainly, the adults of the time must have told the kids to be careful. Description. Since this site is all about Americana, it seems fair enough to reflect the history and perspectives of Americans, does it not? Numerous_Recording87 4 mo. (And how did the kid in the flying rings get into that position?! Nope, not at all. RM 2C5WKJE - Three children, siblings comprising a girl and two boys sitting on a park feature hedgehog, Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen in the 1960s Playground equipment in Germany is certified by the TV, the same association that provides German drivers with the equivalent of an MOT or certificate of roadworthiness for vehicles. Once up top, you exited the tube through another oval shaped hole and could walk around a circular platform that went around the outside of the rocket till you got to the slide. 'One of the things that we have noticed is that kids are really good at risk assessing their own behaviour,' she said. We are trying see if we can afford a rope jungle gym nearly 10 metres high (33foot?). Meanwhile, aresearch team based in Houston, Texas, conducted a study over a five year period to determine which kind of play park was most likely to be the location of serious injuries to kids. And climb up. And a teeter-totter was as much fun to walk, or run, up and then down, as it was to actually use it correctly. See vintage ride-on spring horse toys from the 50s to the 80s, Check out these 36 vintage metal swing sets that offered backyard fun for kids, The 1920s lingerie revolution: How women ditched corsets for comfort and freedom, Photos with Santa from decades ago dont really look all that different, See old 1920s Dodge cars from Dodge Brothers, 30 retro-futuristic space-age inventions, including several were still waiting for. Its even worse if the wood is cheap and not cured properly. It stands by its credo: "No parents allowed." 2023 Minute Media - All Rights Reserved. Unfortunately, that runs smack into our culture's habit of underestimating kids, overestimating danger, and hiring trial lawyers. It sort of looks like a minimalist Ikea version of a play structure. This way of making a giant stride keeps the children far apart, the ropes seldom get tangled and it gives the children a much better swing., A similar version, with a long tree trunk as the center. Two people would ride and a third would grab one of the swings inner chain and spin the swings by pulling from the center pole. Would that work on the plastic slide to make it slicker? 'Children need to learn their limitations!'" | The comments below have not been moderated. Sure, the ground was just dirt, but that was probably safer than concrete. November 04, 2021. The modern Witches Hat (called the ocean wave here) are really, really popular as are the spinners (we call them Gally Spins)! I agree that an article about the history of the playground would be a good thing to have on the site but that is not what this story was intended to be. It was rated to hold up to 40 kids or five tons. That's only because all of the merry-go-rounds, and see-saws, and monkey bars have already been uprooted. ClickAmericana.com is made with and by Synchronista LLC 2011-2022. Dont be surprised however, if the comments section is full of people talking about how dangerous that old equipment was. The object should not be affected by this motion at all." Dantonio, who was featured on last month's Syfy Channel documentary, " Aliens on the Moon: The Truth Exposed ," told The Huffington Post in an email that the triangular object in this Germany video should appear to move smoothly through the sky. Ironically, "safety" culture is stunting kids' risk assessing abilities, in their estimation. But back in the day, playground proprietors combined both into one. Berlin's playgrounds are some of the most physically challenging in the world, and German parents are fine with that. If scaling the Triitopia looks risky, that is the point: built in 2018, the climbing tower in Berlin-Frohnaus Ludwig Lesser Park is emblematic of a trend that has accelerated in Germany over the last five years. (Millenniums lol). (Photos from the Seattle Municipal Archives Collection). I was trying to describe 21 and 22 to my kids and to my surprise I was spot-on with the description when I found the pictures here. Since the. That happened once almost ended me becoming a women, LOL!. Each year, about 200,000 children end up with playground injuries serious enough to land them in the emergency room. 4. They often say with a smile, I dont know how we survived. The heights. None of this stuff actually seems that dangerous by comparison. The name came from the fire pole mounted down the center of the structure, allowing tykes to drop around 15 feet to an unpadded concrete slab underneath. Welcome to the Coronation! The following video from Germany is disturbingly brutal. The kids are having a great time but if that boy keeps going, he might go right over the top. And whenever they do use them they use them in their own risky ways like climbing on the roofs above the slide tops. I did a lot of research, and also spent plenty of time on hot slides and huge jungle gyms. It sort of looks like a minimalist Ikea version of a play structure. This old piece which looks kind of like giant knitting needles functioned like a teeter-totter, except you hung on from below instead of sitting on it. Natural selection was alive and well until it began being gradually legislated away in the 1970s. Germany is often perceived to be a politically and economically risk-averse nation, where everyday life is regulated by a strict regime of rules and regulations. Still dangerous, but smaller, single sets, not these big communal ones. 11 items. The next week, that piece of play equipment was replaced. Tail end of the BOOMERS here am so glad I didnt miss the adventure! Find out more here. Actually, that was great fun too! One of my favorite stunts was to climb one of the 12 tall pipes on the swing set and sit on top. They would rather find a nice ditch and play with some bricks and wooden lats than slide down the 5 feet plastic slides twice in a row. posted by Sequence at 6:46 PM on March 10, 2018 [2 favorites] . The seat was retrieved by the next hearty soul with the help of a rope. Yes, I do. Emma Camp Prince Harry shares struggles to be his 'authentic true self' growing up, saying he felt pressures to 'come As Prince Harry says he felt like the film 'the boy in the bubble' before having therapy, who was What will the next pandemic be? July 6, 2022 Over 100,000 German translations of English words and phrases. 'The spongy surface really just teaches them that the ground is soft, which, of course, it's not. Note: ClickAmericana.com features authentic historical information, and is not intended to represent current best practices on any topic, particularly with regard to health and safety. The worst example was in Jr. High when kids all had to climb the wooden pegboard or burlap rope up to the 50 ft ceiling. Material on this site is provided for purposes of education, criticism, commentary, cultural reporting, entertainment, historical reference, and news reporting/analysis. The big problem with wood log play equipment is that it rots within a relatively short period of time making it not only dangerous and unstable, but expensive to repair. Required fields are marked *. Then check out these people in the 1920s taking it to the next level. The other kids acted quickly, though, and pulled him up possibly saving his life. Still my most favorite memories are from that park and especially that swing. Playgrounds have become a ubiquitous part of the urban environment in Germany. Neuland-Park 65 Parks Playgrounds By Hawen12 Has big events too. Towering over a woodland playground on the northernmost outskirts of Berlin, the Triitopia climbing frame is the kind to cause worry in any anxious parent. Now heres the same kind of old-school structure as shown above, but at this old playground in Boston, it was made out of wood. Playscapes' friend Lianne sent through this climbing thicket in Munich German as a follow-on to the Florian Aigner post; she says it is at the intersection of Untersbergstrae & Weienseestrae in Munich. Still like a good swing in my 70s. Video. The landscape is gorgeous. Variations of this type of log swing survived into the early 1970s, but today multi-person swings are frowned upon because of their great mass and the risk of catastrophic impact injuries [PDF]. Nowadays, a slide this size would be unacceptable without safety precautions. This article was so fun to read and I love the pictures! Readers who are sensitive to violent imagery may want to skip watching it, and just read the transcript. Heres how one of these playgrounds looked minus the kids. Way up. Playgrounds are intended to be fun, safe places to take children to visit and play. Sign in Home In 2019, a family that had sued the Howell Township, New Jersey, school district when their daughter fell off the slide and broke her arm won a settlement of $170,000. The Jungle Gym was still the most common name for the metal apparatus found in parks and school recess areas in the 1960s, all metal. This brings back good and bad memories, grew up in England and then Canada in 50s and 60s. My friend Siobhan is a New York native who moved to Germany. With equipment that made a mockery of the universal conditions of gravity and physics, the schoolyards of the early 20th century were a treacherous labyrinth of concussion and contusion. Lawyers and regulators have all but killed the traditional Jungle Gym, a piece of playground equipment that was tall and unforgiving of mistakes. Lenore Skenazyis president of Let Grow, a nonprofit promoting childhood independence and resilience, and founder of the Free-Range Kids movement. LATE 1970S//EARLY TO MID 1980S WOOD LOG PLAYGROUNDS WERE COOL BETTER THEN THE HIGH TEC FANCY ONES THAY HAVE IN-TODAYS WORLD. Abenteuerlicher Bauspielplatz Kolle 37. Sure, we dont want playgrounds so dangerous they regularly cause injury, but, at the same time, is not life about using your freedom and taking individual risks? 3. Those tall metal slides were still around in the 80s. However, we had a solution to the problem; us boys would take our shirts off and slide down on our shirts. German Translation of " playground" | The official Collins English-German Dictionary online. Im on a Village council here in the UK and in the process of updating one of our play areas. A kid could easily climb out and hang off the side (which we sometimes did!) General Playground Equipments Fire Chief Pyramid-Type Climbing Structure was from the pre-lawsuit heyday and considered a top-of-the-line attraction in 1940. This is basically a fancy name for three ten-foot ladders stuck together. The whole thing was maybe six feet at the tallest point. You might even get someone who disagrees with your subject matter and strongly thinks your article should be about all the injuries kids suffered from playing on that old equipment. Covered as much as shorts under dresses do now. Also, if you didnt like the subject matter, feel free to write an article that is more pleasing to you. Cloud, Minn., sends the following description: A giant stride made by placing a hind wheel of a wagon on top of an Idaho cedar pole in the same way in which you would put a wheel on a wagon. Less adventurous riders may stay on until the old cat dies, according to the ad copy. Girls are more prone to playground-related injuries than boys (55% to 45%, respectively). Thanks for your feedback, and Im sorry you didnt like this article content. The UKs national standards body, the British Standards Institute, by contrast, does not inspect playgrounds but outsources the job to private companies, which can lead to a culture of box-ticking. It's important to note that there is no mention of cultural enrichment in this documentary. | Boomer parents believed it was too dangerous for the kids they raised. This article was great! His family was awarded $15 million. It comes as Rebecca Faulkner, an executive from New York based non-profit researcher play:groundNYC, said soft landing areas and spongy floors don't help kids to learn that their actions have consequences. ago. Here is what they were up way up to back in 1900-1910 at Trinity Play Park in Dallas, Texas. These spinny things ended up lasting and being loved for decades. When you are looking out for broken glass and metal, do a quick sweep for other animals that could potentially harm your child. Thank you for the pictures. The playground equipment taught us to be more thoughtful and to think at least one step ahead. I do think kids are too wrapped up in bubble wrap today. All sorts of stunts, too numerous to mention, may be performed on this apparatus, says the 1929 catalog. Defined in addition to minimum requirements for rails and barriers were maximum fall heights and the form of impact attenuation material required under equipment. The other was the teeter totter. David Khler, whose company has built playgrounds and rope-based spiderweb structures in Germany since the 1970s, told the Guardianhe has pushed for more challenging structures to be built for years. So much for survival of the fittest. I was a small kid, and the person at the other end was always heavier than me and would keep me up in the air threatening me that they would jump off and let me bang back down to earth. Now, perhaps it's up to us to let our kids play with a bit more abandon, and be willing to encourage them to test themselves, even if it means failing and falling. And that's a long way to fall. ', This climbing tower, built in 2018 in Ludwig Lesser Park in Berlin, is an example of a growing trend of new playgrounds designed to force kids to conquer difficult obstacles while managing risk, TheLudwig Lesser Park still has some play areas that are less dangerous intended for small children, but more play parks in Germany are being built with danger in mind. We also had a long metal slide (which got really fast when kids used the wax paper used to wrap sandwiches on it!) In my view, it is good that playgrounds are safer now but there are drawbacks to not allowing for the freedom of individual risk-taking. One day, when my daughter and some friends were playing, one of the smaller boys fell through the space where the log had been, and his head got stuck. They combined their last names to. Its fascinating to look at the old playgrounds and how adventurous they were. Sorry lady, just because it didnt happen to you, or in front of you, doesnt mean it didnt happen fairly regularly to others. I run a memory program for aging seniors and they LOVE to talk about the playgrounds from the old days. "play:groundNYC is 50,000 square feet of magic," says executive director Rebecca Faulkner. Starz' long-planned Dangerous Liaisons TV series is set to film outside Prague, from 6 April for 25 weeks.. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. German Insurance Companies Demand Perilous Playgrounds So That Kids Can Learn About Risk "This is fantastic progress in understanding childhood as the right time for children to learn to. Professor. From my elementary school, which just closed. My father fell off a jungle gym in about 1941 and injured his knee. There were no lawsuits are calls to tear down the equipment. Its kind of hard to imagine four times as many packed in there. They were flat boards, on long chains, that you could jump from at the apex of your swing. Instagram's algorithms would have shown Molly Russell Two children killed at sleepover are laid to rest two days Isabel Oakeshott receives 'menacing' message from Matt Hancock, Dozens stuck in car park as staff refuses to open gate for woman, Incredible footage of Ukrainian soldiers fighting Russians in Bakhmut, Pro-Ukrainian drone lands on Russian spy planes exposing location, 'Buster is next!' Note: ClickAmericana.com features authentic historical information, and is not intended to represent current best practices on any topic, particularly with regard to health and safety, but also in terms of outdated cultural depictions and social values. You probably werent even there, so how would you know. Thanks for the memories. What this pyramid-style jungle gym and a fire chief had in common is anyones guess. This won't come as a huge surprise to any toddler parents out there, but falls account for over 75 percent of all playground-related injuries, per the Children's Safety Network. Todays playgrounds by comparison seem sterile- safe, but boring as heck. A sign urges parents to take off their childrens cycle helmets in order to eliminate a strangulation risk. The National Playground Safety Institute (NPSI), a program developed under the National Recreation and Park Association (NRPA), identified twelve of the leading causes of injury on playgrounds known as "The Dirty Dozen."These dangers include improper protective surfacing, inadequate use zones, and . The Berliner Seilfabrik company manufactures climbing frames and play equipment . This was created so kids could have nice, safe fun? But that doesnt negate the premise of the story. The Panzer 38(t), originally designated as the KD LT vz. We asked the experts - and their answers will terrify you Five unexpected signs in your 20s and 30s you're at risk of developing heart disease later in life. The playground which consists of large bluestone climbable boulders, a metal slide, and a drinking fountain, all situated on platforms with wheels opened today on the corner of Southbank Boulevard and Kavanagh Street in Southbank. Great compilation! This playground contraption, built by Everwear Manufacturing Company, looked reminiscent of a teeter totterexcept it had the unique ability to leap forward (or backward) and whack its unsuspecting victims.