This is unbelievable

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061018/ap_on_fe_st/playground_tag_ban

A school in Massachusetts is BANNING TAG and all other unsupervised games during recess.

They have banned TAG, people. TAG.

You know what? Kids are supposed to run around and sometimes they RUN INTO EACHOTHER. And sometimes somebody gets a skinned knee and sometimes a bloody nose (although I myself went out to recess on a completely paved parking lot with not a patch of grass or spongy padding covering it, and we played all kinds of running around games, and hanging upside down from the monkey bars games, and swing as high as you can games, and I have to say, the skinned knees were plentiful, but, the bloody noses were pretty few and far between.)

Skinned knees are not the end of the world. (Unless your child has some kind of bleeding disorder.)

What are these children supposed to do at recess? Play chess? I like to think that my child might be engaging in spontaneous, child-directed frolicking during recess, but, evidently that's just a little too dangerous.

When did we start micro-managing our children's lives to the point where they cannot chase eachother around on the playground??

I have a modest proposal.

This afternoon. After school. Open the door. Shove your children outside (assuming you do not live in a neighborhood populated with submachine gun toting felons or sidewalks covered with broken glass and used condoms - probably in such neighborhoods, shoving your child outside is not a great idea). Tell them not to set one foot in the in the road for fear of whatever your most dreadful punishment is. And let them PLAY. With other kids. Alone. Like kids are supposed to do.

LM