Interesting video.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/gever_tulley_on_5_dangerous_things_for_kids.html
Basically as near as I can tell the guy is teaching city kids how to be country kids! I like it.
Heres how a country Dad goes a step further on some of them…
- Fire…teach them how to put it out, with either water, or extinguishers
- pocket knifes…teach how to sharpen, and oil.
- Driving a car/pickup…the whole car thing is way important to country folk…teach how to turn off the key, I was taught that so if Dad didn’t notice the ditch or fence I could stop the rig…(kids drive, dad feeds hay off back) If dad gets hurt the kids also know how to drive dad to help.
- Why wouldn’t you let your kids take stuff apart???
I’ll add this one… - Firearm safety…for us it really goes without saying. I take my kids hunting all the time and I’ve done this since they could walk, they know exactly what a bullet does to flesh, not what happens on video games. I started out with BB-guns, then onto pellet guns, then .22’s then when old enough and after Hunters Safety, the big game calibers and shotguns. We didn’t get into handguns at all. In fact I didn’t even touch a pistol untill I was in the military. Dad had a few but he kept’em hid. Muzzle control is so important and with a shorter barrel kids usually end up waving them around accidentally. For my family, pistols may come earlier than they did with me but definately will require much more training for them.-WW
I kind of have been doing some of this but maybe need to lighten up some… My son is 5. When I was 5, 37 years ago, I could run around the neighborhood without fear. When I was 8 I was out climbing this steep mountain with my friend (only a few hundred feet tall but steep and full of shale).
Now we don’t allow our kids out in the front yard without someone watching for fear of a loony showing up and making off with the kid. It is hard to know where to lighten up and where not too.
Maybe I will let him try the car bit, and when we go camping, he can “play” with fire…
I think my parents did a lot of this without even thinking.
What is sad is reading all the dumb comments.
He’s absolutely right about “child safety”. I build schools for a living, and all you have to do to get an issue pushed through is to say “it’s a safety issue” and nobody wants to argue.
Any kid that hasn’t had stitches by 10 and broken a bone by 15 is a pussy.
Crap… Can I exchange broken bones for torn joints and burns? 
My local ER knew me by name from about 5 through 14, thanks god that was 25 years ago or my parents would have probably ended up in prison for neglect. When in fact, I was just a country kid who enjoyed doing stupid scary stuff.
200+ stitches
both ankles
collar bone
wrist
ribs
mucho concussions
all by the time I was old enough to get my driving permit. Good times.
I’m quickly reaching the conclusion that in this day and age it’s nigh on to impossible to raise a proper son in a city, and that a daughter is missing out on a lot of good experiences too. I’m not sure a boy can grow into a man when you keep him caged in a fenced backyard surrounded by asphalt, concrete, and brick.
I grew up in the country. We were never a “farm” (dad is a mechanic, and the countless days at his shop were a treasure worth their own thread), but at some point or another, we raised 3 calves, a sheep, 2 goats, and about eleventy-hundred chickens. There’s nothing like the experience a child gets from hatching baby chicks or taking responsibility for bottle-feeding a calf. Not to mention at any given time, there were probably some lizards, frogs, crawdads, baby cottontails, or who knows what else we’d caught, around the house. Nature and wildlife weren’t a once a year camping or hunting trip, they were just a part of everyday life.
Free time was spent outdoors, in the woods, along the creek, or at least in the yard. The hatchet, saw, and .22 rifle were constant companions from an early age and were as natural to me as a skateboard and basketball to any city kid. I built more forts and dug more foxholes than I could ever go back and count. I played with fire. I built small “bombs” out of disassembled fireworks. And yes, I killed a small furry woodland creature or two. Oddly enough, I’ve grown up with no interest in hunting, really. I made it through that rite of passage long ago.
I progressed from a bike, beat up old go-cart, to a “free to good home” mini four wheeler, to a 4x4. I learned drive in my dad’s lap long before I could reach the pedals, and I learned to drive a manual tranny smoothly before getting turned loose on the road. Keys and a pasture were a far better teacher than driver’s ed.
People asked if I was missing out by not having a neighborhood full of kids to play with. Maybe so. I could have learned my life lessons from the neighborhood thugs in the park. I could always have been just another overweight, video-game addicted boy with sports figures for heroes. Like many “men” today, I probably still would be.
The 11 year old spent the entire weekend playing Wolds of Dorkcraft with his two fatbody friends.
Baby Jesus wept.
Case and point why I’m moving our family to Tennessee.
LOL. I can’t imagine you didn’t say anything?