I didn't read all the responses here but mostly agree with the article. However, the part about safety kind of grated on my nerves. There are some precautions that we take now as parents that weren't done 30 years ago. WE survived lying in the back on our parents' station wagon with no seatbelt on, but we were lucky. A lot of kids weren't. The precautions that we take now are there for a reason, and a lot of them aren't difficult. 10 seconds or 30 seconds can save a life.
DS fractured his skull snow tubing. In the PICU the neurosurgeon told me he should have been wearing a helmet. DS was unconscious for about 6 hours and his eyes were pointed in 2 different directions when he woke up, but the neurosurgeon told us he was lucky, he had another kid who was in much worse shape after sledding. No one else on that hill had on a helmet so we would have looked like weirdos being the only one putting helmets on our kids. But if we had taken 30 seconds to slap a helmet on his head we could have saved ourselves and DS about 8 months of drama. He had brain damage, and with the type of fracture he had he could have died or gone into a vegetative state if he had smacked his head just a little bit harder. We still don't know if he is completely recovered a year later. Now whenever I hear of anyone going snow tubing I get a bit of PTSD and launch into a lecture about how dangerous it is and how kids should have helmets, there should be lanes so no collisions with other tubes, etc. I have become more helicopterish and I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing if it prevents another accident.
