5 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kids so
GEVER TULLY: 5 DANGEROUS THINGS YOU SHOULD LET YOUR KIDS DO
Welcome to "Five Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Children Do." I don't have children. I borrow my friends' children, so (Laughter) take all this advice with a grain of salt.I'm Gever Tulley. I'm a contract computer scientist by trade, but I'm the founder of something called the Tinkering School. It's a summer program which aims to help kids to learn how to build the things that they think of. So we build a lot of things. And I do put power tools into the hands of second-graders. So if you're thinking about sending your kid to Tinkering School, they do come back bruised, scraped and bloody. So, you know, we live in a worldthat's subjected to ever more stringent child safety regulations. There doesn't seem to be any limit on how crazy child safety regulations can get. We put suffocation warnings on all the -- on every piece of plastic film manufactured in the United States or for sale with an item in the United States. We put warnings on coffee cups to tell us that the contents may be hot. And we seem to think that any item sharper than a golf ball is too sharp for children under the age of 10.
So where does this trend stop? When we round every corner and eliminate every sharp object, every pokey bit in the world, then the first time that kids come in contact with anything sharp or not made out of round plastic, they'll hurt themselves with it. So, as the boundaries of what we determine as the safety zone grow ever smaller, we cut off our children from valuable opportunities to learn how to interact with the world around them. And despite all of our best efforts and intentions, kids are always going to figure out how to do the most dangerous thing they can, in whatever environment they can. So despite the provocative title, this presentation is really about safety and about some simple things that we can do to raise our kids to be creative, confident and in control of the environment around them.
Welcome to "Five Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Children Do." I don't have children. I borrow my friends' children, so (Laughter) take all this advice with a grain of salt.I'm Gever Tulley. I'm a contract computer scientist by trade, but I'm the founder of something called the Tinkering School. It's a summer program which aims to help kids to learn how to build the things that they think of. So we build a lot of things. And I do put power tools into the hands of second-graders. So if you're thinking about sending your kid to Tinkering School, they do come back bruised, scraped and bloody. So, you know, we live in a worldthat's subjected to ever more stringent child safety regulations. There doesn't seem to be any limit on how crazy child safety regulations can get. We put suffocation warnings on all the -- on every piece of plastic film manufactured in the United States or for sale with an item in the United States. We put warnings on coffee cups to tell us that the contents may be hot. And we seem to think that any item sharper than a golf ball is too sharp for children under the age of 10.
So where does this trend stop? When we round every corner and eliminate every sharp object, every pokey bit in the world, then the first time that kids come in contact with anything sharp or not made out of round plastic, they'll hurt themselves with it. So, as the boundaries of what we determine as the safety zone grow ever smaller, we cut off our children from valuable opportunities to learn how to interact with the world around them. And despite all of our best efforts and intentions, kids are always going to figure out how to do the most dangerous thing they can, in whatever environment they can. So despite the provocative title, this presentation is really about safety and about some simple things that we can do to raise our kids to be creative, confident and in control of the environment around them.