Have a look at this article http://www.irishexaminer...ll-should-be-385878.html Be interested on peoples views.

A very worrying article. At first reading about a sex case in Victorian times I thought I had gone to the wrong link, but apparently this was a precursor to a story on how things were better in the good old days? My wife's Granddad is also blind in one eye. Also the result of a childhood accident, again 50 or so years ago. I can honestly say in the twenty years I have known him this subject has never come up. However, it would be wrong of me to assume that because he doesn't talk about it, it doesn't bother him. That he didn't and doesn't still grieve the loss of his eye. That it hasn't made his life difficult in the intervening years adjusting to this. He has learnt to live with it because he has had to. I think assuming that because someone doesn't talk about something then it means they are quite happy about it is a very dangerous practice. Especially so in an article which talks initially of a man who was "a randy old goat who fathered children right, left, and centre before being accused by the daughter of a colleague of seducing her under chloroform."

I can just hear my mother (who was Irish incidentally) saying, 'you will have someone's eye out with that' or 'you'll catch your death' going outside with wet hair. Those concrete slabs under the swings did hurt when you fell of them though, I mean falling of the top bar of the swing trying to be clever and showing off, still have the scars to show for it. Last summer I went out looking for my 7 year old daughter for her 'tea' and found her up a tree with her pals, initial thought was to shout at her to get down...... then I remembered my childhood.

Still carry my scars, so visible after many decades after tumbling off a two wheel scooter and hitting a kerb stone (funny I don't seem to recall further excursions on scooters after that even when the kids got them as presents). Thankfully all grown up well before last Christmases exploding hover boards (and at least two known casualties - one a broken nose, the other a broken collarbone both of whom had turned 30). You are always a kid (at heart) it is only society, law and the march of time that marks you out as an adult.

An entertaining piece of Irish philosophy? Trying to compare yesterday with today is always a tricky path isn’t it? For me, it is important to remind myself that kids have to learn how to survive in the world they live in and NOT the world we grew up in. Does the fact that I never climbed a tree, never fell from a swing in the playground, never nearly drowned in a river, never broke a single bone, never got accosted by anyone and never went behind the bike sheds with anyone make me any less safe in my life? I don’t think so. We learnt about/experienced the dangers primarily from our peers, then school elders, then parents and teachers. Some of us then took risks, some didn’t. I don’t think it is any different for kids today. The dangers may have changed but not the process. I think the work related message here is that the recognition of danger and promotion of sensible risk control is a fundamental part of human development. So is there a safer way to climb the tree rather than don’t climb trees. However, we must also remember that there is no need for everyone to climb a tree and those that don’t will not be any less safe as a result. If we can encourage that approach in kids then they will have the right experience as they move into the world of work.

Only nearly died once in my childhood while sliding along the Victorian 'ruined aqueduct' above Chatsworth House. I did manage to stop about two feet from the end. Never went any higher up a tree than the very top; it would have been dangerous to go further. I'm still here and so are most of the people I grew up with (though even though I'm only in my 50s I have heard of a couple of deaths...). It's not H&S that's cosseted kids though. It's something to do with stranger danger and something to do with increased car ownership. And the idea that parents have to be their kids' best friends. Take my partners sister; she's forever driving her kids to this trampolining class and that ballet class and whatever. Their whole lives are regimented and almost entirely lived indoors or in cars. I think the only time they actually just go for a walk is when they visit Granny in Derbyshire. And this is despite the fact that they live about 300 yards from open country on the South Downs. And (partly) because people are driving their kids everywhere the roads are much busier than they were when I was younger, which adds to the perceived risk of letting them run wild and free. Where I live is not on a road to anywhere, and in summer kids, even young ones, play out. It's nice to see. We haven't got kids of our own, so I'm not judging; I have no idea how we would have behaved. It's just a set of flawed and partial observations, John