No one is surprised to hear that safety is important to Swedes. After all, the first 3-point seat belt was first put into production for cars in the Volvo PV444 in 1959. But there are moments when I think that the devotion to safety extends beyond the fair margin to allow for Darwin Award nominees. (OK, no I don’t really go that far with the thought but I do consider it occasionally.)
There’s just too much dependence on helmets if you ask me (I know you’re not asking, it’s an expression). Let’s just take winter sports for kids. There are different helmets for ice skating, skiing and sledding, though the unhip kid would have one for all three of those activities. But don’t think for a minute any of those would pass for playing ice hockey. Oh no.
From an American liability perspective (we are rather sue-happy) I completely sympathize with the schools’ insisting that children wear helmets playing on ice and snow while in their care, but to see children sledding down a gently sloping hill with not a tree nor pole in sight wearing crash helmets does make me giggle. OK ok, better safe than sorry, but I do think there are moments when you can be a little risqué.
On a positive note, I’m rather glad that I’m surrounded by a devotion to safety. After living here I can’t imagine riding in a car, whichever seat I end up in, without wearing my seat belt and our kids don’t pedal a step without their helmets.
And I always have my helmet on skydiving.
Rather to be safe than sorry I would say.
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I agree with “rather safe than sorry”, but you can very easily become too safe, to the point where kids have no immune system against the weakest of germs and then everything just goes downhill from there.
Kids need to be able to get properly dirty – like jump in a mud puddle dirty – so they can be exposed to simple germs and build up their immune system against them. If you keep someone in a sterile environment all their lives, as soon as something strange gets in there they’ll be floored by the impact it has on their body.
Kids also need to get hurt sometimes. Not necessarily break an arm or leg hurt, but enough to know where their physical limits are. If you watch kids grow up, you’ll see that they have this instinctive behaviour to push boundaries and see what they can do. Telling a kid to not do something because he could get hurt can stifle that natural development. I’m not saying don’t tell him anything and let him break an arm, still warn the child that what he’s going to do could cause pain if he’s not careful. But don’t wrap him up in bubble wrap every time he steps foot outside.
By the time my youngest brother was 5, he’d lost 4 toe nails, 3 finger nails off the same finger, had stitches in his forehead, a broken collar bone, and too many cuts and bruises to count. “Poor kid, he’s traumatised!”… Actually, he’s a very bright and intelligent 12 year old now, who knows what he can and cannot do, and how to be safe by himself.
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Oh, I forgot to add, he never gets sick either, unless it’s really, really bad.
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@Monica and Sarah. I see both sides of this and agree on both sides too. I’d rather err on the side of safety but I completely agree with Sarah’s point that learning it the hard way prepares us for life in another way.
I never once sterilized baby stuff before making formula (not the bottles/nipples/water) and only cleaned baby things as I’d clean anything else (dish soap). Pacifiers which fell on the ground gets the grit brushed off (unless there’s a more obvious foreign substance involved.)
I probably had a good amount of dirt enter my system while growing up including trips as a child to 3rd world countries and a bout of Montezuma’s revenge as a teen during a trip to Mexico. As a result I see that I almost never get more than a bit of an upset stomach when we travel but the Swedish husband can be bedridden requiring anti-biotics.
As for helmets. There seems to be a national collective effort to bully everyone in Sweden to use a helmet regardless of the risk value. I don’t wear a helmet if I’m biking around town but if I were participating in more off road biking I wouldn’t think of not wearing one. And most definitely the kids wear helmets on bikes. The funny thing is that when you see the kids with helmets on riding they’re often not on properly anyway (sometimes plopped on top of a very wooley hat) or the helmets are rather heavy and then perhaps setting the kid up for whiplash.
I watched my 2½-year old sliding down the ice slide today in the custody of dagis. She had to wear a big ole helmet which I watched “in use” a few times. The thing is that we slide down the same hill in the afternoons without the helmet and she never bangs her head because she can hold it up and control it better. I see the need for the day care people to depend on the equipment but I advocate evaluating the circumstances and making the decisions based on each need…and not blindly as is recommended.
BB
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All good valued points. I grew up in the 70’s where helmets and seatbelts were not required and my brother and I turned out just fine. But at the same time it does depend on the each individual situation and what type of event one is going to participate in in order to determine what if any safety equipment is recommended or required. Thanks for the story.
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A great article I must say, you have shared a great source of knowledge.
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