By Ola Roks

Kids these days are so sheltered from the world. In my days as a child living in Munich, the kindergarten teacher would hack butts in the park as we wailed down a steep grass hill on these big yellow bouncy ball things. I am not talking like one or two kids at a time, I am talking like thirty rowdy four-year-olds, bouncing down a sharp incline, one trying to get ahead of the other in a race to the bottom of the hill.

Nowadays this would not be possible. I only know this because quite a few of my friends are school teachers and they tell me all kinds of fascinating stories about how these days you can’t eat peanuts at school or how they play dodge-ball with soft foam balls so no one gets hurt during gym class.

I am sorry, but back in grade school, a peanut allergy was rare in a classroom. People like that were considered freaks of nature and told to sit on the opposite end of the classroom while the teacher enjoyed her peanut-laden Nutri-Slim diet bars during lunchtime.

We played dodge-ball with Spalding basketballs, and it was both a survival mechanism and character-building activity – you knew you had to get the hell out of the way or suffer the consequences. Foam balls don’t do anything to teach kids to avoid pain.

Nowadays parents won’t even let their kids play lawn darts or horseshoes or poke a stick in a campfire because they’re afraid they might hurt themselves. It’s a shame really, because children are curious by nature, and should be allowed to investigate their curiosities while under some sort of supervision.

I remember being a kid, sitting on my dad’s lap pretending to steer the car while he was driving. Britney Spears does it with her son, gets photographed and suddenly she is the anti-Christ of parenting. Give me a break.

There was a time when seat belt rules did not apply to the passengers sitting in the back of the vehicle. My brother and I would just slide on the back seat from one side of the car to the other, while dad weaved in and out of traffic talking with a giant mobile telephone nested between his shoulder and his ear, smoking a cigarette with the one free hand that wasn’t on the steering wheel.

Times have changed. I feel old saying that. I look around at the little   people that are going to take my place in the future as a positive contribution to society and I can see that things are done very differently in raising them these days.

There are far too many barriers put up to cushion children from the realities of life. We should let kids poke the fire and investigate and play Red Rover to their little hearts’ content. They’re going to do stupid things anyway, let them learn on their own, experience is the best teacher after all.