Don’t Play Tag
Or My Parents Might Sue You
By Daniel Muniz

Out of fear of liability, elementary schools have slowly begun to curb many of the childhood games that have been played for generations like touch football and even tag. It was bound to happen because bureaucratic governmental entities like public schools make easy targets for trial lawyers who want to exploit a settlement. In addition, there are parents who support such bans since they are terrified of allowing their children to grow up as children because they see a game of tag as being physically dangerous.

But in this litigious environment that we live in, playgrounds were the first to change.

In all truthfulness, change is not necessarily a bad thing because safety is actually a very good enhancement, especially when young children are involved. For instance, placing a barrier around a playground set and filling it with mulch or sand makes sense because it can act as a cushion to break the fall of a child. Common sense requirements are a good thing when they are properly implemented.

Unfortunately, red tape has also turned playgrounds upside down.

For instance, in the school district I live in, it cost taxpayers at one elementary school $116,000 to install only $8,500 worth of equipment. The bureaucracy for projects like this is bogus and shamefully wasteful but needed so that it can soothe the conscience of personal injury attorneys and construction companies. The likelihood of a kid getting cut or bruised is now greatly reduced but the result is that playgrounds are becoming cost prohibitive instead of just being an area where a lot of children can expend their energy and have fun.

Sadly, such outrageous administrative costs are now becoming the norm across the country because playgrounds have to be lawsuit proof if they are ever to be installed. Such a prerequisite will continue to make them more expensive.

But now the next target became the actual playtime of children.

The reason is because the way that a personal injury attorney sees it is that if something happens at a school, then it is the school’s fault even if a kid got hurt while playing a game of Nerf football or tag. And to a trial lawyer, a governmental entity like a public school is the perfect organization to file a lawsuit against. Regrettably, our court system allows nonsense like this to exist so trial lawyers are emboldened to seek out more frivolous lawsuits.

As a result, elementary schools are simply beginning to ban any kind of play time that involves running around.

Heaven forbid but a kid might trip and fall down and scrape his knee or perhaps she will run into another classmate while playing tag. But he or she will definitely not get injured if they are doing something sedentary like playing a card game of UNO instead. It is really a shame that our public school system must now be fearful of being sued because children are playing normal games and behaving in a normal fashion.

But far worse, such a legal atmosphere is poisonous to future generations if kids have to be micromanaged like this. What other kind of lawsuit paranoia must we now be aware of?

One particular elementary school teacher once explained to me that her first year of teaching was the hardest. She saw so many children behave the way that kids normally behave when they are playing. That is, lots of them got banged up in collisions with obstacles or with each other that resulted in of plenty of scrapes and bruises. But by the following year, that same teacher then told me that she got over it because she realized that kids are not as fragile as some parents make them out to be. In fact, they are pretty resilient.

And with my own children, I do feel bad that cuts and abrasions do happen and like any parent, I prefer for it not to take place at all. But on the same token, I don’t want my children to miss out on their childhood or with growing up. Yes, my children may have to get a bandage or they may even have to be taken to the doctor but at least they are experiencing life as a normal kid instead of being sheltered from every conceivable mishap.

Think about it; out of the hundreds of millions of people who were once children, it was natural to play games that involved running around. In that time, no parent ever considered filing a lawsuit because their kid fell down while playing tag.

Consequently, it is time for us as a society to conquer our fear.

For the parents who feel that their kids should go through life without any scrapes and bruises, they just have to get over their paranoia. Hundreds of millions of us went through our share of cuts and abrasions but this country survived it just fine. Just keep a box of band-aids handy. But if a parent still wants to completely shelter their kids from any possible fun, that is fine but don’t impose it on the rest of us.

As for lawsuits, state legislators need to pass laws that indemnify public schools against predatory trial lawyers.

It should not be against district policy for an elementary school kid to have fun. Children tripping and falling or running into something is natural and it happens every day. In fact it is unnatural for us to be afraid of it. Protecting our schools from these frivolous lawsuits is important because we as a society cannot live life under the threat of fear which is why state governments ought to pass effective legislation to end this nonsense.

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