And all credit to you…

Ballroom dancing ... shudder

Close, but your cigar is withheld on this occasion. And not just because those things are deadly. Deadly, I tells ya! Our nanny state overladies frown severely on such pleasures!

Yes, I've never got over drama classes from childhood :-)

was four when I broke my arm and sustained a pretty solid concussion when I slipped while running around the edge of a good old tractor-tyre sandpit. Damn thing must have been all of 30cm high. I think I was in hospital…

That's not limited to timid kids. Every kid will have things that freak them out, and it's foolish to blind yourself to the difference between thrilled and terrified.…

That's not the only pleasure I mean. I'm referring also to things that aren't pleasurable because they are dangerous. A child might like, for instance, climbing a tree, because the…

I kind of took the obvious pleasure we all took in putting our bodies in harms way as a given.

hmmm actively courting pain ... which thread am I in again?

I'd go further and say for at least the 10th time on this site that considering only the balance of harms is blinkered in…

I guess I wasn't writing very clearly, since I largely agree with the rest of your post, particularly the "talkback-grade cliche" thing, which is the guts of what I was trying to say.

As the mother of two boys and stepmother of one, and feminist from day one (brought up by…

As the mother of two boys and stepmother of one, and feminist from day one (brought up by…

Yup. In this house…

And that is of course the point. This is actually a balance between preventing all possible harm and allowing children to learn by (sometimes painful) mistakes. There is evidence now suggesting children protected from harm have a poorer body awareness, that is they don't…

pfft hanging upside down by my legs from monkey bars over concrete and falling on my head never did me no harm harm harm harm

With London, New York, Tokyo? Where my friends' kids were unable to go out without an adult until they were 10 or 12 and as a result spent most of their lives doing inside things. I'm not arguing…

While I'm spleening: designer high-vis vests and hard hats. Pink if you please. Fug off.
And the Deputy Mayor who stormed around town in a 4WD ute on the ratepayer with "Operation Suburb" and her name in large letters…

This guy is.

Would that have been Nunhead Cemetery by any chance, the one with the inverted torches at the gate that made id speshly spooky?.

Nobody told anybody here. Asbestos rooftiles are very common in China. Once helped my father in law put a new roof on the sheep pen, then immediately changed my clothes and…

My exploratory habits took a minor hit one day in Changsha in 1999 when I realised I'd accidentally walked into an army barracks. There were no signs or sentries at the gate, and the camouflage gear on the washing…

The "Fibrolite" would heat up, considerably, and expel any moisture contained in the sheet, there is often a lot in "Fibrolite" as it has a rather high rate…

You've just reminded me of Kiwi Ranch, near Hell's Gate outside Rotorua.

They had some of the most hair-raising activities a parent of three children, now of a similar age, can imagine. The Magic carpet was literally a Persian rug towed behind…

Kudos for his exclamation! Most people it's…

Do you mind! I'm meant to be making dinner.

But you're obviously good at other stuff! Having grown up with an ace builder/ all-purpose Kiwi bloke as a father, it took decades for me to know that it is fine not to be able to change the car's oil, concrete a…

Unfortunately, H&S has reached all the way to Scott Base. I have been reliably informed that the mid winter skinny dip into the sea through a hole in the ice is now taboo.

Me? I am a qualified member of the Lake Vanda Swim Club.…

Old-school playground swings were the bizzo. With a little practice you could wind up and let go at just the right point in the arc so that you launched up and out and achieved enough height to go quite some distance.

I'm thinking illustrated in the syle of those "where did I come from" books. But yes, it would sell based purely on the title.

But these days it more likely to be "don't eat that" or…

We used to do that on sand dunes. The angle of a sand dune is fairly constant at between 30 and 35…

It is quite good. But they picked the wrong hill, there are much better hills in Nelson for that. Some even have nice run-out areas at the bottom. Not the best one, that has a stop sign. But often, if you time…

Being a smart arse, because everyone likes a smart arse. It is Iodine crystals and Anhydrous Ammonia and the resulting compound is Nitrogen triiodide

Oh how we laughed at the teacher…

Perhaps the cure for being 17 is indeed to turn 18 after all.

Ouch. Since we're making each other squeamish, one of the in stitches incidence involved working on my BMX bike in bare feet. Stood on the each of the open metal toolbox, resulting in a semi-detached big toe.

What a tool.

Yup, but there is another stream that joins it, that starts right up where Konini rd meets the Scenic drive. That's where my home was.

Those diggings at primary school were great ... and then there was…

Yup that's the one. This was back before the bottom half of Konini Rd became subdivisions so it was mostly bush all the way down.

I learnt so much in that bush, how to slide down mud banks and avoid the trees, how to recognise bush lawyer,…

I am too. But lack of money forced me to learn that despite lack of natural skill I could get there if I went slowly enough and was willing to accept that the first attempt would end up in the bin. A…

Two kids chopping. (Wifey's younger sisters). Small tomahawk. Wood chopping block. Tractor shed. Farm. Slightly older one is chopping. Other one wants a go. Slightly older one won't give up the axe. Littly…

Hehe, me too. Not dubstep, though, but the opening bars of Hunters and Collecters' Holy Grail or Bob Marley's Iron, Lion, Zion have my wee one doing her absolute best to pound whatever bed she's on into eternal submission.…

+1. The Word of Fear in our house is 'Again!'. Demonstrating centrifugal force to Ms 3 by putting her in a basket and spinning round as fast as possible seemed like a good idea. But not when the lesson needed repeating for the rest of…

For your future reference, my uncle (and brother) would advise…

I'm not sure if we're referring to the same stream, but in any case you've just sparked a whole lot of reminiscing about getting up to mischief in the bush out west.

Changing the nappy of a squirmy toddler in a cafe bathroom with highly polished concrete floors and no changing table. Kid bumps dirty nappy spilling contents onto the floor. I stand up to locate more paper towel, put my foot into the mess and immediately…

Similarly, we had free rein over the bush, cliffs and waterfalls around Whakatane’s Hillcrest suburb. I recall from the age of 8-9 we only really went…

I am horrified and helpless with mirth.

I shall relate this tale on the basis that they're not reading it and nor is their mother.

Picture, if you will Dad with two daughters (3 and 6 I want to say) on a trip to the zoo. It's…

Playing on the street with the local kids used to be thing when I was little. Lots of memories of swimming completely unsupervised at the beach (by which I mean we were supposed to go to…

I've learned to…

I feel the lack of being able to provide that for my boys. I think we faced some special…

I mostly grew up in the northwestern suburbs of Christchurch, where there were plenty of undeveloped sections on which to get up to mischief (such as hurling…

I may have mentioned this here previously, but my brother and I were turned loose to forage at the local dump, which was just round the corner.
And then there was the time the two of…

My older brother cured me of this annoying habit by the ingeniously simple method of…

There was a pohutakawa tree that used to , and probably still does, hang out over a cliff, at least 10 metres above a stretch of hard flat rock next to the sea.…

Parental instructions issued from a lavatory are difficult to enforce; unnecessary lingering almost always leads to disaster.

What amazes me is that you were ever left alone at all to... do your business. I often have an in-room audience of a preschooler, a toddler and a dog. The only advantage…

Same. My friend – now a prominent businessman (you know who you are) – and I owned the alleyway between our houses…

The only time my Dad got upset was when we told him we'd been digging caves in the hillside next to the creek out the back of the neighbour's place.

That was the week that…

I,…

So…

My mother didn't so much encourage me into danger as just not pay much attention if I wasn't around. She used to gratefully leave…

Did your parents allow you to make fireworks or similar?
When my 14 yr old stepson came back from Oz to live with our family at 12 hours notice, we had no idea what to…

Oh, I did that! I was an irresponsible child as well as an irresponsible parent.

I'm heading off to bed now (midnight in the UK), but I'd be interested in tales of irresponsible and dangerous…

As a teenager the…

But she and Bob are growing up with a father who makes things. Real things, things they can touch and break and then watch him repair. It's a kind of magic.

I think the two of you are close enough for you to call him "Norks".

A similar principle operates when your children have become somewhat older and you are within public earshot of a parent trying to manage a difficult young child or children.

You could be annoyed. But, really,…

(this is how we say "thank you, you wonderful man" on the Internet)

Thanks for that, Ian! Now corrected (it's amazing how mistakes can get past).

I figure I'm already screwed in the resthome stakes, so I'm now operating on the "hung for a sheep" system…

I believe the spelling was subcontracted to Noddy Holder from Slade.
Now if 'hanger' had been given to aviation enthusiast Gary Numan, he would've had…