Kids Banned From Playing In The Snow

“I’m a trained risk assessor,” says one parent “and this is not a health and safety issue.”  That’s the point of view most parents would take, I think.  In fact, some pay a lot of money just so their kids can enjoy this activity.  But what is this situation that is so dangerous that some schools in Scotland are banning it?  Playing in the snow, of course, because snow is, well, wet and cold.


Actually, the reasons given for not letting kids outside during recess were that the snow was too deep, there wasn’t enough staff to supervise the kids, and that the kids make an awful mess coming back into school after playing in the snow.  “I’m very annoyed,” explained the same parent, “that my daughter has now been kept indoors for six and a half hours for two days despite all the lovely snow.”

We take a trip each year specifically to let the kids play in the snow and we have a full complement of appropriate snow clothes.  If we lived in an area that saw snow regularly, we’d have sleds, shovels, and any other instruments of laughter we could get our hands on as well.  Certainly, Edinburgh doesn’t get a whole lot of snow and sometimes may not see any, but it’s also not unheard of.  It seems odd that a school would not want to let kids out to play just because there is snow on the ground, regardless of how much snow there actually is.

If you live in an area where it snows in the winter, have your kids ever been kept indoors at recess because of snow, if it weren’t actually coming down?  Would you want the school to keep them in?

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