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Rover

2 year old kid to go skydiving

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I liked this:

"We have to be very careful in the sport with letting very young children [go] . . . They still have a problem with structuring and growing of their brains. The freefall and the opening can cause quite a radical shift of the cerebral fluids."

"It is not healthy for a child younger than perhaps 4 or 5 to do a tandem because the harness doesn't fit their small body ... It can imbalance them and actually cause them damage [in the brain]."

And then you have the problem with the rarefied air molecules occasionally causing TM's to pound their landings. But at least the kid can breathe through his skin.

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How could you miss this one -

"Mr Marriott said he wouldn't be surprised if people reacted negatively to his taking Elijah skydiving, but the boys had been around the sport for most of their lives and were therefore different from other children"

Most of his life? The kid is two, so most of his life is anything over 1 year. Does 1 year on the DZ, minus time spent learning to walk and not shit your pants, really qualify you to jump?

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Aaron, please help me understand that when you say, ""I don't think I would take any other person's child ... It's just something special I can do with my boys" why you're more concerned for other people's kids than your own?!?!?!? :S

Nobody has time to listen; because they're desperately chasing the need of being heard.

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>Aaron, please help me understand that when you say, ""I don't think I would take
>any other person's child ... It's just something special I can do with my boys" why
>you're more concerned for other people's kids than your own?

I understand my kid better than other people's, so that might be a reason. Is he going to freak out? Does he respond well to noise, motion, unusual situations? Does he like similar things? That's something you might know about your child but not anyone else's.

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Perhaps, but we both know there is no means test for anyone of any age and their reaction to the first time out of a plane. Instead of addressing Aaron, which is not going to change his mind... I'll just say that I really think this is in bad form on many fronts.

I can't speak for New Zealand's child protection laws, but if they're even close to here... if the kid even breaks a finger and goes to the ER and someone says, "So, Little One, how did you hurt your finger?" and the kid says, "My daddy took me on a skydive." Well, it's just not worth the risk in my book. My little one is coming up on five and is quite the daredevil. There's just no way Daddy is going to let her jump until she reaches the age of majority.

I do not think any parent has the right to place their minor child in a potentially life-threatening situation. Our job is to protect our kids. We say, "You can do everything right and still have a wrong outcome" until we start discussing young'uns jumping out of planes and then we act as if nothing could happen.
Nobody has time to listen; because they're desperately chasing the need of being heard.

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>Perhaps, but we both know there is no means test for anyone of any age and their
>reaction to the first time out of a plane.

Agreed. A wind tunnel is a way to come close but it's not quite the same.

>I do not think any parent has the right to place their minor child in a potentially
>life-threatening situation.

Honestly letting him ride a bike in my neighborhood puts his life more in jeopardy than a tandem skydive would. But I don't think it's reasonable to say "you don't have the right to let your kid ride a bike."

And that's just biking. What about rock climbing, hunting, skiing or sledding? Kids take risks growing up, and as a parent you have to manage them well. Tell them to wear a helmet when they ride a bike, teach them common sense etc.

To me, the #1 reason not to take a 2 year old skydiving is that they don't get much out of it; they can't go anywhere with it, and it's hard to tell if it will just scare the crap out of them. But when they are 12 and have a few hours of tunnel time? They may well get a lot out of that experience.

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Quote

I do not think any parent has the right to place their minor child in a potentially life-threatening situation. Our job is to protect our kids. We say, "You can do everything right and still have a wrong outcome" until we start discussing young'uns jumping out of planes and then we act as if nothing could happen.



I agree with this, and I'm un-persuaded by the analogies. Parachute jumping comes with a particular form of risk of death that is so unique to itself (i.e., not a possibility, or even a probability, but a certainty of death in the case of a catastrophic and un-recoverable double malfunction) that most analogies simply fall short of the mark. This has nothing to do with whether the kid can "handle" the experience, BTW. It's about realistic appreciation of the actual risk. If a child is too young to understand, appreciate and knowingly assume the rather unique risk of death attendant to a parachute jump, then it's just wrong to take him on one.

Let people flame away with all the parsing or analogies they wish, I stand by my point.

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