[Summit] Room to grow

[Emlyn Addison]

I think few here have disagreed that there are too many toys and, as others
have said several times, anything dangerous should be removed (yes, even by
parents). But these words "dumped" and "discarded" I think are off-target.
The little kids LOVE these play things; hasn't this been communicated?

Truthfully, I can't imagine a scenario where 11-year-olds are walloping
soccer balls with 2-year-olds running around; or is a case being made that
toddlers should stay in the sand box? That would hardly seem fair. Maybe
the park was named--and the name stuck--because it found a niche among
parents of young children.

Any parent can attest that the Lippett playground area can often get crazy
with bigger kids (read: 6 and up) and so this little park serves the other
community. Maybe this practical consideration is being lost here, but the
Tot Lot is a good place to let toddlers roam without us all turning into
helicopter parents. For my part, this fenced-in lot I remember being the
go-to place for letting my daughter run around and explore by herself,
where she wasn't going to get clocked by a ball or a cyclist.

But hey, it's a neighborhood and if the neighborhood doesn't like this
function of the park then they're free to make a case against it. My sense
is that there'll be some vocal pushback by those parents, for the reasons
above.


On Sat, Apr 1, 2017 at 2:50 PM, mdubose1 mdubose1 <mdubose1 at cox.net> wrote:

> I don’t want to reignite the “Tot Lot” debate that occurred when a parent
> acting sua sponte decided to “name” the park a few years ago.  My point is
> simply that the park was never the exclusive domain of 4 year olds. Our
> boys now 13 and 16 used the park with other neighborhood kids from 0 to
> about 11 and it wasn’t until the space was reduced by discarded structures
> that fewer and fewer elementary school aged kids were using it. I have no
> doubt that all of the Petit Princes and Princesses will not feel any less
> so without their plastic castles. *Rolleth the Royal Ball, they will
> kick.*
>
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