Interesting. All of my friends at that age were too nerdy to want to do that kind of fighting. I did martial arts, but that’s a controlled setting, and also made it very obvious why real fighting is undesirable.
I’m genuinely curious, then: If in your case you said this was in good fun, do you think it would have been an improvement had adults constantly intervened to prevent those fights? Where do you, personally, draw a distinction between unacceptable fighting and acceptable roughhousing? Do you consider it plausible that kids are fighting in part because they’ve never really had the opportunity to learn through direct experience that actual fighting is bad, and also to learn how to tamp it down to play-fighting that all involved parties enjoy? What alternatives to actual fighting are available to kids today that achieve the kinds of social and physical goals/roles that good-natured fighting served in your own childhood?
Interesting. All of my friends at that age were too nerdy to want to do that kind of fighting. I did martial arts, but that’s a controlled setting, and also made it very obvious why real fighting is undesirable.
I’m genuinely curious, then: If in your case you said this was in good fun, do you think it would have been an improvement had adults constantly intervened to prevent those fights? Where do you, personally, draw a distinction between unacceptable fighting and acceptable roughhousing? Do you consider it plausible that kids are fighting in part because they’ve never really had the opportunity to learn through direct experience that actual fighting is bad, and also to learn how to tamp it down to play-fighting that all involved parties enjoy? What alternatives to actual fighting are available to kids today that achieve the kinds of social and physical goals/roles that good-natured fighting served in your own childhood?