If your kid wanted to run outside barefoot in the snow, would you let them?
Why or why not? (PS…I would.)
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Sure, why not?
Most likely they will come in before their feet turn black. haha
It’s a sensation, like your under sedation….....oh wait, that’s the time warp.
Sure! Been there and done that with my stepchildren. Played in the rain and jumped in mud puddles. Waded in creeks and swam in swimmnig holes when it was too cold for most sane people. Laid outside on a blanket at night to watch the stars. I wanted them to enjoy nature and really feel the relationship between humans and nature in terms of sensations on your skin and your senses.
Hey, when I went up to Mt. St. Helens a couple years back, I pulled over to the side of the road just so I could go barefoot in the snow! I even have pictures of my toes in the snow :>)
It was a truth or dare question…would you run around the outside of the house barefoot?
What kinda kid wants to do that? :P I hated getting snow on me as a kid…
No, because it’s not good for them.
Once, when I was much younger, I went swimming in Lake Tahoe on a cold day. I stayed in there for a few minutes, until the water started to feel warm. When I informed my mother of the water’s acceptability, she dragged me out and dumped me into the resort’s hot tub and made me stay there until I wasn’t purple anymore.
Kids aren’t necessarily going to arrive at the proper conclusions; that they lack wisdom is practically a defining characteristic of the age group. That’s not always important, since they’re learning, but when it comes to life-or-death situations, it is.
@Nullo
Haha, I did the same once, was about 10, jumped off a pier into Lake Tahoe.
OMG…I could barely breathe it was sooo cold and get back to shore. Good thing for strong young hearts!
We did it just to be silly and to see who could tolerate the cold longest. We had on our coats and gloves and hats….and bare feet. It was fun and lastest a very short few mimutes. We laughed and screamed and our Australian shepherd thought we were outside to play and pushed and shoved us until we fell down delirious and freezing. My kids are grown now and I hope they remember that day with good thoughts like I do.
It’s a neat sensation on the soles of your feet in the right kind of snow! For the first three steps…then you can’t feel anything!
Only well supervised, and for a short time. Frozen feet could lead to frost bite or be injured and the child would not know it.
I do not wear shoes in my house, and neither do the boys, so we frequently go out in all kinds of weather with bare feet – the mail delivery lady was amazed when I went out to get my mail in 35 degree weather with no shoes.
Yes, but only for a very short time. Kids will let their fingers and toes freeze off if they are having fun.
My son was a bit hyperactive, and a show off too. (Don’t they always go together?) I have seen him run around the house barefoot in the snow, repeatedly. Just because the other kids were laughing at him.
And he did it again a different time because he was mad at me and did not want to get caught.
For those who don’t believe their kids would have the sense to come in….really???? In my daycare I once had a kid who constantly played head games with his mom. During one of the first few days with me it was very cold one day and he had to walk to school. He announced that he didn’t want to wear his coat. He expectantly waited for me to flip out…“You HAVE to wear your coat!! You’ll FREEZE!!!! You’ll get SICK!!! You HAVE to wear your coat!” and the head game fight would be on…...and he was flabbergasted when I just shrugged my shoulders and said, “Ok. But you have to carry it with you.”
He started out the door, coat over his arm, stopped and looked back at me waiting for me to call his bluff. I said, “Go on! I need to shut the door!” He threw one last defiant glance in my direction and marched out into the cold without his coat on. I peeked through the window. He kept looking back at the house waiting for me to come out and start yelling “PUT YOUR COAT ON!!!”…..didn’t happen. By the time he got halfway through the neighbor’s yard he decided to put his coat on since nobody was going to pay him any attention.
IMO, kids aren’t stupid unless we expect them to be.
Heck yeah! I go out and get the paper in my bare feet and love the feel of the snow and the challenge to the senses the crunchy cold snow brings. When they get older I will challenge them to face first naked snow angels.
@Cruiser shiver me…..oh no! Yeah, the crunchy snow is good. It’s like the tickley crunch on a dirt road that’s dried after a rainstorm. But so is the soft, feathery snow that tickles your feet before you can’t feel them any more!
@Cruiser OOOOOOOO face first naked snow angels!!!! Soon as I have pics, they are so getting posted.
I put a plastic grocery bag over my head the other night and sat in my hot tub in the freezing rain. Not much of a visual, but damn, was it ever nice! lol
Absolutely.
That’s part of what being a kid is all about.
Maybe not run, because they might step on something like a sharp stick or broken glass that is unseen. But I think it would be ok to take a few steps in the snow, just to say they did it. I have done it and it is a fabulous sensation (for a few minutes)
@Kardamom just curious to know, but do you not let your children run outside barefoot when there is no snow on the ground?
@janedelila Nothing makes you feel more alive than face first snow angels. I will never forget me and my then 5 year old doing snow angles in our swim suits while hanging at a friends hot tub and the look of exhilaration on his face that he had done something clearly outside the box!
@Cruiser
That is the kind of parent all kids need, my daughter still razzes me to this day for my wacky parenting, sending her to school with a frozen flying squirrel for show & tell, amongst many other ‘out of the box’ moments, haha
@TheOnlyNeffie I don’t have any kids, myself, but when my 5 year old nephew wants to go outside without his shoes on, I usually let him if it’s in a place that I’m pretty sure there won’t be glass or something else that could injure him. It’s just easier to scan the area when there isn’t any snow. We don’t get snow where I live, so the snow is only in the mountains and there’s all kinds of sharp things on the ground up there.
Sure, of course. Why not? I did it as a kid and I still do it sometimes when I’m just too lazy to put on shoes for a quick run outside – and to prove to myself that I still can.
It’s not a bit unhealthy if you warm up again before there’s any tissue damage. (And you have to get pretty darn cold, or stay outside for a long and very painful time in ‘moderate’ cold, for that to happen.) A run around the house in the snow shouldn’t hurt, as long as there’s nothing hidden underneath the snow that’s going to injure your feet.
@CyanoticWasp I would say it would take quite a long time….15 minutes?...to get any kind of damage. If given the opportunity, the self preservation instinct in humans of any age will kick in long before that.
@Kardamom As a kid, I took my shoes off the last day of school, and didn’t put them on again till the first day of school. I still go barefooted as much as possible. My feet can handle any sticker, sharp stick or piece of glass there might be on the ground Those things are a nuisance, nothing more. Pull ‘em out and move on. Nature designed our feet to become self-reliant with use. Nature didn’t design us with shoes in mind.
As a fellow barefoot person (I won’t wear shoes until I absolutely have to), I have to agree with @Dutchess_III on this one.
Yep, braless, barefoot hippie chick here, but not pregnant. haha
@TheOnlyNeffie and @Dutchess_III I think I had a bit of the “fear of going barefoot” driven into me at a young age. A 6 year old boy across the street stepped on a big piece of broken glass that was hidden in the sand at the beach (when they still allowed glass bottles on the beach) and and his foot got cut pretty badly. Around the same time, one of my best friends was riding on the back of her brother’s bike (with no shoes on) and had her big toe amputated by the spokes. My mom actually drove her to the hospital. Her toe was not able to be re-attached. We were about 4 or 5 at the time, and it made a big impression on me. I always wanted to run around barefoot everywhere too, but all of the parents on our block were pretty adamant that we wear shoes most of the time. Course we did get to go barefoot sometimes, but it was with a little bit more supervision.
@Kardamom my little sister got her toes stuck in the spokes of my bike. Same scenario. She also fell on a piece of metal and had to get stitches in her foot because she spliced that puppy clean open.
We both still go barefoot pretty much nonstop. My grandmother always used to tell us that shoes will deform your feet over time, so maybe that’s deep in my head. No clue.
I can understand how it would be startling, though. :)
I’m a mountain goat, have spent my life hopping over boulders around the river.
Now I wear river sandles just because, well, I’m ‘mature.’ lol
Ow. My sister got the tip of her little finger amputated in the hinge side of a pneumatic-closing storm door when she was 2. My ankle was sliced WIDE open by the fender of a bike falling on me. Same sister broke her wrist ten years later when she fell in the street on her metal POW bracelet. SAME sister sliced her foot wide open when she dropped a glass bottle of milk and stepped on the pieces. But that was in the house. Oh, the blood I’ve known in my life, thanks to my sister! We should all wear suits of armor!
Coloatsmia, you’re just everywhere, aren’t you! I avoided your last TJBM question, I’ll have you know!
This is a pretty good test of how much sense of self-preservation your child has. If they look at you like you’re crazy when you say yes, or stick their feet in it, and then come in because they’re cold, the odds are they are going to have decent judgement and be able to discern what’s in their best interest.
Thank you @BarnacleBill. Exactly. If you’re always making their decisions for them…how are they going to know when they’re on their own?
Sure, there are many, many opportunities here. My kids came in saying they were cold, 20 below is cold, C or F. I’m pretty sure my kids never wanted to go outside barefoot in the snow- just not a novelty.
@faye Ah, but tis. If you’re used to feeling the world with your bare feet….a recently quick-dried dirt road after a down pour, or a new cut grass lawn tickling your feet, or a rocky shore….or any other myriad of things that you can feel only the way your feet can feel them, then the temptation to find out what snow feels like would be a novelty. Especially to kids. Unless they’ve been locked up, wrapped up and taped up inside of a box called the Concept of We Don’t Do That And Don’t Ask Me Why.
Different types of snow feel different, FYI!
I once won a Trivial Pursuit question, which was, “What part of the body has the most nerve endings?” After all the middle school giggling subsided (and we were adult in our 20’s) I thought for a bit and said, “The soles of our feet.” It makes perfect evolutionary sense. According to Trivial Pursuit, in the 1980’s, I was right…although the few times since those pre-internet years that I’ve gone to double check on the internet, all I can find is middle school giggling.
Certainly. I think it would be a great experience and they’d learn something.
I wouldn’t expect them to want to keep it up for long, but I’d have an eye on them anyway.
@Dutchess_III My kids liked flip-flops. Maybe because we always had a dog? I used to be barefoot all summer but I don’t remember wanting to walk in snow, either.
When we moved to the beach some years ago, I began going into the ocean at Christmas, New Year, my birthday…just because I could, I suppose.
If someone forced you to do it, it wouldn’t feel the same. But, somewhere between your brain and feet, there lies a ‘smile center’ with alternate wiring.
The smile center allows us the grand experience of spontaneity without our everyday limits. It’s a gift…but, if you never use it, you may never realize its existence.
I’m kind of feeling like touching my tootsies to the snow right now. But I’d have to drive about 100 miles to find any. : )
We have snow still in Memphis if you want to put your toes in it.
Sure, for a few minutes. I don’t believe cold causes illness for short spells.
i like bare feet….i love snow…...
naked snow angels sounds awesome.
I was teasing the neighbor about necked snowball fights…....
Trust me guys…it’s a lot less than a few “minutes!” Within a few seconds you have this screaming urge to get your little a** I mean “little feet,” back inside! And you figure that out all by your little self!
I wonder about naked snow angels…do you suppose they leave butt crack impressions in the snow? What would that look like? How would you recognize it??
@crisw…Seriously more information than I wanted to know!!
@mattbrowne I would assume my kids were smart enough to impose their own time limit. Trust me, pain is a good limiter.
@Dutchess_III – Actually, I’m not so sure. Being able to judge dangers appropriately takes very long. Younger kids are still lacking this skill.
@Dutchess_III My feet are very quick to go numb, and I do not feel pain after a few minutes.
@YARNLADY – Yes, but with your experience you wound end the naked feet endeavor in time. Young kids don’t have this kind of experience.
Well…I wasn’t thinking of two-year-olds, @mattbrowne! I was thinking more like 8+. Guess I should have specified that.
@Dutchess_III 8+ is no guarantee, either. I was about 9 – 10 when I nearly froze myself to bits in Lake Tahoe. I had been in Scouts; I actually knew about hypothermia and how you get it.
How’d you do that @Nullo? Also, I’m not suggesting throwing a kid out in the wild and saying “See ya later!”
@Dutchess_III You know how the swimming pool is almost always a bit of a shock when you first jump in, but then it warms up? I figured that I just had to acclimate. It wasn’t a close call or anything, but I think that it might have become one had I tried to ‘acclimate’ any further.
So, if your 16 year wanted to experience running barefoot in the snow you’d say no? Or watch him or her carefully with the assumption that he or she couldn’t figure out when to come in??
@Dutchess_III – Well, 16 might be old enough to figure it out on his own. But 15 or younger, perhaps not. I’ve had some negative experience with my own kids when they were 15 or younger. Other parents might see things differently. I’m not an expert. I just shared my opinion. Ask me about math or astrophysics and I’m more confident about my advice ;-)
@Dutchess_III I pretty much stopped worrying about permission for small things when I was about 16. Had I gone out in the snow barefoot (which I quite frankly have never wanted to do), I would have earned some incredulous questions of the “what the heck are you doing?” variety, but probably not an actual prohibition.
Oh, but @Nullo! It’s really cool! I did it the first time when I was 12 I was spending the night with a girlfriend and we decided to do it just to see….it’s a cool feeling. I’ve done it a few more times since with different types of snow to see how the differences felt on my feet. you have soft snow, crunchy snow, and everything in between. It felt cool (as in groovy-cool.) Then it felt cold (as in cold-cold). Then couldn’t feel anything at all so I hied myself back inside! I love noticing the different textures of things under my feet….
Teenagers go out in the sun and stay until they receive lst, 2nd and 3rd degree burns, if allowed to be in the snow unsupervised, what would be any different?
@YARNLADY To be fair you don’t know you’re burned until it’s too late, but your feet will be achingly cold before any damage, at least mine would sure be.
@YARNLADY what @faye said…. I got a much worse sunburn than that as an adult. It was an accident.
A kid will get back inside really quickly if they’re cold. If kids had no brains at all, didn’t have the brains to recognize extreme discomfort=danger, which appears to be what some people think, they’d all be dead before their 10th birthday.
@Dutchess_III Kids will stay out and play while getting frostbite and frostnip. Maybe toes directly in the snow will be painful enough they quickly come inside, but being out sledding or waiting for a bus kids get frostbite on their toes, fingers, ears, etc. every year.
Well, shouldn’t there be a law against sledding and waiting for buses in the cold then?....?
I remember sledding as a kid….I remember getting cold as hell eventually and coming inside. Maybe I was pushing it, waiting a little too long, but I don’t know. I don’t know how cold it has to be for frost bite, or how long it takes to happen (which also depends on the cold.) I would think it would take several hours, anyway. Much longer than the time I spent rolling around in the snow.
The only way a kid wouldn’t get to shelter is if, for some reason, they couldn’t, like…if they’re waiting for a bus and it’s late.
From Wiki….I know I got “frost nipped,” which is 1st degree frost bite, more than once in my young life! As noted, it itches and hurts. Yeah….hurts like hell which made me go inside and run my hands under cold water….because warm water is excruciating.
* First degree: This is called frostnip and this only affects the surface skin, which is frozen. On onset there is itching and pain, and then the skin develops white, red, and yellow patches and becomes numb. The area affected by frostnip usually does not become permanently damaged as only the skin’s top layers are affected. Long-term sensitivity to both heat and cold can sometimes happen after suffering from frostnip.
* Second degree: If freezing continues, the skin may freeze and harden, but the deep tissues are not affected and remain soft and normal. Second degree injury usually blisters 1–2 days after becoming frozen. The blisters may become hard and blackened, but usually appear worse than they are. Most of the injuries heal in one month but the area may become permanently insensitive to both heat and cold.
* Third and Fourth degrees: If the area freezes further, deep frostbite occurs. The muscles, tendons, blood vessels, and nerves will all freeze. The skin is hard, feels waxy, and use of the area is lost temporarily, and in severe cases, permanently. The deep frostbite results in areas of purplish blisters which turn black and which are generally blood-filled. Nerve damage in the area can result in a loss of feeling. This extreme frostbite may result in fingers and toes being amputated if the area becomes infected with gangrene. If the frostbite has gone on untreated they may fall off. The damage done to the area by the freezing process of the frostbite may take several months to find out and this often delays surgery to remove the dead tissue.[3]
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