impressive coordination and balance.
If he does grow up without suffering serious harm from the circumstances of his infant training, then this early experience will probably make him a superstar skateboard athlete.
In the 1970s, I was struck while in Spain to notice how different parents' views of childhood safety were from our own. Spanish parents that I encountered clearly adored their children and were very loving and paid much attention to them.
However,the Spanish parents I observed allowed certain things that made me gasp in horror. For example, once while riding in a train between cities, I sat near a couple with two small children, perhaps 3 and 4 years old. The kids had been given a large pair of sharp dressmakers' shears to play with! The (aging) train rocked and swayed quite violently the whole way, and I was terrified that some sudden jostling movement would lead to a major cutting or stabbing injury to one of the kids. I was just 20 at the time, so I was not yet aggressive enough to try to interfere, but I was super tense the whole way, poised to leap at the children at any moment to snatch the shears if it looked as though tragedy might really be imminent.
Although I wasn't brave enough back then to confront the parents directly unless it really did look like something awful was about to happen, I am quite sure I would have had the courage to do so if my justification were so obvious that no one could possibly take offense.
Still, the image of those little kids playing with 8-inch shears while their parents blithely ignored the danger has stayed with me for over 4 decades.
A lot of things we now do to protect our kids were not even on our society's radar in the past (childproof pill bottles, helmets, seat belts, safety carseats for kids, etc.), and in many cultures such concerns are still not a matter of conscious awareness.
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