WHEN I was about seven, I remember trying to copy the older girls at school by swinging upside down, by my legs, from the climbing frame.

However, this being my first attempt, I forgot to hang on tightly and, after throwing myself backwards from a sitting position with gusto, promptly found myself on my head.

Another time, I was hit square on the forehead by a flying football and ended up on my back on the school playing field.

And of course there were the numerous nettle stings incurred when playing near the fallen tree trunk - also known as the spaceship - in the far corner of the field.

Senior school was also not without incident. I once caught a rounders ball with my abdomen by doubling over in pain after it hit me in the stomach, and lost a fair amount of skin on one finger during a rather competitive hockey game.

I wasn't particularly accident-prone. Fellow pupils had their fair share of mishaps too - a friend broke her arm while running backwards during a PE lesson and another classmate dislocated a knee in an inter-house football tournament.

But none of us were any the worse for the accidents - long-term anyway - and the school didn't ban climbing frames, rounders or even the perilous inter-house football, because it was generally accepted that bumps, scrapes - and even broken limbs - were a part of growing up, and a part of life.

Today, however, children don't learn what it's like to lose the egg and spoon race on sports day, get hit in the face with a conker or fall off a balance beam during PE.

Our safety-obsessive culture is producing a generation of "cotton wool kids", who will grow up unable to cope in the big wide world, according to government "skills envoy" Sir Digby Jones.

Sir Digby said recently the approach was stifling creativity, competition and a general can-do attitude, which was vital to forming healthy, successful adults.

This view has been echoed by David Yearley, head of play at Rospa.

"Although we're the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, when it comes to child's play, we see accidents as a vital part of play," he said.

"We need to think back to when we were children and the sort of things we did.

"We climbed trees. We may have played with fire and all these sorts of things, and the vast majority of us are still here now, having experienced those things and probably being a lot richer for it."

Mr Yearley said playground equipment such as balance beams and climbing frames gave youngsters the chance to experiment with their bodies and learn about their physical abilities - or lack of them.

He added: "Clearly, if they fall off the balance beam, even with grass underneath or rubber sur facing, there's a potential for injury there, but the benefit of having the opportunity to balance outweighs the risk."

Mr Yearley explained it was all about cultivating acceptable risk. For example, the danger of a child falling off a swing set in a well-maintained play area is very different to a child playing near railway lines.

Annette Brooke, who is MP for Mid Dorset and North Poole and the Liberal Democrat spokesperson for children and young people, agreed a balance must be struck.

"It's really important for young people to engage in sports, really important for young people to be able to play outside safely and it's fairly straightforward to take sensible precautions," she said.

"Obviously, there are concerns about children walking out alone by themselves, so it's a matter of getting into the habit of walking in a big group to school, rather than taking more risks and getting in the car.

"Society has changed and we're more aware of the dangers. But I think you can to sensible things and still not miss out on life."

Mrs Brooke added that risk assessments were now more important for schools and local authorities due to the compensation culture society had developed.

But she said: "Things can happen and you've just got to be realistic about things and carry out risk assessments."

David Yearley agreed that much of the pressure on schools and local authorities to provide safer environments came from rising pay-outs on liability insurance, but that some had gone way too far in their bid to avoid such situations.

"There was a school that banned the children from picking daises, just in case they picked up an infection along the way.

"Now, you can look back through the accident records and so on and I don't think anyone can find a single instance of a child getting an infection from a daisy. So they've been denied that opportunity.

"It's the perception of someone saying we've got to be as safe as possible, whereas what we should be saying is we've got to be as safe as necessary."