I am totally on board with the idea of kids climbing, in fact as an adult I still love climbing trees. That said, I have also spent more time than I care to think about on the roof of various houses. There are several factors that combine to make some roofs and roofing materials more treacherous than others. The Sievers roof had several things that made it dangerous. The pitch was very steep and the roof is what we call a "cut up roof". That means it has a number of different "mini-roofs" with a lot of slippery slopes. It has the type of shingle that has a lot of very tiny stone chips embedded in asphalt. Those chips degrade with weather changes and can create a situation similar to walking downhill on a gravel road. And, last but not least, the height from the ground to the lowest edge of the roof is very high. Many times when we see people sitting on a rooftop they have reached that point from a dedicated access, like a hatch or a permanent ladder. There is a big difference between going up and sitting on a roof and climbing up and down on the peaks and valleys of a roof. There is also a big difference between the sense of balance, and recovery, between an adult and an 8 or 10 year old. jmho
