Perhaps it was a group chasing one individual that initially sparked fears — was this mob mentality in the making? Or maybe it was the oppressive phrase, “You’re it.”

Or was it was the laughter and frivolity? If kids are too happy, there needs to a be a study to look into it, and a policy to control it — they might be mocking, or bullying.

Whatever the reason, the game of tag has now been banished from one Washington State school district’s playgrounds.

That’s right. Mercer Island School District, in tony Mercer Island, Washington, has banned the childhood game of tag.

Mary Grady, the school district’s communications director, explained the recent decision in an email to q13fox.com:

“The Mercer Island School District and school teams have recently revisited expectations for student behavior to address student safety. This means while at play, especially during recess and unstructured time, students are expected to keep their hands to themselves. The rationale behind this is to ensure the physical and emotional safety of all students,” Grady wrote.

“School staffs are working with students in the classroom to ensure that there are many alternative games available at recess and during unsupervised play, so that our kids can still have fun, be with their friends, move their bodies and give their brains a break,” she said in the email.

How are parents taking it? Not too well.

Sadly, now that the ban is in place, one of Kelsey Joyce’s kids no longer plays during recess.

“He has been spending most of his recesses wandering around with his friend talking about video games, which is the last thing I want him to be doing,” she told q13fox.com. “I totally survived tag. I even survived Red Rover, believe it or not.”

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Unhappy parents who are frustrated at being left out of the decision-making process are taking to the new Facebook page “Support Tag at Recess,” created around the district’s tag ban.

“In this day and age of childhood obesity, there’s a need for more activity,” mom Melissa Neher told q13fox.com. “Kids should be free to have spontaneous play on the playground at recess. It’s important for their learning.”

One 26-year-old Boston mortgage professional agreed.

“That decision is so lame,” he told LifeZette. “Tag is a throwback game that gives kids good exercise, and actually creates friendships — sometimes games help kids connect in a way that structured activities can’t. What’s next? Hide and seek? Blowing bubbles with the little wand?”

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The Mercer Island School District does endorse league team sports, but for now, tag is forbidden.

In their effort to have kids keep hands to themselves, Mercer Island School District officials have given free play and spontaneous fun for kids a big red light.

Uh-oh. Perhaps Mercer Island has red light-green light next on the list.

Update: The game of tag now has been returned to the children of Mercer Island, Washington.

“Tag, as we know it and have known it, is reinstated,” the school district said in a prepared statement last Friday.

The district at first responded to the outrage of parents and the subsequent wave of national media coverage by saying that it planned to come up with alternatives to tag.

“We want to initiate a new form of tag-like running games to minimize the issues of ‘you were tagged/no I wasn’t’ or ‘the tag was too hard and felt more like a hit,’ ” Superintendent Gary Plano said in a statement from his office, seeking to clarify the ban. Ultimately, the original game was reinstated.

Kelsey Joyce is happy with the district’s decision. Her son and his friends play four different kinds of tag, including a version involving a hot-lava monster.

“I don’t even really understand that one, but it’s great they are fostering creative development of thinking,” she told the Seattle Times.

This article was updated on Monday, Sept. 28, 2015.