Last Updated on: 23rd January 2021, 10:43 pm
This letter, which appears to come from the president of For The Love Of God, Tether Your Children To Your Person At All Times Lest They Get A Hangnail Or Something International, was published in the Mercury yesterday.
Stuff like this drives me absolutely nuts. Folks like these, though well meaning in their own way, are bent on ruining what’s left of children’s childhoods by turning every single thing no matter how big or small into some kind of hidden danger lurking just around the next corner. The Jan Corbetts of the world are a big part of the answer to a question that people have been asking for years. Why don’t kids just go out and play anymore? Well, how can they? When playgrounds are being gutted and rebuilt for maximum safety and minimum fun and going out of mommy’s line of sight for more than 1.7 seconds at a time earns you a scolding, how are you as a child even supposed to know what play is? Children’s lives are so micromanaged and structured down to the last detail nowadays that play as we knew it doesn’t really exist anymore. Please, for the sake of future generations, somebody stop thinking of the children now and then and let them think for themselves. You’re not a bad parent, you’re doing them a favour.
Backpacks may present a danger to children
Dear Editor – Backpacks, while very popular, put a child in danger of being kidnapped or molested.
I see many weighed-down, overloaded backpacks with big handles on the top, just waiting for a stronger child, a teen or an adult to grab hold and stop the kids toting them cold in their tracks. Even an almost empty backpack with a handle is a real danger. A child cannot run quickly for safety when overloaded, or if the handle is grabbed, and they can be victimized on the spot, or forced into an alley, a vehicle or to the ground.
It takes many precious seconds a child hasn’t got, if they feel threatened, but not yet grabbed, to shake themselves loose of the heavy, awkward backpack and let it drop to the ground in order to start running away. I include older teens here as well.
You might be stunned at the sneaky tactics used by people who target kids.
Fear is a great tool for us all to have in our safety kit. It can alert us to possible danger, and motivate us to take action to save ourselves to fight off an aggressor physically and verbally. No one wants to frighten a child.
There is, however, this one huge safety problem that begs children to be made afraid. The stats prove it. It’s sad that a child’s innocence has to be sacrificed to help them be safe.
Jan Corbett, Guelph