PC gone mad the sequel - bureacracy and paranoia gone mad

Parents can't take their kids into a public play ground unless they have been CRB checked:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/beds/bucks/herts/8331446.stm

Ok, so it is only two playgrounds out of many, but how many will follow suit?

The wife and I take our son to the park. He is still too little for everything but the baby swings, but obviously that will change. There is no way on god's green earth that I would take my son to the playground, push him in and shut the gate behind him, and leave him to it while some stranger who I don't even know supervises him.

What is this country coming too. It would be funny if it wasn't so real.

 

Yes, I saw that Clueless. Just madness. Where will it end.
I think parents in that are just need to tell these numpties they are having none of their madness.

 

I think its particularly worrying because to my mind, one of the most important things is that your kids bond with you. How can they ever look up to you for moral guidance if they don't first see you as their trusted friend? If parents are made to let their kids play on their own, under supervision of a stranger, that bonding isn't going to happen, or at least not as much as it should.

As a child, my dad was always there. He took low paid jobs in the area (all that was available) when there were much better paid jobs elsewhere in the country. We never had much in terms of material stuff. I didn't get the best clothes or toys (actually that's debatable - I got a fair few home made wooden stuff that I treasured), but everyone was happy.

My life long friend, whose parents also did their best, took a different approach. His dad took a job down south that paid very well, and he sent most of the money home. My mate got all the latest toys and gadgets, designer clothes, the latest trend in trainers, and loads of pocket money.

When we reach our mid teens, he totally shocked me by announcing that he hated his dad. Shocked, I asked him why, pointing out that his dad had always done his best for him, and had it not been for his dad he would have been a poor scruffy kid just like everyone else in our neighbourhood. He replied along the lines of "yes but your dad has never had nowt, but he's always been there. Where was my dad? Why was it your dad that took me for days out? Where was my dad when your dad took us to the woods with that clapped out home made go-kart? When the rope snapped and I fell off that tarzy (rope swing/tarzan rope) it was your dad that scraped me up off the floor".

My mate's outburst has stayed with me ever since. It sums up the psychological damage that is done when grown up stuff gets in the way of someone's childhood. In the case of my mate's parents, it was a well intentioned mistake that caused his resentment, but as the bureacrats keep sticking their oar in I reckon there are going to be growing numbers of kids that grow up to harbour the same resentment.

 

I can see the sense in it-to a certain extent. After all, what with all the parents hanging round in the playground and the car parks-where will the druggies and paedophiles hang out!!.

 

Total madness! clueless, what a sad story. Just shows you never know what's going on in others minds. I hope it may make others think too.

cheers

 

omg how ridiculous!! :dh:

 

This is the sort of thing that stops people helping others in need. Child abusers are a minority and child abuse by strangers is very rare indeed. The media have hyped up things too much and some thick parents become paranoid about it, usually the sort of parents that i personally would not trust to look after a goldfish.
A few streets away there was a report of a man lurking near a children's playground. The report described him with his dog, he was by the stream. I knew straight away who it was, just about the most trustworthy and nice bloke you can imagine. I also realised that he was carrying out a survey of water voles in that stream and he was chairman of the local wildlife trust. Why did someone not ask him instead of reporting it to the police unnecessarily?
A few years back we had two toddlers toddling down our street. People looked and watched them but dare not approach. Anyway I thought "stuff this" and followed where they were heading, towards the main road. I caught them perched on the stream bank and made tham both hold my hand. They only knew their first names and told me they were looking for Daddy. So we visited the two nearby garages to see if Daddy worked there and at the second garage I got the staff to phone the police. When the police arrived we took them back up the road and eventually came across a panic stricken mother.
I have also been at a park and ended up with three little girls who were crying cause they had lost their parents. They sat on my bench. I had two dogs one of whom was a bit feisty but they were too frightened to leave cause their parents had left them alone on the swings.
I felt quite frightened really because I could not go for help, having the two dogs. I was quite relieved when my wife returned and we were able to get the park rangers.
It was 20 minutes before the two sets of parents returned, wondering what all the fuss was.
But this is the society we now live in, where people are terrified of helping and everyone is thought to be a child molester unless proved otherwise.

 

Geoff, your story reminded me of something that happened in our street a couple of years ago.

I was just heading out, about to get in my motor, when I saw a very distressed women sobbing in the street calling the name of her son. I didn't know the women or her child. I took a few minutes to talk to her to see what was going on and how I could help. It was apparent that her son of 3 years old had wandered off, and half the street was out on the search. Establishing that most were searching on foot, covering a fairly small radius, I suggested I'll postpone my shopping trip, and she can get in my car and we'll drive round the area just beyond the radius being covered by her friends on foot. She hesitated and looked slightly worried for a second, then refused my offer. What did she think I was going to do? Randomly kidnap her? My wife was with me so it should have been clear I wasn't going to try anything on. People are too paranoid these days.

EDIT: Forgot to mention. The story had a happy ending, the kid turned up safe and sound and totally oblivious to all the panic.

 

I don't know that any mother with a missing child has anything other than where is my kid on her mind Clueless. It was nice to offer, but having had the same thing happen to me once-I just wasn't in my right mind, I was screaming on the street.

 

Fair point.

 

on a summer evening,a few years ago i was sitting at the window looking at the front garden when i heard this screaming outside. this young boy was running screaming ,dressed in shorts. in his left hand he had a vest top,covered in blood .he stopped outside my garden gate,leaned on the gate and started to wipe blood from his right foot. i noticed the pavement was covered in blood from his foot. i ran out the house to investigate. it turned out he had been at the local park,playing in the pond,he jumped into the pond (but some idiot had thrown a milk bottle in the pond earlier and the wee lad had landed on the broken bottle!).i carried him into the house and my wife and i wrapped up the wee lads foot and phoned an ambulance.the cut was very bad the blood was pumping out his foot .we had blood all over the hall carpet and the kitchen floors. but the wee lad was attended to by the ambulance crew was taken to hospital and in time was ok.

the thing that angered me was. the park was very busy with families having picnics etc, and this wee lad had run the whole way through the park and across a main road and nobody had helped him!!!. he must have passed hundreds of people on his way to my house. what would have happened if we all turned a blind eye to a wee boy in distress. music.:(

 

There was a tragic story a while ago about a toddler spotted by some builders wandering aimlessly near a main road. One builder went to go and catch the kid before he did himself a mischief. His colleagues stopped him and pointed out that if he grabbed someone else's kid, he risked being branded a weirdo. The builders did nothing, the kid wandered into the road and was run over.

What would have happened if everyone turned a blind eye? Everyone would have blamed everyone else.

When my little son grows a bit and gets more mobile, if he manages to wander off from my wife or me, I would be furious if anything happened to him that could have been prevented by someone else. At the same time though, I understand people's fear of getting involved. Society in Britain is now too quick to brand everyone a weirdo.

One time on holiday, there was a young lad of about 4 years old walking along a wall near the beach. I was stood nearby getting sand off my feet as he approached. His mother was with him, but not holding his hand. When the kid was about 3 feet away from me, he lost his balance and fell head first off the wall. He fell to the opposite side from where I was so I didn't see how he landed but I heard the most gut wrenchingly sickening crunch, then silence, no screams. I was in shock and horrified. Then after a few seconds, I was very relieved to hear the kid start screaming (screams of pain are not nice, but at least if you can scream you are alive and conscious). When I managed to collect my thoughts and get my heart rate back to merely racing as opposed to practically bursting out of my chest, I ask the mother 'is he ok?'. You should have seen the way she scowled at me. Her face said it all. Even though I never touched the kid and just happened to be near by, somehow it was all my fault.

 

It is because stupid inadequate parents like to blame someone else Clueless, it makes them feel a bit better in their selfish little lives. Remember a few years back when one of the papers was printing addresses of sex offenders it was thick and ignorant who made use of it to harrass people, they were the sort of people who never know where their kids are and what they are up to. What said it all was when someone smashed up a "paedo's' house - he was actually a paedetrician!

 

I remember reading about that. It made feel quite bad, obviously for the doctor, but what made me feel worse was the realisation that we have so many people who are really that thick.

On your point about parents needing someone else to blame, I think you're right. But on the other hand, parents have to be careful these days because you can get done for showing any kind of discipline to a child. Not just smacking them, there was murmurings in the press a while ago that grounding a naughty child or taking their toys off them for a period of time as punishment was a violation of their human rights.

I think the biggest problem we have nowadays is the litigious culture we now have. Watching TV, reading the paper, even walking down the street, we are constantly told by claims companies that we can blame someone else for everything. We are also educated to assume the worst nowadays. I remember at school, and as far fetched as this might sound it did actually happen. In 'Personal and Social Education' class, we were made to watch a video featuring a kid who turned up to school one day with several big bruises. The teacher paused the video and asked us all to suggest what might have caused them. Hands went up all over the class, and suggestions came in thick and fast along the lines of: Fell off his bike, fell off his skateboard, fell off a tarzi (rope swing), fell out of a tree, had a fight with a bigger kid, got them while practising karate in a club etc etc. When the suggestions started to run out, the teacher solemnly volunteered "or maybe his parents have been abusing him".

 

Hmm! Can't quite see where you're coming from, clueless. Why wouldn't that be a possibilty
It's not one that I'd think of but it's a possibility.
As regards the rest of it. If you see a child in danger,you protect it. Doesn't matter about the consequences, you just protect the child, if you don't, you've got to live with yourself afterwards.