The heck with the nanny state; what about the protective-custody state?

[jducoeur]

So there I was, a few days ago, driving around Cambridge, when I passed a sight that has stayed uncomfortably with me. It was a neat line of small children on the sidewalk, each maybe four years old. (I'm bad with ages: small, but big enough to be walking down the sidewalk escorted.) The line was neat because they were attached to a pair of ropes -- each child's wrist was tied into the rope, and each rope had an adult at the front and back, with about six kids between them.

My inner engineer marveled at the simple efficiency of this solution for keeping a dozen children safe while walking down a busy city sidewalk. But my inner sociologist squirmed uncomfortably.

Mind, the kids didn't seem to mind: their eyes were wandering hither and yon as they walked, largely ignoring their right hand held up slightly by the rope. But that's kind of the point -- children at that age learn from everything happening to them. So I have to wonder: what does this teach?

I confess, I find it creepy as all hell. The implicit message seems to be that captivity is right and appropriate, so long as it is intended to keep you safe. I suspect that most people would word that differently, but many would agree with it in spirit. It makes my skin crawl.

To understand a person, it's often best to understand their formative literature. If you want to understand me, I commend the novelette With Folded Hands, by Jack Williamson. (The basis for the followup novel The Humanoids.) It's fairly old (I confess, I last read it decades ago), but perhaps even more than 1984 it shaped much of my political philosophy. If the above scene does *not* make you squirm, the story might help you understand why it does me...

Comments

[unicornpearlz.livejournal.com]

Well said.

[unicornpearlz.livejournal.com]

And I start LOL-ing because all I can think of is a person 'walking' a bunch of crazed 4-5 year old, like a dog walker.

[kls-eloise.livejournal.com]

Heck - this is the reason why my daycare *requires* velcro-closed shoes. If they had to get twelve three and four year olds out of their indoor shoes and into their outdoor shoes with laces, they've be out of day before they ever got outside...

[kls-eloise.livejournal.com]

My day care doesn't have the rope/loop thing that others are describing (that I know of,) but as the parent of a will-be-four-year-old-in-28-days, I approve whole-heartedly.

Charlotte is a pretty good kid, and she minds me well enough that other people and parents compliment me on it. That said, Pennsic was definitely a don't take your eyes off her bit of a nightmare. There's crowds. She's short. There are interesting things to see. Blink, and she's gone. Not to mention that when I bark "STOP" at her she does - but there's about three steps of momentum. AND depending on the situation, my tone, her mindset - in that little brain the logical thing to do at that point might be to run back to mommy - right in front of the car pulling into camp.

There's *one* of her. I don't even want to imagine trying to cope with six. On a city sidewalk. Who maybe aren't as disciplined as mine. I think the folks who work at daycare are saints.

I completely get why to a non-parent who doesn't parse things the same way that would look creepy, but through the parent filter it looks differently. My reaction would likely have been "how clever."

Re: Curious Connundrum

[jducoeur]

Yeah, my initial gut reaction was, "Look, it's a cute chain gang" -- and I'm still wrestling with that...

[johno.livejournal.com]

I've long predicted something like the results you do.

Captivity and Safety go together.

But I came to it from a different direction, Car Seats.

Safety and Security equals restraint and control.

[jducoeur]

Yeah, there does seem to be a real cultural shift going on. Having grown up as part of the "kids in the way-back" generation, the idea of putting four-year-olds in car seats wigs me out something fierce...

[jducoeur]

Could be, although I find the distinction pretty slight myself: an engineering matter more than a philosophical one.

(OTOH, the distinction between "looped" and "holding on", as goldsquare brought up, is much bigger -- still subtle, but the difference between teaching passivity vs. active responsibility...)

[umbran.livejournal.com]

You know, kids do learn from everything, but...

...there's always a but...

...that does not imply that *everything* must be "on message", or the kids will be screwed up. Traumatic events aside, children are pretty resilient about what message finally comes across. You can, in fact, teach them to be passive on that rope, for now, and even *why* they should be so. And later you can get them on board with owning responsibility, at an age when they are more capable of actually taking that responsibility in the face of myriad distractions, and they'll figure it out.

"Kids should not be treated like china," works both ways.

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

There are a lot of things about sane parenting (the kind I hope I do) that if they were applied to adults would be extremely creepy. That doesn't mean they are inappropriate for raising kids. Consider the crib, for example; it's basically a small padded jail cell. Some cultures are horrified by cribs, as a type of child abuse.

I'd rather see kids hanging onto loops and walking than being passively chauffeured in this, which I see around town a lot:


Here's an image of the loop-rope in action:


Some of the books that are treasured for kids really creeped me out, but the needs of a little kid are very different. Cases where the parents seemed to be stalking the kids, for example -- but kids need reassurance that the parent will be coming back or will always be there. It's a radically different lens they view the world from.

Now some parents/teachers go far overboard. For some entertaining and horrible examples, I recommend this blog: http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/

[sabinade.livejournal.com]

This. Not all children will be safe or stay in safety guidelines. It isnt in their makeup.

Re: Curious Connundrum

[anu3bis.livejournal.com]

That's actually what one day care I worked next to called their rope line, but only to the other teachers. I admit to having the song in my head whenever I saw their group go past.

And, just as reinforcement, it was a rope-hold, not a rope-loop or tie.

I've also seen rows of kids in red wagons pulled home after playing in the park or pool.

Apples, meet oranges?

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

One presumes these climbers would (a) be of the age of consent, and (b) be in a dangerous situation where each was counting on the others in line to save their life if necessary, using that rope. Each person in that climb is making life or death decisions.

Here the children have no ability to consent, and the adult is making all the decisions. This teaches lessons that you may not want to teach young children about personal responsibility and looking out for yourself and each other.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Having read the above comments, I am struck by the tunnel vision of current parents. I understand raising children is VERY HARD. I understand that getting little kids to do anything is very hard. But...

How did we, by which I mean people over about the age of 30, survive to adulthood?

I do remember once being asked to hold onto a rope--I forget the occasion--but generally it was "hold hands", or follow instructions. We were clearly able to move around as a herd when I was three, let alone six.

Did something change in how kids behave, and if so, why? Did the world get more dangerous? Did we get less tolerant of mishaps? Are we understaffing our child care to the point where the adults have no choice but to use force-multipliers like ropes?

This always confuses me. Presumably there have been hundreds of generations of humans, each going through the stage when they were four and not following directions and needing to be guided and in loco parentis and all that. And somehow we survived without chain gangs, leashes, always-on helmets, and velcro bodysuits.

Why? How?

[anastasiav.livejournal.com]

Why? Cars aren't engineered for little people. If they're not in a car seat, the seatbelt goes across their face.... It's just a higher seat, essentially. (They do make 5 point harness for kids that age, but they're hard to find. We have a family at school that had to get one for a special needs child, and that's basically the market for the non-booster style.)

[anastasiav.livejournal.com]

I'll just chime in and say I'm sure they weren't tied. There are fairly aggressive laws in all states about "active or passive restraint" of children, and tying one hand to a rope would absolutely trigger a report. I'm sure they were actively holding on.

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

>Presumably there have been hundreds of generations of humans, each going through the stage when they were four and not following directions and needing to be guided and in loco parentis and all that.

Of course, and there were enough casualties that they pull the "average life expectancy" statistics way out of whack. If you survived into age seven or eight in the middle ages, you were likely to live to your sixties or seventies, but because so many little kids died, the average age is something like 30-40.

Several different things have changed. One: labor is more expensive, even not-much-skilled baby/toddler care, so fewer caregivers per kid. Two: a lower birthrate may make parents more careful of this particular kid, but more important, the litigious society we live in makes daycare institutions positively allergic to any kind of risk, because it raises their insurance premiums a ridiculous amount. See the Free Range Kids blog I posted about for some examples of this.

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

My mom was "wigged out" by infants in special seats; we survived sitting on laps, etc.

Of course the kids that went through the windshield are not here to argue the other case.

If you want to be further disturbed, realize that the current laws disallow kids in the front passenger seat until around age 13.

[leanne-opaskar.livejournal.com]

It wigs *me* out, and I'm half to a whole generation younger than you. {:

[metageek.livejournal.com]

And tying them to each other sounds like a liability risk. Just imagine if you had six kids tied together, and five of them got scared of a dog and ran into traffic, and dragged the sixth with them. The parents of the sixth would sue you for tying them together.

[ladysprite.livejournal.com]

Have you ever heard the phrase "tied to the apron strings?" Kids were kept, functionally, on leashes for generation upon generation. This isn't some new, crazy, "nanny state" phenomenon.

And I'd think that being able to go outside, holding onto a lead rope, gives the kids a lot more freedom than being kept indoors in a confined area would. It's not constraining, or overprotective, or paranoid; it's a way to give the kids a measure of freedom, mobility, and diversity of experience that they otherwise wouldn't have.

[etherial.livejournal.com]

I look forward to the day I can hand my child a cell phone with a sticker that says "in loco parentis". On speed dial will be me, my wife, the family doctor, and the family lawyer.

[serakit.livejournal.com]

I have never worked in a daycare, but I've worked in summer camps and elementary schools, and I recall only too clearly the multiple trips out, both walking around Roxbury and on the T, that I took with a class of second and third graders. We didn't have the lead ropes, and we didn't lose any kids-- but I was terrified the entire time that we would lose one, and there were occasions where it was only luck that saved us from losing one. I'm not sure if it's a change in kids' behavior or not, but only about half the class was capable of holding hands and walking in a line. The other half was a constant struggle, and one kid *I* had trouble hanging on to even after he'd been instructed to hold my hand the entire way. If my attention has to be devoted to that one kid who needs to be watched constantly to ensure he doesn't run off, I need a quick and easy way of determining if the other nineteen are safe or not. "Are they all holding on to their loops" is a very simple way of remaining aware of the rest of them while devoting my attention to that one kid who cannot respond effectively to any form of discipline I can dish out. (There's always one kid like this, in any classroom.)

[umbran.livejournal.com]

It occurs to me that there's something far more simple than *all* of this:

Have you never seen a kid out walking, holding their parent's hand? Nothing wrong with that, right? It isn't holding back a kid's independence to hold Mom or Dad's hand when they are out walking....

What do you expect the day care to do, when the caregivers don't have six pairs of arms?

Just because you, as an adult, put a bondage association on ropes, don't expect the kids to do so. To them, it is just an extension of the human hand!

Re: Apples, meet oranges?

[aneirin-awenyd.livejournal.com]

"Here the children have no ability to consent, and the adult is making all the decisions. This teaches lessons that you may not want to teach young children about personal responsibility and looking out for yourself and each other."

Yes, well, such is the nature of our institutional-based approach to managing children from daycare through...well, even college, in many cases. I agree with you and Justin. The institutional model is not one I feel is ideal for kids, my kids, any kids.

I understand why it makes sense from an urban daycare safety perspective. If I were a city daycare provider, I imagine myself likely employing that tool -- otherwise we'd sacrifice going for walks for fear of safety issues. But that misses the point. The point is that this is an institutional model of dominance and submission, and the kids in this environment are trained not to question that dynamic, and some of them (perhaps most of them) will grow up to be adults who will not question that dynamic in the institutions they encounter beyond daycare/school.

At this point, I am not sure we can change the institutional nature of our culture, of which daycare is a prime example, but we can lament it and remember that there are other, perhaps individually healthier ways of solving the issue of "what to do with the children."