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

[leanne-opaskar.livejournal.com]

Creepy as all hell. Agreed.

[meranthi.livejournal.com]

The day care my kids go to has ropes. Which the kids *hold on* to, not tied. That works really well. Tying....? Yeah, creepy!

[katatonic-state.livejournal.com]

I don't have a problem having them hold on to the rope. If I found out my kid was tied to it, though, I'd flip. I could actually think of a few safety reasons why you wouldn't want to do it aside from the fact that you don't tie a kid up like a dog.

[pale-chartreuse.livejournal.com]

I've used leading strings for a single child, I can't even imagine keeping a group together. I doubt that they were tied, loops are pretty standard. Kids have to earn their way into that system, otherwise they are in the group strollers with the toddlers.

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

Are you quite sure they were "tied" to the rope? Generally, those ropes have loops in them, and the kids hold the loops.

I'd be quite surprised if the children were tied to the ropes.

When Anna was that age (and yes: her day care used the rope system as I describe it), I found that she was not very good with negative instructions, ie "don't run off", but much better with positive ones, ie "hold my hand".

Once, I took her and a very young friend with me into the city via subway (for a day at a museum) and it was very helpful to have them both "hold the stroller" or "hold my hand", rather than "stay close" or "don't go there".

[dreda.livejournal.com]

Yeah - the daycare near my house uses ropes like this and the kids put their wrists through the loops, but they're not tied. Same deal with the ropes vs. strollers thing - it's pretty common.

Are you sure they were tied? Or did it just look that way as you were driving past?

[jducoeur]

Hard to say -- like I said, this was seen as I was driving past. The hands on the ropes appeared to be free, and it certainly *looked* like they were tied at the wrist, but it's hard to be certain about a glance...

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

Might be best to think horses, not zebras. :-)

[jducoeur]

Impossible to say -- it appeared to be about their wrists, but "wrists through loops" and "tied in" is a subtle enough distinction that I couldn't say from a glance...

[dlevey.livejournal.com]

As has been said, it's quite likely that these were hands-through-loops and not hands-tied.

As a parent, I don't like the idea that someone will be tying my child, but the loop thing works for me. Walking around in an urban environment, especially with kids that are as likely as not to run off, means that a reasonable precaution can save my kid. Then again, my younger is almost 10, so at this point age 4 is but a fuzzy memory.

As a (sometime) teacher, anything I can reasonably do to keep someone else's kid safe and under control is something I'm likely to do. The idea terrifies me, and I've been working with kids for over 30 years.

[rickthefightguy.livejournal.com]

Interesting. If you saw that in a cave complex or a rock-climb however, it would be perfectly normal, right? (I mean, 8 people is a lot for that, and 4 is young for either activity, but the point remains.)

[celiskywalker.livejournal.com]

There's definitely a lot of things about the helicopter generation that scare me. For me it isn't so much the captivity that bothers me (though it does) so much as how are our kids supposed to learn if we don't give them the chance to make mistakes?

How many of us actually learned anything by just blindly doing what we were told versus testing some of those limits? To me many of the situations we put our children in are designed to prevent them from having to rely on themselves to understand the rules or to prevent them from testing the rules. And that's all well and good for keeping them under control but scary when you think that at some point they need to grow up, be adults and understand how to set their own rules.

Did that make sense?

[calygrey.livejournal.com]

You haven't been a parent. There are many times, many situations where very small children are, quite rightfully, physically restrained.

Walk with even one 4 year old, and the good sense of using the rope becomes very quickly apparent. It's that or confine them to a stroller...or never take them anywhere. It's much easier to never take them out at all. Which solution is best?

[eudociainboston.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure you saw kids hanging onto loops- that is what a lot of preschools/daycares do with kids that age to take them outside for outings. Being big enough and a good enough listener to not be in the stroller is a very big deal to little kids and is a privilege they really don't want to lose.

[celiskywalker.livejournal.com]

While it is true that I have not been a parent, I was 13 years old when my sister was born and my mother was too depressed to take care of her. She went nearly everywhere with me after school for all of my high school years. If she couldn't behave herself she got carried. I wasn't walking around the streets of Boston or Cambridge with her, but I was walking around parking lots and malls and whatnot. There were rules for situations, hold my hand in the parking lot for instance. She was watched extra when we introduced new rules. New rules were tested in relatively safe environments (like the parking lot to a relatively quiet family owned grocery store before taking her to the crowded/crazy mall).

Whether my attitude would be different if it were my kid versus my sister, I don't know. And it would certainly be different with larger groups of children whom I don't know how far they can be trusted so to speak.

Maybe things have changed in the 15 years since my sister was 2.

[tashabear.livejournal.com]

This is why my mom leashed us. We had a leather harness with a leash attached to the center back, and I don't recall it being uncomfortable in any way. For my part, I wouldn't be carried and I wouldn't hold her hand, and this was before small, easily maneuverable strollers were available. When someone confronted her about it, my mom just said, "I'd rather leash her than lose her," and went about her business.

[eudociainboston.livejournal.com]

Yup. I got onto it recently with someone in the library parking lot who saw my then 22 month old on a leash and made a negative comment. I was already not feeling well and in a bad mood since said toddler had tried to run in front of a car while we were walking in so I kind of let them have it. The basic jist was I was ill, with 30% of my lung function, physically incapable of running and recovering from surgery and likely to remain quite ill for the foreseeable future (including the very real possibility of requiring a double lung transplant)so if keeping the girl on a leash meant that we could have small outings during the summer instead of being stuck inside on beautiful low humidity days then I was going to do what I needed to do and really I didn't need to deal with their snarky, judgmental comments.
Making the other person cry was not my intent but hopefully next time they will keep their comments to themselves.

[umbran.livejournal.com]

Dude, think usability. You have a dozen kids of that age. Are you going to try to tie them to a rope, individually? Think about that serial process for just a second. How long does it take to get them into and out of that?

No, they weren't tied. The loops were pre-tied into the rope. The alternative is a usability nightmare...

[calygrey.livejournal.com]

Your methods sound very much like how I dealt with my two when they were 1-5. Keeping other people's children safe always terrifies me.

I've seen photos of solutions like the looped rope and giant buggies/wagons of toddlers all the way back to the 20's. I'd supposed toddlers haven't changed since then. Or since ever.

[celiskywalker.livejournal.com]

Other people's children are always a giant 'what if'. What will they do, what won't they do. Definitely terrified me when I babysat others.

Curious Connundrum

[cristovau.livejournal.com]

This might be a problem created by fixing an older problem. I know Cambridge is not war zone, but Cambridge has some busy traffic. There is a need to keep a group of young children in line when traveling through the city. What tools do you use to guarantee safety?

You could increase discipline, if allowed. That was probably the solution of days gone by. Depending on the discipline form, it is likely to be frowned upon, and/or illegal.

You could chose not to travel through the city, but that is a different form of protection and doesn't address the core issue.

You could go without a guarantee of safety, but that opens you up to possible troubles like traffic accidents and law suits. (and that assumes the danger being addressed is playing in traffic)

All in all, the toddlers introduction to BDSM doesn't seem to be a bad solution to the problem at hand. It is hard to evict the image of chain gang, though.

[dagonell.livejournal.com]

One: This.
Two: Take a quick count of the above comments. See how many say tied=no, loops=ok then think what happens when mommy asks her toddler what s/he did that day. You don't think someone is going to raise holy hell with tying? They were looped.
-- Dagonell

[dragonazure.livejournal.com]

Your visual description simply reminded me of movies that show prisoners on a chain-gang being led to and from their work sessions. That's the reason I would have reacted negatively to seeing that, and it sounds almost exactly what you are reacting to.

On the other hand, having MUCH younger siblings, and knowing how easily children can "get away" in a moment of inattention, I don't see the problem of using a guide rope to help keep the group together. If the child is hanging on to a rope or is tethered via a harness it seems like it would make it more difficult for someone to kidnap one or more of them or have the group get separated and lost in a crowd. Having the kids hold hands might be OK, but it would make walking in a line like that more difficult.

Would you rather teach all those kids to "Heel"? ;) What is the alternative? During my school days, it was either everyone walks "single file" or it was the buddy system. That worked well back then but it was a in a smaller community that was fairly pedestrian-friendly.

[richenza.livejournal.com]

Hahahahaha!

Oh man, this. Just getting the kid into a T-shirt is like stuffing an octopus into a mesh bag. If you actually had to tie them together, you'd never leave.

[unicornpearlz.livejournal.com]

They did the same thing when my brother was in boyscout camp, in order to do night trails. Only, the senior scouts had sticks with which they poked the slower kids to speed them up.

I have no problem with this sort of thing. Makes perfect sense to me and it keeps the kids safe. It's a follow the leader scenario with an adult watching from behind as well. Sounds good to me.