I am just so sick and tired of all this PC Bull Shit , like Bryan said , we did not have a lot of channels on TV growing up during our era and when something good came on as a kid you savored it . The weekends were time to watch cartoons , play outside with friends , riding bikes ect.
Our parents and neighbors looked out for each others children and we all knew when it was time to come in and call it a day. These young parents who are raising their kids on computers and I phone games are really doing their children a dis service imo , let those little rug rats have fun outside , learn to get a bit of dirt on them , watch those old cartoons , get them interested in some of the passions that made you happy as a child , you survived and so will they.
I love Tom and Jerry and Road Runner , still laugh when I see something with Acme Company on it!
Laurie
The PC brigade has gone too far. We are now seeing cases of parents getting JAILED for not sufficiently wrapping up their kids in cotton wool. A US woman was jailed for letting her 9 year old daughter go to the park to play with their friends whilst she did a shift in McDonalds. The charge was "neglect", and must have been quite serious for a jail term to have been imposed. What she did whilst her kid was playing out should be irrelevant, she could just as easily have spent the afternoon at home in front of the telly, catching up on the cleaning, etc whilst her kid spent a few hours down the park.
When I was nine, almost ALL the local kids would play out for much of the day. We had each other, and there were the parents of friends around. I also had grandparents living not far from home, and they were an alternative refuge if my parents were out working.
By jailing this woman, it sends the message that it's no longer simply a matter of convincing parents that they are doing their kids a dis service by keeping them locked up at home, now the law REQUIRES that you do this to some extent, yet there are no clear guidelines as to where the line is drawn between allowing your kids out to play, and facing jail for neglect.
Even here we are seeing so many alerts about a "suspicious person" walking in the vicinity of a school. The problem is that it gives the impression that there are so many predators out there given the almost daily alerts from one school or another that you might as well keep your kids on a lead at all times, and never let them out for a second on their own. For the less paranoid, so many alerts makes it hard to separate the true danger from the hype, and like the boy who cried wolf, the "wolf" will be lurking, and will be one of these many false positive "suspicious persons", and your kid is gone.
Are we REALLY in a world where the majority of people have some ill intent towards unguarded children, justifying the "suspicious unless proven otherwise" stance being taken by those in a position of power?
Perhaps the underlying problem is a pursuit of a zero risk lifestyle, which not only eliminates risk, but sucks all pleasure out of life as a side effect.
It's not true zero risk either, because whilst we have rampant health & safety and kids locked away as much as possible, we face greater than ever health risks from this cosseted lifestyle. Obesity is an epidemic, and can be just as deadly as being killed on the roads, or being the unlucky murder victim. Many kids live their whole lives via a computer screen, locked safely away in their homes, well away from perverts and the traffic, but they often get obese, unfit, and as a result have a reduced life expectation and suffer more in the way of ill health in adulthood.
