When did parents start using leashes on their kids?

. however, mine is just taking her first steps so i may have to revise that opinion in a few months

Relatively open mind for a nanosecond there, just before she explained to me why I'm a bad man for looking after my son.

xpost

I typed a whole answer as justifying circumstances, but I'm out.

i have one daughter (9 months) and i care for my neice and nephew (4 and 2) 45-50 hours a week. we often go grocery shopping and running errands throughout the day and i never have needed a leash. i don't think that is due to my super human abilities.

and i don't think that anyone is a 'bad man' for using a leash. to each his own. i do feel that it is lazy and it is not necessary. sorry if i have crushed your self esteem.

The conjunction of these two sentences made my head blow up.

I say that granting that in the other 20% of cases you will, yes, see either (a) the sad spectacle of a perfectly orderly kid nonetheless tethered, presumably out of paranoia, and sometimes at disturbingly advanced ages, or (b) worse, the parent who stands there having a long conversation or paying attention to something else entirely, while, at the end of the leash, the child runs around raising hell. (I guess people do this with very small dogs, as well.) Which is dumb, for the obvious reasons, and also dangerous, because relying on the leash as some kind of magical protection will, yeah, not keep the kid from eating thumbtacks, punching strangers in the nuts, or trying to hug vicious dogs.

There is a day care close to DU, in the mornings I see them taking the kids for a walk on the low traffic semi-urban sidewalks when the weather allows. These are 3 year olds it looks like They are either holding onto, or somehow affixed to a 10 yard long run of webbing, 2 abreast by maybe 8 kids long. I'm here to say. One kid on a leash: demeaning oppression. 16 kid toddler chaingang: TOTALLY TWEE-DORABLE! Will add, they always seem happy enough. Now MUSH!

you should attach a hamster water bottle to its cage and i am sure it will thrive.

OH NOES IM A BAD LAZY PERANT!!!

http://www.pharmacyseek.com/images/meds/ritalin.jpg

YEEHAW!! ROUND UP DEM LITTLE DOGIES!!!!

didn't we have a "what will a middle-aged ILX argue about" thread?

i am not saying that the RARE circumstance does not exist that would warrant such a contraption. perhaps that is true for onimo. it just seems that many who enlist the device do so because they would rather tie the child to their person than be bothered to pay enough attention to keep hold of them. they seem to be overused. like television/kid's videos, i guess.

LOOK AT THIS MISERABLE DEGRADED CHIDL

Really? I only see a kid on a leash maybe once every couple of years. I think if they were very commonplace they wouldn't seem strange at all but the novelty of it makes it seem unnecessary.

Give a child matches and he is an arsonist for a day.

Give a child a lighter and he is an arsonist for a week.

But teach a child to start fires with nothing but two sticks and some string and he may be an arsonist for the rest of his life.

Show me the studies that show that these child harnesses are damaging to children; until you do, the two examples are more equivalent than dissimilar.

xpost

I bet people who put leashes on their kids put humiliating sweaters on their dogs.

I don't have kids, but I was one myself once, and I think I can safely say I could have lived with having been attached to my parents for a while rather than being another roadkill statistic. (My parents were exceptionally good at parenting, as far as I'm concerned, taught me right from wrong, all that malarkey, and I have no idea whether I was reined or not - presumably not as I would still be bearing the mental scars of such brutal degradation)

Incidentally, what's wrong with children's TV?

This is what I expected to be in the hatch on Lost. Would've been far more interesting.