The whole world cannot be childproofed, and that’s actually a good thing.
My neighbor—correction, my neighbors, as this is a rapidly spreading cancer—have taken to sticking a bright orange sign near the middle of the street to remind us all that children are playing in our residential neighborhood. Let me say that once more for emphasis: children are playing in our residential neighborhood. These are people who insist upon a “may contain peanuts” warning on a bag of peanuts.
I love my kids. I love your kids, too. Kids are funny and sweet and can really get behind a good fart joke. The last thing I want is for something bad to happen to a child, but if I have to dodge another one of these stupid “children at play” signs I’m going to lose it.
Hypervigilant parenting via signage is nothing new. If you are of a certain age you probably remember the great “Baby On Board” invasion of the ’80s, when faux street signs dangled from the rear windows of Volvo wagons, admonishing drivers to proceed with caution when nearing their safe, boxy vehicles. I don’t remember anyone actually saying, “Slow down, honey, there’s a baby in that car. We better give them a wide berth.” Rather, the majority of us mocked those who displayed “Baby On Board” placards while said owners of both baby and sign congratulated themselves for being such fantastic parents. Then we each enjoyed a wine cooler, played with a Rubik’s Cube, and fiddled with the zippers on our parachute pants.
Regardless of their efficacy, millions of Baby On Board signs were sold during the Reagan era at a couple of bucks a pop. Preying on parental fear and guilt is big business: 7 billion dollars are spent on baby proofing each year, according to some estimates.
But child safety cannot be purchased. The world is full of sharp edges, speedy cars, and peanuts. The best way to keep your kid safe is to teach him or her to properly assess danger and react accordingly. If you don’t want your child to get hit chasing a soccer ball into the street, teach him not to chase a soccer ball into the street. Still not sure? Monitor her until she’s responsible enough to monitor herself. That way your little darling won’t chase any soccer ball into any street, regardless of the presence of a “children at play” sign.
Teach your kids to be responsible for themselves, not dependent on a warning label. It’s a big world out there full of unsupervised adventure, danger, scissors that must not be run with, and irons that should not be used on clothing one is wearing.
I need to cut this short and get to a meeting with my lawyer. Can you believe that nobody warned me peanut butter contains peanuts?
—photo courtesy of the author
If I found one of those things in the middle of the street, I’d run it over.
I always said I’d (or rather my kid) would be lucky if they made it to adolesence as I’d be the parent who would tell them “don’t stick you finger in the electric socket because you could get hurt ” twice before letting them do it the third time. Then if they survived the electrocution I’d be telling them “now do you know why I said not to? Great lets go to the hospital…” Children understand pain over logic before their brain is completely formed… so if they don’t want to listen to my logic they can listen to their… Read more »
The problem with this is that if a kid accidentally runs in the street and gets hit by someone going 40 in a residential zone, they are going to be splatted all across the pavement. I’m going to teach my child not to play in the street, but I’d also love the drivers to obey the speed limits, and in my experience very few people actually go 25 in a 25 mile zone.
Our first home in the community we live was on a residential stretch of a main thoroughfare (appropriately names “Main Street”). I had some concerns in that my kids were small at the time and had a fear of their running in the street which was far more busy then a regular residential street. The kids were taught to stay in the back yard, not once did we have a situation that either of them wondered out to the front. People need to take responsibility for their own kids, it’s that simple.I grew up in the city and in all… Read more »
I think it is a BOTH/AND and not an either/or situation when it comes to child safety. Yes, adults need to be mindful about driving in residential neighborhoods, using car seats, childproofing potential dangers as best they can. Tragic events have occurred when that has not been done. Yes, adults need to teach children to be careful. I remember the rule about looking both ways before crossing the street, holding hands while doing so, with any adult I was with. I remember my mother turning the frying pan and pot handles on the stove, away from reach of small, curious… Read more »
I agree James that as parents we are to teach our children responsibility. Whilst we are never to abdicate our responsibility for their safety, we must train our kids to be watchful and vigilant. Our daughter has a peanut allergy. She’s 7 now and is very careful to ask people what’s in something or to advise people of what she can or cannot have. We live on a farm and right now is busy with tractors planting. Both of our kids know to move off the road/lane when something is coming. Safety is everyone’s concern. At my kids school I… Read more »
Wow, this is textbook manslaughter apology: Teach your children not to get killed? Blaming the victim, even the youngest children who can’t understand the consequences of their actions? Excusing and normalizing the reckless and dangerous behavior of self-absorbed drivers? Proof that manslaughter culture is alive and well in America. Disgusting!
You have to respect Amerrica – being distracted by thinking…
James, I’m with you on this one. My sister is living in the house we three kids grew up in. The elementary school is three blocks away through our residential neighborhood with no heavy traffic. We walked to school every day. She insisted on driving her grandson to and from school the whole time he went there. As for that sign in the street, after a week it would just become part of the landscape and have no impact on drivers. And don’t get me started on the “Baby on Board” signs. I never could figure out what they wanted… Read more »
Do you ever wonder why Extreme Sports were born in North America? You can blame parents for bubble wrapping their kids so that whenever they fell down they never scraped their knees or elbows. So they just continually upped the ante……….
We had this neighbor who constructed an enormous flashing Children Playing sign, the size of a stop sign, that he’d park in the center of our street. Horrifying. We couldn’t believe it. (Actually, we could). So I get where you’re coming from. Now, you wrote that you’re a parent. I don’t know how old your kids are, mine are teenagers now, but do you remember the age of two? I have twins; when they turned two, my oldest was not even 4. We refer to that time as Our Dark Period. From my experience, not only do two yr olds… Read more »
What about special needs kids with Sensory Processing Disorders or in the Autism Spectrum??? As a parent you do your best to keep them safe and beside you at all times, but in a blink of an eye, they run (really fast)! Although you do try to teach them responsibility and safety measures, because of their condition, it’s still difficult for them to understand the consecuences of danger and what’s happenig in their surroundings, most of the time (you can Google these and other conditions to understand a little more). I think the article is insensitive and just focuses on… Read more »
“What about special needs kids with Sensory Processing Disorders or in the Autism Spectrum???”
… you don’t let them play in the street? If you can’t stop them from breaking away and running wild into the middle of traffic, what makes you think a sign will do anything? Yes it’s the responsibility of the driver to be aware of their surroundings, and to be prepared for the unexpected in a residential neighborhood, but it’s a road – not a playground for unsupervised kids.
Where did I said that any kid, special needs or not, should play on the streets or that they are not supervised? If you’re quoting and replying to my comment, the least expected is for you to have read it in it’s entirely, specially the part when I said: “As a parent you do your best to keep them safe and beside you at all times, but in a blink of an eye, they run (really fast)! Although you do try to teach them responsibility and safety measures, because of their condition, it’s still difficult for them to understand the… Read more »
Totally true. A great article to read while drinking a Crystal Pepsi or New Coke.
Born and raised in the heartland of the Volvo stationwagon, I wholeheartedly agree. There are so many items put up around the suburbs to get people to slow down, signs, speedbumps, any kind of obstacles (that actually attract kids to go out on the street and play with them!), that people get so busy navigating around that they probably wouldn’t have any chance of noticing a kid chasing a ball across the street… And people get really worked up around this. I’ve seen parents jump in their car and actually go chasing after (at whatever speed they managed to attain)… Read more »
Apparently, speed bumps outside schools have at least one unintended consequence: the air quality in front of those schools is worse than elsewhere, because cars that slow down and speed up again burn more gasoline and therefore put out more pollution. Kids, look both ways before crossing the street, and hold your breath when you do.
I spend about half the year living outside my home country, the US. One of the many things I find strikingly different, in a most delightful way, is the utter lack of this kind of crap. There are a lot of western and first world countries I rarely visit that might have this same disease so I’m not trying to say it’s just the US that has parental paranoia when it comes to safety, just I love living in places that don’t.
I believe in Europe we get that cancer a bit less, but we are certainly catching a few metastases of it. E.g. the new thing is that Kindergarten groups on trips in the city will now often wear matching orange reflector vests. Sometimes I think it is only matter of time until children will be required to wear walking helmets and there will be fences between sidewalks and traffic lanes.
I have a sneaking suspicion the reason kids in groups wear those coats is so the little boogers can’t wander off and get lost. Keeping track of 30 excited 6 yearolds must be like herding cats in a downpour!
It’s interesting, and I’m not sure what to make of this, but the places that are most obsessed with child safety are the societies with the lowest birth rates. The fewer children we have, the more paranoid we are about them getting hurt.
Frankly, I’m amazed those children playing signs are even necessary anymore. I didn’t know American kids still played outside. Are there still kids playing with balls outdoors?
Maybe now people won’t be so afraid of letting their kids play video games…. : – )
Couple of things If you ever do a risk course for mining you will know that using signs is considered the worst and least effective way to reduce risk and is only a temporary measure put in place while a longer term permanent solution is instated. Secondly from what I remember the Baby on Board campaign was started by paramedics to indicate to rescue staff to look for a baby in a car. This started as a result of a baby not being rescued in a vehicle accident. This was probably just as ineffective as training should have been adjusted… Read more »
Hey, Luke, thanks for the comment. Always much appreciated.
According to our good friends at Snopes and Wikipedia, you’ve fallen for an urban legend regarding Baby On Board signs, but don’t feel bad — I fall for a different one every day:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_on_board
Lol. I said it’s from what I remember. Thanks for the correction.
The first is accurate though. The aim of risk management is to reduce risk. The simple fact is that signs don’t reduce risk. If you had say a hole in the ground this is the list of things you can do. Least effective at the top.
Signs
Tape barrier
Train staff to avoid hole.
Fence
Covering
Repair hole.
Hehe, in St.Petersburg I once saw on a busy main street an open manhole cover. No sign or anything. Cars just carefully went around it. And a friend told me that in Moscow he saw a guy on the 3rd lane of a 5-lane street stopping his car and quietly repairing a tire. The problem with those stickers is this: 1) You don’t scrape them off when you are driving without your child, so it won’t tell you whether there actually is a child in the car. 2) When somebody crashes into your car because they totally overlooked it, they… Read more »