When did parents start using leashes on their kids?

and a leash on a ski slope is not exactly the same thing.

http://www.angelfire.com/in2/dandee/

http://babies1st.com/by1354.html

http://shop.store.yahoo.com/kidsstuff/g120-loopleash.html

"lol"

besides, you can make that argument about other, less comical things and it wouldnt be pretty.

While I agree with stan about paranoia there are many things that could happen to a child in a busy store or public area: get lost; abduction; maybe taking things off store shelves and putting them in their mouths. . the list is endless.

I imagine a 'tether' would give the parent one less thing to worry about while in busy public places.

as long as you keep your child by your side, or under your vision that should be it. i'm gonna go out on a limb here and say most parents dont use these things and they get by, right? this just looks STUPID and is just that. kids are not dogs. also, even with this leash, if the parents look the other way the kid can still take things off shelves and put things in their mouth etc.

btw, how do you quote people like that? i

You use brackets like this: <i>quote</i> (see the FAQ link below for more)

thanks StanM!

I have yet to forgive her for buying it or myself for using it.

(Although in retrospect, it must have looked pretty funny).

short leash. like I'm having to use with my young dog. Don't know if the choke training collar would also apply.

I do think it looks silly but that's probably only b/c it's something rarely seen. If it were more common, I doubt it would look odd. I wouldn't criticze the parents b/c you don't know what the situation is with their child. There could have been a frightening incident in the past (like with Maria's brother) or the child could have emotional/behavorial disorders that make him very hard to control in public.

whatever. far more distressing to me is when I see a child hit/spanked in public.

OTM

I went into teaching anti-spanking and came out unsure about how I felt. But doing it in public (or in front of their classmates/friends) is unneccesarily humilating.

IT'S NEW TO ME!!!!!

I completely disagree.

OTM

OTM my arse. They got cars where you live? My youngest ran about like a nutcase for a few months and had no road sense whatsoever. Giving him a calm sensible lecture is all well and good but it's difficult for him to realise the consequences of running in front of a car. If he wasn't on a 'leash' I would have ended up chasing him everywhere and living in perpetual fear of him being run over. Getting hit by a car might have taught him a lesson, but only if he survived it.

It's easy to say it's my fault for not teaching him road safety well enough. Even if that's the case it doesn't make it right to allow him to be fucking killed.

It's my fault officer, I couldn't get him to understand 'stop, look and listen'.
Why didn't you restrain him?
Because someone on ILX said it was an appalling example of lazy parenting and some other people thought it loked a bit embarrassing. I figured letting the poor kid die was the only option.

Too bad cause I probably wont be able to stop when/if I these freakish things again.

The phrase LAUGHABLY FUCKING NAIVE LACK OF EXPERIENCE would spring to mind here if I was the bolshy type.

i think that's called 'parenting'
Don't make a sanctimonious arse of yourself.

. 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.

As indeed, I did (what with the alternative being not living and everything). God, my vocabulary is pathetic at times. Perhaps my parents should have tethered me to a thesaurus.

I see no problem w/ it generally-- wisely used and where age appropriate.

Other news: my Mum used to tie me to the mattress at night. No, really. I used to keep standing up in my cot and crying because I couldn't get back down again so Mum made a special sleeping bag for me which attached to the mattress and made me feel secure. Even now, I adore getting into a bed with sheets tucked in really tightly because it gives me the same feeling of security.

Anyway, she took two steps, then raised her arm as if to say "Remove this!" and stood rock still. There was no moving her. So we removed it and never used it again.

Not sure if this was an isolated case due to the straps being too long or whether it was a real concern at the time...

http://www.woofbrothers.com/files/images/thumbs/t_28.jpg

Cunning small daughter quickly realised that she could remove her end of the velcro wrist strap and attach it to an immovable object (iron railings, car door handle etc) when my attention was distracted for the merest nanosecond, thus leaving me tethered and her free to run away.

i think they are apalling and a tool for lazy parenting.

onimo's reply totally totally otm. actually, onimo otm on whole 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.

i really don't think it's necessarily to do w how much attention you pay your kid. i know i was paid an absolutely mental amount of attention when i were a babby, but to keep me safe while making sure i didn't, you know, DIE, i was kept on a lead when out in public, for ages. and we lived in a tiny village. um, obv they can be misused. but i would guess anyone having a prob wrt the misuse of leads for kids would have a few other bigger probs to sort out first.

Wot is the big deal here? This idea that leashes is "degrading" is weird. I mean, they're degrading if you put them on an Iraqi prisoner, sure, but their primary function is not to degrade. Are people trying to humiliate their dogs? No, they're trying to keep some control over an animal with a tendency to wander, while still allowing them some freedom of movement. Same deal with a kid. Giving them a few feet of walking space seems a hell of a lot less oppressive than strapping them tight into a stroller. Our kid isn't quite to walking yet and we haven't thought about whether to ever use a kid-leash, but I wouldn't rule it out. And holding the end of a leash is no lazier than holding a hand, as long as you're keeping a close eye on things.

YES YES YES.

See, apart from Emily beating down on people she doesn't know, with kids she doesn't know, about their parenting abilities based on her smug self-imposed moral superiority, THIS is the worst thing on this thread.

Sorry if I'm missing something, Nathalie, but are you saying that if a kid pushes you to breaking point then it's justifiable to lash out at them? I'm not anti-smacking at all (OH NOES, BAD POTENTIAL PARENT ALERT!! What with agreement with the use of reins and everything, perhaps I should be sterilised now for the good of humankind), but physical punishment (not violence) should be delivered in a measured and controlled way, with reasons for your actions being given to the kid so that they realise WHY they are being punished. This is what my dad did to me, he hated doing it, but it did me good in the long run and I bear no mental scarring from it. Not by lashing out when the little brats get too much for you to deal with rationally.

I may have misinterpreted this (I know English isn't your first language, so it may have looked worse than you intended), but I thought it needed saying.

Hey, it's all a matter of opinion. Am I wrong or right? Fuck knows. See, I could see one child benefiting from a slap; but personally I don't wanna risk it. :-)

Tethers, leashes, and leads are to be used only for animals and balloons.

We walked through the shopping mall down her way (very crowded, parents and kids everywhere) and I counted at least six kids wearing reins. How uncomforatable and awkward must it be for a parent to walk stooped holding a childs hand? That or a pushchair would be the only alternative to reins because it would be IMPOSSIBLE to stop your child getting lost in such an environment otherwise.

Old people don't tend to run so fast do they?

Very. I'm about six foot tall, our little boy is about two foot. So I would need like four foot long arms to make it remotely comfortable. That said, you'd have to be some sort of glutton for punishment to take your toddler round the shopping mall anyhow. Take them to the woods instead and let them run around like nutters, says I.

In the 16th century. (images seem to be unavailable or protected, but the article is accessible)

i used to babysit a lot and it was the first time in my life i was ever really selfless -- they weren't even my kids but as long as they were nearby, they were in the front of my brain ALL THE TIME, always in my line of vision. i can see myself being a good parent, better than most parents probably, but boy oh boy, what kind of life would i have if i were in that hyper-vigilant role 24/7/365?

so i dunno. i'm on the fence.

Is it bad for a baby to see you masturbating?

I say this as a speaker of two other languages who has frequently picked up all kinds of bad/rude expressions without fully understanding what they mean. That's what happens when you spend the majority of your year abroad in the pub :)

hehe it's funny you say that, because whilst i was in hong kong i noticed that (and this is true in america too actually coming to think of it) there were so many drinking establishments that called themselves 'pubs', when they were clearly bars!!

*applauds*

Oh I'm sure he did something worthy of caging. David's just happy to be off the leash.

Had my mother not leashed me on our vacations, I'd likely still be stuck in the gears of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, presumed long-since abducted by some pervert with balloons, or perhaps be scrambling around the scaffolding of space mountain, hidden by darkness, a sickly forsaken Gollum-like creature. I wasn't a bad kid, but I was utterly oblivious. I wouldn't ditch my parents purposefully, I'd just wander off, usually looking in any direction but the one in which I was headed (so I've been told). In my job now I see lots of families, and a similar lack of awareness from the kids. They're not being bold or intentionally difficult -- usually they'll relax for a while when asked -- but they don't yet have the self-discipline to maintain this themselves for very long. They just start running around again. They also don't understand what the risks they're taking are. In that sense keeping them close = keeping them safe, in exactly the same way that setting a curfew, and keeping them inside (surely a more drastic, though more accepted, limitation) is a sensible idea. Someday I hope to tie a child to a piece of leather.

It probably is marginally less safe than holding hands, but if the adult is spending half the time shaking the feeling back into their arm then holding hands isn't really comparable.

http://au.geocities.com/safety4baby/images/ToddlerReins.jpg

but just like a dog-leash.

This was at the football on a busy staircase where 34 year old me and 35 year old Onimo once got separated by the crowd, so, yeah, still necessary for hanging onto toddlers you don't want disappearing.

I used to think leashes were absurd, but when I read shit like this it makes me think otherwise.

-- Andrew (n...), June 28th, 2006 3:27 AM. (enneff) (link)

(Except, what are the chances? Do they really justify being paranoid 24/7?)

"stop being ridiculous" eh? ok then ;-)

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/178/372087383_2b726fa5b2.jpg

(I just came across this on random, and wanted to mention about the kid I saw on a leash in a necessary situation. Anyone wanting to reiterate themselves, feel free. I stand by everything I said upthread)

The humiliation aspect: I remember my mum looking after a friend's kid, aged about 5 or 6, and threatening him that if he didn't behave when walking home from the village, she would put him on the reins (which she'd kept from when I was small). She only had to take them with her and show him, for him to immediately start behaving himself.

Sheesh, Ailsa, you always take people seriously,don't you? He said:"(Except, what are the chances? Do they really justify being paranoid 24/7?)" He wasn't talking about leashing the kid all the time. Or maybe I didn't understand correctly...

Anyway, use whatever you want if it means keeping your kid safe. A leash will hardly hurt a kid (emotionally nor physically). People should give it a fucking rest, what with pushing their opinoins on others thinking that's the way it should be. Parenting is a hard job, an accident can quickly happen. If a leash can prevent that, why not use it?

We have one of these! Flickr friends will know how adorable Ava looks in it.