From: leadfoot@bigbootay.sw.stratus.com (Mark Curtis)
Newsgroups: ba.general,misc.kids,misc.legal
Subject: Re: Attractive Nuisance (was: East Bay Regional Parks/dog restrictions)
Date: 9 Oct 92 21:23:58 GMT
Followup-To: ba.general

In article <1992Oct9.172944.5291@adobe.com>, pngai@adobe.com (Phil Ngai) writes:
|> In article <3eOn02ls25Ex01@JUTS.ccc.amdahl.com> tjc50@juts.ccc.amdahl.com (Terry Carroll) writes:
|> >What are you doing letting your ten-year-old kid run around an abandoned 
|> >railroad turntable unattended?  A kid shouldn't be permitted to run around 
|> >unattended until he can realize the dangers.
|> 
|> The parents didn't even know there was an abandoned turntable in the
|> neighborhood.

In the neighborhood.  They never bothered to check their neighborhood out?

|> As for 10-year-olds running around unattended, it seems
|> fairly common to me. I ran around on my family farm at that age and
|> earlier. My nieces are doing the same thing right now. My neighbors
|> did too.

On my farmily farm.  Note the difference.  One is property your family
owns, controls, and I bet knows what it contains.  When you leave that
little haven all bets are off.  So don't allow them to leave unescorted/
watched until they have learned a few things.  Just cutting them loose
to wander praying the neighborhood is going to protect them is neglegent.

This is the basic point of all my posts so far.  If you can't see that
just cutting them loose is neglegent than we will never agree on anything
further.  If you think it is OK to just cut them loose you are letting
them live on borrowed time.  Some of them will get hurt and it's your
fault you didn't watch them.

I agree that children must leave the nest to do normal daily activities.
Someone should be with them, that is all I ask.  I don't care if it's an
older child, babysitter, bus driver, or the parents, but someone should
go too.  I remember being on both sides of this one.  I had to walk my
sisters over to their friends homes many times.  Normal stuff required
by responsible parents, maybe you find requiring this unreasonable?

I wasn't allowed to just wander off the yard without telling my parents.
Sometimes they said no.  Sometimes they would walk me over to the next
block themselves, maybe even talk to my friend's parents.  I wasn't told
"OK see you in a couple hours" and left to walk over myself. Later when I
started riding a bicycle around I was allowed a bit more freedom, but still
couldn't just leave without saying anything destination unknown.

Even in the case of the going myself I was not to explore other people's
yards on the way.  I was told to stay on the sidewalk/road all the way.
My parents did expect that the road and sidewalks would be safe, but
yards were off-limits unless invited.  They didn't want our neighbor's
children in our yard unless one of us was with them either and we weren't
allowed to anex the neighboring yards.

Learning to stay in the yard is easy even as a small child.  You can teach
a dog the limits of the yard very quickly too, it just takes a little
effort and YOUR TIME.  If you don't have the time, then maybe you
shouldn't be in the parent business, or at least hire someone who does.
Xref: sparky ba.general:4333 misc.kids:25657 misc.legal:18382