When I think of a leash I think of a dog, a pet. I think of the S&M seminar I attended. I think of conversations of degradation and oppression of women, particularly racialized women in music videos. It does not make me think of good parenting methods.
A few weeks ago I saw a woman with her daughter (about 7, I’d say) on a leash in a hotel lobby. It was a pink leash, yay for helping your daughter internalise sex-specific colour schemes at an early age! Anyways, at the time I laughed – but really, it upsets me to no end. Snoop Dogg and his excuse-of-a-man sidekick 50 Cent led women on leashes in their P.I.M.P. video. Glamorizing the lifestyle of a pimp. Disgusting. Then I saw a video of a woman dragging her child across a store floor. Wtf. There really needs to be an application process for people who want to procreate!
But the real reason of this post – kids in daycares travelling on leashes. I’m equally disturbed by this, and it turns out a lot of people do not agree with me. Rather, they think it to be a good idea to keep a group of children bound to each other on yes, a leash. I’ve heard many rebuttals to my arguments. “Kids these days...They’re less cautious...You don’t want to lose one...Wouldn’t you want to take all the precautions you could...What if he ran into the middle of the street?” Granted, this past week I encountered a 7 year old monster. Such energy! He ran around a classroom yelling “F*** you! F*** you, B****!” Yeah. I have so much respect for teachers. But fear of what this child might do in the street is not excuse enough to put him on a leash.
You see, socialization starts early. And most often it starts at home, though it is becoming more and more a joint project now that kids enter some form of daycare or educational institution earlier. When I was a kid I was taught to hold someone’s hand, to walk on the inner pathways, to look both ways before crossing the street, to not run after a ball if it got kicked into the street. But if all we’re doing is putting kids on a leash, when do they learn these things? There’s obviously no need to tell them if they are constantly on a leash, ready to pull back if they started to stray. Urm... yeah. These are our CHILDREN.
There used to be a buddy system. Hold your buddy’s hand as you walked from the daycare center to the park. It taught responsibility – it taught kids how to be responsible for themselves and for their “buddy”. What happens now? Straps. You don’t learn anything while you are being herded down a sidewalk attached to other kids. There is no awareness of their travelling; each child is simply doing what they’re doing, except that they are respecting the physical confines of the leash. There is no lesson learned. Why are these golden moments of learning negated, and for what reason?
If you don’t start early, when will that little boy learn? I still look both ways when I cross. That kid will be j-walking in a few years ... still gonna keep him on a leash? Oh wait! No, parents can get GPS-tracking on their kids cellphones. Phew! And here I though we were doomed.
If we constantly try to protect and coddle children, we are not letting them engage in one very important element of childhood: self-learning. To internalise rules, concepts, ideas, kids need to be able to engage themselves in the process. Shielding them from the troubles of the world, this fear-mongering, is not helping them one bit. So let the kids loose, let them play in the dirt, let them make toys out of empty boxes...
No comments:
Post a Comment