Unsupervised children in public places
When I read things like this, I’m always amazed, but I guess it happens or people wouldn’t be writing about it: YMCA addresses issue of unsupervised kids:
MUNCIE — The YMCA is many things, but one thing it’s not: A summer day care facility.
Yet that too often is what the Downtown Y has become and that leaves concerned staff stuck between a rock and a hard place as far as children’s safety is concerned.
While children 13 years old and younger aren’t allowed on the premises without an adult — for their own safety — some parents are dropping their kids off outside the property, encouraging them to spend the day there, and picking them up eight or nine hours later.
I do understand that quality child care is hard to find, I have to find it, too. Maybe it’s just my generalized Catholic guilt upbringing, but I could never just drop kids off somewhere for the entire day.
I have a young teenager, and I’m just
Not only does my brain balk at leaving my kids in a public place for hours on end, it also balks because you’re really not supposed to do that, it’s against the rules.
Yeah, I know. Catholic guilt, remember?
While I’m sure there are as many reasons and stories as there are people, the Y, the library and the pool etc. (other than planed programs) is NOT childcare. It’s not safe and the staff of places like that aren’t baby sitters.
I have a young teen and I’m just now negotiating the ins and outs of going places unsupervised. She’s an excellent and trustworthy kid, but there are times we don’t even allow her to go to the movies unsupervised.
Tags: Catholic guilt, unsupervised children, YMCARelated Stories
POSTED IN: Childcare
3 opinions for Unsupervised children in public places
DBN
Jun 23, 2008 at 6:23 pm
I was a lifeguard at a local country club and the parents started leaving them there all day when they were probably… seven or eight years old. It was really quite amazing.
Laura Creekmore
Jun 23, 2008 at 8:34 pm
Well and seriously. Even good, smart kids can do dumb things when a. they are suffering from teenage brain and b. especially when they are in a group of those who are similarly incapacitated.
I can even excuse the every-once-in-a-while-oh-my-goodness-it’s-an-emergency sort of dropping off. But as your regular choice?? I guess everyone isn’t willing to spend half their waking hours planning their kids’ schedules like I am. But — isn’t that why you HAVE kids??? Haha.
JayMonster
Jun 25, 2008 at 10:38 am
To play devil’s advocate to your Catholic Guilt… How old were you when you first wandered off alone without parental supervision for long periods of time?
In almost every incident, it is at a much younger age than we are doing today. With me, I walked to school alone starting in I think 3rd grade, I was out with my friends unattended (but on “the block”) by I guess about 5th grade for all sorts of hours of the day until called home for dinner.
Yes, I know it is a “different world” than we grew up (though some will argue that we just have a lot more information and that not all that much has changed except how much “incidents” are reported these days). But I suspect that these people believe (whether anybody agrees with them is a whole other story) that their children are intelligent enough and capable to handle themselves in the situation without the need for a “baby-sitter”
Like everything else, everybody has their own limits and standards. It is hard sometimes to judgemental though if you simply remember that what “you” do may seem as silly and wrong to somebody that is more strict than “you” are, as that person “you” don’t agree with seems to “you.”
In this day and age, it is funny (perhaps sad) when you consider, how much more learned kids today are (my daughter is doing work I learned in the 4th maybe 5th grade and she completed it in 2nd grade), and yet we have this need to desire (again, somewhat warranted by changing “times”) to “baby them” and “guard over them” far longer than our parents did with us.
I’m not saying these folks are right… but I am not as sure to say that without question they are completely wrong either… at least not as wrong as it appears at first blush.
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