Tuesday, December 23, 2008

You can't watch your kids 24/7, but can you expect others to be responsible for them?

I am torn with this family and the dilemma of pool safety and regulations.

I think I know the house, it's near where the kid on the pushbike ran into my car, he wasn't their kid.

You can not watch your children 24/7, but can you make someone else responsible for their safety in your own home?

What do you think?

6 comments:

RebeccaH said...

I sympathize with the parents' desire to make their daughter's death have meaning, but to me this is just another excuse for the government to intrude further into the homes and lives of private citizens.

Children can't be watched every second, and more complicated fences and locks won't stop a clever, curious child, nor will they always heed what they've been taught. Too many people don't grasp that all of life is a risk.

Skeeter said...

Agreed, Rebecca. I think, by now, most child drownings would occur in fenced pools.
There was a move afoot to make it compulsory to fence your drive-way between your garage and the street.
This was to stop you from backing your car over your kids.
There has never been a requirement to fence your street-front boundary, so it's still OK for your kids to run out onto the road and be killed by a rock truck.
The only thing that will work is to put a fence around the kid, not around the hazards.
Neighbours who successfully reared their brood of kids on a rural property, kept the toddlers out of harm's way by putting them in a large bird-cage under a tree on the river bank.

kae said...

There are perfectly good regulations in place now, aren't there? Regarding pool fencing (I once looked at buying a house which had a little pond a few inches deep in the front yard, I was told it would need to be fenced if I bought it), which is sometimes silly, for example, farm properties with a pool which must be fenced and a dam which doesn't need to be fenced), the problem looks to be a lack of policing of the rules... however, who will be paying for the supervision and policing of the rules? I think that's where the whole situation breakds down.

Kaboom said...

Seriously, these are the sort of "rules" the Socalists love.... Fees, regular inspections (if it complies, it fucking well complies!), entry onto private property by a new class of "inspectors", and a total abrogation of the historical concepts of parental responsibility.

Children drown because the parents (a) were not watching, and (b) were fucking negligent not teaching their children to swim at an early age.

There is no other reason.

I feel sorry for parents who are so stupid as to allow their child to drown unsupervised in someone else's pool.

Just think of it as Darwin's Theory actioned in real life. If you want to avoid the pain of a needless death of a child, take steps to prevent this!

Shifting the blame to the "wealthy" pool owner is just so many levels of bullshit.

/rant over

Anonymous said...

Kaboom. Thanks for saving me the time and space to say exactly what I want to say.

State Government is already in our face too often with too many faces telling us what to do as they set about saving us from ourselves.

Very very sad when the young die in pools, but people die on roads in far greater numbers and governments are spending squillions on stupid anti drink driving advertisements for decade after decade that achieve SWEET F... ALL and still they continue to spend and pee it up the wall, into the wind etc.

Government is bored and needs to reinvent itself on a daily basis to spend our money helping us. No thanks I can do that perfectly well MYSELF. Mehaul.

kc said...

Fence around the kid...god, don't give 'em any ideas!