The Damning Consequences of Child Neglect
We Canadians are truly a rough, tough breed. Northerners, that's us. We can take the weather that this hemisphere throws up at us every winter, no question. Where once our pioneers struggled against the elements as a necessary evil to be faced daily throughout our unforgiving winters, we live now in comfort and play.Comfort because of modern technology which allows us to erect superlative shelters which are easily heated and electrified. Play because to survive the psychological effects of facing relentlessly dark, cold, windy and snowy weather, day after dogged day, we must perforce entertain ourselves in the elements with play.
So clever inventors have brought us snowmobiles, all-terrain vehicles and watercraft to zip and zoom over the landscape, in summer, frozen winter and everything in between. We no longer lose rugged individuals to the rigours of surviving in an inhospitable land as formerly. Now we lose countless frolicking young people who enjoy nothing more than to drink and drive, whether it be watercraft or land rovers.
And every time we have a report of someone mortally hitting a tree in a snowmobile, or driving across a frozen lake which wasn't, or overturning in a motorized watercraft, or driving an all-terrain vehicle into the side of a barn, or a tractor, or turning it over on themselves and dying, we sigh. What a waste. And the papers are full of superlatives describing their unalloyed joy in life, their sense of adventure. Tedious, tiresome, but hey, that's life, and these are, generally speaking, adults capable of living their lives or wasting them.
But bloody hell! An eight-year-old farm boy permitted to drive an ATV? His parents were chopping wood and he was assigned to bring them water? Oh, it's all right, he was wearing a helmet. What do people use for brains? Doesn't this kind of child neglect warrant censure? Instead, we read: "family members, friends remember keen hockey player who loved machines". Right.
This little kid, a whole eight years old, was driving a full-size ATV. His family remembers him as a spirited and adventurous boy who loved the outdoors. No kidding. Spirited and adventurous. Do we extrapolate from there, reach an opinion that this was the child's own doing? He was spirited and adventurous, it was his decision, his parents had no influence on the child, to let him know he was too young for this kind of spirited and adventurous undertaking?
Nothing new about this type of thing. Young teens have been killed in similar crashes right across the country. There was even, previously an 11-year-old boy crushed to death when the ATV he was driving fell on him. That child had permission from his father and uncle to use their four-wheel ATV. Oh yes, there was also a 7-year-old also near Ottawa who slammed into a hydro pole.
What are we thinking? We actually commisserate with these people who willingly, happily endanger their children by permitting them to operate machines they cannot possibly control. Why aren't they being charged for Child Endangerment, Child Neglect, Child Abandonment?
Are we all totally insane?
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, March 19, 2006
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