I went for a walk a couple of evenings ago with my wife. As couples often do we were strolling along slowly, enjoying the hot summer evening air and chatting about the little things. It was about 7:30pm and while the traffic was reasonably light, there can be times when we get a lot of cars moving through our neighborhood so we usually try and walk through the quieter streets, being nosy and looking into peoples gardens for interesting plants and ideas. Naturally to get to these quieter streets we usually need to follow a path that takes us through some of the heavier traffic areas, and at that time of night, you have a lot of people out and about in their cars, visiting friends, returning with their groceries, or just going about other business. So it was with some surprise that my wife noticed a very small child in a driveway across the road and (due to the heat) completely naked.
Ok, sidetrack for a moment. I can't imagine that I'm the only person who thinks it's hilarious when some little kid goes running down the street, stark naked, and laughing outrageously. I wonder if I am however the only adult who thinks it's a total double standard that a little kid can do it, yet if an adult did it you'd get a mix of reactions from incredulous to disgusted... except late on a Friday night when all of your friends are really drunk and really only giggling at you because they thought you'd never do it, and you've probably freaked out a couple of people without a sense of humor. No, this has never happened to me. About the closest I've ever got to this was doing a "Nudie Run" around the yacht while we were sailing back to Airlie Beach during the last day of our honeymoon in the Whitsundays... but that's a WHOLE different tale! :-P
So there is this little toddler, wandering slowly down a long driveway towards the road. At first I'm about to laugh and comment to my wife about how lucky a kid that age is to be able to strip down to nothing on a stinking hot day, when I suddenly realized that I couldn't see anyone supervising the child. When the kid started to run towards the road and was only a few meters away, I didn't even think about it. I let go of my wife's hand, and ran as hard as I could across the road in order to keep the child from becoming a statistic. Lucky for me the road became very quiet just before I started running, because I barely looked both ways, and certainly didn't slow down. I just felt this urge to get to the kid and make sure nothing terrible happened. When I got there, the child must have taken a fright, because it stopped suddenly and looked a little concerned.
At that point, I made sure I was positioned to stop the child running onto the road, and would only risk grabbing the kid as a last resort. I still couldn't see anyone supervising the child, and I was just about to speak when the father slowly walked towards us, beer and cigarette in hand, and looked me up and down with the most absolute disgust, as if I was about to harm his kid in some way. Without a word of thanks, he turns the child about, and (I assume) goes back to his drinking. I wasn't particularly upset about it at the time. The guy's rudeness barely registered with me as I was really so glad that no harm came to the child. It was only later, as I thought about the incident that I started to get really mad. I was already of a fairly low opinion of the guy having seen how little effort he puts into the supervision of his own child, but the way he looked at me was if I was some sort of a pedophile. Now personally I couldn't care less what someone else thinks of me, however his apparent lack of any real interest in his child's welfare was the thing that probably angered me the most. He showed no concern that this baby was running about naked in a potentially busy street, where a car or an aggressive dog or an older child might have easily brought his child to harm, and it was like his reaction to me was a mere afterthought, like it didn't register that I had just risked running across a road to ensure the welfare of his child.
It will never cease to amaze me how little regard some people show towards children, and sadly this sometimes even includes their own kids. Even worse to me is how some people (mostly men it seems) when they go through a divorce, can become incredibly selfish and can somehow justify in their minds that their own children are no longer theirs, but that the kids belong to the former spouse! I know of several cases where this has happened, and I can't help but feel incredibly sorry for the children affected. It seems to me that in all of the instances that I can think of where I have witnessed any form of disregard or mistreatment of children, that ultimately it came down to an issue of the selfishness by an adult.
Look at the situation where a baby is crying on an airplane. Sure, the parents 'could' consider the other passengers, but does that mean the parents should feel pressured into never flying? Should the parents drug the child into submission regardless of the potential consequences to its health? I'd consider any parent who allowed their own feelings of potential embarrassment to be selfish in that regard, but worse perhaps are those people who get angry and abusive simply because a child cries, and I think that such people are themselves being incredibly selfish. Seriously, get a grip people, it's just a BABY. It can't help that it doesn't know how to stop the pain in its ears when flying, or that it can't ask quietly or politely that it is uncomfortable and needs a feed or a change. It just is, so deal with it, and perhaps risk opening your own withered and bitter hearts to feel some compassion for the child who never asked to be uncomfortable.
Then again, perhaps I'm being selfish myself. I allow myself to feel such disgust and outrage at people who ignore the needs of children, so am I any better than they are as I sit on my moral high horse in some sort of self-proclaimed judgement over them? Perhaps, but I'd rather be an opinionated person who cares about the welfare of children, than an inconsiderate person who only thinks about himself regardless of the children who might be hurt as a result of apathy and selfishness.
I once made a phone call to the police on a hot summer afternoon. I had noticed a child asleep in the car next to where I had parked, and there was no sign of the parent. Worse still was that the windows were done up tightly and I tell you that the car must have been getting very hot inside. I still remember that I was sweating heavily just standing in the sun. This was about 15 years ago, but I can still remember that it took the police nearly 15 minutes to get there, and the mother really only appeared after the police had reached the decision that they would have to break a window in to rescue the child. Lucky for the mother she got there before the police messed up her car, but even luckier for the child that it was still ok, although it did look very read and seriously overheated. All this risk and fuss so that the mother could go shopping without getting her child out of the car, and she risked her own child's life for less than $50 worth of groceries!!
These are some terrible examples perhaps, but for mine the worst are those parents who abandon their children without a care or thought for the the children's welfare, or even to simply to engage in an act of "punishment" to a former spouse. It's a sore point for me having been through my own divorce, but I could never in a million years risk losing my kids simply to get at my ex-wife! Abandon them because I think of them as "hers" and no longer "mine"?!! How ridiculous!!!
Children aren't possessions to be bartered and sold. They aren't commodities to be owned, but are human beings to be taught and raised to become good adults. Children are neither a burden or a curse. They are simply learning through trial and error to become adults. They ARE a responsibility, and not one to be taken lightly. I guarantee that those people who continuously moan and complain about how wretched and horrible their kids are didn't moan quite so loud or so long while they were making them. If we show children apathy, and selfishness, what can they do but learn to become selfish and apathetic adults later in life, and that's if the poor kids even manage to survive that long! When I think of how hard and how long I personally have fought to protect my children from harm after my own divorce, to see other people behaving so terribly towards children with so little care literally infuriates me, yet if I do the right and moral thing by seeking to protect such children, I am labelled and abused and told to mind my own damned business.
For myself, I'm glad I chose to act rather than simply ignore that child. Had I done nothing, it is entirely possible that the child could have come to harm, and I'd rather err on the side of caution. I regret nothing in my own actions, and I feel so sorry for those children who were given the sort of parents who think nothing of their mistreatment of their own children. The more I see stuff like this going on in the world, the more determined I become to not allow myself to become like "them"... the selfish ones. Even more, it makes me determined to make sure my own children learn this from me, that all lives are precious, and that children are not terrible creatures to be reviled, but wonderful tiny people to be lovingly nurtured and enjoyed while their childhood years remain. It also makes me determined not to squander my own children's childhoods selfishly.
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