No Parents on the Playground! (They Might Be Predators)

OMG, that’s the ultimate ridiculousness. That just means parents will stop taking their kids to the playground. So they expect people to keep constant watch over their children but forget the playground because if you’re an adult, you’re not allowed. What the hell are they thinking?!?

BTW: Lenore, you’re link doesn’t work; it goes to a page that requires logging in to Yahoo…do you have the direct link to the article?

The kid in me says, “Awesome!” The parent in me says, my kids might be lonely down there because my uptight neighbors can’t let their kids out of their sight.

Link take you to Yahoo Mail.

Having sent this to you yesterday I have read more on it . Watford council it seems are saying that this is the type of playground where you drop off your kids to be supervised by others, its not meant to be a play park where parents supervise the children themselves.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/henryporter/2009/oct/28/parents-playground-children

is the article I read
this is the local paper
http://www.watfordobserver.co.uk/news/4705034.Parents_banned_from_council_play_areas/

Watford council have said this

http://www.watford.gov.uk/ccm/content/strategic-services/home-page-content/statement-about-harwoods-and-harebreaks-adventure-playground.en

But I like watching my kids play at the playground… It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. In a good way.

“Play workers”? Talk about an oxymoron! (With decided emphasis on the MORON who devised this asinine legislation).

How crazy that it has to be all or nothing. Personally, I would be thrilled if there was a playground where I could drop off my kids without having to worry that someone would call the police for child neglect. I assume that if they let parents accompany their kids, they would also have to REQUIRE the parents to do so.

I think this is a good idea, and sadly, a necessary evil. I have been approached more times than I can count by single men (with no children) who were hanging around the playground, in spite of huge signs which say, “NO ADULTS WITHOUT CHILDREN ALLOWED”. Some of them were scoping out single mothers, others… no idea. If all adults are kept out, I guess this solves it. In theory, I love the idea of free-range kids. But fact: this is not the same world we grew up in. Jacee Lee Dugard was taken a block from my house, and it seems like horrific things are happening to children every other day. I can’t chance it. I don’t see how this would infringe upon my civil liberties, even as a Libertarian.

I’ve seen the “adventure playgrounds” in England. THOSE are what’s dangerous. Also, can we just cut to the dystopian future where all children are raised by robots.

“you have to leave the playground now daddy, you’re not allowed. Go somewhere and read a paper and have a coffee, I’ll call you on your cell when I’m ready to be picked up.”

How much do you want to bet parents aren’t allowed to leave “the premises,” though?

But my question is, are the parents allowed to take their kids home with them, or do they have to leave them with government-approved people? And will they ban people from having unrelated adults come into their homes while their children are there? “Sorry, honey, I can’t invite Mrs. Henderson for dinner. She didn’t get a background check!”

Also @ Noel: Please reread your statement. “It SEEMS like horrific things are happening to children every other day” because of the 24/7 media cycle and the subsequent endless need to fill airtime and garner ratings.

This type of legislation PROFOUNDLY infringes upon EVERYONE’S civil liberties because it is one more slip down the slope of prohibiting parents from having access to their own children and making children permanent wards of the state.

Stacy, I think that would work as an explanation if they weren’t using expressions like “Sadly, in today’s climate, you can’t have adults walking around unchecked in a children’s playground”. They didn’t say a word about needing to keep the kids’ attention or lack of distraction, everything was about safety, background checks, and people who met “guidelines” for being with children.

You’re right — my daughters’ ballet school doesn’t let us wander around the studio when they’re teaching. They do, however, allow us to be in the building and to interact with our own and even (gasp) other people’s children “unsupervised” in the hallways and dressing areas.

I can see what you’re saying about how not having parents “in the way” could legitimately be part of the reason they do this. But they sure aren’t making it sound like the motivations you describe have very much to do with it, as opposed to motivations concerning paranoia.

I heard the Mayor of Watford talking about this on a radio station this morning. Apparently, it is a case of mis-reporting.

It’s not really a playground apparently, it’s more a sort of playgroup. Most of the parents choose to their leave their children there and go off and do their own thing for a while, but a minority like to stay and one or two were “causing trouble” (she didn’t say what kind). So instead of just banning the trouble-makers, they decided it would be easier to just impose a blanket ban on parents citing CRB regulation.

The mayor admitted that if the situation really was as it had been the reported she would have been the first to “take myself out to be shot” and that maybe it had been a case of “using a sledgehammer to crush a nut”.

The interesting thing to me is that the view from teachers, council officials and other authorities these days seems to be that if you want to control parents, the trick is simply to utter the magic words “health and safety” or “Criminal Records Bureau” and that will just silence people because no one can possibly argue against that the all-purpose concept of “health and safety, can they?

pentamom – I fully agree the problem is with the presentation, both in the legislation wording *and* in the media coverage of the problem. The situation has been presented in as inflammatory a way possible, which is ridiculous since it isn’t any different from any of the dance/gymnastics/after school programs I’ve been involved in during the past 35 years.

I know there are “creepy” men hanging around kids’ areas, seemingly unaccompanied by kids. My husband had an appointment on the way to somewhere my kids and I needed to be, so we carpooled and I dropped him off. We thought we were going to be done at roughly the same time, but instead, his appointment was over an hour early and mine went late. He was supposed to meet me at our large central library, in the kids’ area.

The security guard ran him off three times before telling him he was going to call the police if he came back. We got there just after, and immediately my son went into a robotics class and our next one and I had to make a restroom run. That left him holding the hand of our 4-year-old.

When we got back a few minutes later, the guard was asking my four-year-old if this was really her daddy, confusing and upsetting her. Then my 10-year-old, who had lingered at the drinking fountain, bounded up and said “Daddy, we walked all over looking for you! You were supposed to be HERE!” and the guard looked like he was going to blow his stack and abruptly left. 🙂

My husband says he’s also gotten suspicious looks when he’s taken one or more of our kids to a park and had to wait by the restroom, or when sitting on the bench while the kids play (looking like he was there alone, yet watching apparently intently).

My son is only three and still requires me to hang around, so I guess I would be the one avoiding that place. He tends to try things he can’t yet do and falls or gets stuck. I let him b/c it’s a learning thing, but that means I have to be there to pick up the pieces. Is someone else going to do that for me?

Even the Brits themselves know for years that this hysterical reaction of seeing a paedophile in every adult is getting out of hand. Here a selection of ‘Monkey Dust’s’ infamous Paedophilefinder General.
(Monkey Dust being a very black, very satyrical British cartoon – not for the faint-hearted, so beware)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCywGhHQMEw

ok. I get where you’re coming from and you’re right – this is a stupid rule.

Having said that – I would LOVE to be able to drop my kids off at the playground and have someone else take care of them while I did something that did not include sitting at the playground.

I have a book in mind… yes… a book for the society of children that we wish to create by removing the adults. Yes. “Lord of the Flies.”

I mean, why not? If we just ship all the children of the world to some continent and ban all adults from entering the continent we’d be just fine. In fact, we could ultimately just go “Brave New World,” and skip the act of procreation – take the parenting of unauthorized people out of the equation – and just breed people for certain jobs. I mean, really, isn’t that what we’re doing anyway?

If I didn’t read through the comments, I would not know that the playground is not a public facility and that what is reported in the initial blog posting is not a good reflection of the situation. Isn’t this one of the complaints of this blog? That things are not reported accurately ? That people’s fears are based on overblown media reports ?

Even with the additional responses to the original posting, it seems like some people are still taking away the message that a public playgroud in England has banned parents in favour of government employees.

As some have alluded, this is not a matter of whether parents should be allowed on playgrounds in general. I think the particular incident has been a bit misperceived and blown, inevitably, out of proportion.

I think the question at heart here is really this: What degree of Openness should Adventure Playgrounds have?

If you aren’t familiar with Adventure Playgrounds, then I just have to be perfectly honest: You have no idea what this is really is about. It might be helpful to read up on the history and philosophy of APs if you like (this site is a good starting place: http://adventureplaygrounds.hampshire.edu/ ), or to read up on the Playwork profession (I’d recommend Bob Hughes’ books) — but until you’ve actually been to an Adventure Playground and spent some time there, you simply cannot gain an appreciation for the amazing complexities of what they entail, how they impact children’s lives, and of course the difficulties in trying to run one (both as a playworker and on a managerial level).

It is true that the council mayor was cited by the Telegraph as giving a “paranoiac safety rationale” for not allowing parents — and, I’d imagine, that rationale is probably as equally ill-received by the Adventure Playground staff themselves. It’s hard to fund an AP, though, and sometimes the only way to do it is through local government: which brings its own layers of bureaucracy and removes a lot of control from the people actually there with the kids day in and day out.

A major tenet of the philosophy of Adventure Playgrounds is a principle of Openness: Children should be free and open to do what they wish, play as they like — and more importantly, come and go when they want. The whole idea was to turn the spaces into neighbourhood-based resources for children in the broader context of their lives — not as a mere attractions their parents drop them off at on special occasions, but as places kids can come to with friends after school if they like, hang out at for however long they want, and leave when wish.

Unfortunately, it seems for the Harwoods and Harebreak Adventure Playgrounds, the Local Authority officials in charge of them haven’t really understood this philosophy of Open-access: They’ve required that children are first registered to visit, for instance, and the general feeling I get is that parents are either required or encouraged to drop off and pick up their kids — but children aren’t free to come and go as they wish.

I think the real concern here should be with the CHILDREN’s level of open-access — not their parents’. Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn about whether parents are allowed or not to linger at an Adventure Playground. What I care about is whether kids themselves feel the freedom to come and go as they wish, unhindered by both policy and their parents’ free range allowances.

@Noel: You cannot say that ‘today” is different than way-back-when and then give an example from nearly TWO DECACDES AGO! And, as I heard the story, she was on a street/sidewalk, no? So, we should ban “unchecked” adults from sidewalks, too? From driving cars because they might lure someone into it?

Someone else mentioned that this is an afterschool type of program. I guess if that’s the case, I see the idea of not wantinh parents mulling about. However, I agree with Pentamom in that it doesn’t sound like that’s there intent – sounds more like they are afraid the parents/adults will do something harmful to the children. And that is the outrage here.

I have two thoughts on this.

The rationale given in the original report is absurd and disturbing.

BUT I actually really like the idea of adventure playgrounds where kids go without their parents. In fact, I just commented on the Spain thread about a playground like that in the Spanish city where my family spent a sabbatical year in 1981/82: kids went in, parents sat and had a cold drink at the café near the gate. It was incredibly liberating (at least, for Canadian kids with a somewhat overprotective mother) and a lot of fun. However, it was never framed as “for the kids’ safety”; the fence around the (very large, wooded) play area was for safety, but keeping the parents out was so that the kids could be independent and have fun. And did we ever!

Possibly the real issue here is straight-up bad reporting. The no-parents rule itself I have no problem with, but it disturbs me that “parents might be predators” and “no one who hasn’t had a CRB check should be in contact with children” would immediately leap to anyone’s mind as a rationale for said rule.

Daniel, thank you for the link – I suggest that all FRK devotees go there and read carefully about what the Adventure Playgrounds are supposed to be like.
http://adventureplaygrounds.hampshire.edu/index.html

I wish that one would open in my neighborhood. And that parents would be banned from it, too. Isn’t that what Free Range is really about? Parents allowing their children to have freely integrated social interaction in natural ways without parents running the place?
The Adventure Playground concept sound heavenly!
From the site:
In a sense, you and I have always played in “adventure playgrounds.” We created a fort in the kitchen cabinets, jumped from couch to couch across oceans; we snuck out through a hole in the fence to a new world. We climbed trees and hid in bushes. We played in the mud and the rain. We chased each other, made secret worlds with our own language. We created spaces with whatever we could find around us. Some of us played in abandoned buildings, or barns, or vacant lots between buildings, used what we found and made up stories of our lives to be. We looked everywhere to find our space.

We made a children’s world in the city and in the country. Imagine, a place that provides all that, in the middle of a city. Here you go, hammers, saws, nails, wood, tires, rope, cloth, whatever you can find. Make it yours. You can change this playground right here, right now. You don’t have to make an appointment. You can walk or ride your bike, and there are people here to help and encourage you. What if you had that space? What if every child had that space?

Love it! And Parents Stay Away!

Seriously? Are we going to require a background check before people have children or visit their grandchildren? Or are we only worried they will abuse non-relatives (contrary to all the evidence)? So many abusers have no record, and many on the sex offender registry are there for offenses like having had consensual sex with another teenager while in high school. Extending this vetting process to all sorts of settings stigmatizes people unfairly and gives a false sense of security.

I sometimes stop at the dog park on my walk home because I like to watch the dogs play even if my dog isn’t with me. People don’t look at me like I’m a crazy dog-napping pervert; they are happy to share the joy of watching their dogs run and play. If only this were true of playgrounds.

This is probably true, E. Simms. In hindsight, the Council mayor emphasised all the wrong things in defence of the move — citing safety, fear of sexual predators, that sort of thing. At least, sadly, those were her lines that the Telegraph latched onto, and was the able to spin the story as. So no, it wasn’t the best handling of the situation…

But that said, and judging by a comparison between the Telegraph’s and the BBC’s reporting, I’d say the biggest fault lies with the Telegraph. This was just sloppy, context-less and politicised reporting.

Hi Jennifer,

I’d just like to follow up on your statement; based upon my own experience and graduate research in Adventure Playgrounds, I’d simply say that your characterisation is perhaps not quite fair of the “adult” role at them.

It does seem paradoxical to have adult “playworkers” present on the playground, but it must be understood that there are no “rules of the playground” that they enforce, no direction they provide, not even any real “supervision” (in a classical sense) that they offer. Playworkers are there to ENABLE and SUPPORT children’s play, to allow for children to play in ways that wouldn’t otherwise be possible in densely populated urban settings. It’s really a rather unique role, and it’s nearly impossible to understand without seeing the role done (well) in person. Bob Hughes, a British playworker, has written quite a bit about the dynamic and function of the role if you’d like to read more, though.

Speaking more personally, I’m not sure having Free Range children or Free Range environments for children necessarily means they have to be completely absent of adults’ presence. I’ve always taken it as meaning the children have choice, and opportunity, to do as they wish and interact with who they wish; they have a sense of empowerment within a civil community. I don’t think many would advocate “Free Range” as meaning that children have to be removed entirely from that civil community to a new, entirely kid-populated environment.

“If the answer is that they would stand by and allow the kids to play as they want and work out any bullying problems on their own, then what ARE they there for?”

To keep all those dangerous parents away, of course!

What I find funny is that they won’t allow parents on the property to interact with their own kids, but they’ll happily let the kids go home with ‘potentially dangerous predators’ at the end of the day.

Please understand that I’m very much in agreement with you in philosophy and what I wish for kids. I’m very for the free range ethos — this sandlot, “Leave it to Beaver” idea so many of us remember from our own childhoods — and I think most playworkers are too. The nuance is in the context and circumstances, and in how the philosophies overlap.

It does need to be made clear, though: a founding principle of Adventure Playgrounds is one of OPENNESS.

* There’s openness in children’s choice to play as they wish, within a very supportive environment — with both ample materials to build and play with and a supportive community to be a part of (yes, including caring, listening, supportive adult playworkers).

* There’s also crucially an openness in children’s ability to come and go; Adventure Playgrounds are, to kids, a community resource that they can visit and use. However, it’s *the child’s choice* to come and go as they please.

The ethos behind Adventure Playgrounds is not one in contradiction of the Free Range ethos, but instead I think can be found to be very complimentary of it. Adventure Playgrounds are just one option for kids, one place they can go, but it’s ultimately up to them. It’s simply another opportunity for them, a widening and deepening of their range to roam.

What’s ultimately important to remember, though, is the CONTEXT of Adventure Playgrounds: almost exclusively, APs are found in very densely populated urban areas and cities. We’re all in support of “The Sandlot,” but the problem is you’re not going to find a sandlot in the city. This isn’t suburbia or your small, homey American town. Often there are really very few physical places within these dense urban areas that can serve as social and communal spots for kids (and there’s also great social friction when kids try to be within “public” spaces, but get accused by old guys of being pesky annoyances and hoodlums); certainly there’s hardly any physical places that kids can actually build, construct forts, and have full control of.

That’s where APs can really greatly extend children’s empowerment to roam and be in charge of their day and activity.