sounds like the folk here are consciously making what they consider to be the best choices for them and their kids. which, imo, is all that can be asked of parents.
to be honest, my youngest is 21, so i have limited recollection of the day-to-day with toddlers. i’m sure i made some fucked up decisions - but my kids ended up a librarian, a rocket scientist, and a phd student with a full ride studying microbiology. and we all seem to enjoy each others’ company. so i don’t seem to have scarred them too much.
maybe i was incredibly lucky, but i cannot think of a single instance when any of my 3 kids darted away from me in the way folk here describe. i asked my wife if she could recall such, and her response was ‘it sounds like those kids haven’t been trained yet.’ maybe some kids accept training more readily or younger than others.
best of luck all. and apologies for the lack of caps on my ‘updated’ phone.
Having raised an extremely active toddler while suffering a slipped disc in my lower back, I can say that she would never have seen a concert, a circus, or a shopping mall without the leash. I also had the one that looks like a teddybear backpack.
And yes, there was quite a bit of evil glaring and open snickering. I chose not to stop and share my medical history with them. Oh well.
When my parents returned from occupying Japan in 1952, I was 18 months old. We made the crossing on a troop carrier. My mother made a leash for me. Without it I would surely have died.
Yes. My older two children, no problem, never ran away from me, never felt the need for a leash or anything like that.
My youngest, however…
We raised him more or less the same as his older siblings, so I’m pretty sure it’s not a personal failing on my part, but this child will be 50 yards away from you the second you let go of his hand in public. It’s better now that he’s kindergarten-aged, but his toddler years were, shall we say, trying. I never got a leash but that’s mostly because I was too lazy to shop for one. I think they’re a great idea. Honestly, people think it’s totally normal and A-ok to strap kids into strollers and push them around, but you do the same thing while letting the kid walk on their own and suddenly there’s outrage. (Not in this thread, but I’ve certainly seen it elsewhere on the Internet.)
I went to LegoFest with my sister and her two boys today. The youngest is about 19 months old and was on a leash (monkey backpack) when not in his stroller. Which was practically the whole time he was there, the kid likes to move. He hates to be carried. He doesn’t dart off and usually keeps his Mom in sight but there were hundreds of kids and adults packed into the Expo center milling around everywhere. I got accidentally separated from the group several times - so many people! The lead simplified our outing tremendously. The boy actually seems to like it as well - he always knows Mom is on the other end, it reassures him.
I don’t remember it myself, but there is photographic evidence that my parents at least occasionally used a leash on me and my brother in the late 1960’s - but keeping a three-year old and an 18-month old on a ferryboat (and out of the water) probably required such means (I wonder if the ferry rented leashes to parents?)
It’s funny, as a non-parent-sometime-babysitter it was always obvious to me that toddler leashes are a brilliant idea in certain circumstances – including almost anywhere in NYC other than a playground. It’s the parents who acted horrified at the suggestion.
For some reason strapping a child into a stroller is not met with the same horror, although the net effect – confinement, lack of exercise, excessive use of sidewalk space – is actually worse.
Best thing ever. I loved mine. Kept me from trying to split myself in half running after two 2 year olds. Wonderful when in large crowds like the mall or the zoo. I often had people ask me where I got them and where they could get one too. Plenty of exasperated toddler parents admired them. I got a pair from my dad (cute little Jeep brand back packs) and a pair from Walmart with giraffes on them. They used them as little personal back packs when they got too big for the leash part. I think you made a wise, wonderful decision. Screw anyone who judges you for being a responsible smart momma.
A less-subtle and more-common distinction which some people never seem to grasp is that children are individuals. My brother has already realized that his eldest responds to discipline while the youngest completely ignores it (something the rest of the family knew before either one had turned 2yo), but until that point he thought that his friends whose eldest ignores discipline were just “bad at discipline”. Those same friends’ second responds beautifully to so much as a raised eyebrow.
Leashes weren’t necessary for your kids, congratulations. I would have loved one for some of my cousins, though, but they weren’t available back then - note the “some”.
Of course children are individuals. But I consider bullshit the suggestion that some kids are immune to discipline. Of course one size of discipline (and encouragement) will not fit all. But unless your kid has some serious pathology, if you haven’t found the successful method of improving its behavior, you haven’t tried hard enough. And - to you don’t say as much - you certainly don’t wait until a kid is 2 to start affecting its behavior.
One of our friends never understood the challenges we had in getting our oldest son to do what he was told to do. She just couldn’t see what the problem was. Then she got her #2…
Yeah, I was a non-leashed older sister to a leashed kid. My mother never understood it. The first time I bolted, she gave me the spanking of a lifetime. Never happened again. First time he made a run for it, she did the same thing and he considered it a challenge.
Here’s the root of the problem: yes, more or less every kid (except the truly pathological) eventually learns discipline, and not to dart unexpectedly. You don’t, usually, see 12 year olds wearing leashes, do you?
The problem is that, for many kids, this process - of learning how to pay attention, of discipline - takes a certain amount of time. It isn’t something the child was born with, and I don’t care how awesome your skills at parenting are, it isn’t something that anyone can instantaneously instill into every toddler, no matter what philosophy or training regime you adopt.
Some toddlers are naturally attentive. Some are not. You may find this simple statement of fact eye-rollingly naive - that, in your words, parents of difficult toddlers “just aren’t trying hard enough” to discipline their 2 year olds - all I can say is, you should be thanking the gods (or genetics, or the gods of genetics) that you are in the happy position of being able to look down your nose at those lazy and lacking parents.
I wonder what Dinsdale’s baby momma would have to say about their children. Often parents have different perspectives about how lovely their little ones are. We are only getting one side of the story. I have seen, and have personally experienced, a child being a perfect angel with one adult and a little terror with another. Often the parent they send more time with gets the brunt of bad behavior, while the parent who spends less time because of outside the home responsibility sees his/her children in a much different light.
Not only do I not have much need for one-- we have sidewalks and my kids stop when I holler-- but I don’t see any in use in my area. For long walks I’ll still get the stroller out, though. Incidentally, Hello Again, there’s no way a standard stroller takes up more room on the sidewalk than me and a kid walking side by side, unless you really need to be in the space directly in front of me for some reason. Even if it did, too bad. I don’t bring a stroller for my convenience but because my kids can’t walk as far as is sometimes required for whatever it is we’re doing.
Personally, if my kids didn’t stop when I hollered, I’d get one but would be embarrassed to use it in relatively safe places like malls. On streets (or if I ever somehow found myself on a 1952 troop transport) I’d use leashes and nevermind the blushing.
