Since I have limited access to sound, I’m missing a few bits of information. Could someone 411 me?
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Is the mother blaming the fence? For what, being inadequate, or being a “hidden danger”?
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Where was this? It looks oddly like somewhere I know.
Darwinism averted, yet again. :rolleyes:
The mother says she “thinks the parks should have provided a better railing, and the more she thinks about it the angrier she gets”.
I don’t know where it is.
This thread reminds me of something a co-worker said the other day. I had my own toddler (age 19 months) in the office, and he was opening & closing the doors to amuse himself. The co-worker was worried that he was going to smash his little fingers, and said, “this age is so scary…it’s like they are always 30 seconds away from a visit to the emergency room.”
I have never heard anything more true said about toddlers. They are unbelieveably curious about everything, and have no idea what it means to get hurt (well, not badly hurt). You have to watch them every second, and you have to constantly anticipate the things they might do, which there is no end to. (Witness my experience I started a thread about recently, where my little guy got in the bathtup and turned the water on. It took all of 30 seconds out of my sight for that to happen.)
We went canoeing recently, and I had him sitting in front of me while I paddled. I had to keep stopping and grabbing him, because he would stand up to look at the water…I knew that that it would take him approximately 1 second to fling his leg up over the side, and go right in the water, and that there was nothing in particular that would stop him from doing it except for me physically restraining him from doing so (of course, he was wearing a life vest). The things you might not think of because even a 4-year-old is smart enough not to do them…those are the things a toddler will do in a heartbeat. And a little kid 3 years old like in that video is in no way going to look at that fence and think “gee, if I try to lean on this, I might go right through and fall to my death.” That’s what the parent is supposed to be figuring out on her behalf.
Parent’s fault. I know precisely nothing about kids (well, they’re loud and messy and I don’t like them), and even I can tell that if you know there’s a cliff on the other side of that barrier, don’t let your kid go near it, if only because it’s very obvious she can fit through.
Amen. The park service exists primarily to protect nature from us, and making it accessible is a secondary mission.
If you ever want a glimpse into how astonishingly stupid people are about nature, find someone who’s worked on a wilderness Search and Rescue team. Better yet, talk to a park ranger in a popular national park. It seems like some people think that because something is officially designated as a park, it’s like Disneyland. Gravity won’t hurt you, the weather will be perfect and predictable, you don’t actually need to drink water, and the wildlife just wants to play.
Thank you.
I suppose that deep down, the mother feels guilty about the situation, but is heavily indulging in denial, projection, and whatever other faulty thinking you care to mention. Having to face that she’s a dumbass is probably too much for her right now.
And I agree that the fencing could be more adequate. But life is full of dangers like that. It’s up to a parent to recognize the more obvious of them.
“Go up and pet the Bison, honey, it’ll make such a cute picture!”
Yes, the Parents fault. And while it was potentially horrific, I think we need to be careful here. I am sure that every parent here has at one time or another done something absent-mindedly that put teir child at risk. It isn’t a condemnation, but realistic in realizing that watching a child 24/7/365 will have those moments where youare like, “Whoa!”.
OK look, it was the Mothers fault but I don’t get all the vitriol towards the Mother.
Parenting is a learning experience. Not everybody is going to be a fucking professional the second the kid pops out of the womb. It was an honest mistake. She feels bad about it and I feel most confident she’ll be more cautious in the future.
And sorry, if that’s a spot that’s frequented by kids; they DO need safer fencing. Sorry if that ruins the aesthetics for all you nature lovers out there but a kids life is worth more than all that.
::raises hand:: Walking a trail at Mt. Rainier Nat’l Park with my nine or ten-year-old, and we moved off the trail to make way for a group of climbers coming down. We moved off too far. We both started to slide on the snow, and I still don’t know how we both figured to fall and dig in with our feet to stop the slide. He was really close to the edge before he stopped sliding. I didn’t yell because I didn’t want to scare him – I don’t think he realized what was happening. What’s worse is that when we got back on the trail, I looked back at where it happened and saw that we had been on an overhang that was nothing but snow.
He’s 41 now and says he doesn’t remember this at all. He likes to tease me about trying to kill him, but I can’t laugh about it.
Agreed that no one is a perfect parent all the time , Og knows I’m not. But she should recognize after the fact that she, not the park, was at fault for not providing the due diligence demanded from a parent in that situation. Instead she blames the park, which is why she deserves all the vitriol she gets.
Life is a learning experience, and I learned that gravity’s a bitch long before I had kids. I’m also the last person anyone would have expected to have kids, but it’s pretty obvious that 150’ drop and an unrestrained 3 year old don’t mix. Unless you’re watching a different video than I am, she did not seem to feel bad about it - just angry with the park sevice for not protecting her kid from her stupidity.
What sort of fence do you propose? About the only fence that will prevent episodes of stupidity like this one is about 8’ of chain link with razor wire across the top. That would make this one spot perfectly safe, since no one would want to go there anymore.
For what is worth:
We had a place on a lake, there was a 45 foot cliff and the bottom of out fairly steep downhill front yard withe about 2 feet of more or less flat rock then the edge. At the bottom was 45 feet of water. There was no wading at our place. 
We had rock steps to that flat part, then had to walk to the right about 50 feet to where the first of three ladders were that led to a place we had made to swim from back under the overhanging cliff. We eventually made rock steps (no rails) in place of the 2X4 ladders.There were 7 of us kids. I was 9 when we built the cabin. Littlest was not yet born. None of us ever fell off. (Me and my brother and older sister and a few friends occasionally pushed each off)
When other families would come to visit, quite often the parents would question the ‘no rail or fence’ part. My Dad would ask, “What is the first thing you child does when it comes to a rail or fence?” They climb of course. Babies that crawl or small toddlers would not be allowed near the slope much less the cliff and it was the parents responsibility and all the older kids responsibility to see to that. We started build in 1953 and to this day, none of the hundreds of 4 - 17 year old kids that played there have ever fallen off.
Could it happen? I suppose, but the parents were told and the slightest indication that they did not do what the needed to do, they were set away right then, friend or no. We even made the hour drive each way to return a few guests that we kids had come stay at the lake because they did not obey the rules.
Toddlers, heck, any kid under 18, = 100% the responsibility of the parent IMO.
I have no expectation that a safety rail or fence or whatever will be 100% safe. I do not trust them. Sometimes I have to trust safety equipment to do a job but, at public access sites, nope, that is for fools and we keep paying them $$$$ in lawsuits winnings…
In that video, I would bet that if the child had fallen, before her child had ever hit the bottom she would already be thinking about the $$$$$. It is always about the $$$$…
YMMV
I don’t think the park service is at fault; however, I have seen fences of this type that also have heavy mesh/screening in the “open” sections of the fence. This keeps kids from getting through and doesn’t “spoil” the integrity.
Mom is mostly to blame, but I wouldn’t blame her nearly as much if she wasn’t so angry (and getting angrier!) at the park service. Take some responsibility, lady. She didn’t even mention how thankful she was that everything turned out ok, did she?
I’m the dad of two girls, ages 3.8 years, and 1.3 years. My assessment of blame is:
Mom: 83%
Park service/Fence: 17%
Primarily, a parent should always be aware of that kind of danger. If you’re a parent, it’s really your main job in life to make sure your kids don’t perish unnecessarily. The mom in that video lacked a basic awareness of the situation (inadequate fence, proximate cliff-edge) that she should have had.
Secondarily, it’s basic human nature to assume that a fence is adequate to the job it obviously been built to do. It’s hard to tell from that video, but at first, when I watched it, it didn’t seem like there was a deadly drop just on the other side of the fence. And part of my brain would have assumed (wrongly) that if there really was a deadly drop so close, there’s no way the park service would have “blocked” it with such an obviously inadequate fence. And the mom is still a human being, with a fallible human brain, even in the best of cases.
Like most posters in this thread, I find it absurd that the mother seems to be placing all the blame on the park service. Most of the responsibility was yours, mom… take it.
-P
Judging by the tremble in her voice when the event occured I’d say she did feel bad about it.
Plus this is the news. I don’t know if you know his or not but news people like to do this thing called “editing”. She could have easily went on a ten minute rant about how SHE fucked up; but how fun would that be for the veiwing audience?
So maybe they cut those parts out. Nobody knows for sure.
“The more I thought about it the angrier I got with the state parks, because there is no excuse for that.” Indicates pretty clearly to me that she is not taking any responsibility for her actions.
Shit, dude, you’re not going far enough. People like this should be surrounded in bubble wrap and locked inside foam rubber houses.
It should not happen again. The Oregon State Parks got caught out when this story aired and the video posted to the web. The fence is now a “real” fence. Of course, no one in the local media has bothered to check it out and report back yet.
Even amusement parks, a highly controlled environment, are occasionally blessed by odds to occasionally see someone die in a way nobody ever thought possible.