Playground inattentiveness equals inevitable disaster

DEAR MARIANN: Recently I have noticed the increas­ing num­ber of “play areas” for chil­dren, espe­cially at shop­ping malls and sev­eral fast-food restau­rant loca­tions. Since these are not super­vised by a mall worker or restau­rant employee, it alarms me to see so many kids unat­tended. What is your advice to par­ents regard­ing this? 

MARIANN’S RESPONSE: Con­sid­er­ing the num­ber of high-profile kid­nap­ping cases within the last few years of chil­dren who were in their own neigh­bor­hood, let alone at a high-traffic, quick exit envi­ron­ments such as a mall, it amazes me that some par­ents seem so non­cha­lant about their children’s safety. Seem­ingly it is inevitable that a kid­nap­ping will some­day occur from one of these unsu­per­vised venues before needed atten­tion is focused on this issue. “Deposit­ing” chil­dren in a strange envi­ron­ment poses incred­i­ble dan­ger and unneeded temp­ta­tion to those who have prob­lem­atic ten­den­cies. Even though I did not have chil­dren, by accom­pa­ny­ing my par­ents in pub­lic when I was very young, whether it was shop­ping, church or to an expen­sive restau­rant, I learned how to act respect­fully in pub­lic. With­out those oppor­tu­ni­ties and our society’s fix­a­tion on tech­nol­ogy and video games as sub­sti­tu­tion for parental inter­ac­tion, my opin­ion is that we are rob­bing our chil­dren of an oppor­tu­nity to learn appro­pri­ate deco­rum in social venues and essen­tial com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills.

Par­ents, if you don’t want chil­dren to accom­pany you dur­ing these shop­ping trips, please find a “play date” for those hours you will be away or a babysit­ter if they are too young to leave alone at home. How­ever, I have fond mem­o­ries of shop­ping with my par­ents espe­cially since my father was a “clothes nut” unlike most men. It might be an equally mem­o­rable expe­ri­ence for chil­dren if you ask them their opin­ion about poten­tial pur­chases, thus giv­ing them a sense of belong­ing and pride that you are solic­it­ing their input dur­ing shop­ping trips.

For those par­ents who leave their chil­dren in a fast-food play area unat­tended, my sug­ges­tion is to please be more atten­tive to your kids ver­sus text-messaging or chat­ting with other par­ents. Injuries are not uncom­mon in these com­mu­nal play areas, let alone the ques­tion­able clean­ing of the equip­ment that poten­tially could expose chil­dren to more germs than needed. Accord­ing to the Con­sumer Prod­uct Safety Com­mis­sion, more than 200,000 U.S. kids ages 14 and younger are treated in hos­pi­tal emer­gency rooms from play­ground injuries, with 2 per­cent of those occur­ring in fast-food play areas. That doesn’t sound like many, but it still equates to 4,000 chil­dren who needed med­ical care, prob­a­bly when their par­ents were dis­tracted either by con­ver­sa­tion or technology.

DEAR MARIANN: Some­one I know seems to be “los­ing it” from what I would guess is demen­tia. Speak­ing to the per­son directly about my con­cerns would not be met with much appre­ci­a­tion since they are quite pride­ful, but with­out other fam­ily mem­bers in this area, I am unsure of what to do next to help this per­son before the sit­u­a­tion becomes worse.

MARIANN’S RESPONSE: As “baby boomers” age, this sce­nario is likely to increase dra­mat­i­cally, espe­cially since half of us will be diag­nosed with Alzheimer’s if we reach age 85, accord­ing to the National Insti­tute on Aging. The Alzheimer’s Asso­ci­a­tion cal­cu­lates that presently, 5.4 mil­lion Amer­i­cans are liv­ing with this disease.

My sug­ges­tion is to con­tact this person’s chil­dren, pas­tor, rabbi, or doc­tor. Explain­ing your con­cerns in a fac­tual yet sym­pa­thetic tone will demon­strate that you are truly con­cerned about this older indi­vid­ual. Also explain­ing the sit­u­a­tion to the county agency that ser­vices older adults might be beneficial.

Delaware County has an excel­lent Senior Cen­ter on Cheshire Road, just south of the city. Their staff is com­prised of a vari­ety of trained pro­fes­sion­als, includ­ing social work­ers who are excel­lent in address­ing older adult health and men­tal issues and deter­min­ing appro­pri­ate legal action if there is a ques­tion of safety. Meet­ing with one of their clin­i­cians would be a good first step in find­ing help for this declin­ing indi­vid­ual before an inevitable tragedy occurs, espe­cially if they are still driving.

Mar­i­ann Main is a Licensed Coun­selor and a Delaware native. Her col­umn appears weekly on Wednes­days. To sub­mit a ques­tion and have Mar­i­ann answer it anony­mously, visit delgazette.com/life-questions-with-local-answers or send mail to the Delaware Gazette office, 40 N. San­dusky St., suite 203, Delaware, OH 43015.

Posted by Mariann Main on Jan 15 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.