Child protection gone mad?????

[chloeb2002]

Just after some reflection on this one.... We DD (22mnts) and I were wheeling our way around tescos. Trying coincidently to keep DD happy as she had fallen off a gate... long story... and banged her head. anyway also trying to tackle potty training as she is very into it. The problem is that she will be 98% dry untill she has big girl pants on, so instead she is just wearing long dresses and going comando. so far so good, but whilst standing by the capsicums a woman with bright red hair acosted me and said " i notice your daughter has no knickers on" Yes say i we are ptty training and wernt expecting to come out but she had banged her head etc. yes says this woman, i undersatnd but as she had wriggled i the trooly her dress had ridden up and didnt cover her up, so she picked up a new oven glove id bought and placed it over her, uttering listen i work in child protection and you just dont know who is looking.
Is society so messed up?
help im losing faith!

I think in this situation it was absolutely fine for
your daughter to have no pants on. I think covering someone up with an oven glove is making our young ashamed of there genetalia and could seriously make a mess of a new generation if this keeps up

Im glad im not the only one who thought ths was a bit OTT. I was worrying that between the liberal attitude of Aussies and living amongst too many sheep in north Yorks something had warped my perception. I appreciate that some nuters ma wander around armed with their camera phones and photo children. however i view that as their problem not mine? DD was never in any risk and i'd argue that anyone who PT'd with no knicker problems was lucky. Having mentioned this to a few people including my HV, she said her advice would have been to leave DD's knickers off untill she was a bit more confidnet. Now one week one ill add she can have big girl knickers on for short times and stay dry, pull them up and down etc.
I dont see how she could harm herself on a shopping trolley? she was at on her very long dress, trolleys dont have sharp edges, pointy bits and she is strapped in? I dont feel she would be any more protected from injury when she has thin knickers on.
So far so good, no other complaints in fact the opposite, congratulations on pt'ing an under 2 year old. so feeling a bit happier. Thanks for your comments.

MeanBean, you just said what I was thinking!

Totally agree with meanbean and fairyfly. Think it is very sad really.

It is very sad, but I wouldn't allow my children to go out without underwear.

It's not that I think there's paedophiles on every corner, but they are about, and the problem is you don't know who they are.

Of course there is nothing wrong with children's bodies. My kids run round with no clothes on in the house and garden all the time. I don't agree that it's anything like the argument about rape victims' clothing. No-one is suggesting that the child is inciting predatory behaviour, it's just about taking the necessary steps to protect our children.

Totally agree meanbean.
I've said this before and got lambasted for it, but I'll try again...
If there were wierdos with camera phones taking pictures in the supermarket, how would that hurt the kid? That's not to say it's not abhorrent, but unless the kids realise that they are being perved at I can't see how they can be harmed. Far more distressing for them is to be told to cover up, or to be looking for horrid people around every corner. Be cautious with regards to your kids actualsafety by all means, but don't make them so fearful that it affects their day to day lives.

I'm with Prufrock, Meanbean, FF et al.

I have a fear that the current Anglo-American culture of fear and distrust is itself creating a generation of disturbed children as we don't allow them the opportunity to find out what is normal and that it IS possible to be friendly, not related and NOT a paedophile. If we teach them to distrust everyone and that their bodies are beautful things, how can they learn that friendly hug is OK (but that "this is our little secret" is not)?

I think that the analogy that someone used to burkha and/or "girls in mini skirts were 'asking for it'" is a good one to make. I also liked the point that who knows what it is that will "turn on" someone who is disturbed? Are we going to ban all school uniforms because they might titillate?

I'm not having a go at those who do feel a need to protect their children: I just find it sad that our society (and the media) has created (IMHO) such an excessive culture of fear.

I thinkit is sad as well but I have no problem with children learning abouttheir bodies and being friendly but society has changed and parenting needs to be updated. The analogies made are fine but do not take into accounttht rape and abuse often come down to power rather sexuality and people may also have latent tendencies which with media and clothing manufactured for children are being made to seem more acceptable. I managed potty traing with pants on so I guess I was lucky but it never crossed my mind not to put them on dd when we went out

I do find it strange that this has become such a problem in recent years. It is all I believe down to the media coverage of the subject. Peadophilles have presumably always been around, and unfortunately are always likely to be so. Your child is far more likely to be run over than be subjected to a peadophile. Roads and cars are of course considered a risk and we teach our children how to be safe. And rightly so. I really don't know what the answer is for teaching children how to be safe from nasty people. But I don't think that the conviction some seem to have that there IS a peadophile in that supermarket, street, park etc is a healthy one.
I do remember actually, a young man who was a loner and a bit of a strange one videoing us children in the playground at primary school. I remember thinking he was very strange but he was a bit of a joke... He was warned off, never did any harm to any of us to the best of my knowledge and was in the paper later on saying he'd seen aliens landing in a field near my house! Like you do!

I don't think we are overprotecting our children by putting pants on them to go to the supermarket. Nakedness on the beach is one thing but a supermarket is quite another.

just wanted to say that as someone who is sick of our fear culture I'm heartened by seeing lots of people here with what I think to be rational responses. Meanbean - you're dead right about the analogy with women wearing mini-skirts - it's what I was getting at about giving out the message that paedophiles are somehow right or justified in finding children "sexy".

The necessary steps i take to look after my children are to make sure i am watching them and with them. To keep an eye out for anything odd around, to protect them from any danger as i see it. Remove them from situations i find damaging or where they could be at risk. It is not panicking if there pants fall down or they decide to strip, i am not going to put fear into them by running to there side and wrapping them up. Or for that matter running up to other peoples kids and covering them up. That is not my right.
These people who choose to live as sexually perverted animals can go home and fantasise. Sad idiots but they are not going to effect mine or my childrens lives and i will not be dictated to by them.

Has society changed? I spent my school years walking to the bus-stop through a park teeming with flashers in the bushes. Our gardener flashed at me when I was 3, and overheard many muttered conversations in which adults made all sorts of undecipherable references to 'characters' from whom we were gently steeered away if in the vicinity.
But it didn't rule our lives, we scampered about happily without clothes - and without ridiculous 'bikini tops' to cover our non-existant nipples / breasts, too. My mother might well have taken me out in a long dress and no knickers - but she certainly wouldn't have allowed me to wear 'sexualising' high heels.
Yes, maybe peadophiles have access to digital cameras and the 'net... 'caring' parents dress their 7 year old daughters like Britney and Posh. I'm NOT saying this makes a sexual response to children acceptable or excusable, or that the 'sexy' clothes 'invite' peadophiles, I'm saying that if society has changed, childhood, and the confident innocence to grow up without the burden adult sexualisation is coming from many directions. I would like my child to enjoy childhood free of panic about peadophiles, and free of pressure to aspire to images of adult sexulaity.

I honestly would question the intent of someone who took it uopn themselves to cover up my child with an oven glove!

I think the woman sounds like a grade A loon, and anyone who started touching my kid or scaring them with oven gloves (!) and talk of paedophiles would get very short shrift from me. Agree with Blu, Meanmean et al. So what if some mythical man is taking pix with a cameraphone (agree with Edam, it's all urban myth stuff) - it wouldn't hurt my son and if a paedophile saw my little boy in his swimming trunks or my 13-year-old stepdaughter in her school uniform and was 'turned on and raped a child', well, I strongly resent any suggestion that their actions would be my 'fault' or that of my children. I actually think that's an outrageous thing to say. Come on, school uniforms are a fetish for lots of men (Britney, anyone?), including Ian Huntley, who deliberately sought out schoolgirls in uniform. Should we ban children from going to the supermarket or walking down the street in their uniform?

Mad woman is all I can say! I have sent my daughter to school with no knickers on what does that say about me????? (Oh by mistake)

agree, all sorts of dress could be construed as a turn on. Should I not allow my sons to be seen in public in cubs uniform for instance? The bizarre sight of an oven glove shielding the bottom of a little child might even be a turn on for some sad person - and if not, surely attract stares?

Thankyou every one we haven't seen the red haired scarey lady since, and the knickers are on or off at the mo, depending what we are doing, not what other people think about it. The oven glove has been used regularly to remove hot things from the oven .