""""""COTTON WOOL KIDS""""""CHANNEL 4""""""""""

[RTKangaMummy]

TONIGHT

I think it was shocking to see all these children sitting inside and playing computer games all of the time- I also thought that the dangers of obesity are so much more likely than abduction. So often it looks like we're saying that children have changed to prefer an inside, technology-led life, and they don't want to be active - but it's that parents have changed and don't let the kids go out and be active.

It was so sad when that chubby 13-yr-old was playing computer games with another kid who was let out to play the game 'in real life'.

I thought this programme would be interesting (I'm a slightly overprotective parent) but I found it quite boring. The thing that did leap out at me though was how inappropriate it was (I thought so anyway) that those children kept harping on about MM. The way they were discussing it "her Mummy and Daddy left her alone and she was taken etc etc." I just felt that it was wrong of the programme makers to allow MM to be discussed like that on this programme. Obviously there are relevances, but this programme wasn't about MM it was about overprotective parents and their children. It really annoys me how MM is automatically linked to every slightly similar case, like when Shannon went missing, her photo was jostling for space in some newspapers with MM's. The media need to stop doing that. God forbid, if one of my DC ever had to make headlines for such a terrible reason as being abducted, the constant MM references and pictures and so on would really anger me. I can imagine I'd want to scream "it's not about her." The media have turned MM into some sort of celebrity and that's wrong.

Anyway, back to the programme, the Mum with glasses and the young baby, Abi's Mum, clearly needs some sort of therapy. She's doing her children a huge disservice (is that a word?) by discussing stranger danger and so on, in the manner which she does with them. She'll end up with completely neurotic children on her hands. Some parents find it easier than others to 'let go' and let them have some freedom, and I've struggled with it, but I realise that they have to develop their own risk assesment abilities, and be able to make desicions around what's safe and what's not, and what's a threat and what's not for themselves. Basically, they need to become a bit 'streetwise' as it's a good self preservation measure. It's not something you can do for them. At the end of the day, we as parents need to follow our instincts, and if it's something you're really not happy or comfortable letting them do, or go, them don't, but otherwise try and keep it in perspective.

Okay, soapbox moment over.

I quite agree about your comments about MM ~ I would be really angry too UNLESS I was on holiday and left my child while I went out to dinner ~ there would be no simularities

So no reason to compare the situations or frighten the children after all in the MM case it was the parents that made the decision rather than anything the children were in control of

I hope the children aren't being bullied at school today after being on the programme with their mad parents

This prog actually made me cry (ds 7 months - I'm still hormonal clearly). Al least some of the kids featured were rebelling slightly. What upset me was the fact that a lot of the kids featured were happy to stay inside because their parents have scared the bejesus out of them. The emphasis on MM disturbed me as well.

Boundaries are one thing but incarcerating your child is something else entirely even if, as was the case with one kid, you buy him off with a new gadget every time.

I know I haven't had to make these calls about how much freedom to allow ds but I hope I can keep my fears to myself - they're my problem not my ds's.

Those parents, particularly chip lady, are insanely paranoid. Young Sid seemed surprisingly balanced and sensible in the circs. Chip lady needs to get medication.

i watched this last night and was utterly shocked by the parents. i gave a small cheer when Sid was finally allowed to get the bus to school. i swore at the tv when he said he was going to his friends house for a week to go to the gym, and his dad asked him if he could get hime any other games consoles intead, couldnt he see his kid needed to play real games and not VR ones.

chip woman was absolutly bonkers! heck my kids know about stranger danger but she was utterly barmy!
bloody strange woman.

i liked the stats about stranger killings etc being no higher than before, its reassuring.

dd1 (8yrs)still wont be walking all the way to school on her own yet, but that because we have to cross at a busy crossroads, and its hard for even an adult to negoiate. i remember reading somewhere that children cant judge traffic properly until age 10, so we are working towards year 5/6 when she can walk alone/with her friends.

I watched about 15 minutes of this and had to switch off - it literally made me feel ill. The woman driving her kids around, pointing out passers by and saying ' oh yes look at him, he could be a child killer' and so on made me sick. And the young girls discussing Madeleine McCann's abduction as if they were experts....WTF???

Do you know what though, after watching the programme, I gave a bit more thought to chipping, and wondered, if it were to become something that more and more parents did, I wonder how many parents would see another side to it. It does sound like a completely nuts thing to do, but then again, if microchipping children were to become commonplace, would abductions become less of a threat? Someone commented that the kidnappers might try to remove the chip from the child, but how would they know whether the child had one? And if so, where it was? If your child had gone missing, not necessarily abducted, you'd be able to track them and that may be a Godsend. After all, some might say we do chip our animals in case they get lost, so why not our children? I guess it comes down to the infringement on privacy and human rights (which would come into place once the children are older) though. It could make for interesting debate, but I can't see it catching on.

these parents who tell their children never to trust strangers and so on....what is their advice if their child gets lost?

It'll be interesting to see how these poor children grow up. They'll probably be too timid to do anything much with their lives or they'll go completely bonkers, and with no experience of assessing risk, will take huge ones, and get into seriously bad situations. Don't know which is worse to be honest. Their parents are mental.

Good point donnie. I guess, depending on the age of the child, perhaps they'd go into a shop or approach a police officer if there happened to be one around, or a Mum with children or someone equally 'normal and trustworthy' looking. I'd hope that's what mine would do anyway. Once, my DC and I came out of a restaurant which is in a shopping area, it also happened to be market day so it was busy, and we lost DS2 (my youngest) I told my elder two to stay outside Sainsbury's and not move whilst I went to look for DS2. Looked in shops and around market for 5 mins or so (always feels a lot longer at those times though) couldn't find him and felt panic starting to set in. I turned to go back to the other two DC wondering what the hell I was going to do, when I saw a kindly waiter from the restaurant with my DS2. DS2 had had the presence of mind to go back inside the restaurant. He was only 7 at the time. The waiter had come outside the restaurant with him, seen DD and DS1, recognised them as being with us earlier, and waited while I returned from my search. All ended well.

I felt so sorry for the thirteen year old boy, being desperate to go on the bus by himself to school. Father anxious about him being kidnapped, shot, knifed, mugged or 'happy slapped'. In St John's Wood? My own 13 year old is never in!

That chip woman was truly scary.

What really irritates me, is that if a parent makes a responsible risk assessment to leave a child alone/ let them out on their own, Social Services are likely to be called and get involved, on the offchance that the child will be harmed.

It is blindingly obvious that all these cotton-wool children are at extreme risk of being harmed, but because the harm is long term and/ or pschological, SS has no remit here.

Some forms child abuse are more equal than others, it would seem.

Groundhog Day.

Now the One Show are telling us about this new market in child surveillance - implanting our precious children with an MICROCHIP!

Sorry but you need to create a market for such invasive nonsense.

Sorry to be blunt but it is no suprise that we have the most high profile 'missing child' ever and now we start reading stuff like this:

www.bbc.co.uk/theoneshow/article/2007/07/ab_childchipping.shtml

I think this is going too far!

Missing People....Missing Children Europe...these charities and sponsored by hught companies who basically are microchip companies.

A generation is all they need.

Please think about this carefully.

It's not a conspiracy - I wish it was, I'm a mum and I don't want this for my kids future.

This is an agenda we are watching and the joke's on us.

Blurb from The One Show:

Angellica first meets the man at the extreme end of the tracking scale - Kevin Warwick, Professor of Cybernetics at the University of Reading. Prof. Warwick caused controversy shortly after the Soham murders in 2002, when he offered to implant a tracking device into an 11-year-old girl as an anti-abduction measure.

At the time, his methods, involving surgically implanting a radio transmitter under the skin, were not well received and so he backed down. But he now he thinks the tide is changing.

The day we implant chips could be just around the corner but, for now, the less invasive devices are put to the test in Chipping.

Tracking device 1: Toddler tags
These are wristbands worn by children which transmit a radio signal to a handset. Parents can create a 30m virtual ring fence - and an alarm goes off when the child goes outside that radius.

Tracking device 2: i-Kids phone
The device is a phone which parents can listen into and hear sounds, such as traffic or a river. They then text a number and get a location sent back, revealing where the child is. They can also track the child's location on the dedicated website.

Tracking device 3: Tracker belts
These contain a Global Positioning System (GPS) unit in them, so parents can go online and get a satellite image of where their kids are, which updates every 15 seconds.

All three devices performed as they were supposed to, and Angellica tracked the children down in seconds. But are parents using these gadgets for real?

Angellica meets Julie Nash, a mum who uses a tracker to keep an eye on her daughter, Chloe. Julie has bought one of the i-Kids phones and explains why, "It's just for peace of mind - knowing that I know where she is, because she is a wanderer."

Angellica asks her if she would resort to implanting a chip in Chloe, if such a thing became available. "Yes," Julie tells Angellica, "If anything happened to her, we would be able to track her. When you first let your children out it is really, really scary."

So if you want to keep track of your children 24-7, the technology is in place - the trouble is, once you have the means, it's hard to avoid using it.

Let us know how you keep an eye on your children.