It’s normal enough. I saw a couple of kids on wrist leashes just this weekend at a very crowded outdoor event. The kids were probably about 2 and 3. I have a 3 year old as well, and didn’t have him on a leash because he’s responsive to my voice calling him and has decent (for his age) impulse control. I didn’t judge or have negative impressions of those parents. They were present and just trying to enjoy the event with their kids. It’s HIGHLY kid dependent. When I was a toddler, I was the type to just run off in a crowd and I could have saved my mother a lot of grief and panic if she had a leash for me. It’s just another tool available to parents.
It’s important not to project your feelings as an adult, because you have different assumptions, associations and contexts tied to leashes than a toddler does. Generally, toddlers are taught to have shame or be embarrassed about things, their default sentiment to most things is extremely pragmatic. A toddler on a leash will be focused on the tactile sensation of it on their wrist or body, the effect it has of limiting their movement, and not much else. Think about when you saw those kids on leashes… were they upset about the leash? Were they trying to get out of it? Were they asking their guardians to please take it off? Or were they just kinda being silly kids running around exploring?
Bytemeister@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Probably, but I think at that point they’d learned not to complain to the person holding the lead that can yank them around like a dog.
I can tell you they weren’t playing with the other kids. They were the only kids at the aquarium watching their parent more than the fish.
If it’s so normal, where are all the movies and TV shows that portray kids on leashes? Where are the documentaries where people are waking around with leashed kids on the background? You don’t see it, because it’s not normal (in the US at least) outside of some very regressive areas.
I think we need to make a distinction between places that are dangerous for kids, and places that are inconvenient for parents. You don’t have to take your toddler on a cliff walk, and you don’t need to leash them at the grocery store, or the bank.
Nefara@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I’ve personally only seen kids on leashes in the context I mentioned above, of a large, crowded event where a few bodies moving in the way of your kid will break line of sight entirely. Outdoor festivals, concerts, fairs, amusement parks etc. I have never seen a kid on a leash at a playground or park or bank or grocery store etc. Toddlers are small and if there’s a lot of bodies around it would be VERY easy to lose sight of them. If my kid ran off and broke my line of sight of him in a crowd I absolutely would have a moment of panic. Again, I’m not going to judge other parents for finding solutions to problems that don’t harm the child.
I got away from my mother at a large event, and left her panicking and organizing other parents to search for me. When they found me she spanked me and yelled at me for running off. It wasn’t the first time and wouldn’t be the last. Obviously hitting me was wrong, but if she had just used a tether it would never have happened.
Something’s lack of representation in media is not exactly a reliable metric of commonality, if it was, gay people sprang into being in the late 90s.
Bytemeister@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Your gay analogy doesn’t work, because a culture of persecuting and demonizing gay people for thousands of years might have something to do with their refusal to publicly out themselves.