they are still doing it (parents leave child in car)

[citizenED]

Dear Spadetownboy,

I agree, making assumptions about people's class on minimal information is a bit of a minefield. As a rule I try to avoid any assmptions because making sweeping generalisations on any issue is a surefire way to skew the debate. But I am sure you accept it is blooming tricky to avoid entirely. You even make an assumptionin your post. In my defence I was only speculating on the class of the kids in the respective parks in order to stimulate what i think is an important debate considering the recent report saying that most parents would not let their kids play out alone until they were at least 14. And furthermore I was hoping to project the sense that the parents of The Firemans' kids had a more realistic perspective than the Dulwich park ones, whatever class they were.

citizen

[Asset]

I too, who am probably 'middle class' although definitely not well off as am a student and a 'creative' partner, 2 kids blah blah blah, cannot bear the over protective mollycoddling attitude of most parents in the park BUT I don't think it is a class/race/money/whatever issue. It is just the way we are with our kids these days in general as I have witnessed the same sort of cringemaking behaviour from all types of people. The sort of people who take their kids to the park when it's been raining and tell them not to splash in puddles in case they get dirty! I have seen it myself, kids in the park in their best clothes being told not to go on the grass, kids being constantly told to be careful on the roundabout etc. It drives me mad and I sometimes feel embarrased to be associated with them.

CWALD - it's all very well talking about the kids in the estate but as I made the point earlier, most of the kids in the park are too young to go there alone and need to be taken - and what is so wrong with two parents taking their child to the park?

I sometimes go with my partner and I sometimes go alone, I don't see that as over protecting my child I see it as doing something as a family. When I'm in the kiddy park with my almost three year old I do my utmost to let her do her own thing and sit on a bench having a rest watching from afar. I don't care if she gets dirty, she'll wash.

My ten year old now goes out to play on his own with his mates of an evening - out of my sight but with a boundary of a few streets. It is worrying when you let them go like that but it has to be done, I'm not sure I would have done it much younger though unfortunately for him.

Not really got a point here, just rambling on.

I am getting bored with this constant working/middle class thing on this forum though, it's generalising and that is always a dangerous thing.

[ChavWivaLawDegree]

Asset - I wasn't trying to say that having 2 parents with a kid is being overprotective, that was just an observation. What I think was disturbing tho, was the fact that they never seemed to give their kids any adult-free space at all. Maybe that's just because they are at the park, and they give them free space somewhere else. It just seemed strange to me because I'd never seen it before.

[Asset]

I agree with you. I've got friends who are like that with their kids, I have to bite my tongue. Do you think it is just a 'middle class' issue? We need to define 'middle class'.

[ChavWivaLawDegree]

I'm not sure actually, I do know a few over-protective working class parents, but the ones I can think of right now are Turkish, Jamaican and Bengali, and it applies more to their girls than boys, but you don't see them out en masse to 'exercise' their kids, so I suppose it's less noticeable.

[Nero]

I think kids have to be scared of other kids these days. When I was young, trollin' around hte streets of Stockport, I knew who the hard ones were and played safe. But the hard ones then were just fisticuffs hard, and didn't smoke skunk and carry knives and were heavily into 'respect', which now sometimes seems to mean 'deference and obeisance'. So I do understand when parents worry. It just isn't like when we were kids, and I am speaking as one who's had first hand experience of playing around the cobbled streets till all hours and learning who to trust and who to stay away from. Nero

[ChavWivaLawDegree]

Nero - teaching your kids to assertively deal with gang mentality and avoid becoming victims of a knife or other serious attack would seem to me to be an important part of parenting in London and many other cities, and could never be seen as being over-protective, but denying children freedom to explore at a safe distance from their parent/s is a totally different thing and in my view is over-protective and unhelpful in the development of their much needed assertiveness.

[clare]

Sean- please don't not have children (sorry about double negative) because of other parents opprobrium. You always sound like a person of sense (mostly!) when you post on the forum. You'll find your way !

It's late , we're in the Lounge so I'll say it - god some of these postings are pompous and wearisome. Jeeez.

Night all

[TillieTrotter]

London is a scary place to bring up children and its very easy to become overly protective. My daughter was mugged in Dulwich Village a few years back on a light summers eve at 8pm. My boys have been hassled when I allowed them the freedom to go to Dulwich Park alone a few weeks back.

As someone rightly said, and maybe this is a sign of getting older, that in my day you feared a punch on the nose but today it is all about weapons, and that scares the sh*t out of parents.

Its a very hard call to make when considering the freedom v safety issue.

I think that some of you childless peeps need to be a little more lenient when opinning on this as until you are there and faced with this reality, you wont know how difficult it is to make these decisions.

[ChavWivaLawDegree]

Tillie - I suppose for me it helped that all my kids did martial arts as soon as they could walk, and my ex-husband was a bit of a scary dude, so they didn't have too many problems growing up where they did. My son (who is 21 now) is as a youth worker and teaches sports on a crime prevention project to the seriously disturbed kids who are among those killing each other in Peckham. Things are much worse now than when he was growing up, I was a youth worker then, and I think it's not just coincidence that the kids who are the worst now, are the ones who were born at the end of the Thatcher years, when life for me and millions of others was a constant struggle and many parents in my area couldn't cope, ending up addicted to hard drugs or alcohol. Sorry to be boring Claire, but Thatcher's legacy is only now being fully realised.

[TillieTrotter]

Yes CWALD, that sounds like a sensible idea to get them into martial arts, although fists/hands/feet are not a fair match against a weapon but I suppose it gives them the confidence to stand up for themselves.

[SeanMacGabhann]

CWALD - I tend to agree with your statement about Thatcher's children (now grandchildren probably). I know it sounds hopelessly 80s and Ben Elton to say so but I've been saying this to people for a while. Not that the current lot have done nearly as much as they could to reverse that mind you

You might want to be careful when spelling Claire tho - in my opinion Clare's who don't have an I in their name tend to be quite particular about that - am I wrong Clare? ;-)

Thanks for the kind words (mostly) as well Clare but to be fair it's just one of the reasons - I have drifted from really wanting them in my 20s to being somewhere close to Bill Hicks' position today (rummages around on youtube for relevant clip.. can't find it... will post later)

[Asset]

nothing wrong with not wanting children Sean, too many of the little blighters around anyway.

[Alan Dale]

SeanMacGabhann Wrote:

sounds hopelessly 80s and Ben Elton

You mean 80s and 80s Ben Elton. Noughties Ben Elton is Andrew Lloyd Webber's servile flatterer, a sycophant luvvy, a royalist and a self promoting Blairite. The 80s Ben Elton I grew up knowing turned out to be a character created for comedic effect as a vehicle for an aspiring drama graduate.

He kept us going through the Thatcher years only to spit in our faces today and cosy up to the establishment.

Now he's weedled his way back onto our screens to leer over twenty-three year old Alexa Chung. He'll probably get a knighthood for it and he'll accept it too.

Phoney.

[SeanMacGabhann]

The best critique of what Ben Elton has become is on Stewart Lee's first DVD - the punchline being that fewer people hate Osama Bin-Laden than Ben Elton because unlike Elton he has at least lived his life to a consistent set of ethical standards...

[ChavWivaLawDegree]

Sean - Gotta say Bill Hicks is (was) the man, and Robert Newman comes in a close 2nd. Elton has been a bit of a letdown, a lot like his hero, Blair. I'm in the Green Party myself, a party that is too young and lacking power at present to have any major traitors yet!

[Keef]

ChavWivaLawDegree since you've started posting on this forum you've spoken a load of sense, and I generally tend to agree with you (not least when it comes to Bill Hicks).

One thing though... You say you hate class division, yet doesn't your name encourage it? I think working class warriors can be just as snobby about class as Middle class toffs...

Seriously I'm not trying to argue with you here, and I'm not calling you a working class warrior, your post a while back just made me think.

[Annasfield]

Not sure if any of you have seen this before, I'm sure that most of you have as it came around as an E-mail last year. I felt that it's quite poignant and highlights the differences between today's childhood and ours... Only a bit of fun I know, but good for the memories......

FOR THOSE BORN BEFORE 1986

According to today's regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who were kids in the 60's, 70's and early 80's probably shouldn't have survived,

because our baby cots were covered with brightly coloured lead-based paint which was promptly chewed and licked. We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, or latches on doors or cabinets and it was fine to play with pans.

When we rode our bikes, we wore no helmets, just flip-flops, or wooden Scholls, or black plimsoles and fluorescent 'spokey dokey's' on our wheels.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or airbags - riding in the passenger seat was a treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle and it tasted the same.

We ate chips, bread and butter pudding and drank fizzy juice with sugar in it, but we were never overweight because we were always outside playing.

We shared one drink with four friends, from one bottle or can and no-one actually died from this.

We would spend hours building go-carts out of scraps and then went top speed down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into stinging nettles a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

We would leave home in the morning and could play all day, as long as we were back before it got dark. No one was able to reach us and no one minded..

We did not have Play stations or X-Boxes, no video games at all. No 99 channels on TV, no videotape movies, no surround sound, no mobile phones, no personal computers, no DVDs, no Internet chat rooms.

We had friends - we went outside and found them.

We played elastics and rounders, and sometimes that ball really hurt!

We fell out of trees, got cut and broke bones but there were no law-suits.

We had full on fist fights but no prosecution followed from other parents.

We played chap-the-door-run-away and were actually afraid of the owners catching us.

We walked to friends' homes.

We also, believe it or not, WALKED to school; we didn't rely on mummy or daddy to drive us to school, which was just round the corner.

We made up games with sticks and tennis balls.

We rode bikes in packs of 7 and wore our coats by only the hood (ahhhh the memory!)

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke a law was unheard of...They actually sided with the law.

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers and problem solvers and inventors, ever. The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.

And you're one of them. Congratulations!

Pass this on to others who have had the luck to grow as real kids, before lawyers and government regulated our lives, for our own good.

For those of you who aren't old enough thought you might like to read about us.

---------------------------

This my friends, is surprisingly frightening......and it might put a smile on your face:

The majority of students in universities today were born in 1986.........They are called youth.

They have never heard of We are the World, We are the children, and

Uptown Girl they know is by Westlife not Billy Joel. They have never heard of Rick Astley, Bananarama, Nena Cherry or Belinda Carlisle. For them, there has always been only one Germany and one Vietnam. AIDS has existed since they were born.

CD's have existed since they were born.

To them John Travolta has always been round in shape and they can't imagine how this fat guy could be a god of dance. They believe that Charlie's Angels and Mission Impossible are films from last year. They can never imagine life before computers.

They'll never have pretended to be the A Team, Red Hand Gang or the Famous Five. They'll never have applied to be on Jim'll Fix It or Why Don't You. They can't believe a black and white television ever existed.

And they will never understand how we could leave the house without a mobile phone.

Now let's check if we're getting old...

1. You understand what was written above and you smile.

2. You need to sleep more, usually until the afternoon, after a night out.

3. Your friends are getting married/already married.

4. You are always surprised to see small children playing comfortably with computers.

5. When you see teenagers with mobile phones, you shake your head.

6. You remember watching Dirty Den in EastEnders the first time around.

7. You meet your friends from time to time, talking about the good old days, repeating again all the funny things you have experienced together.

8. Having read this mail, you are thinking of forwarding it to some other friends because you think they will like it too...

Yes, you're getting old - but what the heck -we've had fun!!

[mockney piers]

Love the first bit!!!

The rest is just saying things change. My dad could equally have one saying, anyone born after 1945 will only have know a divided germany etc.

But yeah, the Red Hand Gang rocked!!!!!!!!!

[ChavWivaLawDegree]

Keef - I chose the name to stick up for chavs, and try to show that chavvy people like me, can be more than the stereotype. Also one thing I noticed after moving here from Elephant is that there seems to be a bigger divide between the social classes here resulting in more misunderstanding, fear and hostility than I'm used to. I was a posh chav down my old ends, but feel slightly looked down on here! I'm also a natural bridge builder, sorry i can't help it. I hope that by bringing another perspective, all you good forumites, will be able to build bridges with your local chavs, instead of seeing them always as 'the other' and so promote social cohesion and lovliness all around!

Annasfield - Couldn't stop grinning all the way through your post, spot on.

[ChavWivaLawDegree]

Saw another chavette on a bike with a staff yesterday, so just incase you think she is me, here is my blog so you can tell us apart!!

[Alan Dale]

Take this test:

http://www.itcanwait.com/content/view/20/1/

You are not a Chav. More of a tree hugger and a do-gooder.

[SeanMacGabhann]

For a thread that started about the responsibility (or lack of) of parents this has turned in to a very sociable thread

Thanks for the personal introduction CWALD - will keep an eye out for you and we'll have a beer and talk about Bill (who I saw twice before he died)

Rob Newman has really developed as a comedian hasn't he? My favourite is a vhs video called Resistance is Fertile - must dig that one out

Annasfield - love the posting but really - 99 channels? That's sooooo 1992 ;-)There's nearly that many music video channels these days

[mockney piers]

Rob Newman was Stevenage's sole alumnus until young Lewis Hamilton. (well, unless you count Barry Hayles, stretching the terms success and fame).

Had a peek CWALD, Pilger, nice! Also first I noticed wiv instead of with. Have you read the Book of Dave by Will Self yet? Top Stuff, actually I think neveryone on this forum should give it a go, an awful lot that's relevant to the forumites re changing london, londoners' ways and class differentiation.

[Keef]

Hey hey, some of my best friends are chavs! ;-) And yep, the Red Hand Gang did indeed rock!