Leashed kids in the mall.

[Faryn Balyncd]

203. Some circumstances may be unique to a particular child or family:

In our case, it had to do with the fact that we lived on a street that had intermittent high traffic (There was a ferry about a half mile away, and when the cars got off the ferry, there was a very dangerous situation if a child had managed to wander into an empty street.)

You can imagine our horror when we realized that our daughter had left the back yard through a gate which had been somehow negligently left unlatched, and the fact that she was not killed by the traffic she stopped was an immense blessing we in no way had earned.

We were able to make the backyard safe for play by permanently locking the back/side yard fence.

Yet we frequently worked in the front yard, and she would want to play in the front yard with us and her sister, and the front yard could not be legally fenced. When someone mentioned a harness, we thought that rather bizarre, but it seemed the best solution,and she loved playing in the front yard on her harness when we gardened. (I have no recollection of disapproving stares, but that was the relatively tolerant 70's).




(This was a delightful, spontaneous, & exploring child, who, several years later, when no longer using a harness, once slipped under a fence at a petting zoo, getting into an adjacent area next to monkey cages, whereupon a large monkey, reaching through the bars, grabbed her by her pony tail and held her pinned against the bars of the cage . . . Perhaps a leash would have been helpful then...)