Monday, May 18, 2009
CPSIA - Nightline Explores the Fine Line Between A Safe Childhood and OCD
You gotta check out this short Nightline video. If you wondered where the mania underlying the CPSIA came from, I think Nightline nailed it. Watching this video, I have to ask how my kids made it this far without all these devices to protect them. And me - what are the odds I would have made it to my majority in the days when front doors were never locked and you simply wandered somewhere down the block to play and came back later when you were done or were hungry. I particularly liked the Nightline correspondent's questioning the line between appropriate safety measures and obsessive-compulsive behavior. If I still had a sense of humor, I might have found this all pretty funny. I hope to find it funny again someday . . . .
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5 comments:
I like Free Range Kids' blog
http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/
She has not blogged about the CPSIA. Might be time to make a contact about where the real lead danger lies.
Nightline might have a good time with your CPSIA compliant Future World Collection.
Driving home the message that "Risk Analysis" is something people are unable to comprehend. Apparently people are willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to buy these "safety" devices without any understanding of the miniscule risk that these products pretend to guard against. The reality is that the world is far less dangerous than these profiteers claim. Risk analysis (and a bit of common sense) should make that perfectly clear, however most people are generally too ill-informed to understand the concept. Clearly the government doesn't or they would have allowed it in the CPSIA.
Where's John Stossel when you need him??
I just watched this again w/my kids (they were a bit confused about the glovies comment in the next post).
A couple things stand out. First, it is probably a very good thing to teach your child how to use public transportation--if they ever were to be kidnapped, the fact this kid can manage the subway likely means he can get home from anywhere. Most times it is the ignorant who are taken advantage of.
Second, the Glovie mom believes her experience of a closed preschool due to swine flu is somehow different from her parents' experience. I was talking with a friend a month ago who is close to my dad's age about whether summer programs might be cancelled if the swine flu continued. Her comment was, "I remember the summer the pool was closed because of polio and we couldn't go swimming."
That mother really needs to ask her parents or their friends about the real health risks they faced as children.
I would take the swine flu and inconsequential lead levels over polio any day if I had a choice of diseases for my children to contract.
Lenore Skenazy has posted my guest blogpost about the CPSIA: http://www.freerangekids.wordpress.com/2009/06/03/why-does-congress-believe-children-are-eating-books/.
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