Should Five year olds be allowed to play in a park with others of their age, without their parents around?

Today I saw something at our community park that’s kind of shaken me, surprised me and made me angry!

We live in a small gated community in Sacramento, CA. The community has one common open area that consists on a semi-circular grassy patch with a couple of picnic tables and a barbeque grill in the middle. There is a concrete path around it.

Ever since my five year old, got two scooters for his B’day (last week) we’ve been regular visitors of this park in the evenings. It’s a park and there are other kiddos around too. My champ makes friends easily and befriended everyone he met there. They share their scooters, bikes and chalks and have fun in general along the concrete path. The grass is too thick to cycle or scooter on. Needless to say kids are from all ethnic backgrounds. I roughly gauged all kiddo’s have at least one parent nearby except one little guy who’s mom I’ve seen come out only to get him back home when it gets dark. She’s not around all the time.

Things were fine till today!

When we arrived at the park all the kiddos were there, a toy basketball stand was setup on the path (one of the plastic Fisher Price ones that can go up to 6 feet high) and the kids were having fun with it. The scooters and bikes were lying around casually. When my kiddo went in with his scooter, he managed to distract a few from the basketball game and they joined him with their cycles and scooters. Fun went along nicely till one of the girls got bumped on the nose with the basket ball. One of the guys received a scolding for it (?!?!). Thereafter another kiddo (one who’s parents are not overlooking him) got shouted at a couple of times for trying to hang on the rim. It’s not that he was doing it alone. The other boys were doing it too! Second time he got shouted at he gave up on basketball and started playing around with a spare cycle. While cycling around he once went into one of the building’s staircase area (where I could see him but the other parents couldn’t). When he came out, one of the parents rushed to him and rather admonishingly said something to the order of – “that cycle does not belong to you, do not go out of sight with it”. From a distance I found the tone and gesturing really really rude. The kiddo took it sportingly, gave up on the cycle after a while and played with one of the spare scooters.

Then nasty things happened.

I was at a picnic table when my kiddo and this kid came over and were taking a breather. We saw two cars of our private security patrol come up to the park. Now I always tell my kid that if he is not nice, Security (or Cops) will come (want them to fear law rather than super-natural beasts and demons). So I was kidding with both of them asking them if they had been naughty and that was the reason the Security cars had come up.

Two security guards came out and were standing on the periphery when the lady who had made the rude comment walked up to them and talked to them. They were about 30 feet away and I couldn’t hear them, I only caught a few words that sounded like a complaint against this kiddo because no one was watching him!!! The two security guards then asked the kiddo to take them to his house and knocked on their door. What transpired I don’t know, but it ended up with this kiddo going back home and me feeling extremely confused! As I think about it now, I feel have mixed emotions and anger is one of them.

Questions that keep popping in my head are -

1. Should five year olds not play on their own with other kids of their own age? Fact is I don’t let my 5 year old go out on his own. Having broken his left arm before turning 5, at playschool, while doing monkey bars, I am not confident of his abilities to keep himself out of harm’s way! But if someone is confident about their kid of being able to take care of themselves in a gated community, what’s the harm?

2. As a parent do you really need to tell another kid that something is not his and he shouldn’t get out of sight with it? Five year olds? Come on!!! Now that I think back, a couple of days back one of the girls was playing with my son’s scooter and she dropped it on the path instead of putting it down softly. I believe the same lady admonished her for that too.

3. Calling Security? I mean that was ridiculous!!! Are we so insecure about ourselves and our neighbors? I mean these two families live in the same building. All one had to do was ring the bell introduce yourself and have a polite chat if you were so concerned.

Whatever the reason, I left the field today with a little bit of a culture shock!!! Now I know I have to be careful about the parents of kids whom my son plays with.

Better Roads… Better Humans… Better Taxation…

Last week I became a part of an interesting debate in on of the online groups I am a member of.

The group was started by a set of well meaning gentleman who were thoroughly fed-up with the state of roads (or lack of them) in Pune, India. The news about the group spread like wildfire and soon if grew into a sizable social-organization. It kept going from strength to strength organizing meetings, public gatherings and even petitions in court. I am not an active part of those happenings and I admit I am NOT proud of that bit. I would really like to get over my ‘intertia/lethargy’ whatever you call it. I really really hope to contribute more to it. Given my lack of contribution to the group I kept from criticizing or patronizing.

The group from time to time would have enthusiastic people post about other social malises in the city/country and that when things would get more interesting. Some time back a similar post came to my notice. A well meaning gentleman laid his heart out about loss of values and moral in todays’ citizens of the country vis-a-vis days of Gandhian glory. Personally I am not the biggest fan of Gandhian philosophy where you are supposed to present the second cheek if slapped in one. I am more of a ‘fight-or-flight’ guy depending on secnarios and under no circumstance will take physical violence lying down. Nevertheless the loss of moral and and values has hit me time an time again ever since I ‘hit-the-road’ trying to make it on my own. I’ve tried to live up to certain self laid rules of acceptable civil behaviour that’s somewhere between Gandhian Non-Violence and Subhash Chandra Bose’s ‘give me your blood and I’ll give you freedom’. Leaning more towards the later.
Coming back to this gentleman’s post about his feelings, without doubt it invoked sharp responses. One gentleman pointed out that since only about 15% of the popluation paid taxes (he meant Income Taxes levied on your earnings) they were entitled to have materialistic dreams and had rights to ‘sit-back’ and enjoy them. He also cribbed about how the farming community never paid any taxes and hence didn’t ‘deserve’ the comforts the ‘tax-payers’ could afford. Though he had his facts slightly misplaced (only 2% of the earning population in India pays Income Taxes, the rest are all ‘farmers’, pun intended), it was a stark revelation of how modern India’s neo-rich and successful think. More importantly the huge bridge in thinking and doing. The gentleman was a part of the group which was essentially doing social work. So his reason of being there can be percieved to be well intentioned but his statement points at the growing arrogance of the neo-rich and their shallow knowledge of deeper social malice in the complex country. It is extremely sad to even think that non-tax-paying farmers did not deserve a better life.
If one looks deeper, its not the farmers who don’t pay taxes. Heck most of them don’t even make enought to afford 3 square meals for 365 days a year. Thousands of them have taken their lives because they couldn’t repay loans of loan sharks. These loan sharks are leechs who systematically rob the farmer of his rightful earning and bleeds the government of taxes. Add to that group the lot of politicians who thrive on the un-employment and un-educated. They are the most un-accountable/blood sucking group of ********* out there.  Next, the biggest grossers in terms of money are the best when it comes to avioding taxes they suddenly turn farmers. And then there are us, the ‘educated-illiterates’. We prefer to live in our false cocoon of safety… our false sense of success… our false belief of achievements. We thumb a few keys on a keyboard 16-20 hours a day and belive we work hard enough to consider ourselves insulated from all social responsibilities, including foregoing our right to vote. Yes, the election day is NOT a public holiday. We even dare to be armchair specialists of all the social malices in the world and cock a snook at anything that brings us closer to reality…

Get real guys… Better Roads would definitely be nice… but being better humans is the starting point… so make a start… after all we live in a democracy… Better taxation will follow…