Kitchen Garden Forum

I'm afraid there has always been a section of parenthood that has been liable to react badly to teachers/schools etc but in the past this hasn't usually involved taking legal action.

The lawyers etc. created a climate where this type of thing escalated and even very young children would retort 'my dad says you can't do' that to teachers or 'my mum will sue you'. Now it is sort of a fait accompli and lawyers or not encouraging parents the idea is now implanted.

The furore over accidents on school visits though has been hyped up by the media. When children have accidents when with parents the parent is an object of sympathy (rightly so in most cases but in some maybe it is negligence) but have an accident when under school supervision and someone is to blame and has to pay - I can understand a parent feeling this way but this is also the attitude of those outside of the family too.

I do agree with your sentiments. The softness is partly due to the motor-car. 30 years ago some parents wouldn't dream of walking their kids to school; others wouldn't dream of letting their children do so by themselves because of traffic.

When it was my turn to do the school run, I got them to walk if the weather was fine in summer. It never occurred to me that a child of 12 or 16 would be in any danger on our roads. Nor were they.

The payoff came on 7/7. We managed to get in touch with my daughter working in south London, but living in Hackney. "Oh, I'm OK - I'll walk home. It's only 10 miles". [In fact she only had to walk 5]

And then about a year ago she came with me on my sponsored 30-mile walk and finished up in almost as fresh a state as I was. But, unlike me, she hadn't been on a long walk for ages, except the 15-miles she did 2 weeks before as practice.