The Real Christmas Spirit

Yesterday the Guardian gave us a glimpse of the real Christmas spirit:

A while ago Lisa Bacon (a pseudonym) was visited by social services after an anonymous caller reported her for allowing her seven-year-old son to walk to school alone.

In the article "Lisa Bacon" explains she briefed her son regularly on safety and how both felt extremely proud of each other for the level responsibility shown by the young boy (gaining a spirit of responsible independence and answering aptly to his mother in exchange of the trust bestowed upon him)

Both felt happy and safe - until the Social Services knocked on the door that is...

I've read this woman's story several times and each time I think it beggars belief and it's worth a read for the sanity displayed by this victim of inane regulations, grey soulless people beyond desks but above all the pettiness of some people (the latter in a minute).

Lisa Bacon explains further that "four years ago we lived in a poor, immigrant neighbourhood in Loughborough. Around the corner in one direction were dodgy flats, with a reputation for drug-dealing and arson. Around another corner a busy high street, including two licensed sex shops and two unlicensed brothels. Summer days and evenings our road filled with children playing out, some as young as four. I was always the only supervising adult outside among the children. I shudder to think of the reception I would have had from Bangladeshi neighbours had I asked why they didn't come out to watch their offspring: "They watch out for each other," "But it's normal!".

Dangers lie everywhere, true, and one doesn't want to go as far as the McCanns, who are said to have left extremely young children alone for several hours on consecutive days. "Lisa's" story I think is a little bit different (added to the fact that "Lisa" always followed behind her son's footsteps to make sure everything was ok... apart from a couple of instances that were caught by someone less than well-intentioned - even though they might have said otherwise)

She also explains that the areas she now lives in "has average social indicators (income, home ownership levels, etc). Most residents are stable working families or pensioners. It's a low-crime, low-traffic residential corner of a small, sleepy market town. But it's reckoned unsafe for a nearly eight-year-old to walk unescorted for five-15 minutes in broad daylight. Am I crazy to think some kind of madness is at work?"

She explains she is no activist or fighter and thus took heed of the social services' warning, not least because she doesn't want them to keep their file open on her.

(And since I mention the McCanns, why were social services so quickly to act this time around? and what are the rules? who specifies them? based on what? as the article explains "the woman from children's services left without telling me to change anything I was doing. A week later, a letter came saying (only) that in the view of social services, my son was too young to leave home alone, even for short periods. He should be supervised at all times. I wrote back, to clarify whether "all times" applied to the school journey, too. And at what age would my son be, in the view of social services, old enough to leave unsupervised for specified periods?" )

But sadder than all of the above (and "Lisa" explains she grew up in the States, and perhaps her different approach has got to do with cultural differences) is that "Lisa" received this warning after she was grassed to social services by an anonymous caller!...

Someone who didn't have the nerve to talk to her and discuss any of this openly; maybe another parent at school? a neighbour? someone who had been prying on her and her family?.... someone like Mary Whitehouse (whom, I learnt recently, even complained about the violence in Tom&Jerry...)?...

Spooky.

"Lisa" may well be a bad parent and being short with the truth; although I tend to believe her; simply because today, still, my mother - who lives far and abroad - is obsessed about my safety and wellbeing, but she was the one who despite her fears used to take me halfway to school and let me do the rest of the way alone, sometimes under someone else's discreet supervision, from the age of 8. I could have been snatched away, I could have fallen onto a ditch, who knows;

But as Lisa says the possibilities of that happening were similar to those of being struck by lightning...

(higher still than winning the lottery...)