Scams over assault and injury

[Meng Lelan]

Child-watching is serious business in the US, but seems to be casual business in China. I remember when I was the apartment manager of international graduate student housing in the US, I saw a Chinese dad take his 8 month old baby out to a grassy area of the playground, and then he went into his apartment to fetch some cigarettes, then sat on the steps some distance away smoking. I was near the baby and could see she was literally chewing on some trash from the ground and the man never paid notice. By the way the man had to be a grad student not a migrant worker to be living in grad student housing.

Then another occasion that was really something. I was attending a service at a Chinese church in Texas. There were several tots playing out in the hallway while their parents (all of them Chinese, all of the highly educated professionals and grad students) were in the sanctuary attending a sermon. Just little tots, some were still in the crawling stage, totally unattended. I was so scared something would happen that I simply plopped myself in the hallway attending those babies while their parents sat at the sermon and they never came out to check on the little ones. That was really bad. I never went back there again, ever.

[murrayjames]

Yet another, this time a bridge-jumper in Chengdu. Hard to watch... No one stops, but the orange car in front in the camera is infuriating. Less than 15 seconds after someone tries to kill herself right in front of them, and they're already pulling back into traffic, getting on with their day.

http://www.gochengdoo.com/en/blog/item/2467/woman_jumps_off_bridge_into_traffic_in_chengdu_drivers_carry_on_video

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMzE4NTk3Njg0.html

[rezaf]

I think I need to buy a 行车记录仪 as well!

[Lu]

Chinese parenting does seem to be lax sometimes in terms of supervision, but if US law requires parents to have an eye on their kid every second of the day, that's also unreasonable. Minds wander. It's a very rare person who can concentrate on something for hours at the time and never let their attention waver. Children can be up to something or in some kind of danger within seconds, and parents, like all people, aren't perfect and can't be paying attention every single moment.

[rezaf]

I once set a table on fire and also did some other crazy things with electrical devices when I was 3 or 4. I would wake up early and start my evil plans before anyone was awake.

[Meng Lelan]

parents, like all people, aren't perfect and can't be paying attention every single moment.

Most parents are not perfect and most parents can't pay attention every single moment, therefore the need for sitters, relatives, daycares, etc but there are parents who do not have consistent access to childcare therefore they end up having to do this 24/7. I actually know some women in military families who are having to do this for extended periods of time when the man deploys abroad for months.