A cafe in Nunawading, Australia is being forced to stop toddlers from drawing with chalk on its sidewalk, despite the fact that the kids, the cafe, the townspeople and the mayor all like the drawings. The drawings contravene the town’s anti-graffiti laws, and the mayor says he can’t grant a permit because someone might trip over a child, fall into traffic and die horribly. As Lenore Skenazy says,
Can we PLEASE stop catastrophizing this way in every situation? If the kids are an accident waiting to happen while they draw on the sidewalk, aren’t they an accident waiting to happen while they just stand on the sidewalk, too? After all, someone could bump into them! A car could jump the curb! A dog could chase them into the street! And inside the cafe, a patron could spill boiling tea on them. Every situation can be dangerous if you think about it hard enough. Why use THAT as an excuse to curtail childhood?
Council slaps ban on child’s play
(Image: Sidewalk Chalk, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from crschmidt’s photostream)