No, I missed it, - just seen it!

Why is it hard to believe?

When was the last time someone died from eating a growing Aconitum?

Um... Why hard to believe - would you panic if they planted digitalis or all the other toxic plants we have in our gardens?

I've never noticed children eating flowers

I have seen children eating flowers, but only very small children. Where is their mommy?

I feel we need to get over this 'oh my god it is toxic' panic... a large number of the plants we grow in our gardens are to some degree toxic. It is not that difficult to train (yes I do mean TRAIN) small children not to eat anything from the garden without permission! All our gardens would be much poorer if we eliminated anything that was in any way toxic!

The average parent--that mythical beast--these days is inexplicable. They fuss and fume about poisonous plants and hard dirt under the playground equipment, but still allow their children to wander around alone to get hit by cars, kidnapped, or--around here--drown in pools. Go figure. : /

But don't you understand ;o) It's always someone else's fault! "It's the Council!" "It's the schools!" "I have to work!" "Why is the Park Keeper there if not to keep an eye on the children playing!" "I was over there talking to my friend (with a G&T in hand). Why wasn't the Pool Attendant looking?!" Parenting should come with a big sign that says "The Buck stops HERE."

Hear hear, all.

Totally agree Nariz!

Well put Nariz!
I had a pop at a mother in the supermarket the other day - her brat was dropping stuff (ranging from fresh fruit to tinned goods) on the floor, and took particular delight in snapping the french sticks in several places. Her response was to tell me (in a somewhat middle class accent) the "he's only young and doesn't know that it's wrong"!
Gobsmacked as I was by that, another woman then came up to me and joined in, pointing out that by calling "the little person a brat I could do real harm to his sense of self worth"!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I agree children must learn right from wrong, but sometimes you have to learn the hard way, remember when mum says HOT DON'T TOUCH but you did,I know I did "ough"

The Daily Mail picked up the story and I'm delighted to see that most of the comments point out what nonsense it is.

This culture of 'the dear little thing must be allowed to do whatever it likes regardless of the impact on others' drives me nuts! I was once on a plane with a boy of 4 or 5 in the seat behind me. He persistently kicked the back of the seat which, as they are pretty thin, was hurting my back. I politely asked his mother to make him stop, her response was something on the lines of his being bored hence he would kick! If it happened now I would call a flight attendant and complain to them.

I had 'toxic' plants, berries, even trees in my garden and I taught the children to respect plants and not to touch/taste without asking first. We always went to the park etc with them, children need guidance, supervision, boundaries and fun in their lives! Not this modern nanny state of health and safety!

Whilst I agree with you all It is still hard to believe that a council would be so stupid to do this considering what sort of health and safety gone mad state we live in now MG I have had the same thing happen to my wife on a plane all the way back from Egypt my wife told there parents and we got ignored

Storm in a teacup really, though it does seem counter intuitive of the Council to use that plant in this day and age, when they're even going so far as to consider banning smoking the street, presumably on the strength of 'passive smoke inhalation'. Ridiculous stuff and nonsense, a lungful of air on the streets these days means a lungful of PM10s and other pollutants anyway.
As for the child's behaviour in the supermarket, I never experienced that in such a bad way, but having reared 2 boys, one of whom was dyspraxic, I have to say he was very difficult as a toddler, no easy task dealing with him in public, or at all in fact. If someone told me I'd got to do it again, I'd rather slit my own throat, frankly. And if anyone had called him a 'brat' I'd have punched 'em.... fortunately, it never happened.

The only stupid thing this council did was to cave in and issue an apology.

Our local council has, as it does every year, planted Ricinus communis in municipal flowerbeds all around the district.

As Moon_grower says, what matters is to teach children about the world around them.

I'm always telling people who ask if they should remove toxic plants from the garden that telling a 3-year old not to pick plants unless they know what they are is the first step to getting the 13-year old they will become to say no to alcohol or drugs.

Wonder if all the laburnum trees on the streets will get cut down...

Hmm, not sure there's any connection between teaching toddlers not to eat any old plant and their not taking drugs in later life, poison gardener - certainly didn't work on one of my sons, who had a high old time on the blasted things whilst at university - as many do and fortunately, its a passing phase for 90% of them.

Bamboo.

The connection is getting the children to think about what's around them and making their own choice.

I'm not saying it's a 100% solution. I'm just saying there's a lot of risk in the real world and pretending you can protect children from it all is nonsense.

Well, controversially I expect, that's my approach to drug use - find out exactly what's out there and have the conversation with your kids about it, before they start coming across them, rather than a blank, uninformed "Say no" approach, which doesn't work anyway...

This has turned into an interesting thread,
Bamboo - to be honest I lost it! I'd been watching this go on down three aisles, and the mother knew! That's what made me so livid. Who knows, maybe he has lost all sense of self worth and now realises that the universe doesn't revolve around him. I do know that my daughter or stepson would never have behaved or been allowed to behave like that. I do have to agree with you about drugs and our children - I make no secret of the fact that I've used just about everything going (except heroin and crack) at points in my life. As someone who suffers from bouts of depression (thankfully they're few and far between nowadays) I know from experience that a persons state of mind is what determines the risk of drug dependency, and that if you say to a youth DON'T, then they almost certainly will! I believe that the three best bits of advice that I've shared with them are;
1. If the world seems like a crap place today, drugs will make it twice as bad tomorrow.
2. Never ever buy anything that you didn't set out to buy. Do not fall for the "try this, it's good" line.
3. The three DONT'S - never use crack cocaine, heroin or Ecstasy. Those three are poison.

The funny thing about all this is that I'm now that miserable old sod that I used to despise my father for being!!

Following the most recent thread on this, I'm happy to say I brought up two lovely well-balanced girls, one of whom I consider paid me the greatest accolade by saying "I'm bringing my children up just the way you brought us up, Mum, and their teachers say they wish they had more of them in their classes." Bit of trumpet-blowing there!

To MG and Steveg: We, too, had a kicking incident on a plane going to Canada several years ago. The girls (Canadian) behind Partner, who were sitting apart from their parents, were being over-exuberant and upon him asking them to stop they said "Sorry Sir, we'll sit still now." And they did! We caught the look of "That's my girl" from the parent on the other side of the aisle, gave a smile back and had a good journey the rest of the way (as good as a journey of 9 hours can be !!). There ARE sensible parents out there - like my grand-childrens' teachers - I wish there were MORE of them!

I'll add the one I used with my children, Meanie: "You are in charge of your mouth and have the ability to make it say No. Saying 'No' is not a crime or a weakness."

Going back to the start, have just had a thought - if the child was old enough for his self worth to be damaged by being called a brat he must have been old enough to know when something like breaking baguettes in a shop was wrong ... if anybody had ever taken the trouble to tell him. Makes you wonder.

Agreed Nariz, but it's a time of great discovery and curiosity. My sister has never even had a fag, has drank twice in her life, yet as her eldest prepares for uni it has suddenly dawned on her that she can't be there 24/7.

Steragram - I believe that they call it parenting without boundaries.

More like to idle to parent properly then wonder why their little dear is suddenly a teenage thug. Sorry if I offend anyone but I firmly believe that young children need rules and guidelines in order to grow up to be useful productive citizens.

Ah, the very worst kind of parenting Meanie, permissive. You've got a point there, Steragram, and anyway, if her 3 year old didn't know his behaviour was unacceptable, she's obviously unclear what her job is as a parent. Admittedly, my dyspraxic son rolled round the floor in a complete tantrum in nearly every shop locally, and I knew the best thing to do was ignore it, then pick him up, bend him round my neck as restraint and carry him home - but none of that was necessary with the non dyspraxic child - a look was usually enough to quell any bad behaviour.
But surely worse than a badly behaved child in a supermarket is a child being slapped and screamed at, especially if their crime is simply to whine a bit because they're bored, that's one thing I cannot bear.
And Meanie, you sound like you've had an interesting past, lol! Actually, I differ from you on one point - Ecstasy. So long as you know the facts about it, its actually much safer than aspirin, and a zillion times safer than too much alcohol - statistically, an average of 100 people are admitted to Casualty departments every weekend through drink - compared to 1 a year for Ecstasy. And another interesting thing about Ecstasy - if you're already on Prozac, it won't work, or will be much reduced, because Prozac is already occupying the receptors in the brain which Ecstasy works on. A drug is a drug is a drug... even if its called medicine.

Whilst I would disagree with your figures, you are right that it's relative risk is certainly very low. But when I was living in Amsterdam in the early nineties there was a bad batch going around, I believe that it claimed eight lives in one week. So that did enough for me to put it in the stay clear bracket.
I'm not advocating that they should try drugs, I would rather just know than have to find out.........

Wow, fascinating reading all of the above.

My neighbours behind me have FIVE children and they live on a TINY lot. They have kicked their balls over here on numerous occasions and once I caught one of the buggers climbing over the fence to retrieve it. I have many mirrors along that fence that have jagged edges and can only imagine what damage that could do. At this point my husband suggested that I remove the mirrors because should one of these "darlings" injure themselves, I would be liable even though they would be in fact trespassing! Being presented with a choice of changing things in MY garden or confronting the neighbours parents, I chose the latter. As far as I know, they have not been back since. And yes, I reared children that knew the difference between right and wrong.

Not only do we have a LOT in common Meanie, I agree with what you've said, as well as others, specifically referring here to the drugs :)

Steve - I do hope that you don't object to where this has led?

Lil - I think that you've hit the nail on the head. Most children (and people for that matter) are not bad, they/we just need to know the boundaries.

Yep, wholeheartedly agree with that - who doesn't remember clambering over a fence to get a ball back when the neighbours were out? I also remember being told by a neighbour at the age of about 8 to stop playing 2 balls up against her wall because she could hear it reverberating round her sitting room - so I did it against the garage walls instead, which was fine.
Re your bad batch comment, Meanie - that's always the risk with all of those things, unregulated, lord alone knows what's in them a lot of the time. At least you know what's in your Prozac, etc...

Or over a wall "scrumping" fruit!
That's a whole new tin of worms Bamboo - the many thousands of law abiding citizens who are addicted to prescription drugs..........

I remember being made to wash off a chalked hopscotch from in front of a neighbour's house. I was peeved as she didn't own the pavement, but you didn't argue with grown ups in those days. Reading all the drug comments makes me so grateful my two boys never got hooked. Its easy to congratulate yourself that this is down to good parenting, but some good parents do have the heartbreak of seeing their kids go off the rails.

I muse on that quite a lot Steragram - I've come to the conclusion that many people need a crutch to get through life - sometimes its religion, sometimes its substance abuse, whether that be drink or drugs, sometimes its food, and sometimes a couple of other unmentionable things. Look at me, I'm addicted to nicotine, life seems unbearable without it, and I suspect I chose nicotine because I'm a control freak - I don't like the woozy feeling of being out of control on drugs or drink. I'm a first born child, and I noted with great interest that neither my first born, nor my sister's first born, dabbled with drugs at all - in both cases, it was the second child. Both of whom no longer dabble, I hasten to add, so a temporary experiment, luckily.

At a school reunion a few years ago it worked out that only one in five HAD NOT dabbled/tried recreational drugs at some time. This is not in a run down inner city area, it's a reasonably prosperous area of the Cotswolds.

I reckon thats right, Meanie - certainly most university students dabble a bit, probably the ratio's higher, meaning about 1 in 20 don't. I know my dabbling son at the time told me that it appeared to be 90% of students trying stuff, in other words, normal. But of course, they don't talk to their parents about it, generally.