Taking better, smarter, care of children

For all that we make a great fuss over children, we don't appear to like them very much. Sure, they rate, but they don't come first with us.

We're willing to flatter the little creatures senseless. Bless 'em. Yes, they are our future. Yes, they are adorable. They say the darndest things. We say yes to smaller class sizes and nutritious school lunches, we oppose flammable nightwear and lead paint in their toys.

But when you analyze all these fine feelings, it doesn't add up to much. Take Sara Maude St-Louis, the five-year-old who flew from Edmonton to Montreal on WestJet recently. She's one cute little muffin. Completely inept, of course. Kid wanted to get off in Winnipeg. Luckily, the guy sitting in the next seat came to her rescue when the flight attendant ignored her.

The parents, who had paid $50 each way for supervision, were furious with WestJet, the father especially so when he saw the child come off the plane in Montreal in the company of a stranger. The mother — a federal government employee in Edmonton — and her new husband say they want free flights to Montreal for the next decade in compensation. Reporters were sympathetic.

Hats off, please

Me, I saw it differently.

Are these parents on my planet? I hadn't known it was even legal for five-year-olds to be left alone anywhere, much less an airplane. Even the Ikea ballroom says you have to be at least 2'5" tall, and toilet-trained, and probably labelled and insured as well. Babysitting a child that age is hard work, which is why you have to pay teenagers serious cash, probably more than WestJet pays. This is an airline that allows dogs, birds, cats and rabbits in the cabin. A flight attendant has a lot on his plate.

I'm also horrified by the rule that hangs a big label around the child's neck. Air Canada's website says they sometimes give them special hats. What does the label say? "I AM ALONE." Why not just spell out "PEDO-MAGNET?" Labels serve the airline's interests, but surely not the child's.

Slandering men

I'm sure the Catholic Archdiocese of New York meant well when it released a new colouring book for kids, to help protect them from abuse (though not from spelling errors, I see). This is brave after decades of lies, heartbreak and litigation. The church's Safe Environment Program director is quoted in Newsweek as saying that teachers love the book. "It's a nice little vehicle for speaking to kids about … not the most pleasant topic."

But look at the cartoon. The drawings are inept but clear: Stay away from men (with oddly swivelling heads) in rooms with crucifixes. But the angel says different: She tells kids never to be alone in a closed room with an adult.

The angel means "a man." But very few men on the face of this earth are going to harm children, even if the kind of men who do would be drawn to places where they can plausibly be alone with children.

The angel is saying that the nice young man who walks down my street with his Tiny Toddlers day care class should be out of a job. Responsible parents wouldn't leave their children alone with him.

I don't like this slandering of men. The man who rescued Sara-Maude on the plane was every parent's dream. Carefully described as a "father of four," Pierre Cataford decided Sara-Maude's welfare trumped his need not to be wrongly arrested for kidnapping.

Almost every man on this earth would put Sara-Maude first. The angel disagrees. I am now in the awkward position of arguing with an angel, but still.

Fuming issue

Adults care, up to a point. I read a new study on the pulmonary health of kids in daycares near bus stations. It wasn't good. And the next day, I came out of my subway station and stared at the Lots o' Tots place across from where hundreds of buses idle daily. I know it's best for parents and employers, and it's good for the children that their parents are employed and not on welfare.

But the federal government has a $54 billion surplus from not paying benefits to workers who fund what is called "Employment Insurance." If the money doesn't go to the unemployed, why couldn't part of it finance national day care? Fine, let the kids inhale fumes all day and cough up chunks at night. They don't come first after all.

Walking the dog

And now comes a painful case where children have lost out to animals.

Children's strollers are sleek, expensive things, so stylish that they now strike me as unwieldy. But I don't object because finally kids in streamlined strollers are doing better than dogs. In my neighbourhood, dogs have spas for spiritual relaxation, prescriptions for chewable beef-flavoured Prozac (it worked on humans: How many of them bark at night?) and special bakeries. We have none of this for kids. The dog day-cares are nowhere near the bus station.

So what's coming next? Dog strollers. Not carriers, strollers. Go to www.petsnap.com. They're in New York, they're spreading, and they'll be here soon. They shall be instantly booted off the sidewalk and crushed. But I'm worried. What if they aren't?

Then this column will be proved right, and I don't want that.

This Week

For reasons that elude me, Harris/Decima regularly e-mails a survey to me. They claim the answers are "confidential," whatever that means. Each time I can win 75 Aeroplan points. (Yeah, if I tell them my name, which takes the anonymousness out of it.)

I fill them out because I like questionnaires and if they tell some hopeful corporation that many consumers feel their teeth are already too white, it's all to the good.

But Decima over-caters to the demanding customer, and doesn't tell them when the questions will produce skewed results. Their polls are getting ever more strange. After the pollster asked me if I'd ever had cancer or any other disease, and if so, the location of the lumps and lesions, I cut the survey off.

If you want accurate polling, you probably have to hire live humans to look people in the eye. I am neurotically truthful and never lie, but what's to stop me online? Yesterday, Decima asked me such a weird series of questions that I became alarmed. Why do they want to know if I think immigrants have too much power in this country? And which bank wants to know if it should set up a debit card system that rounds off the purchase to the nearest $10 and puts the extra dollars and cents into my savings account? It's puzzling that the questions are in the same poll. Either they have two separate customers, or one tight-fisted board of directors planning the I.D. card of all time.

So I lied. I am a wealthy man with Nazi leanings who would be happy to round my debit card purchases off in a savings scheme called Squirrel (their suggestion).

If Decima reads this and cuts me off, then I'll know that "confidential" doesn't mean "anonymous." I suspected that. I'm wise to their game. But they're not wise to mine. They don't know how many of us liars are out there.