As a child growing up, i was blessed to be able to go to work with my dad. What a wonderful bonding time. As i grew, some days i was able to even help around my dad’s workplace. By going along, i was able to see the magical world in which my dad toiled 5 days a week. It also allowed me to see just how truly hard he worked.
At other times, even though i was was under age, i was able to help out at building sites carrying bricks ( 2 at a time if i was feeling strong) This presented me with an opportunity to see tradesmen working first hand. To see how hard they worked, to see the magic that can be created with ones hands.
These experiences were part of the shaping of the man I am. The survivor, blogger, speaker, salesman & budding author. Now i can see no direct correlation to my dad’s work, or the brickies building those houses in the work i do. Yet i feel those early experiences helped make me a better, more understanding and complete young man, who grew into the mature adult i am now.
Several years ago, I found myself a single parent, when my wonderful son decided to come live with me. At that time I was working as a salesman for a high reach company (cherry pickers and scissor lifts) On school holidays, i would take my son in the car with me to work, just like my dad had done with me. This was a lovely bonding time for my son & I.
Unfortunately my boss called me in one day, he told me i could not take my son around in the car with me any longer. Under “Duty of Care” the company could not allow it. My son was gutted and i was truly sad.
Today I do not know of anyone who can take their child to work. A child can certainly not enter any building site in the western world. So many regulations are now set down that prohibit such things.
I understand safety for kids. I understand the concept of duty of care. What i do not understand is, how for centuries, children have spent some glorious times at their parents place of work, but today that is no longer considered safe or appropriate or a good idea.
The western world of today, seems to be regulating itself into a hole, from which the light of sanity and common sense is blocked out. Why do we seem to have this craving in the west to regulate, regulate, regulate. Why can people not be encouraged to think for themselves, decide for themselves, act on their own moral fortitude. My dad never conciously endangered me taking me to work. I never lost a limb on those building site. No one had to regulate that, it happened from good old common sense by all concerned.
Maybe what we need today is to regulate that we no longer over regulate and we could then regulate to bring back good old common sense.
