[Deptheads] Child Care at the Convention

[Janice Sellers]

Heather,

It's difficult to enforce because we would be requiring our GM's, who
are already volunteering their time, to be the ones to enforce it.
They're the ones who would have to tell the child in question that he
can't play and/or try to find the parent.  The alternative to that is
to create a security department again, in which case those people
would need to check every game to make sure there are no unattended
children, and then deal with any they find.  Would someone who is
concerned about having children's activities run by volunteers be
comfortable with the idea of a volunteer being responsible for taking
a child out of a game and then having to repatriate him with his
parent?

A significant difference between the types of activities you mentioned
and our conventions is that for baseball practice, soccer practice,
etc., everyone is pretty much in one location.  The people
supervising/coordinating those events don't have to be in more than
one place, and there are usually multiple people in some sort of
supervisorial role.  At the convention, we have multiple events in
multiple rooms on multiple floors.  That requires a significant
increase in the amount of monitoring required to keep an eye on
everyone and to enforce the rule that all children have to have
parents with them.

The fact that most parents are familiar with the concept does not mean
they themselves always follow it.  Nor does it mean that they won't
become distracted by their own gaming and forget, or simply are
convinced that their child is capable of taking care of himself.  I am
not in favor of bad parenting or of dumping children, having been the
"dumpee" for many years, and not just at conventions.  But I simply
don't think it's practical for us to try to enforce this kind of rule.

Janice

On 2/11/08, Heather Hughes <heather at gibsongirl.net> wrote:
> I still don't understand why we can't enforce the "parent" rule. I have am
> REQUIRED to attend all events that my 7 year old is involved in (baseball
> practice, soccer practice, science program, cub scout meetings).  Most
> parents are familure with this rule of parenting and as a convention due we
> really want to contribute to "bad" parenting, by allowing a "drop and run"
> policy?