“A tiny, resourceful creature that lived 430 million years ago devised a novel method for such baby tracking: It tethered egg pouches to its back with threads and trailed its juveniles as they grew, as if they were tiny kites.”
This is good. We must start doing this.
I don’t know about this. Would you like a 2-year-old tethered to you at all times?
the great 2-year-old dilemma: A) if they’re not tethered to you they’re off destroying something or risking life and limb. B) THEY’RE TETHERED TO YOU
A! A!
A woman I used to go to church with had one of those for her son, only it’s a backpack shaped like a monkey, the tail being the actual leash.
I knew a couple that had that for outdoor events with their toddler.
I was kept on one of those for several years in toddlerhood for some pretty good reasons, tbh. Mine was the PLAYSKOOL one, red fabric that went around my wrist.
I had a habit of running off in the store because I got bored easily, and one time someone found me and took me to the front office area, where someone gave me a sucker and then kindly got onto the PA system and announced that my mom needed to come look for me.
The next time we went to the store, I ran off and headed straight to the front, for candy and also having my name announced for everyone to hear.
Yes! I also had that, the one with the springy red telephone cord leash?
I had that one too! But mine had rainbow fabric around my wrist and a yellow phone cord leash. I haaaaaated it (the cuff was itchy, I think?) and didn’t really need it – I was a pretty good toddler, except for the one time I snuck off in the middle of a church service and no one realized it until I started pushing the foot pedals of the organ – but my brother basically lived in it.
PLAYSKOOL Hand Holder! I didn’t know the telephone cord leash part came in different colors until about 5 minutes ago, but yes! With the scratchy wrist strap part.
That wasn’t strong enough to do anything but provide a tactile reminder that you were straying too far outside your designated space. You could totally break free if you wanted to, but it reminded you that Mom Didn’t Like It when you did.
My middle sister had the same one, and I got to hold her leash in grocery stores as a wee Type A first born. Oh the power!!!
I too was sometimes kept on one as a toddler, and I can’t argue with it, as I had a tendency to rush off to pet every dog I saw. I didn’t understand enough about dogs to realize that not every dog sees a small thing running and putting its hand right in its face (because, um, that is how toddler me thought petting went) as a great thing. Amazingly, I never had a bad dog experience, but I also can’t deny the sense in putting me on a damn leash.
Yup, my sister got bit this way!
My sister worked in DisneyWorld, and says they once encountered a small child who had been TIED to a TREE with that monkey-backpack. (The parents were found on a ride that the child was too short for)
Hopefully this was not any of the above-mentioned children.
No, this was not that. This was “I am in Starbucks and wish to order my latte without having to actually hold my 5-year old at all times,” so she could get her drink and have her monkey child roam within a confined radius. He was adorable.
We have one for our toddler, but it’s a giraffe. Called Dot. We love Dot 🙂
If I had toddlers amenable to hands-free leashing, my hands wouldn’t be in my pockets, they’d be utilized as God intended, for me to play with my phone.
My kindergarten teacher friend thinks those are inhumane, but they’re the only thing that stopped me and all of my siblings running into traffic before we were three
I’ve never understood the “inhumane” thing. Why is it inhumane to keep your toddler to make sure that your kid, who’s old enough to run off but too young to exercise any kind of discretion about whether that’s a good idea, is not going to get lost when you’re distracted for two seconds?
Dunno we’ve had the same argument many times. It also makes it harder for your toddler to take all her clothes off in the post office, which I was wont to do.
Because children crave *touch* and if you don’t want them to r-u-n-n-o-f-t you should babywear them at all times, obvs, or they will wind up in therapy someday. Or something like that, as far as I can glean from my internet moms’ groups.
LOL, at this point, I totally use babywearing as the *punishment* for running off. “If you don’t stay near mommy on the sidewalk, you have to go up on my back.” It works surprisingly well, actually.
It’s like hand holding but everyone gets a bit more space to move around in!
Does your teacher friend have a child of their own? I used to think they were terrible and then I had two kids who would run away from me at the drop of a hat. The youngest has literally gone a full city block without looking back.
I swear the only reason my siblings made it to adulthood were those leashes. I didn’t need one because I chattered incessantly so my mom could echo-locate me.
My daughter likes to run off, but she seems to be unable to move without screeching, so she’s not stealthy. I use her fading ‘AAAAAAaaaaahhhhhhh’ to find where in the house she is. (it’s when the screeching stops that I have to worry, lol)
My brother was a leash child. Watching him try to run away, first to the left, then to the right, then the left again, being stopped by the leash every single time was one of the highlights of my childhood.
I met a child with one shaped like Tigger recently, which looked AWESOME.
I have been desperately scouring the internet trying to find images from a picture book I had as a child about triplets which show the three of them our for a walk on toddler reins. One has the lead wrapped around her mum’s legs, one has run off in one direction to say hello to a dog, and the third is investigating a lamppost. Tethering yourself to multiple small children never ends well.
My mom put my then 3-year-old brother in one of these when they took him on cruise. He embarrassed her to no end by going full dog and insisting on crawling on all fours, barking, eating food out of a bowl on the ground, and pawing at strangers in order to be petted. A+ leashed toddler behavior.
I had a friend with a hider. Turn your back for a second and that kid was gone. Not gone like between the dresses on that rack in the mall, but like, crawled inside a cardboard box behind the Sharper Image counter, 3 stores over from her mom. Once the police came and locked down a shopping center, everyone was frantic, the kid had curled up inside a display model cedar chest in a furniture store and gone to sleep. My friend bought a leash.
I would be unable to resist attaching all manner of small fluffy puppy and kitty babies to myself with absolutely no discretion and within a week I would just be a tornado of tiny floofs.
But… but… trees and power lines!
Hah, yes, I got into a debate about these that had nothing to do with whether it was “humane” for toddlers, and a Whole Lot to do with whether you’d just end up clotheslining unsuspecting pedestrians and getting tangled with dogs.
My baby would probably like this. But as she is 9 months old and ~24 pounds, I would not.
I’m picturing the house from Up but with those Anne Geddes babies instead of balloons.
Please may I have those kittens?
Yes, you may. May I visit them sometimes?
The [redacted] hours of Animaniacs I’ve watched since this weekend makes me skeptical of the baby on a leash method. That toddler gets out, and then poor Buttons always gets scolded and it makes me sad. Maybe having the leash be part of the parent’s body would solve this problem, though.
Buttons and Mindy is one of the most tragically underappreciated Animaniacs skits.
Truth.
I refused to watch the Buttons and Mindy skits. Although I did appreciate that Mindy knew who her best friend was.
Oh, oh, oh!
Let’s go fly a (baby) kite
Up to the highest height!
Let’s go fly a (baby) kite and send it soaring
Up through the atmosphere
Up where the air is clear
Oh, let’s go fly a (baby) kite!
Now it’s just baby beetles who keep tails made of poop on their backs.
Thank you for this delightful fact-nugget!
The cats are adorable!
I had a friend with a hider. Turn your back for a second and that kid was gone. Not gone like between the dresses on that rack in the mall, but like, crawled inside a cardboard box behind the Sharper Image counter, 3 stores over from her mom. Once the police came and locked down a shopping center, everyone was frantic, the kid had curled up inside a display model cedar chest in a furniture store and gone to sleep. My friend bought a leash.