if dad abandoned the kid to go party would people still feel this is okay somehow?
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The one thing I need to ask myself is did kids get dumber between say 1975 and 2025? I would have been fine for an entire day solo as long as I knew where to get food (I knew how money worked and if I had cash, I could just go buy some food and return to watching all the hype and if I knew where the hotel was, Iād be able to navigate back).
I donāt think kids are dumber. The stuff they can do on computers and tablets is mind numbing. They can navigate all kinds of things that Iād have had no clue how to. I think now we just leave kids to the wild on the internet versus into the wild in live life.
Which is worse?
Iād argue the hoards of kids wandering all over the internet with barely developed brains when it comes to the risk associated with what happens on the internet is way more scary.
A kid sitting in a VIP zone of 16 hrs going back and forth to the LP hotel strip on closed roads seems relatively benign compared to the crap that happens on the internet.
So while there is a ton of outrage here about ārisk in the physical worldā, maybe weāre all worrying about the wrong risk. Itās right in our homes all the time. I could probably run away faster than most child predators could run at 9 anyway.
But hey, I get that its 2025, and weāre all freaked out about a child abduction in Alaska like its going to happen on our street because it happend in Juneau and we let our kids to the wild of the internet with no worries.
I was talking to my college mates at a reunion of the crazy stuff we did in the physical world taking all kinds of risks in cars, on motorbikes, on mountains on forward deployment in combat zones, in crime zones and all of us survived, but to a person we said, that if the internet existed when we were 19, a lot worse things would have happened.
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This kids didnāt get dumber, the adults?
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No the adults got smarterā¦ look up violent crime statistics on children in the US. There is a pretty comprehensive study by Duke. Crimes against children rose to its peak in the mid 90s, you know the time all of us latch key kids romanticize. Iām one of those whose parents let them do wild shit back in the day, but saying I survived thus anyone should be able to survive is one of the worst logical fallacies. The reason itās a terrible fallacy is that a lot of our peers (by far more than recent generations) were victims of that wild up bringing. I do think some of the reaction to the dad is overblown, but saying he did absolutely nothing wrong is also an under reach.
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That an absurd take. How could they possibly know this kid was going to be left alone? There could have been other VIP ticket holders who were friends or extended family. Itās not IMās responsibility to audit all the VIp ticket buyers.
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We donāt know all the circumstances so we/I can only assume. My thought behind my comment is that Ironman sold the tickets, then they checked in the dad and the son. You canāt just stroll into VIP. Thereās a check-in process and I would assume bracelets are put onto the Dad and the child? Ironman knew that only the dad and child checked into VIP and they also have a record that the dad registered for the race and they know he started. At some point, they decided they didnāt like the situation and called the police. Now, i donāt think the kid shouldāve been left alone and my bored morning on the trainer is over, lol.
Weāve had some absolutely banger threads lately. This one and the Imogen one have been 
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Doin some mental gymnastics to blame Ironman and the volunteers for not proactively stopping a dad from breaking the T&Cs and leaving his kid alone while he went and participated. But hey, any chance to throw shade at Ironman needs to be taken right.
Yes you check in before the race and given a bracelet and credentials. Buying the passes you have agreed to the terms of service. Itās not OMās responsibility to police your intentions or question the logistics of how you use their facility, thatās on the buyer. The Dad violated the terms of service, IM figured that out and notified the authorities a child was left at their facility unattended. Thatās what happened. Ironman assumes people will adhere to the terms they agreed with.
There are a few ways of looking at this. Are there more benefits on aggregate of kids having freedom to roam in the unsupervised adult world vs every kid having a helicopter adult protecting their every move? Or is is OK if there is some more bad stuff that happens to a fraction of a percent of kids along the way to adult life.
I canāt answer this. Obviously if it happened to you, or your kid the answer is obvious. But what about for everyone for whom nothing happens and they expanded their horizons, became self sufficient, learned how to navigate the world independently early and carried these assets thru adult life ?
No straight answer to all this. In the crime free affluent neighbourhood where I live for the last 28 years, I never see kids playing solo with other kids at the park, no pick up unsupervised touch football, or baseball, or a solo kid walking with his hockey stick and skate 2km in the snow to the local outdoor rink just to meet up with other random kids to just keep playing with frozen toes for 3 hrs and come home in pitch dark and have a parent thaw out frozen fingers and toes !!!
In any case, I get that times changed, but when I look at my new grad employees, they are relatively useless navigating the working world without adult guideance. At 23 I could figure out with my peers how to uninstall a jet engine from an airplane and put a new one in (reading manuals and all for several days but still). We did that stuff with no senior officer giving us guideance, they just said, āfigure it out, but this thing better not fall out of the skyā (of course our workmanship and steps were insepected by a qualified technician after we gave it a go).
So I tell my young staff to go and figure it out, they are not getting a lot of hand holding, but they are expecting hand holding until they realize they are super smart and can do it all without a bunch of managers babysitting their every step.
I realize this is not exactly the topic, but whatās the trade off.
LP during an Ironman is as benign as it gets. It is a bunch of rich guys and gals running around in Lyca, their rich families all over the place, tons of people who are parenting age floating around, and a ton of police at every sidewalk due to road closures. This is not exactly a heavy crime zone.
I do get that everyone grows up and gets out of the wings of adults to becoming their own people. Age 9 is young to start becoming your own person regardless of era so this guy was certainly pushing his luck
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At 9, I was feral all summer. Out after breakfast. Grab a self-made PB&J at noon. Lake swim w friendsā¦ All day! - No adults! In, long after dark.
By the time I was 12, parents left me home alone in the city for 4 days straight. They went on vacation while I had to be at football practice. They came home and had to remind me that it was my birthday.
A VIP pass, a lake beach, maybe have my bike, $ for ice cream downtown LP. I probably would have run from the cops. But, that wasnāt uncommon for me.
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Kidknapping is down nearly 50% in the last 25 years. Maybe there was a downside to letting kids supervise themselves?
Just because we all made it through after summers spending nearly ever day unattended for 10 hours doesnāt mean everyone did. Remember the milk cartons?
I do think IM made an example out of him. The kid, if he could listen and obey and āstay inside the tentā was almost 100% likely to be fine. The problem is the guy basically reefed free babysitting off IM for the day and they were pissed. I myself couldnāt do that. I couldnāt do that for a sprint. I disagree with what he did pretty strongly but I donāt think they had to tar and feather him.
How did they make an example out of him? They didnāt report it to the paper, they didnāt announce to the crowd he was a terrible father and had abandoned his kid.
They had to make a decision about how to handle a kid left with no supervision for over 9 hours. If they donāt report it, they are accused of being complicit in the potential mistreatment of a minor and if they do report it they get waxed for not doing more to prevent the father from leaving his kid and for not doing more to keep him from getting in trouble. Pretty thankless position he put them in by willfully doing something that was explicitly not allowed.
If they made an example out of someone who left their āchildā unattended for the duration of an IMā¦thatās one example of what not to do that Iām *ok with them setting. If we are saying they went 1 step too far in getting the cops involved, as Ryan mentioned above, for me itās like fuck around and find out.
This. IM is liable for that childās well being suddenly and thatās not their responsibility
What do you mean why doesnāt it? There are different laws in place for children to protect them because they canāt protect themselves. Holy fucking shit some of you are clueless.
I donāt live in Texas anymore but please explain to us how a law regarding livestock is at all germane or applicable to the discussion at hand. Of all the stupid things Iāve read on this thread this one might be the worst.
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This is why the Lavender room exists or did exist
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What do the gall darn Germans have to do with thisā¦ā¦
Idkā¦ by confiscating his gear, calling the cops, and having him arrested? How else is that not making an example out of him? I donāt necessarily have a problem with it, the cops might have been more discreet.
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