A ban on tea and toast, for children's safety

by Nicole Weston, Posted Feb 14th 2007 @ 4:31PM

All sorts of safety issue plague parents and children these days. Playground equipment and activities are carefully monitored and toys are painstakingly screened, especially if, unlike video games, they involve movable parts that the kids might play with too vigorously, thus injuring themselves, or eat, injuring themselves further. When it comes to food, most safety issues have to do with concerns about food allergies, but perhaps in light of the burns allegedly caused by Starbucks hot chocolate in the hands of a very small child, some groups are looking to ban hot drinks altogether, rather than supervise their consumption.

The Pat-a-Cake Playgroup, which meets at a library in Rawmarsh, South Yorkshire in England, has been "banned from serving tea and toast on health and safety grounds." The risk for burns is, apparently, far to high for the city council's liking, so the parents running the group have been told that they cannot boil water in the room where children are present, and that adults must drink their hot drinks in a separate area, far from the children, if not a separate room entirely.

As you can imagine, the parents are considering disbanding the group to escape from the oversight of the council before they demand that children be outfitted in protective gear at all times to avoid papercuts.

Source

Filed Under: Cooking With Kids, Food Oddities, Health & Medical, Drink Recipes
Tags: boiling, bread, britain, british isles, butter, child, children, england, hot, hot drink, hot drinks, kid, kids, oddities, playgroup, safety, snack, snacks, tea, toast, water

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Reader comments (Page 1 of 1)

2-14-2007 @5:36PM Sam said... Simple-minded nonsense.

If a child can't grasp the idea of 'hot', then any resulting injuries are a result of nature's simple darwinian 'thinning of the herd'.

I, for one, am prepared to accept some such losses in the pursuit of a really good cup of tea. :)
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2-14-2007 @6:10PM peggy said... why don't we just wrap all children in bubble wrap or a big "boy-in-the-bubble" type thing so they will never be hurt, or experience pain or have any experiences at all.... better yet, jsut stop haveing children, cause the world is a much too scary place...GIVE ME A BREAK!!!!!!
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2-14-2007 @6:44PM Lynne said... I'm all for safety, but who in the world doesn't know a child who received an accidental, minor burn and lived to tell the tale? That group is held in a library - books have sharp corners, someone might poke an eye out. Bookmarks hold untold potential for paper cuts. I assume there are hard floors, and during a quiet game of duck-duck-goose someone could trip and bump a knee. Even a quiet game of patty-cake holds danger when uncoordinated toddlers are involved - one bad move and someone has a scratched cheek!

As to my experience, after repeated warnings, I touched a light bulb with my finger at age three. It hurt. I cried. My hands still work and I'm a happy, functioning member of adult society who knows to use a potholder if I'm changing a light bulb that was recently on.
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2-14-2007 @6:57PM calamari said... Perhaps children should wear helmets in the library, lest books fall on their head.

The problem, of course, isn't wanting to bubblewrap children -- it's wanting to protect oneself from litigation-happy parents, who will sue the library if their Precious Angel runs shrieking into a teacup-carrying adult and gets spattered with hot water.
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2-15-2007 @5:31AM rspellman said... Christ, seeing all these sorts of things just makes me even more pissed off. My folks were careful, but that didn't stop my brother and I from doing things like painting cars, sledding (which a bunch of kids in my neighborhood were doing today and got yelled at because they might get hurt), and drinking hot tea. You aren't going to learn how hot the tea is if you never drink it. For fucks sake. I fear for the future.
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2-15-2007 @5:36AM David Cantrell said... Seeing that the story is in the Daily Hate Mail, it's safe to assume that it's just rubbish that they made up, unless you can find something on a *news* site to corroborate it.
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