I'm almost disappointed that I took the gaming side on the "Are Games Bad?" argument. Because, if I had taken the ignorant scaremongering side instead, I could right now be using this as ammunition against facebook games - the bottom of the bottom of the gaming barrel - and by extension facebook as a whole. But oh well. I made my choice and I'm sticking with it. So now it looks like I'll be defending facebook. Ugh.
Sigh. Ok look, parents seem especially inadequate these days. I didn't take baths on my own until I was capable of speaking in coherent sentences, and by that point my parents had laid down safety rules that I frickin' followed if I didn't want to get punished, and told me exactly what could happen to me if I didn't put safety first. Squished by a car, electrocuted, abducted, drowned, burned. But even then I was never left to look after myself. My mom even opposed me being a latchkey kid until I was a teenager. She must've been afraid I'd blow up the house and myself with it.
The worst my mom ever got distracted was when she was talking on the phone. And even then if she saw me doing something dumb in the background, she'd go "hold on a second my son is etc. etc." and stop me. There's nothing more distracting to moms than a phone call, but she never put that before making sure I lived to see another day.
There's nothing wrong with embracing your favorite distractions, but it is indeed stupid to leave a toddler to his own devices. I think she just created this idea of her child being independent at such a young age to justify not having to watch him. Some might say that the game was to blame as an addiction, but no addiction on earth has the power to override motherly instincts. (Except maybe heroin.) The only thing to blame here is stupidity. I know a lot of new ideas about raising children involve giving them as much freedom as possible, but new isn't always better.
