To be honest, I can't even agree with you on that one. Like I mentioned earlier, "no swimming" takes on a totally different connotation than "stay away from the water". The boy wasn't swimming, so they didn't ignore the signs.
If I'm at that resort, I expect to be safe, and any dangers to be CLEARLY pointed out to me. I'm not in the wilderness, I'm in a man made resort with landscaped beaches with freaking lounge chairs for tourists. I honestly would not have expected alligators in the water if there were no signs that warned of it, and I don't think that's an unrealistic assumption.
This tragedy is totally on Disney if we need to assign any blame, and none on the parents whatsoever IMO.
I'll preface this by saying that none of this is arguing, I'm just curious about people's mindsets.
Why is that? Just because it's Disney World?
See in my mind, pretty much any freshwater in Florida is likely to contain alligators. Whether they actually attack or not is a bit of a different story. Personally, it would seem safe(r) to assume they are there than not, no? (and again this thinking applies to Disney and it's terrible signs as well)
Part of me wonders about what the reaction would be if this was a grown man who lost his toe or something as he waded in the water. My guess is there would a pretty good slant of people going "Well yeah, it's Florida you idiot."
The fact is parents tragically lost their child, so maybe it is a bit callous to pull apart the incident in this way. Just trying to understand other people's mindsets, because as I said, it was the first assumption for me. If the headline said "Child Dies in Florida" my first thoughts would be accidental shooting, or gator attack.
Quote:
Originally Posted by V
How many kids do you have?
Not that this has anything to do with precautions taken when entering the water in Florida, but I have zero kids. But I also wouldn't even be throwing a stick for my dog into lagoon water in Florida. Maybe that's just my own personal overblown fear.
I had an incident this past weekend at a party that involved me sprinting 20 yards, while simultaneously breastfeeding my baby, to stop my 2.5 year old from walking onto the dock at the lake house we were at. He loves the water and I'm sure was about 10-20 seconds away from leaping in. My husband was occupied with helping our older child with dinner and didn't see the younger one wander off to explore the dock. It was also a party so there were many distractions.
Kids are fast. Mistakes and accidents can happen. Especially so when parents are looking after multiple children and/or distracted by... I don't know, having a lovely evening at movie night on the beach at Disneyworld.
Just unbelievably tragic for that family. I have no blame or shame for them at all. When you have little kids you know that even with hyper-diligence (I'm a total helicopter), things can go wrong in a blink and were it not for chance, a tragedy could have been you and your family. I told my story because thankfully I wasn't distracted by talking to someone at the party or changing the baby's diaper somewhere - I saw my son go wandering off while my husband turned his back for 30 seconds.
Innocent wading on a man-made beach at a world class resort with Dad within arms reach... pretty sure an alligator attack would not be front of mind for most people. It's easy to be a monday morning quarterback, imo.
Just awful all around.
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Not that this has anything to do with precautions taken when entering the water in Florida, but I have zero kids.
It's funny how the most vocal opinions on parenting are usually the most ignorant. Actually, that's not really parenting related. That applies to almost anything on the internet.
I'll preface this by saying that none of this is arguing, I'm just curious about people's mindsets.
Why is that? Just because it's Disney World?
See in my mind, pretty much any freshwater in Florida is likely to contain alligators. Whether they actually attack or not is a bit of a different story. Personally, it would seem safe(r) to assume they are there than not, no? (and again this thinking applies to Disney and it's terrible signs as well)
Part of me wonders about what the reaction would be if this was a grown man who lost his toe or something as he waded in the water. My guess is there would a pretty good slant of people going "Well yeah, it's Florida you idiot."
The fact is parents tragically lost their child, so maybe it is a bit callous to pull apart the incident in this way. Just trying to understand other people's mindsets, because as I said, it was the first assumption for me. If the headline said "Child Dies in Florida" my first thoughts would be accidental shooting, or gator attack.
Is it possible you're projecting your expert knowledge of Floridian freshwater fauna to the rest of the country? Many of us have told you we wouldn't have classified walking along a man-made beach in Disneyworld as risky behaviour, but you can't seem to accept that at face value.
You know you live in an effed' up country when it takes mere seconds to come up with literally hundreds of choices for drunken ride on mower hill billy videos.
It's funny how the most vocal opinions on parenting are usually the most ignorant. Actually, that's not really parenting related. That applies to almost anything on the internet.
Ok holy sh**.
Can someone please point to spot where I had much of a vocal opinion about anything outside of "there are gators in Florida, and people should probably be aware of it" (INCLUDING F***ING DISNEY)? Conversely to the "ignorant" posts on parenting, maybe people with kids are a bit too quick to bulldoze people with "stop blaming the parents" when you're not even really doing that.
I've been genuinely curious about people's mindsets in here, who mostly come from a place similar to Nebraska, regarding the dangers of alligators in Florida? I'm Calgarian, I've been to Florida once when I was a child. But I know enough about that area of the world to know that there are gators everywhere. And thus, for myself personally, I would probably be pretty mindful of signs telling me not to swim in the water. I kind of assumed most people knew this about Florida. I guess I'm wrong.
A: They weren't swimming, so it's not even like they ignored the sign.
B: Even if they were fifty feet out in water, "no swimming" is a lot different than "gator zone, possible death/injury may occur"
Should they have known to stay far away from the water? In hindsight yes, but I don't think it's unreasonable to alert a densely populated, almost exclusively out-of-state tourist area to wildlife dangers they might not have been aware of. I didn't know salt-water crocodiles were a thing until I went to Australia, but the municipalities there are aware enough to erect signage in tourist-busy zones.
A: They weren't swimming, so it's not even like they ignored the sign.
B: Even if they were fifty feet out in water, "no swimming" is a lot different than "gator zone, possible death/injury may occur"
Should they have known to stay far away from the water? In hindsight yes, but I don't think it's unreasonable to alert a densely populated, almost exclusively out-of-state tourist area to wildlife dangers they might not have been aware of. I didn't know salt-water crocodiles were a thing until I went to Australia, but the municipalities there are aware enough to erect signage in tourist-busy zones.
Almost every post I have made explicitly mentions this.
It's like people see "... the parents could..." and immediately snap to comment regardless of what else is said.
