This is a subject I’ve wanted to address for awhile now: Kids in cages. On the surface it may sound fairly barbaric, but I think after you read this you’ll agree that it doesn’t have to be.
At some point this society decided that a “time out” corner was OK, but cages were not. Recently I was watching an episode of Supernanny where a child repeatedly ignored his parents requests to stay in a single spot and think about his actions. The parents kept putting him back in the same spot, but of course he wouldn’t stay. Not once did Supernanny suggest a more easily locked-down location, or even restraints. I was fairly shocked to watch the scenario repeat itself several dozen times without any attempting to contain the child in secure environment like a cage.
More and more we see the liberal media spin stories like this article about a father who disciplined his children by keeping them in a “time out” cage as some type of child abuse. Where are the articles that are sympathetic to what parents like this have to endure daily when their children won’t do what they’re told? People are quick to be outraged when a parent employs some form of punishment they don’t agree with, but where is their outrage when a child won’t stay in her room when told repeatedly to do so?
Back when my girls were younger my wife had some problems getting them to comply with the laws I’d set forth in the articles of the Constitution of our home. At first she tried to simply send them to their rooms—or even lock them in the garage—much like Supernanny would likely recommend. As the girls got older they learned how to compromise the locks in their rooms and the garage. She then began using pad locks for a short time, but that just resulted in broken windows—I recently even found an incomplete tunnel that they must have begun digging from the back of our garage during one of their periods of incarceration.
Nothing she tried was working, eventually she came to me with the problem and I quickly solved it.
As I told her, there was no place in our home, or the trailer, that we could easily secure our daughters when they were acting up. I explained to her that another clever solution was needed. That clever solution? Cages.
Briefly I considered buying an off-the-shelf dog kennel, but they were prohibatively expensive and I wasn’t convinced that the plastic material most of them are made of would be suitable to keep them from escaping. I found that despite the fact that every parent faces these problems, no device existed that I would do what I needed. The solution was to fabricate my own cage.
My design was based on one that was used by the Vietcong during the Vietnam war to hold American servicemen. Instead of using bamboo, I used galvanized fence posts, I then wrapped it in chicken wire. It worked like a dream to hold the girls, even after repeated attempts to get out over several days, not once was the integrity of the cage compromised.
The cages I made were so successful that I built portable versions that I installed in the back of our van so that when my wife and I went out we didn’t need to worry about whether or not the girls were getting into mischief. For a short time I tried to start a business selling the cages, but was not able to find a distributor and eventually gave up to pursue other interests.
As you can see, I really had no realistic alternative other than to use cages to contain our unruly children. This is why stories like the one I linked above upset me so much. By immediately assuming that every parent who puts their child in a cage is a terrible person, we’re creating a society that refuses to look at the benefits of using one of the oldest disciplinary techniques known to man to control bad kids.
Also, if anyone is interested in purchasing a cage from me I have the original prototype models that I no longer need. I also have the materials and designs to make new ones, just contact me and let me know your needs. I can offer discounts for larger purchases like day care centers.
