To Leash Or Not To Leash

We are now less than a week away from the target birth date. Very exciting times. Ashley and I are doing so many things to get ready, and there are a lot of decisions to be made. There are still a lot of things we need to discuss. One very important question we are still debating is whether or not we should put our child on a leash.

This is a very tricky subject with heated opinions on both sides of the fence. On the one side there are those who believe putting a leash on their child is the safest thing you can do for them. Leashing your child is the best way to protect him or her from running mindlessly into oncoming traffic or being plucked away by a scary man with a creepy van.
On the other side of the fence there’s the argument that putting a leash on your child is inhumane and cruel. They think if you put your child on a leash you are treating them like a dog. Not to mention yanking your child around by a rope can potentially cause irreparable physical and emotional damage.
But I don’t know. I know a lot of people who treat their dogs better than they’ve ever treated another human. At the same time, putting your kid on a leash is really just lazy parenting. If you don’t teach your kids not to run into oncoming traffic, the day that you let your kid off the leash…BAM! Hit by a bus. And then you have to get a new kid. So then you’re forced to keep your kid on a leash until he’s 30 and he finally finds a woman who will marry him and then you can finally hand the leash over to her.
There are a lot of pros and cons to using a leash on your child. For instance, PRO: if ninjas attack, I could swing the child around as a weapon. Or, PRO: I can break into a double dutch session at any moment. Or, CON: I have this fear that my child will become stronger than me (wouldn’t take much) and run away dragging me down the street for several blocks.
We still have a bit of time before we need to make this decision. We’ll keep thinking about it.