Why people need to watch their kids...

Someone (and it's pretty obvious it was kids) completely trashed one of our parks for 2-5 year olds. They splashed paint everywhere, wrote in it, and left hand prints all over. The paint was dry before it was discovered and attempts to clean it up have not been successful. 

In another blog post I wrote about obstacles. Well one of those obstacles was stairs being blocked off due to damage and vandalism. (This is at a different park.) Kids have been removing the bricks from the sidewalk and moving them to the playground. When it started it was just a few bricks missing. Now over half the sidewalk is gone. There are huge holes dug in the ground (nearly big enough to bury a dog or small child in.) 

and this is where the sidewalk is going...

This disgusts me. I saw a five year old unsupervised at yet another park today. Maybe I'm old fashioned but my child is four and a half. There is no way that she is anywhere near old enough to be out and about by herself. What has happened to society that we no longer pay attention to what our kids are doing? I don't know if people just don't care or if they expect others to take care of their children for them. This isn't something that happened in a span of a few minutes. The bricks at the playground have been slowly relocating for months now. The kids with the paint must have come home covered in it.


 I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that the folks that haven't taught their kids how to respect other's property, also are not supervising their kids. I'm sure the lack of respect of the children is a direct consequence of this lack of parenting. I hope that the people involved are caught and that both they, and their parents are punished.  I'm tired of seeing children (especially the young children) out with no one watching them. Some are worried that pointing out these problems will paint Baumholder in a negative light but I say all you have to do is take a good look around for Baumholder to illustrate that for itself. 

(this one is DPW's lovely work)

Unfortunately this isn't isolated to children. There are cigarette butts, dog feces, dirty diapers, empty liquor bottles, pregnancy tests, garbage left around the parks and buildings. These things are obviously left by adults. When I find trash at the park near our apartment I pick it up, however this is bigger than what I can handle. Quite frankly, it shouldn't be left on the shoulders of a few that want where we live to look nice. 

Maybe if we get together as a community we can come up with a solution. The authorities have been contacted but that isn't going to stop this from happening again. Please share this with anyone in Baumholder so that we can raise awareness of what is going on in our community. Feel free to post any comments or ideas you have to help with this issue. If you have any additional pictures please e-mail them to me at hborstaddesigns@yahoo.com and I will post them.