They’re back!!! … I suppose it’s like any fad. It’s happened with flares … it used to happen with yo-yos … still happens with mullets. We humans are easily convinced … One day you see someone driving a Volvo and you think it’s OK again.

That is the only explanation I can deduce for the sudden re-emergence of the kiddy leash. Marketing types have softened their appeal by calling them ‘child restraints’ or ‘harnesses’ but that doesn’t change what they are - A gun doesn’t become less lethal by calling it a ‘bang bang stick’

I have vague memories of seeing some of my 80cm peers pulling at the bit around Northland Shopping Centre – lunging to smear the hands on the shop window of Tim The Toyman or clutching helplessly at cinnamon donuts well out the reach of the 2 metre radius that was their world. I felt sorry for those kids. Not that Mum let me wantonly smear shop windows and pilfer donuts at will but at least I knew that I could if I wanted. I think the saddest thing I ever saw as a child, was a boy whose harness matched his sandals.

But how have they re emerged in this seemingly more enlightened era of parenting? Did someone keep theirs as an heirloom and one day after their toddler had put toast in the dvd for the 3rd time suddenly went scavenging in the boxes in the garage? Maybe an over tired dad went to take the family for a morning walk to give mum a rest and ended up with the King Charles Cavalier in the stroller and junior on a choker?

Is this going to lead to kids sniffing each others arses and crapping on your nature strip? Will we see toddlers running around wearing plastic Elizabethan collars after being desexed? Why not muzzle the little bastards while we’re at it.

Whatever the cause of their return they are back with a vengeance. Some of them have been dressed up as novelty animal backpacks to make the kid feeling like they are being given a treat, but I think if you told the inmates of Guantanomo Bay that soft toys would enhance their miserable existence they wouldn’t have been rushing to line up for Tickle Me Osama Dolls.

There’s lots or reasons why people have decided to use them, from the extreme fear of abduction to the lazy dad who wants to read his paper and drink his latte without paying any attention to his kid. There’s probably even some valid ones but regardless of that I have made a decision. The next kid I see on a leash, I am going to cut free … run little one … run … run free and smear toy shop windows … steal donuts … and … umm … don’t go that way … that’s a road … hey kid … really some parents!! … keep that kid on a leash would you?