Kid leashes aren't a bad thing. It is easy for a parent to lose their child in mass crowds of people.
Imagine being so little and someone (a rude person, but it happens alot) pushing their way through you and your child because they don't even bother to see that your are holding the hand of a child (whom is very independant and not at all interested in being in a stroller). Your child looks up and sees a stranger shoving by them (a child's biggest fear is abandoment). They freak out, stop, turnaround, and look for their mommy or daddy. Meanwhile, mommy or daddy is watching the child through all this going on, never losing a visual of the child, but has to fight the crowd to get to the child. Screaming the child's name doesn't really help because the crowd and environment is too loud for them to hear it. Eventually you lose the visual of the child while you are fighting to get to the child, causing you to lose your child....... It happens all in a few seconds......
Leashes seem inhumane (sp?) to many people, but they offer security to children (as in my case), and they help a parent to keep track of their child in large unruly crowds. Think about the crowds coming out of Fantasmic. Imagine a child stopping to pick up something that they dropped in that crowd ...
Again, I know many feel the leash is a "resort to lazyness", but it is NOT. The leash helps a child feel more confident in his/her environment of tall people...
My four year old daughter told ME to put on HER leash (she saw another little boy on one). So, we bought two of the disney neck strap things that have the clip on the end and attached one to my belt loop and one to hers . I asked her if she felt like a dog, and she said, it makes her feel better when "lots of people are around". She called it her Mommy line.
Hope this helps non-"leash" believers to understand the purpose of the child leash. I too use to be a non-leash believer, until I started taking my children into environments of large crowds.... Then I saw the purpose.
