He says social worker misstated law, scared his granddaughter
By Kathy Chaffin
kchaffin@salisburypost.com
A resident of the Glen Heather subdivision says a young woman visiting his neighbor on the afternoon of April 28 walked over to his house, identified herself as a social worker and asked for the age of his granddaughter who was operating a riding lawn mower under his supervision.
“I said, ‘She will be 10 years old this year,’ ” Donald Lindsay wrote in a letter to the Post. “I told her she was a little small for her age.”
The Rowan County social worker then said “she was not old enough to be on the lawn mower,” he wrote. “She said she could take her from us because I was being negligent by putting her in harm’s way, but if I would get her off of the lawn mower in her presence, that she wouldn’t fill out the paperwork.
“I assumed the paperwork was to take the child from us.”
Lindsay, who lives with his daughter and her family on O’Leary Court, said he motioned for his granddaughter to come closer and told her to turn off the lawn mower and that the woman, who he identified as a social worker, had said she was too young to be on the mower.
At that point, he said, the social worker asked if he wanted her to talk to his granddaughter. Before he could respond, Lindsay said in a telephone interview, she said, “I’ll tell her.”
She also identified herself as a social worker, he said, then told his granddaughter, “I can take you from your mother.”
After his granddaughter went inside the house, Lindsay said in his letter, he asked the social worker how old a child has to be to get on a riding lawn mower, adding that he didn’t know of any law specifying a required age.
“She said, ‘Middle school age,’ ” he wrote. “I thought to myself, ‘My Lord, she’s making our laws for us, too.’ ”
After the social worker left, Lindsay said, his granddaughter came back onto the porch, where he had been sitting and watching her mow. In fact, he said, he had already mowed the area she was mowing and was only letting her go back over it “since I have mulching blades and a shield to cover the opening of the mowing deck.”
“What could go wrong?” he wrote. His granddaughter could reach the gas and brake pedals, he said, and knew how to use them.
The LX 176 John Deere lawn mower stops whenever the operator takes his or her foot off the gas pedal.
Lindsay said his granddaughter was crying when she walked back outside. “I asked her what was wrong,” he wrote. “She said, ‘Is that woman going to take me from my mother?’ I tried to assure her that she wasn’t.”
In the telephone interview, Lindsay said he felt the social worker was “abusing her power,” but said he took her seriously.
“I knew she couldn’t take her that day,” he said, “that she’d have to fill out some paperwork and bring a policeman back, but I did feel threatened by her. And I know she has the power to get the ball rolling to take her.”
Though he said he had cooled down some and wasn’t as mad as he was when the incident happened, Lindsay said he continues to be “appalled that she would come over here demanding that she get off of the lawn mower in her presence.”
“You know, you give some people a little bit of power and they go ape,” he said.
Sandra Wilkes, director of the Rowan County Department of Social Services, said she had talked with the social worker after being informed of Lindsay’s letter and talked to him over the phone about the incident.
“I think she saw that situation and it concerned her to the extent that she felt in her capacity as a social worker that she needed to respond and at least alert him that the child on the lawn mower might not be safe,” she said.Wilkes said, however, that it was “not appropriate whatsoever” for the social worker to tell Lindsay that she could take his granddaughter away if he didn’t make her get off the mower.
The social worker denied telling the child that she could take her from her mother, Wilkes said, adding that that would have also been “absolutely inappropriate.”
“That is not good social work practice,” she said. “I am certainly hopeful that we would not misuse our authority in any way to threaten or to frighten a parent or a child.”
Wilkes said the incident has been addressed with the social worker.
If the department’s Child Protective Services had received a report about a 10-year-old on a riding lawn mower through its intake process, Wilkes said, “I’m not certain that we would have accepted that report as one to investigate.”
“He was there supervising the child,” she said, “and that seemed to be less harmful than seeing young kids on ATVs and riding tractors on the farm and those sorts of things.”
Other factors would have to be considered, she said, such as whether there was a parent in the yard and the child’s age, strength and maturity level.
“There is certainly no law that says a child cannot do these things before a certain age,” she said.
Wilkes said Lindsay asked her if there was an age requirement for riding lawn mowers. “We had a good conversation, I think,” she said.
Whenever parents or caretakers ask about the appropriate age to let children start doing certain things like operating a lawn mower, Wilkes said, Social Services employees try to offer suggestions on factors to consider in making those decisions.
Those factors would include “the child’s age, the child’s emotional maturity, the child’s ability to respond to an emergency if the child is home alone and there’s a storm or a fire or the child becomes injured or sick,” she said.
Parents and other caretakers also need to consider the danger related to the activity. In Lindsay’s case, Wilkes said he was supervising his granddaughter on a lawn mower equipped with a protective shield.
In her telephone conversation with the grandfather, Wilkes said he told her that he only allowed his granddaughter to mow on the flat portion of the lawn.
Lindsay said his 14-year-old granddaughter also started operating the riding lawn mower at around age 9.
The American Academy of Pediatrics, in order to prevent lawn mower injuries to children, recommends that no one younger than 16 be allowed to use riding mowers and that children younger than 12 years should not use walk-behind mowers.
Each year, an estimated 68,000 people with injuries caused by power mowers are treated in emergency departments. More than 9,000 of the people hurt are younger than 18.Older children and adolescents were most often hurt while cutting lawns as chores or as a way to earn money.
The American Academy of Pediatrics also recommends that adults make sure that children are indoors or at a safe distance well away from the area they plan to mow; that they carefully look for children when mowing in reverse; and that they do not allow children to ride as passengers on riding lawn mowers.