Public TV want our son!

Our son’s anqinban is regularly approached by Public TV to send kids to do some sort of filming: not clear what, but apparently not commercials (PTV doesn’t have commercials? no idea).

Anyway the school has been asked if our son can go, on Thursday. He wants to, my wife apparently has agreed to it, and apart from asking me it was pretty much all set up.

People from PTV will collect him and return him to the school. No teacher or anyone else from the school will be involved on the day. We have the mobile number of the PTV person organizing, but nothing in writing, not so much as a business card.

I suppose if I can establish that other parents have sent their kids along, and they haven’t been kidnapped or killed, I might as well go along with it.

What do you think though? Is it a weirdly informal and really scary arrangement, or am I just paranoid? We’ve never entrusted him to anyone we don’t know before (our boy says it’s OK, he knows the people).

Sounds scary to me. I would ask for more info from the anchingban! If they are arranging it, you should be more informed by them. My daughter is just a little one (2 yrs) and I worry about lots!! I think it’s important to know what’s going on!! Better safe than sorry!!!

why not call the heads of PTV and ask…??

I wouldn’t agree to it at least 'till meeting said party.

How old is he?

I just think entrusting your child to a stranger is a bad idea… period.

sounds pretty random. sure nothing will happen but…

No teacher from the school going? No mom or dad going?

No kid going.

But that’s just me.

Listen to yourself:

Somebody you do not know has asked that they take your son somewhere they’re not saying to do something, but you’re not sure what - and nobody normally responsible for your son is invited.

Give your head a shake! And smack your wife upside the head for saying yes.

That’s specious reasoning at best.

do they have any plan at all if something happens during the … whatever it is that they’re going to do? will there be anyone there who knows CPR etc.?

i would want someone there whom i know/trust if the boy was invovled.

I have worked with the PTV people before. They haven’t seemed as careless as this to me…hmmm… It seems out of character. I would definately call them. Ask them where they are going, and if you can come/send a supervisor along.

I highly doubt they will say no, it’s your kid. Bad Anquiban for not taking care of this in advance. They should of had all of this arranged before asking you.

I wouldn’t.

Madness.

I wouldn’t allow my child to go to some unidentified location to do some unidentifed act with some unidentified people.

Bizarre.

[quote=“Tigerman”]Madness.

I wouldn’t allow my child to go to some unidentified location to do some unidentifed act with some unidentified people.

Bizarre.[/quote]

Yeah, that’s weird.

I’m surprised the school isn’t sending a teacher. There is no way in hell I would let one of my students go anywhere unsupervised while the kid is under my watch.

Gotta cast my vote with the NAY crowd.

I would not let the YoungCowboy go on an outing such as this.

I’ve just phoned the head of the kindergarten.

Well, the location it turns out is the lake 1km up the road from where we live. The PTV contact is a friend of the kindergarten head, who himself (the head) acts as a consultant for PTV. There will be two kids and a dozen PTV employees including the contact. They’ve taken kids from the kindy loads of times and no parent has ever questioned the procedure before. They just want to film kiddies doing creative things, I guess a bit like the video clips on the Teletubbies.

So it’s obviously perfectly OK (I mean even if they were sending a teacher, it’s not like we know every teacher personally, or that we would be in a better position to make a claim or something if something went horribly wrong). But I told the suozhang that I think it’s completely weird that (a) he didn’t approach us himself, rather than letting the contact do it, and (b) there’s nothing in writing, and it all seems so casual. Well he thanked me for the advice, and hopefully he’ll change the procedure before next time.

Thanks for all your responses!

(btw jdsmith and others, do you not allow your children to be supervised by other parents? Including Taiwanese parents :s )

Sure, our son goes to his Chinese class in the morning, but we would not let that teacher outsource him to another teacher or a TV company.

I think the main thing that startled me here was that your kid would not be supervised by anyone you knew were legally responsible for his safety and wellbeing.