Lorraine Kelly: Punishing little boy for playing in the park is a step closer to creating generation obsessed with social media and selfies

WHO remembers common sense?

I think it disappeared around the same time as the introduction of Facebook, selfies, Twitter and social media in general.

Since then, everyone appears to have grown more dense and less able to make sensible decisions and act in a reasonable way.

This week a dad and his little boy were playing with a remote control car in a London park.

It was one of those dinky little things that runs on batteries.

Out of blue two police officers appeared and told Hariz Waiyasil and his three-year-old son Idrees to stop playing with the toy.

The father and son were accused of breaking bylaws in London’s Battersea Park because they were using “mechanically propelled vehicles”.

The baffled dad was told that protesting would see him cautioned.

Talk about taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

First of all, this father should be congratulated for taking a little boy to the park and playing with his toys, rather than sticking him in front of a computer screen.

Second, what real harm were they both doing?

The three-year-old’s car is powered by a couple of AA batteries and is a small version of his dad’s.

Hariz said he would stop using his bigger car and they would just play with his son’s little one.

This was not acceptable.

They were both on a road in the park used by joggers and cyclists, who have eyes in their heads to easily avoid a little car on the path.

The whole thing appears to have been very heavy handed.

Dad Hariz said his little boy was in tears and really upset.

It is the latest in a seemingly never- ending series of events where common sense has completely disappeared.

We see it all the time.

We can’t take pictures of children’s school plays, kids aren’t allowed to explore the great outdoors and get scrapes and bruises thanks to health and safety laws that have taken most of the fun out of swing parks and paddling pools.

Obviously, we need to protect our kids but they have to be given the chance to play outside, enjoy themselves and learn by their mistakes.

Otherwise we will have a whole generation who do nothing but stare into their mobiles “liking” pictures of cats falling over and never actually have an interaction or conversation with other human beings.

I think this ban on that little boy playing with his car is completely ridiculous and over the top and makes no sense at all.