I'm having this issue a bit with my wife. I want my 9-yr old daughter to go to the playground a couple blocks away on her own; my wife is reluctant.
My argument is that it's statistically very safe, especially in our neighborhood, and that we and her older brothers all did similar things. Her argument is that a girl needs to be more cautious than a boy, and that although she knows it's unlikely anything bad would happen, it would destroy us if it did.
We're planning to compromise by letting her do it, but only after we get her her first phone.
Parents today are overprotective (this includes me!) and don't realize that it actually damages their kids. I was 5-years-old when my parents would just drop me off to the kindergarten and then I was on my own pretty much the whole day after kindergarten finishes in the afternoon. I would go to different classes kilometers away, crossing roads, etc. and it was common practice. I don't think kids get injured less today than when I was a kid. Also, my parents would send me to the store to buy them beer or cigarettes - all you needed back then to either bring a handwritten note from your parent or for the salesperson to know you and know your parents - I don't drink, I don't smoke. We always underestimate the power of the forbidden fruit! Leaving kids on their own makes them more responsible and independent.
I was a four-year old forty-five years ago. I was walking to my pre-school and back, a couple of blocks and a pretty big and busy street across daily.
The cars weren't a problem. Getting mobbed by primary school kids on my way back and getting beaten up was a problem. A bigger problem was when I told my parents the reason I was getting home later and later was because of the detours I was taking to avoid getting beaten up, and they arranged a meeting with me, the beaters-up and their parents and them -- and in the end, it was clearly my fault, I had never been beaten up, and these were all friendly kids, brought up all wholesome.
The past wasn't a better place, it just was a place where you didn't talk about being abused, no matter what.
We had a bully at school and he beat me up 2 times. After that i always had a stone in my pocket, long story short, he had a hole in his skull and never did it again, no consequences for me (apart from a some explanations). But i was 9.
I am in the same camp. There was this girl I met on tinder that I always noticed the irony of her rescuing a dog from somewhere only for her to lock it up in a cage for 8-12 hours a day while she is working or partying. It's not right at all.
I have to agree - maybe outside of dogs, all other pets are not happy. For example, how can "fixing" cats be acceptable?! Just because we don't want to allow cats to mate and inconvenience ourselves, we "fix" them and everybody seems okay with it! How is this not animal cruelty by the book?! Cats grow obese and feel miserable. I've had cats, I let them go in and out, they lived fruitful lives and were not forced to come back, yet, they did. During the mating seasons, of course, they were gone for weeks.
There are so many people, and some of us have cats and dogs. Cats kill a lot of birds (and mice and rats—-maybe a good reason to have a cat on a farm) and don’t give much back to the ecosystem. Cat and dog poop adds pollution to land and waterways if not picked up (some is okay, but it doesn’t scale well).
I love our dog and feel this non-human person is family. I’m also sad for him not being free to roam and track down deer, elk, bears, coyotes, and potentially end up injured or dead. We run with him often, set boundaries, share affection, and I’m not sure I want to subject another animal to this captivity after he dies. I’d like to switch to helping the land I’m on be more diverse and robust, with healthier soil, more insects, more birds, more mammals (with measures taken to keep rodents out of the house), and to spend time observing this as a way to get me outside.
I have been bothered at times at just how outside the overton window the idea that animals/pets, dog or cats should be able to e.g. see their parents or children, ever again, falls. I'm not a vegan or a big animal person, but it just isn't talked about.
Well, you're right. Dogs are emotional, and get attached to people and happy, but it's only because they don't realize how miserable they actually are and simply don't know any better. I personally like dog breeds closest to wolves like the German Shepherd. And I pity some of the breeds resulting from ages of selective breeding, which don't even resemble dogs.
The first two are very sad honestly and it really doesn't help with a child's psyche if they discover the purpose of their birth was for this reasons. It's almost like your purpose is to become a disappointment specifically because your parents had you as a trophy.
My son just underwent Sex Ed this year - it was so detailed that I'm sure many adults could learn tons of stuff. Yet, accidents happen, but mostly because we don't educate kids. In the past, I remember my grandparents talking to my sister about these things, and teen pregnancies were much less than now with all the Sex Ed, wide availability of contraceptives, etc.
> teen pregnancies were much less than now with all the Sex Ed, wide availability of contraceptives, etc.
While a common perception, that's actually almost entirely false. Teen pregnancies have been dropping pretty steadily for the last ~70 years and they're now almost one quarter the rate of just 30 years ago. Sex ed and availability of contraceptives (especially IUDs) are quite effective at preventing teen pregnancies.
We let our very-capable son and his less-capable-but-bright and more-experienced older sister freely wander the neighborhood on bicycles when they were 5.5 and 7, respectively. Worked out fine so far.
Varies by neighborhood, though. Our current one's busy-body and kids-only-play-with-parental-escort enough that we had a couple neighbors stop by to warn us that they'd seen our kids several streets over, thinking they'd gotten away from us. Not quite busy-body enough that anyone called the cops (I suspect we were right on the edge of that happening, and maybe just got lucky). Our last neighborhood had wonderful mixed-age "gangs" of kids wandering around playing all the time, and it would have been entirely safe there. That was a much younger neighborhood (in terms of both the ages of the houses and the average age of residents) than this one (not sure whether that's related), and, I suspect, there were some class issues at play (the other had a very high-prole character to it, in Fussellian terms, while this one's 100%, gratingly, middle-class as hell)
As for chances of assault, your main worry by a country mile should be cars, not predators. All forms of attacks on kids by strangers are incredibly rare. Leaving your kid in the company of a specific adult or set of adults is far riskier than letting them walk to the park (yet people do that all the time). Shit, statistically siblings or cousins are far "scarier" and worthy of concern, in that regard, than the risk of regular walks to a park 2 blocks away.
> your main worry by a country mile should be cars, not predators
100%, and cars are a reasonable worry that we should do something about. There are well known traffic calming measures that we know slow down traffic substantially (speed being one of the greatest causes of pedestrian fatalities) and even in my very walkable city we're largely not using them.
speed doesn’t cause fatalities, or even cause collisions, it increases severity in the case of a collision. collisions cause (pedestrian) fatalities, and distracted driving is the leading cause of collisions.
Well no; speed does increase severity in the case of a collision as you say, but it also directly impacts your stopping distance, even at the same level of alertness/reaction time/etc. If a kid runs out in front of your car, you are both more likely to hit them at 30 mph than 15 mph (due to not being able to stop in time) and more likely to kill them having hit them.
you see, that's exactly the kind of marginal thinking that gets us into these kinds of shut-in situations for children in the name of "safety". that exact scenario, where only the speed difference rather than a myriad of other factors, is material to life and death, is a tiny, and probably an undifferentiable, portion of collisions. putting forth such imagined scenarios as if they present significant risk is poor rationale.
support traffic calming measures (like narrowing car lanes, adding streetside trees, converting parking to bike lanes, etc.), not for specious reasons like this, but because they reduce distracted driving, and thereby reduce collisions and injury/death. it's at best misdirection to talk about reducing speed, and at worst, leads to poor policy that not only doesn't address the problem (reducing injury/death) but creates unintended consequences (like traffic and more distracted driving).
And focusing just on distracted driving similarly leads to campaigns that are little more than "you, driver, pay attention" PSAs while ignoring the structural reasons that drivers incorrectly feel safe enough to do so.
Of course they both contribute to the problem. So why not both? Traffic calming is the answer, either way.
no, that sounds like a reasonable compromise, but it's just appeasing poor thinking, which is exactly how we get so many bad policies and regulations. addressing distracted driving with traffic calming is a reasonable solution for a correctly identified problem. psa's for distracted driving is a bad solution for the right problem. traffic calming for speed is a bad solution for the wrong problem. it's how we get stupid speed bumps and unproductive stop signs as an energy and time tax on everyone rather than targeting the reckless directly, which is the (other) right problem to address. while excess speed is indicative (but not conclusive) of reckless driving, a focus on reducing speed is a safety theater red herring. just like "think of the children" and ceqa (environmental) challenges to housing, it's used as a brainless cudgel to get a pet outcome approved, not to improve societies.
Ha, yes, actually it was almost exactly like that. With a concerned look, "I think I saw your boy over on [street] and thought I'd better let you know". Was he playing in the road? Getting in the way of traffic? Stomping on flowers? Otherwise behaving like a jack-ass? Nope, just there. OK, uh, thanks for telling us.
Well intentioned and mostly just amusing. At least no-one called the authorities when they realized we weren't planning to confine our kids to the yard or accompany them on every idle play-outing all damn Summer.
My mom used to take the bus into the city when she was 8, spend the day wandering around, and come back on her own time. This was in the 70s with no smartphones. If there was an issue, she could use a pay phone. Her own mother sent her out of the house to get some free time for herself.
When I was growing up, I did similar things, taking my 5 year old sister on the public bus with me to get to school when I was 10. If I had some pocket change we’d get ice creams from McDonald’s on the way home.
It depends on what neighborhood you live in, but the world is very safe today and if you’re on HN I assume you’re in a decent area.
I think parents have too much time and energy today to spend worrying about their frankly very competent kids. The smartphone thing is a good idea but I really think it’s best to push your kid out of the nest to discover the world themself, lest you end up with a grown up daughter who’s afraid of the world.
In the 90s I walked to school(two busy streets and one market Square with stalls away) on my own at the age of 7, I was expected to leave the house and lock the door behind me on my own(my parents both left to work by that time), make it back at the end of school and let myself in and wait at home for their return.
Nowadays just leaving a 7 year old at home alone would be a crime.
"I'm having this issue a bit with my wife. I want my 9-yr old daughter to go to the playground a couple blocks away on her own; my wife is reluctant."
...
"We're planning to compromise by letting her do it, but only after we get her her first phone."
I hesitate to enter into child rearing discussions but ...
May I suggest a slightly different approach: satisfy your wife by following, secretly, your child at a distance the first few times. All the benefits of independence and self-reliance, etc., for your child - and a gradual, baby steps approach for your wife as she gets comfortable with this routine.
May I also suggest that a phone is unnecessary due to the fact that every single other person already has a phone. Further, bad actors will likely assume your daughter has a phone. It's classically selfish behavior but you can piggyback on the (telephone) safety net that everyone else has already constructed. I know from voluminous personal experience that everyone, everywhere, is happy to use their phone to help your child. Just make sure she memorizes your phone numbers :)
> May I suggest a slightly different approach: satisfy your wife by following, secretly, your child
Suspect they already trust their child enough to not need to follow her at all. She's capable. The concern is unforeseen events outside the child's control such as irresponsible drivers, bullies, or worse. None of which is any less likely to happen after you stop following the child.
They're not likely to ever happen, and the child's independence is probably worth the risk, but there's no way to ever completely eliminate those risks or put your mind completely at ease about it.
I agree with your analysis - but this suggestion is for his wife, not the child. It's a way to become comfortable - in a slow and controlled manner - with expanding the range of the child, etc.
Following the child after apparently granting freedom would be a massive breach of trust: bad enough on its own, but potentially very scarring if discovered. Don't add that risk!
As for the phone, you're right if you only think of the phone as somehow protecting against stranger danger. But as someone who lives alone with health problems I think of the phone entirely differently: it's a lifeline to all kinds of potential help, from a medical emergency to being locked out of my car or apartment building. And of course not only in that direction; it works the other way too where having my phone means I can be a point of contact for help for others. This is obviously a somewhat new aspect of our society in the past 20 years, and I'm certainly not saying we couldn't get along without it; but I am asking, "why would you want to go back to a time before these universal lifelines?".
My eldest is also a daughter of a similar age. What my partner and I have said is "yes you're old enough to go do things, as long as you're going with friends." She's not old enough to go places alone, or to go places where she'll be supervising her younger sibs. But she's old enough to be in a setting where peers are watching out for each other and know how to find help if needed.
I know that's still a walk-back from what previous generations enjoyed, but it's not that different from what we both experienced at this age in the 90s. And in parallel to this, we've put a fair bit into teaching our kids to navigate on foot, use public transportation, and safely ride their bikes on the road— all of it an investment in pre-car/non-car teenage autonomy.
This really is a great thing about living in Utah with young kids (one of the states mentioned in the article with laws explicitly protecting parents from these randos.)
In my neighborhood the street is literally full of neighborhood kids almost every day, ranging from 2-3 years old to teens, out riding bikes and playing games. There's a park a few blocks away that my kids (3yo-10yo) walk or bike to unsupervised.
Obviously as a parent you still worry - for me I worry more about someone getting hit by a car than being abducted - but it's nice to know at least that child services isn't going to show up just because the kids are out playing.
I live in the Midwest. I am a teacher. My wife is a social worker. I hear this fear about being charged Or having your kids taken by CPS because you let them walk alone to the grocery store or something, but I’ve literally never heard of it happening. I even have known a couple CPS workers in the past. The stuff they deal with day to day is wildly more intense than what people are suggesting here. My
instinct is that it’s a straw man, but clue me in. How common could this possibly be?
The bigger risk is getting run over by an inattentive driver, and yet most parents are worrying about pedophiles. How would a phone guard against distracted driving?
Given what we have learned regarding the catholic church, boy scouts and penn state athletics program. I'd say young boys have just as much to fear if not more.
That said I'm with you on her walking to the park.
> We're planning to compromise by letting her do it, but only after we get her her first phone.
Might I suggest looking into one of those cell phone watches for kids. They allow you to lock down who they can send and receive calls/messages from and have gps and geofencing so you can keep an eye on them. It basically allows you to give them the advantages of a phone, without having to give them a phone.
I don't think the intention behind "free range kids" is that they get unrestricted access to technology and everything the internet can serve up to them.
> I don't like giving cell phones to kids younger than 12 or 13 because childhood should be free of a lot of the technology we use today.
The future is technology. You're holding them back, socially and technology skills wise, if you wait until they're 13 to give them a cell phone.
I was fixing computers and was generally the house technology expert well before I was 13. To get to that point required unrestricted access to tech and the internet. If I was locked down until 13, I would not be as successful as I am today in tech, if I was in tech at all.
The computer that you used required skills to use and maintain, and stayed at home. It is vastly different than a dumb (yes) internet appliance kept in a pocket all day long subjecting children to dark patterns and dopamine hits for hours a day.
Hard disagree. Children with phones don't socialize face to face with other children. That's pretty much the most important skill taught in elementary school and you're taking it away from them. You can still let your child use computers at home, but they should have to interact face to face in order to socialize. Yes, the future is technology, but not being able to interact with people without anxiety is not a path to happiness, and that's what you get when you give children phones.
Fully agreed. I spent my entire childhood with essentially zero electronics (we lived overseas), and didn't get into computers until we were back stateside, and I was a young teen.
As an adult, I'm proud of my technical accomplishments. But having no social anxiety, because I learned how to communicate face to face throughout my childhood, has been the biggest boon of all. Not joking.
[edit] I feel I should also add that not getting in to tech until already a teen has never felt like a deficit, or that I was starting behind anyone else. On the contrary, the non-virtual skills that came from playing with physical things like lincoln logs, tinkertoys, building models with friends, etc. gave me a intuition of how the world works that has helped me a great deal in getting my head around the nature of more virtual structures.
Interacting with children who have smartphones. Both as a child myself and now. Obviously it's not a universal truth, but I've seen it more than 10 children who suffer from this which is enough to convince me that it's a risk.
I'm puzzled by this attitude. It's as if a kid is a monkey of some sort that can randomly call someone. If a kid is smart enough to use a phone, he or she can understand your concerns.
You might try to get longish distance walkie-talkies. They are cheap and probably go far enough. I let my (similar age) kids free range a block or two, especially if they go together and bring a walkie talkie.
Why not just give them a real phone?. That way they are never at risk of being out of range. Parental control it so it can't install apps if you are super paranoid.
It's the "John Walsh" effect. His son's kidnapping was all over the news and then later he had "America's Most Wanted" and he literally started scaring people from allowing their kids out of their sight. To this day, people still think their kid is going to be abducted if they let them go play.
I remember being 9 and riding my bike miles away to the mall and back. Kids can't do that anymore.
It’s a conversation being had by parents all the time. The mistake is to think that not letting the kids do things doesn’t have an effect.
More realistically you are often balancing a high harm, low risk (sometime tiny, eg abduction) event against a low harm, high risk one. This is inherently difficult, but easier I think when framed this way.
Even back when us kids were 'free range' there were more restrictions placed on the girls, my older sister couldn't get up to as many shenanigans as I could at the same or younger age -- cultural norms and whatnot.
My argument is that it's statistically very safe, especially in our neighborhood, and that we and her older brothers all did similar things. Her argument is that a girl needs to be more cautious than a boy, and that although she knows it's unlikely anything bad would happen, it would destroy us if it did.
We're planning to compromise by letting her do it, but only after we get her her first phone.