In among the many, many movie-related comments in Tuesday’s Movie Day post was this bit from Zee German, “I was trying to recall at what age I could really start roaming the neighborhood . . . probably 8-9-10 or somewhere in there.” A few people chimed in with thoughts, and it seemed to me there was more we could talk about in a dedicated FKB post.
As a parent of youngish kids (4.5 years and 1.5 years), I’m in the early stages of dealing with this stuff. So I guess I’m curious to know not just how much freedom people give their kids but also how they think about the question of how much freedom to give.
Not that long ago, Mr. NaCl and I had a . . . discussion (yeah, let’s call it that) about the jalapeño plugging in some Christmas lights. I thought it was completely fine. I mean, the jalapeño is certainly not timid, but neither is he a major risk taker. He’s also good about understanding rules about dangerous things and following those rules. But the mister obviously had a different opinion and thought it was just waaaaay to dangerous for a four-year-old kid to be having anything to do with an outlet.
Yesterday I came across a 2008 essay, "No-Man's-Land" by Eula Biss that addresses perceptions of safety, among other things. (Astute citizens may recognize Biss’s name; she the author of one of my favorite reads of 2014.)
Biss references The Culture of Fear by Barry Glassner:
Every society is threatened by a nearly infinite number of dangers, Glassner writes, but societies differ in what they choose to fear. Americans, interestingly, tend to be most preoccupied with those dangers that are among the least likely to cause us harm, while we ignore the problems that are hurting the greatest number of people. We suffer from a national confusion between true threats and imagined threats.
And also:
One of the paradoxes of our time is that the War on Terror has served mainly to reinforce a collective belief that maintaining the right amount of fear and suspicion will earn one safety. Fear is promoted by the government as a kind of policy. Fear is accepted, even among the best-educated people in this country, even among the professors with whom I work, as a kind of intelligence. And inspiring fear in others is often seen as neighborly and kindly, instead of being regarded as what my cousin recognized it for—a violence.
As it happens, this week Jane Brody has an article in the New York Times that ties in with all of this as well. It’s about Lenore Skenazy and a new tv show in which Skenazy works with overprotective parents to give their children a bit more freedom. The first episode is about a ten-year-old named Sam. His mother won’t let him ride a bike (“she’s afraid I’ll fall and get hurt”), cut up his own meat (“Mom thinks I’ll cut my fingers off”), or play “rough sports” like skating.
My heart kind of breaks for this kid. It's clear his mother loves him dearly and only wants to keep him safe. But by protecting him from all these perceived risks, what essential skills is she preventing him from acquiring?
Brody's article also includes the following quote from Dr. Peter Gray, author of the book Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life, “If children are not allowed to take routine risks, they’ll be less likely to be able to handle real risks when they do occur.”
As I’m sure is obvious to anyone still reading, I’m on the side of giving children more freedom rather than less. I want my kids to take risks, I want them to make mistakes, I want them to experience failure. That's not to say I'm going to teach them to swim by throwing them into the deep end of the pool. I want them to know I'll always be there for them, happy to offer support and guidance. But I also hope to give them opportunities, both big and small, to try out new things on their own and to develop the skills they'll need to one day navigate the world on their own.
The other day, the jalapeño dropped a raw egg on the kitchen floor. And that was okay with me. I had him help me clean it up, and afterward I asked him what he’d do differently the next time he was carrying an egg. He said he'd use two hands. That lesson was far more vivid than it would have been if I’d just followed him around calling out, “Be careful! Eggs can break! Don’t drop it!”
Well . . . I think that’s about enough from me. So what about you? How much freedom did you have as a kid? How much freedom do you give your own kids?
note: featured image is from a British ad campaign promoting a personal emergency service
Our boys do not take risks, so we've rarely had to limit them. We just have to show them that something they're doing is not safe and they won't do it anymore (or do it more safely next time). Most of the time, we go out of our way to get them to get out of their comfort zone. They rarely try new food or do activities they haven't done before. They won't go anything close to a roller-coaster. Every year when summer camp comes around, we have to convince Trey that he's going to have fun (which he always does). We have wondered at what point we can leave Junior home alone or in charge of Trey. Junior just turned 13 and has his own cell phone, so I imagine we'll probably have date nights now and then pretty soon. We have left them home alone when walking the dog or something like that where we were gone for less than an hour. We just make sure Junior's cell phone is on and charged.
Kernel is not much of a risk-taker either. Typically, she vacillates between wanting to do things for herself (that she's done before) and demanding help doing things (that she's done before).
wanting to do things for herself (that she's done before) and demanding help doing things (that she's done before).
heh, we get a lot of this too.
Same, although she's getting better about it. 3-year-old logic is currently the most frustrating thing I have ever experienced.
Four-year-old logic is infuriating on some days, but nowhere near as infuriating as 3-year-old logic.
This morning was brutal. She refused to put her pants on, then she finally returned, but started screaming because she wouldn't pull them all the way up and we told her she could do it. Once we are part that, she had to go to the bathroom, but my wife was on there, and the trinket just want having that. When my wife finished, the trinket wanted to knock on the door so she could go on, but instead of knocking she learned against it and screamed about how she wanted to knock. Then, she didn't even have to go.
instead of knocking she learned against it and screamed about how she wanted to knock
Some day you'll look back fondly and laugh...
Interesting. We've started leaving our 10-year-old for 1-2 hours with our 7- and 3-year-old. It has went well. Would we drive 2 hours away and stay away for 5 hours? No, not yet. Our oldest is so responsible, though, that we've taken the quick-date plunge. It's great!
We're almost there for the quick-date plunge. Our 11-year-old is a bit of a space cadet, but the eight-your-old is really responsible. The problem is the three-year-old is a real pill, so we haven't felt comfortable leaving her with her siblings for any length of time. We're close.
From FindLaw:
So I guess we're not being too overly cautious. That article has some general guidelines for ages of children/teens to be left alone at home.
14!?!?!??!!!?
Kernel really doesn't like to do things that she hasn't already experienced or mastered, whether it be walking, gymnastics, swimming, pepperoni pizza or tofu. Once she knows it's okay, good luck stopping her.
Pepper, my preference is more in line with yours: giving them more freedom. Unfortunately for me, giving them more freedom - in many instances- is me going too far to "encourage" Kernel to try something new. That is, I require/bribe/convince her to try something new because I believe she wouldn't do so on her own and I a) think she'll actually like it, or, b) want her to eat some gosh-darn vegetables. Sometimes it works out (see: holding her hands so she can walk up my legs and kick her feet over, doing a backflip of sorts). Sometimes it doesn't (see: eating most anything she hasn't tried before). My wife is more inclined to let her try things one her own schedule. It has worked out to have divergent views on this as she sometimes has to try that new something , but also gets the freedom to explore. We try really hard to support each other's positions in front of her and have "discussions" after the fact.
My thing is, I don't want her to be afraid of the things she doesn't have experience with. Even if she doesn't always want to be trying the new things, I want her to know it's okay to not like something or fail at something after you've had a go at. I also want her to know that it's okay to be stubborn about some things; I don't want to quell her natural tenacity as I think (with the right support and guidance) that trait is a really good one to have.
When I was young (and even through my teens), my mom would push me to try new things. I didn't always appreciate it in the moment, but looking back, I think her instincts were right. And then I moved to NYC directly after college and it was never an issue again.
Thinking more about this . . . while my mom’s instinct was right, I can’t say always enjoyed the things she encouraged me to do. One particular instance comes to mind. When I was sixteen, several friends (not close friends, but girls I knew from my neighborhood) wanted to go out dancing. I was wary, but my mom said I should give it a try.
That night was awful. It was a 16+ night at some club, and while on the dance floor I had several different (almost certainly older) guys come up behind me and start grinding with me without so much as a hello. I couldn’t even see their faces, but I was afraid not to go along with what was happening. My friends weren’t reacting in any way that suggested they thought something was amiss. I thought I was supposed to enjoy it; I thought the fact that I didn’t meant something was wrong with me. I lacked the knowledge and assertiveness to stop what was happening, to say, “get your hands off me.”
I fled the dance floor in tears and spend the rest of the night out behind the club at a picnic table, waiting until my friends were ready to leave. I honestly don’t remember if I ever told my mom what happened.
I wish I had some nice way to conclude this anecdote. I’m still in favor of giving kids freedom. I guess I just think they also need some coaching on how to speak up for themselves and they need the confidence to know it’s never rude to simply leave when faced with a situation they’re not okay with.
That's pretty brutal.
To my way of thinking, trying new things shouldn't be of the "encourage them to jump in the deep end and then walk away because other kids their age have fun swimming" variety. If we haven't given them the tools to succeed at (or at least appreciate) a new situation, then at least we should help them know how to survive it in a way that doesn't make the "Try a new thing" experience counter-productive.
I also think that life as a teenager is a challenge, no matter what you do to prepare for it.
no matter what you do to prepare for it
Are you suggesting that "isolate them from the world and homeschool them; they'll be well-adjusted 18-year-olds!" is not a viable plan?
I should have a talk with EAR.
Shifting discussion a bit from physical risks to more emotional/spiritual risks, we're now navigating the wonderful world of electronics and internet with our 10 year old girl and 11 year old boy. The boy got an ipod touch before Christmas and the girl just got a kindle fire with her Christmas money. The boy has learned how to text using the ipod and the other day in advertantly texted a number of people (including adults we know - parents of his friends) and caused a mini firestorm. He also had grand plans for his own youtube channel with friends, putting up videos of kids whom we didn't have permission from their parents.
I really never thought about some of these risks. My wife's hackles went up when all of this happened. What if we get sued by the magician that he video recorded (the magician knew he was recording), what if his friends parents sue us, what if he looks at an inappropriate video while looking around youtube (a fair concern), what if his future employer sees these videos 10 years from now. Everything on the internet is traceable *puts on tinfoil hat*
I understand her concerns, but we need to fall somewhere between letting him have some creative freedom, and protecting him from potential dangers. We're still navigating the waters, but I'm confident we'll get through to the other side just fine.
The boys' school requires them both to have tablets. Fortunately, they have shown no interest in surfing the Web other than to look for video games on Google Play. We limit them to three free games on their tablet at a time plus whatever games they have bought with gift cards they got at Christmas and/or birthdays. So far, they seem to be following the rules and not trying to be sneaky. We'll see how long that lasts. With Junior and his cell phone, he is only allowed to text with his friends (he has a prepaid cell phone and texts use up partial minutes), but he rarely does that.
This one is timely as well, as I just found my three-year-old this morning playing a game on the Nook that involved shooting an arrow with a bow and slicing people's heads off. That was an easy "no."
The 11-year-old is using Craigslist and his gmail account to find a used cell phone for a cheap price and is presumably negotiating with grown ups. Ugh.
We have so many devices that at times each of the kids and adults will be on the Nook, laptop, Chromebook, iPhone, iPad and the TV is on too. Our goal is to cut down on "blue screen" time, to date myself, but it is a constant battle. And frankly I don't know where to draw the lines.
that involved shooting an arrow with a bow and slicing people's heads off.
That game is awesome!
Save it for your next games post. That'll make it a 3rd generation of posts then!
OK. I just completed a couple levels...
I live in total fear of having to figure out all that Internet stuff.
Wait until "trying new things" means flying somewhere to visit friends. Or dating. How did I survive?
(she turned 24 today)
Especially if you have no cell phone to contact that person and spend three hours first roaming Boston and then vaguely remembering where that person worked/would be and navigating public transportation to there.
Or when your cell phone dies at game one of the 2004 ALDS and you ride the subway from the Bronx to Queens at 2 am only to wander around for an hour until your friend finds you.
Or when you don't have a hotel reservation so you end up in a scary motel in Richfield after the Twins game.
Adam moved about two blocks between my visits to Chicago. He didn't answer his phone when I arrived. I went to a bar I knew was in the general vicinity and waited til they kicked me out. Then I took the El as far north as I could, catching the last train of the evening as I recall, then a taxi the rest of the way to O'Hare. Oh, did I mention all of this is after a 6 hour MegaBus ride and with mc and our luggage in tow en route to Mexico? So we got to O'Hare at like 3:30 AM about 12 hours after leaving DSM and slept in the terminal until boarding opened for our flight.
Mom didn't find out about that until after we were back.
The Boy was a pretty timid child, The Girl, not so much.
I had a hard time with the whole "let them take risks" thing at the local park for a long time. In part because a childhood friend (and later crush) of mine had fallen on the school's monkey bars and knocked out all of her upper front teeth.
I was allowed to roam the neighborhood at a pretty young age. We walked to school in kindergarten and could go to a friend's house after school as long as we let our mom know. I remember a rule that I couldn't ride bike across the street. I interpreted that to mean I couldn't ride bike while I was across the street. So I'd leave my bike in a stranger's boulevard and go visit my friend. I remember being worried about my mom seeing me riding my friend's bike while I was across the street. I didn't realize until much later that I could have just walked my bike across the street.
I walked to and from kindergarten in south Minneapolis five blocks each way. Of course, if my mom didn't have two younger kids at home at that time, she probably would have been more protective.
Ironically, that flipped by high school where my parents were insanely over cautious and gave me little freedom while my siblings could do whatever they wanted.
Almost the exact same. South MPLS, though my school was only 3 blocks away. I got myself there from Kindergarten.
Hey hj and other city kids: at what age were you allowed to ride city busses on your own?
Also curious. Also for suburb kids.
18 for me. Suburban kid. I had jury duy over spring break of my freshman year of college and rode a city bus on my own from Maplewood Mall to downtown St. Paul. It was during morning and afternoon rush hour, so it was very
boringsafe.Well it was 18 for me as well and I was from the sticks. For Augsburg freshman orientation, the OGs (orientation groups) had to do service projects around town, and we had to take the bus to get there. I took the 7 into downtown. The first weekend, I took the 2 to the Electric Fetus with some new friends. I bought REM's "New Adventures in Hi-Fi" The rest of the bus routes are easy when in your first week, a guy who was eating from an open bucket of fried chicken gets pulled off the bus by police. He wasn't pulled off for the chicken, they'd been looking for him.
Just checked the release date... that was the second weekend.
20*.
We didn't lack for cars growing up. At one point we have five cars for four drivers. I grew up in Minneapolis but it was close to the border of Robbinsdale and in a pure-residential area. There wasn't much to walk to except other single-family homes. It was close to a busy street (Dowling) but I don't remember many buses using it. Basically, the area was a combination of the worse parts of city vs suburban living: limited space and nothing to walk to. It didn't help that this was the time of Murderapolis.
* This is part serious, part joke. That really is when I started regularly riding city buses on my own. Before that, I rode a city bus only a handful of times.
If it makes you feel any better, I was 24 before I ride any form of public transportation, which was during a visit to Chicago.
sean - Small world: I spent my first decade in that part of Mpls and then we headed outstate (in 1990). We were on 42nd and Vincent and then 42nd and Queen. We did not ride city buses in North Minneapolis unaccompanied at that age...probably didn't do public transit on my own until I was 19 or 20.
We were on 37th and Thomas.
We didn't have city buses in A-Town. The first time I remember being on public transport alone* I was riding the Tube in London at 18. I think the fact my parents let me go off to London on a whim at 18 says more than the fact it was my first time on public transport.
Sidenote, I love using public transportation whenever possible. I wish Austin's transportation infrastructure was better developed, since the traffic here is absolutely horrific. Thank goodness for the near-constant decent weather and my bike.
*My first time on public transportation ever was the DC Metro with my parents and aunt & uncle. I lost a tooth on the way into the Mall.
Likewise, my first mass transit experiences were in DC. My dad took us all to a conference in Baltimore in the summer of '76. Bicentennial! Tall ships!
I remember taking the Metro once or twice. But what I really remember is my mom getting us lost on the bus system. We rode one to the end of the line and the driver finally clued in and helped us yokels out.
I don't specifically remember when I started riding the bus by myself, but I was a veteran by freshmen year of high school.
I never understood the big deal about school busing back in the 1970s. Kids in my end of town had to be bussed to the south side junior high when Spamtown Central closed its 7th and 8th grades....
I figured those Boston people were just whiners.
And how else would the farm kids get to school without busing?
Little school houses every few miles?
Well, that WAS the original model.
But seriously! Farm kids rode the bus. WE were bussed across town, integrating north-siders with south-siders.
I had the same overbearing experience in high school. Then when college started the pendulum swung the other way. I guess they just wanted to make sure nothing happened on their watch.
I solved that problem by going to school on the East Coast.
That's adorable. (Referring to ben and the bike thing.)
I wonder how this is going to unfold for us. I worry way, way, way less than the wife, an admitted worrier. But, I'm not the one at home during the day. She's let him do things that I wouldn't have due to needing something new for him to do. These activities aren't all that dangerous so it's mostly me needing to keep up with what's okay. This has led to some positive things. One activity is playing with an iPod nano in a dock. He doesn't speak yet but does sign, so after some practice and patience he now crudely signs "music" when he wants to play with it. And it's also led to him opening the pantry, grabbing something (e.g. Cheerios), running to his room, and munching on them there.
Bang on pots and pans. Neil said so.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVwQ9jBuoFA
Pepper - I couldn't get that No-Man's Land link to work...thoughts?
Fixed it.
Thanks.
Not exactly what I was expecting to read, but excellent piece nonetheless!
Yeah, it's primarily about Biss's reflections on moving to the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago. She wrote a whole book about it, and I definitely plan to pick it up at some point this year.
I thought it was interesting. And rambling. Not unfocused, but hitting a lot of different points quickly so that I had things I wanted to maybe bring up here to talk about but now I've forgotten them.
I did realize that the younger two girls are missing out on the "Laura and Mary" books because when I finally have them ready for bed, I'm not going to read them chapter books (LBR fusses and AJR asks the most in-depth and rambling questions). When CER and AJR were roommates (up until this fall), CER went to bed later and I read AJR fairy tales. I made it all the way through a Reader's Digest collection I found second-hand. I had also read her all of the first Pooh book. And the entire Thomas the Tank Engine collection (the original stories). I had gotten her partway through a Costco-purchased leatherbound "101 Tales from Grimm" when the move happened. And I read them as unflinchingly as I could (a few word changes in one is all I can remember) even though EAR (who encouraged me to read fairy tales) thought that some of the most morbid should be elided.
I wouldn't call her writing dense--it's too well-written for that--but she does pack in a lot of pretty big ideas in a small space. One of the reasons I'd like to pick up her book on this topic is because I'd like to think more about the points she raises and see how she explores them in a longer form.
She reminds me of a lecturer at last year's homeschool conference. He touched on a lot of things and made a lot of dry jokes (my kind!) and I was glad I was taking notes so I could discuss things later with EAR or else I would have forgotten that he had even mentioned it because I was too interested about the next thing. I ended up scuttling my original plan so I could catch another of his lectures; it wasn't even a topic I was interested in, but it was so intellectually fun. I hope he's back again.
This is timely, as I was just watching my six- and eight-year-old girls walk to school this morning. There's no sidewalk on our street, so they have to walk on the side of the road or across our neighbors' lawns. They don't think anything of it, but I worry about terrible drivers. But what are you going to do?
We don't have a lot of rules. My 11-year-old roams the streets of St. Paul pretty much as he pleases. He's never been much of a risk-taker, but one of his good friends has an older brother. So, he's learned from that family that there is a lot going on outside of his yard and street. In the winter, he spends a lot of time skating on outdoor ice at the local park and recs, generally until the rink turns the lights out. The other day he wanted to go by himself (He usually goes with a buddy.) after dark and I told him "no." He didn't think that made any sense and I'm not sure the logic holds up after thinking it over. Might have to backtrack on that one.
And I'm going to try to click on some of these links later in the day. Nice post!
Reflectors, blinking lights, and bubble wrap!
To be honest, walking around streets kind of freaks me out. When it's dark, it is so easy to miss someone walking. This is even worse when people like wearing dark clothing. I added two reflectors to my backpack that might help, I don't know. I just try to always be aware of things while hoping I don't mess up at the same time a driver does.
Just this morning, I had a lady start walking across a street while I was turning right onto it while staring into the sun. I almost didn't see her before stopping. If I had continued, I probably would have driven through the intersection before she got to the side of the street I was walking on, but it was still stupid of her not to wait a whole 2 seconds while I went through. Instead, I had to wait 10-12 seconds for her to cross.
I agree with you both. My younger kids are only three or four feet tall, making them even more difficult to see. Other than walking streets, parking lots scare the hell out of me too.
You joke, but we did that to a guy at a rugby tournament. He blew his knee out the previous week, so he hit the sauce first thing on the bench. Turns out this tournament is in small town Iowa just outside of town. We took one of the sideline flags and stuck it down his shirt so we could find him when he inevitably wandered off into the corn to take a bathroom break.
This is a great topic. Our home was always the epicenter of our neighborhood, so when I was younger that was just where we all played, most of the time. Made it easy for Mom and Dad, I'm sure. Probably about the time I could start telling time I could go to select places on my own, always with a curfew. Aquinas is now 5, and I think he could handle a lot of things on his own, but living in a 3rd floor apartment makes this a dicier prospect as we can't respond as quickly to any needs that might arise. I'm looking forward to taking neighborhood roamability into account whenever it is that we move out of here.
I love the underpinnings of this topic being brought up - unreasonable fears. I know that I have to fight them off with great frequency. I think my vivid imagination does me no favors here, and never has re: fears generally. Philosofette has an aunt who has left fear cripple her and her children significantly, so seeing that up close, I have a handy reference to the dangers of giving in to fear.
My kids seems to mostly suffer from my same ability to exaggerate and imagine fear, so they're fairly risk adverse on their own. But Aquinas also seems to have inherited my absentmindedness, which can lead him into not paying enough attention to legitimate dangers too. Sigh. How I ever survived past 7, I do not know...
My last thought on this is that I'm generally offended by people who don't like kids playing by themselves, etc. I've heard enough stories of neighbors calling the cops, protective services, etc. That kind of thing really irks my raiders.
We had a wiffle ball league in my neighborhood growing up. We kept basic stats in a stat book, and later on someone's home computer*. When there was school we would play from the time we got home until dark or dinner time, whichever came first. In the summer we'd generally start in the morning and play until enough of us had to leave for real baseball practice or some other activity. When my house was the field, there would often be people playing in our yard when I was not home. We had no adult supervision outside the possibility that a parent may have checked out the window every so often, and we certainly had nobody older organizing our games.
I would say "get off my lawn", but it doesn't quite seem appropriate for this "in my day" rant....
*When I moved in as a 4th grader I had to correct the way they were calculating ERA. They were starting everyone at 3.00, and adding a certain number of points for every run allowed while taking away points for scoreless innings. Ick.
Back in my day, when I saw a grown-up looking out their window as I trespassed through their yard, I hurried up to get off their property.
(I addressed earlier that trespassing was both though woods and as a shortcut to the park.)
Exact same with me. Pretty much baseball at the park down the street all summer long (with brief games of street hockey*, basketball, soccer, and capture the flag intermixed) and lots of stats kept.
*living across the street from Darby Hendrickson' s family forced hockey into the rotation for about three days a year
[Same pull-quote as Scot].
Yeah. How are kids supposed to learn self-sufficiency or responsibility if there's always a check behind them or around them?
14 to be old enough to be left alone in IL. 14.
What's the age of consent in that state? (17, per google.)
AMR, do you live in IL?
I do, and that sounds insane. I thought that was just to be left alone with other children (a la babysitter)
No, but IL shares borders with both WI and IA, each of which shares a border with Minnesota (where I am).
I'm just going off that pullquote from SoCal.
We also have the added concern in that we homeschool, so our kids are home all the time. Occasionally the wife will leave them at home while she takes the baby to the doctor or some such. She has a fear that one day we'll come home to red flashing lights. Not because someone got hurt, but because the police found our kids home by themselves.
We've got HSLDA to help if we ever get in a bind. It feels like insurance via legal representation, and helps me worry less. I'd recommend based on that alone.
there are limits to free-range parenting, however.
Well, there was ramen...
I've lived on it. It gets boring unless you get the spicy kinds.
I stopped when my blood pressure kept creeping up.
Oh man, I bet you guys have never experienced the joy of cup noodle.
I did a bit, but trended more to the Korean Kimchi flavors.
Good too. Spicy miso is my jam.
You eat it on toast?!
Behold! The Power Of Bread!
I found this article linked to a discussion of the kids who were found walking from the park. It sort of traces the recent history of parental protection of kids.
This is where I fall as well. I have also taken pains to give my 8 and 5 year old responsibility. The oldest is responsible to make his own lunch, pack his back pack, and get ready for the day at school on his own. I will not bail him out if he forgets something. I see too many parents of my high school students enabling their kids to avoid responsibility and dropping everything to run a lunch, homework, etc to school for the forgetful student.
I'd like to think I would hold firm on that, even if my 8 year old forgot his lunch, I just haven't been presented with that scenario to find out. I could see that causing me some guilt.
I like to think I would hold out, too. Kids have missed birthday parties and other things because they didn't have things done.
I phrased it, "If you don't do this, you don't get to do that." So that as cut-and-dry as it could be.
Sometimes I regret phrasing it that clearly.
I read a bunch of Lenore Skenazy blog posts and articles a few years ago. She's definitely colored my opinions on this.
(Combined with "oh yeah, I did x, y, and z at this age.")
Warning! Ramble ahead. Scattered, mildly related thoughts and anecdotes.
EAR once found HPR (now 9, then 6 or 7) outside tied up in one of our apple trees and unable to free himself. He had used slip knots in a jumprope as a harness. EAR freaked out because he could have hung himself. (The rope was under one arm, that's how it got so he couldn't move the arm.) I scolded him for using the wrong knot for the job. "Next time, you've got to use a bowline." Which led me to buying Cub Scout and Boy Scout books (like hell I was going to let them use mine, I've seen what they do to books (now I understand why Dad was so protective of his field guides)), which led me to signing HPR up and me being a Den Leader. So long as I can leverage this into another trip to Philmont, it will be worth it.
CER (now 11 then 9) once sneaked a pocket knife and tried whittling. She got her finger along with the stick. On Easter. So we went to urgent care.
So I had to teach her how to cut away from herself, which includes not having your hands downblade.
There's a creek in the woods behind our house, an outlet of storm sewers on its way to the River. There are logs across it. When first CER and HPR asked to cross it as a bridge, I hesitated. But I really just initially said no because I didn't want them to slow us down. I thought of Skenazy and changed my mind. But I told them to scoot across first and do it one at a time. Now I hope they fall in sometime so they can realize that mud and water are OK.
There's ice on the river. That scares me. Right now, when we walk on the frozen-over pond or creek, I go first because if it can hold me, it can hold them. (And I've fallen through a few times, and we keep walking. Last winter, they thought my frozen pant-leg was hilarious (less than a month before we saw a similar scene in Frozen). They need to fall through the ice on the creek and pond, where the water's at most 3 feet deep, just so they can know that it can happen and what it feels like when ice is cracking. I never realized that I learned this from the outdoor skating rinks in New Ulm. I'd hang out there during spring thaw, when it melted and froze over. But it was only about 6-12" deep, so all I ever got was wet boots.
CER and HPR hang out in the small woods on our side of the trail reasonably often when it's nice out. I like them being close so I can call them in, I've never tested their punctuality, and I have problems with it when I'm off running errands or walking through the woods.
When I talk about strangers and stuff like that I try not to do it assuming the people are bad guys. Sometimes people do lose their dogs around us. It's not bad for them to ask you if you've seen it., and to let them know if you do. It's not right for them to ask you to help out by going with them. I fear that the way "bad guys" are portrayed in that "stranger danger" stuff makes it seem like the bad guys are as thinly and obviously bad as the bad guy from Avatar, which makes it seem that if it's a good or friendly person, it's OK.
The thing I struggle most with is "peer pressure" from our peers and neighbors. No one does that so if anyone does it something must be wrong. I wanted to let CER bike "around the block" and EAR's mother was around at the time (she grew up in this neighborhood even though most of it was potato fields then) and said it was a horrible idea and what if anything and things are different and she's young and its different for girls and ugh, I couldn't refute it and keep the peace. (I really like my in-laws in general.) It wasn't the battle then.
My kids get more alone outdoors time than most, probably. Because of where we live and homeschooling (though they can't be too conspicuous when school's in session) and the amount we limit TV until it really is too damn hot or buggy out. Our limits aren't set times or anything, just requiring permission and a bias towards "no". Cutting the cable and my breaking the habit surely helps. (EAR was never as tied to the tube, maybe because her parents had similar restrictions.)
I found the walkie-talkies today while looking for batteries.
HPR still loves rope when it's nice out. CER has her own pocketknife. (It has an angel charm on it.)
If I catch kids trespassing, I'll grumble and maybe just stand out on the deck.
When it's adults, that's different. And that's the form our old persistent trespasser took. The one that opened the gate to our back yard. (Our yard isn't fenced, but because it's next to the trail and as good a place to cut through yards as possible, we've got 12 or so feet of 2-ft high fence—glorified rabbit fencing really—with weeds and shrubbery on each side. I don't even open the gate myself, I just step over it.)
I was fiercely independent as a child, and my parents didn't so much offer me freedom as much as I simply took it. They recognized that I seemed to handle myself well enough and they just kind of went along with it in the end. I think I was coming home by myself after school before they got back from work at least by 4th grade.
Looking back, I'm also pretty surprised with how much rope I was given to run around in a quieter but nonetheless city neighborhood. Things I don't see myself letting the boy do. Of course, I'm already seeing him assert his own independent streak (I suppose that whole Montessori thing isn't suppressing that at all either). Should be a fun next few years.
No question that exposure to Montessori philosophy in recent years has shaped my thinking about this. Not to mention the jalapeño's insistence on doing a good number of things himself...
Apropos
I had a pretty good amount of freedom to roam the neighborhood as a kid. I feel like I remember that we were able to go pretty much wherever at about 6 or 7. By the time we were 12 or so, we were cruising around the neighborhood on the three wheeler mini-bike until one jerk a couple blocks down called the cops. There were also a couple of wooded areas well out of our parents visible reach that we played in near every day. Also spent some time fishing in the pond across the street from the Stillwater prison around the 12-14 year old range. But then, it was a relatively secluded and quiet neighborhood just off the bend of hwy 36 heading into downtown. (which now currently has the highway going right through where our house used to be, which feels really weird when I drive over it now.)
I'd like to give my kids similar freedom, but its hard to say at this point. I think they're just a bit too young to really know how they'd handle that sort of room to roam. We do live in a quiet neighborhood in a quiet town and there is a park two blocks down that I can see from our house (with a soccer field just behind it) and there's a bunch of other kids running around, so it might not be too difficult of a thing to do. There's too much sports pick-up game potential for that open field down there for me not to, really.
Might be the times they grew up in (Depression/WWII) or just us growing up in really small towns and rural areas but my parents gave us the freedom to roam wherever we wanted with a few exceptions (the river was off limits, so of course we came to know the banks of the Wabash intimately) . By third grade I could range as far as my bike and legs could take me. My wife was babysitting her little brother and sister by the time she was 10, and other people's babies when she was 12. So you can probably guess where I come down on the issue. But this really struck me several days ago while watching that news report about the free-range parents who were cited for letting their kids walk home from the park by themselves. I think my problem with over-protection lies less with obviously caring parents who have sympathetic motives and more with a legal system that seems hell-bent on turning as many people as possible into criminals, too often for the egregious offense of making their own decisions, and a society that's been so inculcated with fear that it can no longer tell real threats from imagined ones.
a thousand times, this.
Growing up in a rural area meant that there was adventure and mischief. We had essentially two rules: don't trespass (broken rarely), and no playing with sticks (broken constantly). The creek that ran through the pasture behind our house was shallow (two feet deep, four feet wide) that we were allowed to play in it at a fairly early age.
A third rule cropped up from that: no bringing the various foul creatures from the creek and putting them in the aquarium.
It's sort of sad that my kids won't live in a world that resembles that at all.
"Don't trespass"? How did you ever get to where you wanted to go?
I guess I wasn't in the country, just a small town with yards to cut through, so maybe things were different.
We had thirty acres. The only downfall to that was that it was all creek, pasture, field, and swamp, and the neighbors had a nice big woods in their back forty.
Usually, we didn't explore it.
I grew up in the central part of the Big City. We had fences between properties, and sidewalks all the way around each block.
Where did people put the snow? JK. I had sidewalk all the way around the block I lived on, so I could go in a two-mile loop without actually crossing the street.
I just looked into it: about 120 feet of elevation change on that route.
On the "boulevards" (the stretch of grass between sidewalk and curb), obviously. 🙂
Those piles frequently got to be 3-4-5 feet high of hard-packed snow. Made for a great trail for winter adventures.
At the intersections, they get higher and you can play king of the mountain. Or dig them out for a snowfort.
Aye.
Question: do girls play
a) Queen of the Mountain (or Princess etc.)
b) King of the Mountain
c) They don't push each other off the top of snow and dirt piles?
We spent many a day at the road ditches, and our aquarium had, at various times: fairy shrimp, bullhead fingerlings, northern pike fingerling, tadpoles, etc etc. The porch always had an array of wet/muddy shoes and most of the time our pants cuffs were damp.
My parents were okay with the various minnows and whatnot, but my mom drew the line at the giant water bugs (which would always quickly tire of the aquarium and escape). Boatmen were pretty cool, though.
Ha, and now I see via Wiki...
I loved water boatmen, water striders, and "toe-biters" and other insect larvae, but never introduced any of those into the aquarium. We were also adept at catching crayfish from their clay mound covered hidy-holes. My favorite were dragonfly larvae -- ugly as they were, they were just as adept at eating mosquito larvae as the grown dragonflies were at eating grown mosquitoes
This is just cool.
more with a legal system that seems hell-bent on turning as many people as possible into criminals
Hear, hear! When I have qualms about granting the kids freedom, it's not about whether they'll be safe by themselves, but whether they or I will have to talk to a police or park officer. (or neighbors, or in-laws, etc.)
I had a handful of discussions and thoughts about this over the weekend.
My personal situation sounds typical. Felt like I had a fair amount of freedoms as a kid. General free reign through the neighborhood and plenty of solo bike trips on the city paths and parks.
Now as a parent our kids are naturally independent, especially the boy (8) (and probably our littlest (2! tomorrow)), and for as much as we worry, they're not oblivious to danger and don't do objectively dangerous things, so we're also intending to encourage as much independence as we reasonably can.
I recently started listening to these podcast things (this new learning amazes me...) and NPR's Invisibilia has been very relevant. Their episode on Fear opened with a researcher's observations of how children play when unattended. Three and four-year-olds off in the woods. This was a generation ago. When he returned to the same town a generation later (same demographics, same risks...as many controls as you might hope for in such a thing) he could barely find kids that were permitted to do play alone in any way whatsoever, to include the children of the children he had observed alone in the woods years ago. Holding them back was all the fears they had of the, you know, things, that happen.
The next episode of that same podcast was on expectations and how deeply we're affected by the expectations of those around us. The mother of a rambunctious blind boy spoke of all her fears that she had to set aside so as to not limit her child, and lo and behold, he never properly got the message that "blind people can't do that," and managed to figure out how to move almost as freely through the world as you or I. It made me vary wary of the messages and even feelings directed at my kids. We're no doubt perpetuating the fears that we're supposedly protecting them from.
Of course, as parents we're affected by society's expectations and stumble a bit when someone questions our methods. At the old neighborhood where we eventually had a block of parents on the same page about the roaming kids (four adjacent houses - FREEDOM!!), my wife was at one point getting informative calls from one of the mothers to the effect of, i.e. our daughter didn't have her shoes on, etc.
We can tell there will be similar attitudes in the new neighborhood. ("He stepped in the street and I almost had a heart attack!") We see the middle-schoolers sitting in the car at the bus stop with mom or dad. If that's your quality time, great, but I suspect it's some sort of fearful obligation that I can't help but object to.
The wife and I speculated as to contributing factors, and I suppose they are many. As family sizes are reduced, parents have both more investment (time, emotion, material) in each child as well as more time to commit to and worry about each. Losing a child is no longer as statistically likely as, say, two generations ago, but whether or not we like to admit such a thing, the loss of an only or one-of-two children is a bigger hole and potentially more devastating a shock, long term, especially working under today's expectations. More to worry about.
We also live in a nation where the two-income family is more and more of a necessity, especially if you're going to have all of the things a reasonable American ought to, and those economics are putting further downward pressure on family sizes.
You'll see plenty of parenting jokes on the facebooks and such about standards of care for the 1st (sanitized toys, photo shoots, coordinated wardrobe) vs. 2nd vs. 3rd child (drinking water, access to knives), and there's some truth to those as well. My mother-in-law has less small child parenting experience than I do, yet feels the need (as Grandma, which is to be expected) to offer all manner of advice on their care. When your primary souce of traditional parental wisdom (elders) never had enough children to learn that they're going to be ok, it's no wonder that our parental fears are expanding.
I don't really have much for solutions. Show them courage and a rational assessment of the world around them, I suppose. Recognize they may not learn to be adventerous from the kids around them, so play like a kid with them and let them lead the way. Expect them to be good, expect life to be good. Learning that from us would a pretty good start.
ZG, this was a really articulate and well thought out comment - good stuff.
Sorry about that. It happens from time to time. Will attempt to keep things half-bakef in the future. 😉
so play like a kid with them and let them lead the way
I've actively been modelling adventurousness that I'd lost when I started with kids and had to y'know, take care of them, and also study for and pass my exams.
My dad did a lot of his exploring via hunting, but being in the suburbs and not a small town means my opportunities to drive 15 minutes, walk around for an hour, and drive home with dinner are pretty limited.
And I'm just not that into fishing. Too much sitting in one place. So I bird and just explore the woods. I feel very lucky to live next to a large chunk of land that won't ever be developed (parts of Maple Grove were inviting until I realized that the gravel pits* would soon be tracts of housing). But that was by design. We had been looking at houses for a good five years or more before we found this [moldy*] foreclosure that was right where we wanted to be.
*gravel pits are just man-made Badlands
**not that we knew that
These subjects sure get me talking.
I've been more conscious of this stuff since becoming a Den Leader for Cub Scouts. Not just thinking who I want to be for my kids, but who I want my kids' friends to be, how I can encourage more getting out there and doing and playing among HPR's friends, and just other boys in general, to raise the latent normalcy of those behaviors I'd like to see more of.
I'd say that one of my faults with this whole free-range thing is wanting to free range with them. Going out is fun and I want to watch them out there having fun and being part of it, too. It's not the same impulse as helicoptering, but the effect is a lot the same. Still under Dad's watchful eyes. But I let them run ahead. Especially when they complain that my sitting and watching a particular bird is boring. "But take your sister (AJR) with you." to teach responsibility, of course.
That reminds me . . . I've been meaning to check out more of Invisibilia. I heard a snippet on the radio a week or so ago and was intrigued.
It's certainly interesting stuff if you have the time to listen to another show.
Bubble wrap won't protect them from RSV, which my wife just learned Niblet contracted during his first week of daycare.
Awesome.
Scary for the little ones. Take care.
Scary for the parents of little ones too. I'm home with him today and I can certainly tell he's not feeling well.
I grew up on a lake in North-central MN. At the end of our lake, there is a dam. On the top of the cement dam structure is an iron enclosure/fence around the dam.
We used to jump off this iron fence and dive/do cannon-balls, avoiding the two cement arms that stuck out from the front of the dam enclosure. There were many ways that someone could get really hurt there, but we were careful.
Many years after I left there to go off and find my way, I heard that some kid while diving had hit one of the cement arms below and gotten severely injured. In response, the local authorities put a chain link fence above the iron link fence. So now there is even a higher, less secure platform from which to jump/dive from. Natch.
My FiL tells tales of how he and his friends used to swim in Mill Pond at the end of Elm Creek in Champlin, MN (it's now split by 169). They'd ride through the culvert-type thing under the dam and West River Road and into the creek's estuary into the River. Like a fully submerged waterslide.
Someone has to have died at some point doing that. If not there, then somewhere similar.
My Dad and his cohort used to slide down their driveway and across Highway 55 in Hamel. Not exactly the kind of healthy free-ranging we had in mind for our kids.
One of two good sled hills from my youth would spit you out on a main thoroughfare if the snow-berms were low or you had too much speed and bad aim. The first building on the left was the Hospital, so there was that. If anyone knows where the NU Diocese's new big building is above the hospital, it was from that hill down. There used to be two paired oak trees up there, but then one bit it in a windstorm.
(The other good hill had most of that 120-foot elevation change and was usually so polished into ice that it was a struggle to get up it. That hill had a steeper but less-polished side hill for which you actually had to avoid trees.)
And my dad just crossed the Minnesota River while the ice was breaking up to go varmint hunting outside city limits.