Is it so wrong and dangerous for a twelve-year-old to have a life? Yeah, I’m serious. Twelve-year-old girls, friends, schoolmates, walking around used to be unremarkable. Now it seems like parents are afraid to let their kids have any life apart from them. Again I ask, how are kids supposed to get socialized?
When there are assaults and kidnappings of children, they are rare and the news makes national headlines, is my feeling. (The first time I left my kid, about 11, home alone while I ran out to do an errand, I started to say, “now, while I’m gone -” and she interrupted: “yeah, yeah, no cooking, lock the door, don’t let anyone in, I know, I know”. I had to laugh!) More worrisome now is when they take your CAR to do their wandering.
Here, from wiki on an analysis of violent crime and property crime in the U.S.. THey also have a nifty chart that some guy did by plugging in FBI and U.S. Bureau of Justice stats:
As I said before, most people who think violent crimes are on the rise are often being influenced by TV series that amke serial killers look commonplace (once a week at least) and sensational major media news coverage, like the Natalie Holloway crime, that border on “infotainment”.
Looking at the kids I know, 7 hours a day in school sitting at a desk and structured, supervised activities like sports practice and Girl Scouts are the only times they aren’t under the direct supervision of parents.
I don’t think the problem with this is ‘socialization’ per se (because kids certainly interact as much as ever - but it’s all very different because of technology as you said) but I think the direct result of this is older kids going totally wild and acting as though they’ve never been out of their house as soon as they get their first taste of freedom at 15, 16 (or god forbid, college). There is very little time spent out in the real world learning how to relate to people of all ages and common situations (like behavingly politely in a restaurant when mommy isn’t there, and leaving some sort of tip- something I’ve frequently dealt with as a server), and there’s almost no unsupervised time spent alone with peers which can create huge problems later on. I have to credit the ample time I spent alone with kids around my age starting really young. I seemed a lot more capable than most of the more sheltered kids I knew of setting and maintaining boundaries with people and making good choices in my teenage years when I could have made awful ones like many of my friends (alcohol, drugs, tons of risky behaviors, breaking the law - most of this because they couldn’t seem to see which kids were ‘trouble’ and keep their distance, because the majority of my friends were ‘good’ kids who didn’t want to get in trouble, get drunk and do things they never would sober).
Teens aren’t the same people they will be as adults but they are certainly more capable than a lot of adults give them credit for. Kids need freedom to make their own choices and learn from mistakes starting very young, you can’t expect them to start at age 16 and make good decisions. This applies to social interactions as well as many other things.
It’s natural for a parent to worry any time their kid is exposed to a new part of the growing up process. It’s hard, but just leave it alone. It’ll get easier.
I think what you’re saying is that kids will naturally be exposed to new people and situations as they grow up and that it should happen in a guided and safe environment. I agree that freedoms will increase with age, but I don’t think you’re advocating having preteens roaming the streets without their parents’ knowledge of their location and activities, where their choices/mistakes could include being lured into a stranger’s vehicle, etc. Yes, we should give kids credit for being capable of understanding that there are rules they must live by and that having that structure in their lives means their parents care about them.
I just returned from an enjoyable evening chatting with my neighbour in his tiki hut. We talked about what we did with our friends when we were 12 and 13 years old. In those days, he and his friends routinely biked out to the edge of their city to a lake/marsh, where they swam, built bonfires, and camped out. At that age I was more into canoeing rather than biking, so instead of bike-camping, it was canoe-camping for me, which required a parent to drop us off and pick us up. The first time I guided an adult wilderness white water canoe trip was when I was 13, the same year I started winter camping, and the same year that my friends and I took the train into the city each month to attend the symphony with the money my little business made. At 14 a friend and I went out on our skis for over a week, catching our food along the way.
Times have changed. Kids are often not given the opportunity to explore the world around them, to challenge themselves in that world, and to take real responsibility for their decisions as they learn how to handle themselves in a widening variety of situations. I’m very glad I was a child before the era of helicopter parenting.
No, I am indeed saying that being totally unsupervised by adults is good for children starting quite young. For most of my childhood my mom had no way to know for sure where I was or what I was doing (of course, we discussed my plans whenever I left the house and I was usually doing just want I told her I was - and when I wasn’t, I wasn’t doing anything I shouldn’t - and I came back to the house to check in regularly during the day, and was always home by dark on pain of death). Also ‘being lured into a stranger’s vehicle’ is an unreasonable and extremely, extremely statistically unlikely fear to have about your children’s safety. Some 80% of already-rare child abductions are performed by one of the child’s parents, and most of the others are committed by someone the child knows and trusts.
Well, my daughter and her friend wanted to go to the zoo today, by themselves. I said ‘no’ because it is three buses away, and the second two routes she has never been on. Plus it’s a pretty expensive day out for a girl who doesn’t like animals much. She was confident about the buses, but agreed it was expensive. I wonder what the next idea will be.