When I was little we lived in a house with a tall privacy hedge surrounding the back yard. It didn’t close off the back yard from the front and there was also one bush missing so that our yard communicated with the back-door neighbors. From the time I was fourish my brother and I (he’s 2 1/2 years younger) played outside pretty much unsupervised. We also walked the 6 or so blocks to school by ourselves. Rain, snow, wind, no rides. Now granted we lived in a little town that, at the time, was considered too far outside of Chicago to even be a suburb. There was a corn field inside town limits until I was in high school. It was very quiet and we knew all of our neighbors and a good 75% of the people in town.
Where I live now isn’t a bad neighborhood and there’s an elementry school 4 blocks away, but somehow I think that when the time comes I will be taking them there, or at least walking with them. I don’t know if I’d feel safe letting the kids walk by themselves. I certainly don’t let them play outside by themselves. Though, I wish I could.
Am I being paranoid or is it just not safe anymore for kids?
I don’t have a kid but my brother and myself bike to school every day. We don’t do it if it’s raining. Our neighborhood is extremely close (5 min. by car) to the school, so it’s a short bike ride, and most kids in our neighborhood walk or bike. I don’t feel uneasy doing it, since there’s generally a lot of kids around and pretty much nobody walks or rides alone. The only times I felt uneasy were when we used to take shortcuts through the long stretches of desert that are on either side of our neighborhood, since there are lots of places for something or someone sinister to hide.
But I’m speaking about Small Town USA. I don’t know about other cities/towns.
When I was younger and went to the middle school that’s actually near my home, I used to walk home all the time. I didn’t walk to school very often, since class started at 7:30 and it was usually too dark to be safe.
Several other kids who lived on my street used to walk also. There are still large groups of children that walk home. They pass by my house everyday. Of course, this is a quiet area, with plenty of families to watch out for children out and about. It’s quite safe, so long as you avoid the main road.
My kids don’t walk to school. My daughter takes the bus, my son is delivered to his school via mamataxi. My daughter’s school is about 1+ mile away, plus there are no good sidewalks and it’s relatively hilly. There is a bike path, but I’d don’t think any of the kids ride it. The kids that are closer do walk up to school.
I recall in first and second grade walking to the school at St. Matthew’s in Seattle. Seemed like a very long way and at least as hilly as here, but there were some cut throughs. I wonder how far it really was.
I drive my two older kids (Kindergarten and Second Grade) to school on my way to work in the morning, but they walk home every day. Rain, snow, the whole nine yards. It’s only about a mile or so from their elementary school to our house, and a few other kids walk the same route.
Of course, we live in a fairly small town (less than 3,000 people) about twenty minutes from Madison, WI. So it is pretty much still a quaint midwest small town enviornment. If I we lived right in Madison (which isn’t a “big city” kind of city anyway) I don’t know if I would feel as comfortable about it.
But as it is, it’s great. The kids love the freedom of walking by themselves, and my wife loves not having to get the three year old up from her nap to go pick them up.
I quite frequently see newspaper stories stating that it is no more dangerous than it ever has been, it is just that child abductions etc. get a lot more publicity than they used to.
My brothers and I always walked to middle school in a southern suburb of Denver.
High school was farther away and for that we took the bus.
Now I have my own kid in the center of the same city. The streets which have to be crossed are busy, and there are no crossing guards. He mostly walked to his neighborhood elementary, but I picked him up a lot, esp after a classmate got hit by a car. Now in middle school, I take him in the pitch black mornings (my job is nearby) and in the afternoons I mostly pick him up, but once/twice a week he takes the public bus.
We looked into him taking the bus in the mornings. But I have to admit, when I saw 8 different cars running the red light at the street he would have to cross, I just freaked out. So now I get to work an hour early because I take him to school. The job is nearby, and I do get a lot done.
I do think kids these days do not walk to school the way they did In My Day. Many/most families have both parents working, there are errands to be done after school rather than during. Also I think it is partly the fear, whether justified or not, of kidnappings etc. And it is partly that kids today do not necessarily go to their neighborhood school. (Both my kids went to magnet middle schools, older one went to a magnet high school.)
You probably won’t be with your children every minute of the day.
Make sure they know what to do in a dangerous situation. Tell them never to get in a car with a stranger. Not even if the stranger says something like, “You mom is really sick and had to be rushed to the hospital. She sent me to pick you up.”
Tell them if a stranger wants them to go somewhere, find a phone and call you/grandma/whoever and ask what to do.
Make sure they know their full name, your full name, their phone number, grandma’s phone number, and Uncle Tommy’s phone number.
Make sure they know their address.
End Paranoid Alert.
I live in a quiet suburb, and the kids all walk home from school. But here’s the important thing: in the six years I’ve been here, none of them have been abducted.
How do I know that? Because it would be in the news. Whenever a child is missing here, they issue a special alert. It’s on the news, and there are special bulletins that interrupt regular programs.
You should be able to find out if any children in your area have been abducted or hit by a car fairly easily. This will give you an idea of how safe or dangerous it is for you kids to walk to school.
Obviously you have to decide this for yourself. My point isn’t to relax and not worry about it. My point is you can find out what you should worry about, and prepare for it.
Which to me means it was more dangerous than my parents thought. I don’t think it’s a bad thing that we have more publicity around abductions. One abduction is too many. And if that one is my child, what do I care if it’s the only one in the country?
I walked to and from school from 2nd grade to 6th grade. I will never forget the man who tried to get me to get in his car. I was late and the day was cold and snowy and I was sorely tempted by his offer, but I knew you weren’t supposed to get in cars with strangers.
Thank goodness he took my no for an answer, but what if he hadn’t? He was probably just a nice guy who felt sorry for a cold kid trudging through the snow, but what if he wasnt’?
I was completely vulnerable. I was on a residential street with absolutely no one around. Probably most people who lived there were at work, and of those at home, how many were looking out their windows just then? And of those looking out their windows, how many would’ve been fast enough to even get a license plate if the guy forced me into his car?
My 3 year old is in preschool now, but the elementary school is within easy walking distance. There is no way I would ever let him walk alone. Call me paranoid, I don’t care. Sheltered is better than molested or dead.
My daughter has never walked to school. But then she’s disabled. She walks with crutches now and used a wheelchair in past years, so she’s always been bused to school. I drove my son to and from school until he started the 2nd grade – it was about a mile and a half each way. 2nd through 5th grade he walked to and from. His first two years of middle school, his school was too far to walk (3 or 4 miles) and he rode the bus. He walked to and from the bus stop, though. We moved to another state the summer after his 7th grade year and his new middle school was close enough to walk again (really close, actually, a little less than a mile) and walk he did. Actually, the middle school was so close to our house that, a couple of times, my daughter even walked home on her crutches – if she needed or wanted to stay after school for something and would miss the bus. Nick’s in high school now, about 4 miles away, and he rides the bus again. The bus stop is 3/4 mile away and he walks there.
It comes down to assessing risk/benefit/loss. In a country of 280 million people, all sorts of things are going to happen to “one in the country”. Often, the measures to prevent that chance are not worth the loss of normal behavior. We travel in cars and on planes. We take our kids with us. There is an element of risk, but we accept that as part of the modern lifestyle.
Actually, I don’t have a problem with taking the kids to school rather than have them walk. Not walking to school is not a great loss. But to deprive kids the pleasure of playing together outside, unattended, because of the very small risk of something happening is, to my mind, a very sad thing to do.
Exactly my thoughts, Amarone. My son has always preferred to walk to school with his friends and I wouldn’t deprive him of that. And not only that – I think having a kid walk to school gives him or her a degree of control over their day. It’s a little lesson in responsibility. If my son was pokey about getting dressed and eating breakfast in the morning, he had to hurry to school – maybe even by himself if his friends left without him. Or, if they piddled around on the walk to school – grabassing, or whatever – they earned themselves a tardy note.
Even with my daughter I always tried to weigh the risk/benefits/loss angle when making decisions about what she’s allowed to do. Walking to school was never an option for her – as I said before, she walks with crutches since middle school and used a walker and wheelchair before that. However, I allowed her, at an appropriate age, to visit friends in the neighborhood on her own and to play with her friends outside without my direct supervision. As a result I can honestly say I’ve met very few kids with as severe a disablility as Doe has – her diagnosis is moderate-to-severe spastic diplegia cerebral palsy – who are as independant and self sufficient as she is. In fact, I’ve met no kids with similiar disablilities who are as independant and self sufficient. There is a girl Doe’s age (15) whom she sees on church outings occasionally. Their levels of disability are very similar, but that girl has never been on so much as a school field trip without one or both parents tagging along. When they first met Doe, it was on a church sponsored hayride. Doe and my son were there with their church group – supervised by the youth group leaders, but I wasn’t with them – and Anna was there with her group, her group’s youth leaders AND both of her parents. Even when they all stopped for dinner, Anna and her parents ate together at a small table apart from the other kids. According to my kids, Anna has some pretty serious social lags – she doesn’t seem to know how to talk to other kids, except for Doe. And, Doe says that even when it’s just the two of them (and Anna’s parents, of course) she doesn’t seem able to discuss anything other than her disability. Doe and Anna have met up at several other events – Anna always with her parents and Doe never. Anna’s parents say, “Your folks let you come alone?” Well, it takes all kinds, I guess. And I suppose Anna’s parents are as appalled by my parenting as I am by theirs…
When I was a kid, starting about 3rd grade, I took the city bus to school. It was 45 minutes away and took 2 busses and about 10 minutes of walking to get there. This was in Tucson, AZ which isn’t small. I had people try to kidnap me twice, I had men chase me into stores, I had adult men tell me that they loved me on the bus. I had a guy show me his penis in the back of the bus once. Sometimes I’d miss the bus and end up coming home in the dark.
Now that I have a child, thinking back, it scares the shit out of me. Dominic takes the school bus to and from school, and the bus stop is less than 30 seconds from our house, and is visible from the living room window. And that’s how I like it.
My kids are too young for this, the oldest is two. That’s a big part of why I don’t let them out by themselves yet. I can’t tell them things like don’t go off with strangers. They won’t understand. Knowing their phone number is a while away too.
I often think that I shouldn’t give the powers of evil such a hold on our lives and live like I want to. Maybe when the little one is closer to two…
I almost put in a comment about “at the appropriate age”, and now wish I had. Yes, I would agree with being more protective with the very young. It is the parents that don’t let the 7+ year olds play unsupervised that I disagree with.
My son takes a school bus now. He is in 4th grade… The school is couple miles away and you have to cross few dangerous intersections to get there.
Though he did walk from school in 2 and 3rd grade. We lived in San Diego, CA at the time and the school was just half a mile away. I felt uneasy when he began walking home untill I got an opportunity to talk to the older fifthgraders who were taking the same route and they agreed to keep an eye on him.
I think I was more afraid of him being run over by a car than actually being abducted.
They started walking to school alone together when the oldest was in Gr. 3, the youngest in Gr.1. School was very close by, maybe a 10 minute walk. It was a bit hard for me to decide to do this but I felt it was important for them to start learning independence. (When I was a kid, I had a housekey by age 10 and was coming home at lunchtime to make myself a hot lunch.)
When the oldest was 12, he got a key to the house and was in charge of looking after his brother until I got home (about an hour.)
Now the oldest is 15, in high school, he’s gone to catch the bus with his buddies before I even get up sometimes. I still have breakfast with the youngest but he walks to school on his own now.
