Okay, I’m going to try a poll on this. Recent news coverage of parents having to deal with the fallout from allowing their children to play in parks or walk to the store unaccompanied by an adult has gotten my ire up. People who are good parents are being harassed by cops and child services agencies, and sometimes charged with child neglect for allowing kids to have some independence. I think it’s bullshit.
I remember being shocked about ten years ago when I heard a parent tell a child in a grocery store: “Don’t get out of my sight. Someone will take you!” To me, that’s child abuse. Like most my age, I grew up outside as soon as I was in grade school, playing with my friends. When we moved to a city that wasn’t on the side of a mountain, I had a bike and was free to ride it where I pleased.
For people to report a child/parent to the police when there is no immediate danger is to project one’s own paranoia onto those surrounding them.
Free range with prudent controls. By prudent controls I mean a limit on how far they can range, when they have to return, and some lessons in common sense.
I don’t care so much how people are raising their kids as much as this nonsense of the state getting to decide how parents should raise their kids. If there’s a defense fund for parents who are charged with crimes for not imprisoning their kids I’ll contribute to it.
Both can be done well, and both can be done poorly. It all depends on the kid’s personality, the parents’ strengths and weaknesses, the local environment, and the cultural context.
But then my oldest is three, so I’m definitely going to want to keep in range so he doesn’t decide to try and eat the funny colored mushrooms or play pattycake with a skunk. I imagine I’ll lighten up as he gets older.
The anecdote about a child in a grocery store made me think that was some good parenting, so obviously we are on different wavelengths if you thought it was abuse, which I find bizarre.
I’d say that keeping a 3 year old in eyesight is prudent, but keeping a 5-6 year old is overkill, and keeping a 8-9 year old is fully into overprotective land.
3 year olds are prone to doing stuff like swiping things from produce displays and starting to munch, or going into places/messing with stuff that’s not appropriate. Kids a few years older are better about that kind of thing and can be trusted not to wander into the parking lot, or climb into the freezer or things that 3 year olds might do.
This is the part that really pisses me off. People who call the police anonymously about someone else’s children who are not in obvious peril are not being responsible adults, they are being lazy cowards! If you’re really that concerned, how about just going up to them and asking them if they’re okay, rather than calling in an authority (the police) who are likely unprepared and ill-trained to handle it?!
And while I brought up the police handling it, what the fuck, police?! When you get a call about a couple of unsupervised kids in a park, you don’t put them in the back of your squad car like they’re criminals and keep them in there for three hours, you ask them where they live and you take them home you dumb fucks!
I’m a man. Imagine the reaction if I were to come up to an unaccompanied child and start talking to it. Not that I have ever called the authorities on a parent, but I can see why that option would be less fraught than going up to the child directly.
That’s the thing missing in a lot of these discussions - the age of the kid involved. If I let my three year old walk a couple of miles to the nearest park alone, yea I probably deserve to talk to a judge. But a 12 year old? Probably good for them to get some time away from pops.
A local NPR station was interviewing a child psychologist from Boston College on this exact story. He said if it really was so dangerous at a park that children could play without adult supervision then our society has some serious problems and we should focus on that, not on the parents (meaning he thought it was not only stupid, but harmful, to worry about the kids in this situation).
A local woman in Hood River was taking her child out for a swim. She was parked in front of the business that she owned at the time, engine running, air conditioner on. She realized that she had forgotten the two-year old’s life vest, so ran back into the store to grab it. In the two minutes she was gone, somebody called the cops and she was arrested for child endangerment, and of course DCS got involved. She ended up opting for a trial and was acquitted, but she took a lot of abuse in the meantime.
I think in general, aside from the 1 person who’s voted “helicopter” so far, nobody would ever admit to wanting to helicopter parent. The problem is that people do it without realizing it. My father-in-law is a stalwart “in my day” conservative type who would readily tell you about how pussified kids are these days, but he’s the first one to jump in if his grandkids climb more than 6 inches off the ground.
It is so much easier on the nerves to be a helicopter parent. It is eaasy for me, childless, to say I wouldn’t be one. But maybe I would because I do worry about things. And I do tend to assume that children don’t know what they’re doing.
But I think it would be fear of tattle-tell adults that would drive me to helicopter parenting more than fear of danger. I don’t want to be arrested for letting my ten-year-old babysit herself for a few hours everyday, as I was allowed to do when I was that age. And I’m afraid that snitching is only going to get worse. At least right now, most parents were latch-key kids. But in a few years, the kids who grew up with helicopter parents are going to be parents themselves. The idea of a kid walking to school unaccompanied will definitely seem foreign to them.
One million of these. Any desire I’ve ever had to hover has been driven more by self-preservation (and by extension, prevention of my kids being deprived of dad while The Authorities sort it all out) than protection from phantoms.
I spent time in two very different countries: Cameroon and China.
In rural Cameroon, it wouldn’t be unusual to send a three year old to the store down the lane to pick up some soap. A five-year-old might wander by carrying her baby brother. Twelve year olds were sent out to the bush to life alone as part of the initiation ceremony, while teen girls were considered ready for marriage.
And most of the people I met were pretty much the same as anyone anywhere else. Kids were happy. Most people seemed level headed. A few bad apples.
Then I lived in China, where kids are scheduled up the wazzoo and babied at home until they marry. High schoolers would be in class until 9 or 10 PM. Cram schools were considered “fun” compared to everything else. Toddler would hardly be allowed to walk without Grandma a step behind. Kids more or less never left a caregiver’s sight, not that they had any free time anyway.
And most of the people I met seem the same as anyone anywhere else. Kids were happy. Most people seemed level headed. A few bad apples.
And now I live in the US, and people seem the same as anyone anywhere else. Kids were happy. Most people seemed level headed. A few bad apples.
Raise a kid with love, with their basic needs fulfilled, appropriate boundaries and with some level of basic stability, and you’ll probably end up with a good kid. The rest is all details.
To me, the poll options for free range are redundant. I’d argue that it’s not free range parenting unless there are “prudent controls” - it’s just neglect if you’re not doing some parenting/control.
I would emphasize something though - the controls themselves are not really the key issue. The key issue is letting children demonstrate increasing levels of independence and responsibility. That starts at very early ages and advances only as the kids show capability. So when they can play unsupervised in their room, you let them play unsupervised in the back yard. When they can do that, let them play in the front yard. Then at the park down the block for just an hour. Then at the park for three hours. And so on until you have a fully independent adult who can go off to college and thrive on his/her own.
For me, it’s much less age dependent than achievement-related. Just because one ten-year old can’t manage to play by himself in his room without supervision, that doesn’t mean that another ten year shouldn’t be allowed to wander around downtown for an afternoon. As long as they have demonstrated the capability and responsibility for what they’re being permitted to do, that’s the “right age” for it.
