Fucking helicopter parents now rule the school, and tell me how to parent.

[SciFiSam]

@jabiru

VG.

I also want to know what the eventual resolution was.

My daughter’s primary school didn’t allow kids to walk home alone until they were ten, but it’s surrounded by very busy roads - and they did make at least one exception that I know of. The kids were also just collected by a parent or some other adult or responsible older child, with no hanging about to sign the child out; if the school didn’t know that person, you phoned ahead, but you could do that 5 minutes before the end of the school day. It was pretty sensible, all-in-all.

And I walked my daughter to and from school every day because, even though it’s a five-minute walk, she’s extremely dippy and there’s a particularly lethal road crossing en route. I hate crossing there, let alone a child too small to be seen over the bonnet of an SUV.

[Euphonious_Polemic]

@Cat_Whisperer

(Said in creaky old grandma voice)Well, it was back in rural Saskatchewan. We all walked to school except for kids bussed in from the farms. In eight years of grade school, I don’t recall ever getting cancelled for weather - if it was cold (and this was an area that routinely got down to -30ºC and stayed there in winter), we were expected to dress warmly and get our asses to school.

That’s nothing!
When I was a kid, my school was on the MOON! We had to walk 360,000 km EACH WAY, and the temperature! I don’t want to say it was cold, but -270 degrees is no picnic! I won’t bother to bore you with the story of the kid who got caught out in a solar storm…

[Drunky_Smurf]

Related helicopter parenting video.

Helicopter Homer

[Spice_Weasel]

Shit, I got my first set of house keys when I was seven - it sure is a different world I guess.

[Greg_Charles]

@TriPolar

The consent form was eventually provided, then signed and returned. Then one day while walking home from school a car ran off the road and killed the assistant principal.

<pedant>That’s ridiculous! How could a car walk home from school?</pedant>

[Cat_Whisperer]

@Euphonious_Polemic

That’s nothing!
When I was a kid, my school was on the MOON! We had to walk 360,000 km EACH WAY, and the temperature! I don’t want to say it was cold, but -270 degrees is no picnic! I won’t bother to bore you with the story of the kid who got caught out in a solar storm…

{Grumbles}Stupid one-uppers. I knew I should have said Jupiter.

[Saint_Cad]

@elbows

Got a friend that’s a lawyer? Get them to draw you up a letter relieving the school of all responsibility as you will be acting outside of their policy AND informing them that your child will be walking.

(Point out, in your letter, that you will keep private the arrangement, not sharing it with other parents and then do exactly that. If anyone asks you about this, just smile and don’t reply, explain to your child that this is a private matter that he should not discuss with others.)

Have it notarized, delivered by registered mail, and then carry on as you wish. They can have no complaint. Stop looking to them to give you a release form and get one created for yourself.

And you know that if anything happens to the kid on the way home, the parent will still sue the school because “the law says” it was the school’s responsibility.

[bump]

Hell, when I was that age, walking home was when all the really good fights happened and the neighborhood pecking order was established.

I also remember walking & riding my bike to the swimming pool from age 7 onward, without my parents, about every day of every summer.

Parents these days are ridiculous.

[Princhester]

@bump

Parents these days are ridiculous.

The problem is that is a stampeding herd of ridiculousness. You may know that everyone is going in the wrong direction but you have little choice but to conform or be trampled.

Personally I have no difficult with our eight year old walking home by himself. He’d be absolutely fine, and if he wasn’t, well there is only so much you can do. Life has its risks. The odds of something happening to him on the way home are probably no worse than they are for plenty of other risks we take all the time without a qualm.

What worries me is that if something did happen, it may well result in highly negative legal and social consequences due to the current popular “wisdom” that kids walking home by themselves are taking a signficant risk and their parents are being grossly irresponsible.

Being incorrect often has nowhere near as severe consequences as being out of step with popular thought. It will take a reverse tide of consensus for the situation to change.