Another kid who played in the B (lightly traveled) streets. We’d shout “car!” and pause the game until the vehicle had passed.
Kids did literally play in traffic in the early days of the auto, jumping on and hitting rides holding onto the side as late as the 1920s.
When i was a kid, 50 years ago, we played in the actual street. We played kick the can, and four square, and kick ball. It was not a dead end, we got out of the way when a car came by. We also shouted “car" to warm each other.
And when it rained heavily, we went to a nearby intersection that used to flood, and we swam in the street. Sometimes idiots would try to drive through and and their cars would die, and a dozen kids would collectively push their car out of the water.
While I’m not (necessarily) questioning your cites, I do think that these stories are often either (a) significantly overblown by the parents or (b) have a lot more context around what the child endangerment actually entailed.
I tried follow the crumbs on your last cite (the Killingly CT one) and from what I can tell it stemmed from a “children’s rights activist” putting out a Facebook call for stories. Note the article was written in 2023 about an event that purportedly happened in 2019. It was not reported at the time. Color me suspicious…
I haven’t tried to follow up on the other ones yet.
As to the OP, my 10-year old walks just about anywhere he wants with his friends, knowing not to cross the major streets without letting us know. On his bike he goes a bit further afield (again, with friends or his brother). They definitely walk up to the store (~0.5 mi) to get snacks or breakfast or whatever.
Without using this anecdote to argue a point, a 13-year-old boy in my county recently drowned when a flash flood roared through a drainage ditch in which he was playing. Very unusual accident for our geography here in central Maryland.
I was a free range kid, too. By current standards, practically feral. I think our yutes could and should be trusted with a little more independence. The over-protectiveness seems to have gone to extremes and we could probably spend an entire thread discussing examples of parents intruding into not only college life but also job interviews.
We didn’t have a stream, we had a little pond. In retrospect, i wonder if we weren’t all playing in sewage from the storm drains, but there wasn’t any danger from the water washing us away.
Same here. A LOT of street hockey.
Wasn’t able to find the article but, what? A 10 y.o. kid got hit by a car? Killed? Any info as to the sort of neighborhood/street?
ISTR kids getting hit by cars when I was a kid (tho I don’t recall any deaths.) No one woulda thought of bringing action against a kid’s parents.
I remember going through a drainage pipe during the summer and not thinking anything about it, but if there had been a sudden influx of water I might very well have drowned. But that’s life, isn’t it? Something that might be so safe might suddenly turn dangerous when conditions change.
Yeah, we didn’t have a pipe. We didn’t have a stream. It was just a low point in the road where the water didn’t go down the storm drain fast enough, or more likely, backed up from the storm drain from all the nearby, higher streets, and overflowed the area. But the storm drain/sewer access was covered by a grate. Nothing larger than a golf ball could have gotten into it, even if it suddenly cleared and sucked all the water back down.
As an adult, i would assume that water was filled sewage and would try to keep my kids out of it. (Although it’s possible it’s a separate system )
Also, as an adult, i didn’t want to risk getting into trouble with the law or my community. So my kids didn’t walk home from school until the school said it was okay. It wasn’t about the distance, it was about being unsupervised at all.
I used to walk abut a mile to a small country store. It was one turn to get out of the neighborhood and then a long walk on the shoulder of a rural highway.
Only a kid would walk that far for a Soda and candy bar.
Today a half mile walk seems reasonable. It depends on the area where they are walking.
We had a proper stream out the back, which we used to play in. (8 and 5). There wasn’t any danger of flash flooding, no danger of slipping in and drowning, some danger of hitting your head and drowning, and as an 8 yr old, I used to worry about the frequent earth quakes, which rearranged the rocks every month or two. I don’t know if that was a realistic danger, but it seemed to me that if we were in the rocks when they re-arranged, we might be in trouble.
The norms are radically different from my childhood in the 90s, when I spent most of my time by myself out of the house. I’m additionally challenged by my son’s developmental differences relative to myself at that age. I was an extremely independent kid. My son wants more independence than he has judgement to handle safely. He frequently doesn’t pay attention to what’s going on around him, and he has a tendency to lull you into a false sense of security by following the rules for months and then suddenly running off without warning. The end result is I hover more than I prefer to.
I could easily see this kid not being able to handle staying by himself until he’s fourteen or fifteen. I started when I was eight.
Does your son have actual developmental challenges or is it just due to the fact that kids are less independent these days?
I ask because my son is starting middle school this year where he can walk to and from school by himself. He’s slightly on the autism spectrum but also suffers from being a little kid who doesn’t always pay attention to what’s around him.
I’m mostly worried about traffic because Hoboken, NJ is a very dense, busy city and people drive like assholes and blow through stop signs and street lights all the time. On the plus side, I’m not really worried about him getting lost. Hoboken (AKA “Mile Square City”) is at most a mile in any direction. And it’s penned in by the Hudson River, the NJTransit/PATH rail yards, the Palisades cliffs, and Weehawken Cove.
I walked to and from school from K through 3 but that was a more suburban neighborhood. With our bikes I think we had maybe a 1 mile or so travel radius
My grandkid has been diagnosed as on the spectrum. She is 10 and entering 5th grade, and has been walking/biking approximately 1/2 mile to school since at least 2d grade. Suburb, involves crossing 1 busy-ish street with no signals/stop signs.
Sure, folk on the spectrum differ. She wanted to walk by herself, so her parents worked on it with her. Her little sister starts K this year.
Good luck.
Just got back from a bike ride w/ the 10-yr-old. I asked her if she and her sister were going to be walkig to school together. She corrected me, saying, “I’m going to be walking her to school!” 
Everyone’s situation differs and they ought to be given considerable latitude to deal with it as they see fit. As a general matter, however, I believe most kids are capable of considerably more responsibility, and at a much younger age, than many adults give them.
And conversely, most adults, regardless of age, are capable of far less responsibility than society expects of them.
'Tis a conundrum.
He is autistic Support Level 2. He’s always seemed behind the 8-ball when it comes to danger recognition and awareness. When he was younger, he seemed unable to understand the urgency in our voices. It’s something we’ve talked to his therapists about. I suspect his real issue regarding safety, though, especially with regard to traffic, is with impulse control and attentional lapses due to ADHD.
Also, he’s five. With all the gains he’s been making, he could catch up with other kids soon, you never know.
I can’t even remember what I was doing at five.