BigT, our school district has a half-day kindergarten, and the kindergarten bus driver will not drop them off without a parent present. However, once they reach first grade, it’s no holds barred, you can get off the bus anywhere and you’re on your own.
I really wish I could let my kids walk to school, but it’s just way too far away.
My seven year old son walks to school by himself and has been since the beginning of this school year. It’s only around the corner, though. But school rules prevent him from walking home alone. I (or someone else on the approved pick-up list) must sign him out every single day. Pisses me off mightily that it’s not my call.
Walked home across the street? Hell, my bus stop was further away from the house than that! I mean, only a block or two, but still, and I had to cross a 40 mph road to get to it.
Parents these days really baby their kids.
Was he rushing home to pick her up, or was he rushing home because there wouldn’t be anyone at their house when she got there? 11 strikes me as right on the edge of the age I’d allow a child to be at home alone for a few hours - certainly I wouldn’t criticize a parent who didn’t want their 11 year old home alone.
To answer the OP - my 9 year old walks to school with 2-4 other kids, about half a mile. I wouldn’t let her walk alone. I drive her to the meeting place first because (a) I’m taking her younger sister to the bus at the same time anyway, and (b) there’s a ridiculously dangerous blind curve right near our house, with no sidewalks, that I’m uncomfortable walking through, much less sending my kids.
Thanks for all your input.
I compare it to walking my dog. I get nervous allowing other people to walk my dog. Being a schnauzer, he will bolt if he sees a squirrel or a bird. All it takes is one bolt in the wrong direction for him to get hit by a car.
Likewise, all it takes is one bad dude to do something horrible.
Either way, the result is a lifetime of regret and second-guessing.
Aw, you can’t live that way forever. And your schnauzer is an animal that can’t be taught how to behave in different situations with different people and develop street smarts.
Anyway, it seems to me that such rules are only suitable for wealthy suburbanites or rural people. Keeping a car is so expensive in NYC that I’ve never done it and know few families that have more than one. Also, in my world both parents usually have to work and can’t drop everything to escort The Little Prince a mile on a route they take every day. Past the age of 8 or so, let 'em walk or buy them a bike or pay your taxes for school buses.
You’re assuming footpaths. (I guess that’s what Americans like me would call sidewalks.) A lot of suburban neighborhoods in the U.S. don’t have them, and they’re even more rare on main roads. Best you can usually hope for there is a wide paved shoulder.
When I was in third grade, I walked 1.5 miles to school. By the time I was in ninth grade, I was walking about three miles.
Kids need to learn to not be afraid of walking.
The likelihood of your child being abducted and killed by a 'bad dude" is millions to one. The likelihood of them being killed in a car accident is much much higher. So not letting your child walk to school out of fear of a ‘bad dude’ is illogical.
You can use the “car” argument to justify all sorts of permissive parenting. Why not let your kids walk down Skid Row on a Saturday night? More kids die in car accidents than get attacked by homeless people.
Anyways, I’m not disagreeing with you- I think my OP showed that overprotective parenting can be silly at times.
My point is more this: if losing your child is the worst possible thing that can happen to a person (to which I’m sure we’d all agree), I’m just wondering whether parents are justified in coddling their kids when it comes to walking vs driving.
My wife is a school teacher, and dismissal time at the end of the day is a MAD HOUSE… parents are swarming like bees everywhere… the parking lot is gridlock.
Aha, there’s another thing–what do you do if there’s no driveways, no parking lots, and usually no parking spaces within several blocks? All my schools have blended into city blocks, no space for cars or sports (although they both had concrete-paved yards.) Google “4318 katonah avenue, bronx, ny” and look at the overhead view. And our backyard was huge compared to most schools.
My sons started walking when they were about 11 and never, ever rode the buss. Part of the reason they could walk home so young was because we purposely bought our house behind the school. When they went to middle and high schools, they still walked home (1.5 miles) but I always drove them there. Great quality time together and I got to make sure they were there on time.
For the OP, I would bet that the dad isn’t rushing home to drive his daughter - he probably has to sign his child out. Schools don’t just let kids leave any time they feel like it. They are deathly afraid of “losing” a kid, as they should be, so the handing off of responsibility is important. More than once I’ve rushed out of a meeting to pick my son up because otherwise he would be sitting alone at day-care when I arrived, with a “where have you been” look on his face. Also, day-care providers don’t like it when you are late and will charge you for it.
And if nobody signs him out what happens?
He becomes the property of the Advantage Schools corporation.
When we decided to move to our present home one of the main considerations was that it was walking distance from our son’s school. I’m convinced that obesity has as much to do with sedentary lifestyle during childhood as diet and walking to school is a great opportunity to prevent this.
He is 9 and cycles there and back most days. It’s less than a kilometre away.
One of us cycles with him, in what may seem like helicopter parenting, but even though the streets here are quiet and there is hardly any traffic, the way people drive makes us fear for his safety - and although we do try to teach him to stop at intersections and look in all directions, he does not apply this 100% consistently. The days he walks, he either goes on his own or one of us walks with him, mainly for exercise and quality 1-1 time.
I walked to school from the age of 7 or 8 - a 20-30 minute walk. People rarely drove their kids to school (1970s - early 1980s).
Where I come from there is virtually no crime and hence no fears of child abduction, but parents there have followed the global trend and no longer let their children walk to school, even when the school is just a few minutes walk away. The main fear is traffic-related and this has become far more dangerous than when I was a child.
I say get rid of all the school and playground zones on the roads, because kids are never allowed to have their feet touch ground outside without a Helicopter Parent hovering nearby (or driving them around).
My son is six and rides the bus. We live less than a mile from the school, but he’d have to cross a very busy, 4 lane road in order to get there, so the bus comes to our neighborhood. I wait with him at the bus stop in the morning. There are five six-year-olds there and they would probably be pushing each other into the street if there were no adults present (they get pretty rowdy and have a daily game of tag or they race each other). The bus stop is on another fairly busy road. In the afternoon, my son walks home from the bus stop by himself. The bus driver stops on our side of the road when he drops them off, so no roads to cross and it’s just a short walk. I’m not worried about anyone grabbing him - I’m worried about a car hitting him.
My son’s school has a pretty strict policy about releasing kids if they don’t get on a bus. Each kid has an assigned number and you have to have the school-distributed card with that number on it in order to pick your child up. They do allow kids to walk home without a parent picking them up, though. I think the sign-out policies are to avoid problems for kids who are in the middle of custody disputes or family arguments. They’re not worried about a stranger kidnapping your child as much as they’re worried about a non-custodial parent picking the child up and the turmoil that would be involved with that. All the stuff I’ve had to sign about which adults in the family are authorized to pick my son up and which adults are absolutely never allowed to makes me think this is a pretty common problem the schools have to face.
I was in elementary school in the 40s and of course I walked. Although we moved a couple times, the distance was always under a mile and we were taught to cross streets. For my last four years of elementary school, one of the streets happened to be US 1, although it was just a city street and we had a traffic light. With my kids, mostly in the 70s, we lived only a half block from the school and they walked themselves from kindergarten on. Around 1980, one mother drove her kids to school and the rest of the parents were appalled. They didn’t know what was to come. Now, nearly all the kids are driven (leaving aside the ones that live more than 1.5 miles away and are bussed) and the traffic around the school is truly appalling and dangerous. I guess that nowadays my wife or I would have to accompany them.
Now my grandchildren never walk, unless accompanied by an adult. Four of them live about a half mile from the elementary school and there is an easy back way that avoids all traffic (only one street has to be crossed and that is a half block long cul de sac). Even when they were 5-11 years old they were always accompanied. Now the two older ones are in Jr. High and are driven and so are the two younger ones still in elementary school. I have heard that a mother who allows her child out alone could be prosecuted for child abuse.
In similar ways, I played out in the street practically every day after school and in the summer. My kids played in the street occasionally, but mostly went to each others house to play. My grandchildren have play dates and organized sports. There is essentially no spontaneous play. And none outside except in a back yard.
It’s not like that everywhere though. 3 of my 4 children are currently outside playing, just playing with neighborhood kids. Nothing organized or scheduled. They do this frequently.
I walked to school at the age of seven with my little brother who was fifteen months younger. I’m not sure of the distance, but I do know that we had to leave at ten after eight and school started at 8:30. Smallish town, no real major streets to cross.