“The idea of the holiday is simple: We take our kids, age 7 or 8 and up, to the local park at 10 a.m. That way, they meet up with other kids from the neighborhood. We wave goodbye and the kids are on their own to come up with something to do. Boredom works in their favor — eventually they start playing because NOT playing is so painfully dull”
I love this idea and wish more parents would stop hovering and start granting their children some freedom. When I mention ideas like to other parents, I often get comments like, “But your children are so mature and responsible, mine aren’t, so I can’t leave them alone” But I think that kids don’t magically become responsible and then you can start giving them real responsibility… it’s the other way around. Kids learn to be responsible by being given real responsibility and freedom.
So take your children to the park, and leave them there!
I’m only 27, and I would play in the park without parental oversight as a kid at that age. It’s not a big deal at all. I would hardly call it revolutionary. I was never by myself, since my little sister tagged along everywhere I went and our neighborhood had a shitload of kids. But 8 is certainly old enough to play with friends at the park and cross residential streets safely.
Ah… the great fear of our times. Crime is at an over 40 year low, and crimes like child molestation is even lower. If you played freely as a child, you child is safer now than you ever were.
While I’m totally not a hovering mom (and in fact got a lecture from my 7 year old last week for being “the only” parent who drops her off at school and doesn’t stay until the bell rings), I do wonder…
Is it conceivable that this is because there are 87%* fewer kids running around unsupervised?
I’m just not sure that, logically speaking, one can point to a downturn in child molestation as a sign that we don’t need to supervise our kids, when that downturn has coincided with a decline in unsupervised children. Seems kind of like saying we don’t need to vaccinate for measles because so many fewer kids get measles now that we vaccinate for it.
I prefer to point out that kids are far far far more likely to be molested by their family members than by strangers. That’s still true, as far as I know, and the same parents who hover in the park don’t generally worry about supervising their kids at family parties.
I have no children so I really don’t have a dog in this fight, but my cousins do. These kids lives are so scheduled…dance, softball, martial arts…whatever. I wonder if the kids actually have any time to play!
I spent my summers on my grandfather’s farm as a kid and some of my fondest memories are from then…playing with the animals, building a fort in the back of his '59 Ford pickup…I went outside after breakfast, came in for lunch, and was out again until dinner.
I think people would be surprised at how little some parents let their kids actually do. My ex will not let the kids out of her sight, not even around the corner 20 feet away. They are not allowed to play on a lot of the playground equipment, and og forbid if they use it ‘wrong’. Me I know they can run down the sidewalk and know they stop at the street. They can run away from me if they want since they know I’ll be there in a minute. They can play however they want on the playground.
My kids are also learning how to go to the bathroom by themselves, they can get stuff from the buffet lines themselves, they know how to say thank you to people who hold the door for them.
Way too many people that I know would never let their kids go to the park by themselves, even if they did it at the same age. I really don’t know what it is, even my own father says stuff if the kids get too far ahead of me.
I think people watch too much TV and don’t think for themselves. We’re going to create a generation of people who are too afraid to do anything.
OK. I’m logging off. When I was a kid we had a Spalding, even if we had to fish out a sewer ball and well that was about it in terms of manufactured toys. And the entire block had to share it.
Well fuck me we had to play social games, read (imagine) and be creative and stuff. And then we grew up to write books and stuff. School looked great after the long un-airconditioned dull 100 year long summer where are parents never saw us until they “turn the street lights off.”
There is no one ever at the park, if I dropped him off I’d find him home in five minutes whining he was bored.
Instead he crosses the street and plays with the kids in the green space in front of the condos where most of the nearby kids live. I then yell at him from the balcony to come home for supper.
I just don’t understand why you can’t have one adult watching. That’s how we did it growing up. The problem isn’t them not doing anything, it’s them getting into squabbles or other bad things. It’s not like you have to sit anywhere near them or anything. Just watch.
For example, my cousin’s friend did the no-supervision thing all her life and wound up having sex with 24yo guys at 14and getting pregnant, and they had to move away. Fortunately my cousin had a better head on her shoulders. If only the dad would have listened.
I’v heard this a lot, but the problem with the 'kids are molested less because they are watched more" idea is that ALL crime is down since then. Everything from car theft to check forging to murder is down hugely, and no one hovers over adults or cars. Crime is down because, well, no one is quite sure but there are lots of theories. But we know that crime is down a LOT. In fact, in New York City murders are the lowest ever since they started measuring in 1963.
So kids are safer now than they have been in at least one generation. Yet parents are more frightened than ever. That why this day " Take Our Children to the Park…And Leave Them There Day" is being promoted, to get parents to lighten up a little.
Our girls are too young to be left alone, but it’d sure be nice if more kids were at the parks. It can be something of an event if there are other preschoolers at our local parks. The skate park is usually busy, at least. The kids there intimidate my stepson.
I think some kids do pretty well with a busy schedule. It’s expensive, though, and time-consuming for the parent.
Kids will always have varying maturity levels. You can raise two kids in the same house and they can both be worlds apart.
My son is very mature, but he’s still young. He’s 7. I’ll finally let him go out unsupervised if I can see him from the window. (We live in an apartment complex.) Am I being overprotective? I don’t even care. I’ve seen what happens when kids aren’t supervised well enough.
At our park, there always are. Because there are kids younger than seven. There are also kids older than twelve hanging out at the park. The park is a populated place where middle schoolers “hang out,” parents come with younger kids, kids in older elementary play with or without parents, and neighbors walk their dogs (or just walk, or jog). There is a natural evolution of maturity for these kids. We aren’t expecting other adults to be “responsible” for our kids, but there are people around, which scares off crime. And we teach our kids common sense - meet friends at the park. If its empty, come home and hang here. Be aware.
Thus the kids in our neighborhood grow up and leave for college dorms where they don’t need mama hovering.
And it isn’t that there are zero pedophiles - but the guy who came by and tried to tempt children into his van at the middle school wasn’t successful, and was arrested the second time because the kids told adults and got the plate number.
Raise street smart kids. There are bad people who target young adults, adults and the elderly, too, and your child will eventually have to take care of themselves.
I was one of “those” moms - my daughter was a latch-key kid at 9. I had to be at work at 6:30, but she was able to get herself up and dressed, gather her stuff, lock the door, and walk 4 houses down to catch the school bus with the rest of the kids. After school, she’d go home, lock the door, and start her homework - I’d get there about 30 minutes later. The only reason I didn’t let her go to the park by herself was that it was pretty far away along narrow roads that didn’t have sidewalks. But if I took her and some friends to a park for a picnic or something, we’d turn them loose, keeping an eye on them from a distance but not being obvious.
The neighborhood where I grew up was so different - lots of kids, lots of places to bike and skate away from traffic, playgrounds (with metal slides!!!) within a half a mile, a candy store 3 blocks away… When we went out, we needed to tell Mom where we were going and she’d tell us when to get back. Heaven help you if you were late!!! :eek: But we learned early how to cross a busy street safely, how to look out after the younger kids, and how to keep track of time. We also figured out what cuts and scratches would be OK and what required us to run home to Mom. Learning independence - what a concept!
Exactly! The sooner you start to give your kids little bits of responsibilities and freedoms the better off you both are because you can take your time learning all the things you need to be an adult.
When my kids left home for university they could (note: not did, could) cook, do laundry, clean a house, read a bus schedule and get themselves where they needed to be and balance a budget. This should not be the exception! Sadly they discovered that an astonishing number of their classmates had Mommy coming to pick up their laundry or were on an allowance for their spending money with all their bills taken care of or had no idea how to cook anything if it didn’t start in a can and end in the microwave.
The path to this all started when my son was 5. He was an exceptionally early riser and was always hungry when he got up so we figured out a solution for Saturday mornings. I would pour a bowl of cereal before I went to bed and put a glass of milk in the fridge. He would get up and “make” his breakfast. He was rediculously proud of his accomplishment so we started adding more little things. There were steps backwards along they way but that’s how the path to adulthood goes. You try stuff out and if it doesn’t work you try something else.
The one thing I don’t agree with about this however is that you don’t send a coddled kid who has never been out of mom’s sight to a park for a full day as a starter tactic.
