Take Our Children to the Park…And Leave Them There Day

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

I find that if I simply don’t feed my children, they start foraging on their own and this saves me time and effort.

(Kidding. Well, mostly kidding.)

I support the overall philosophy behind this movement. Worrying about a predator snatching your child off the street is about as useful as worrying about your child being struck by lightning. I have every confidence that my older two kids have the knowledge and ability to 1) come inside from playing if they hear thunder, and 2) not wander off with a stranger who entices them with candy or whatever. Yes, I suppose a bolt from the blue could hit them anyway, or a sneaky child predator could just bundle them off in the car against their will, but I am really not spending time worrying about either of those two scenarios.

That said, my kids are involved in a lot of extracurricular activities. We set limits - I’m not driving people around to things every day of the week, and we don’t sign up for anything that’s going to eat up an entire evening or whatever (especially at this age; my kids are 10, 8, and 5), but this year, for example, we did chess club and architecture club (my son) and Girl Scouts and Drawing Group (my daughter). The kids wanted to do these things and were excited about them. I don’t have a problem with this. I think a lot of the people who complain about how kids these days are overscheduled are simply indulging in hazy nostalgia for their own youth. Activities for kids are usually fun for the kids. That’s sort of the entire point. If I told my 10-year-old that we were canceling chess club because I wanted him to spend more time wandering around the neighborhood and going to the candy store, he’d look at me like I was a crazy person.

I mean, yes, you can overdo it and leave your kids with zero free time and that’s not good, but as a general thing, I think clubs and activities can be fun.

Also, I think a lot of this entire issue is economic-class-based in our society. I say this because my regular driving route to my youngest kid’s preschool takes me through some of the poorer areas of this city, and what I see along the streets every morning is a shitload of unattended kids, either waiting for buses or walking along the streets (busy, high-traffic streets) on their way to school. (Well, hopefully school.) Every day for those kids is “get left alone by your parents” day. Which is not to say that the free-range kids movement isn’t a good one. Just that overprotected children are definitely not a universal in our society.

22

Ew, I don’t want to accidentally get a dirty kid! (Or any kid, actually, but.)

When I take my niece and nephews places I always yell that I want three kids back in the car when it’s time to come home, no more and no fewer! And if we have to pick, pick fewer!

23

I find this focus on child molesters a bit strange.

To me, of far greater concern where young children are involved is … conflicts with older children, the possibility that the kid could go outside the park and get involved in traffic, etc. I’m willing to bet a child has a far greater chance of being hit by a car than snatched by a molester.

Naturally, any child will have to deal with that eventually, so some steps towards independence must be taken. It’s all a matter of their age, level of maturity, and the surroundings.

Culture plays a role too. In these threads you always get loads of people lamenting that kids these days don’t have the independence that they had. Part of that is simply a cultural change - things are just not done the same way as they were then. In some ways this is very good - for example, in many circles physical punishment as a form of discipline is no longer considered appropriate (it was routine when I was a kid) and standards of safety have improved beyond recognition (for example, as a kid we had no special car seats - we were seated in the back without seatbelts at all - and adults smoked in the car as a matter of course).

The bad is that it is no longer culturally acceptable to, for example, let young children walk to school in some places, or wander about unsupervised.

24

I think Bill Cosby’s observations on playgrounds is still relevant today.

25

Are you me? Well, I guess not. I started doing the same thing with my six year old over a year ago. I also let her make sandwiches (no cutting involved, we always have salad in the fridge) and she has specific chores.

26

Getting your own food sounds normal to me. My son does that and he’s 7. He’s had access to the fridge since he was five (with limitations). Before that, he had a list taped to the fridge (with pictures) that showed what kinds of snacks he could have and when.

I know I can have a cheesecake in the fridge and never have to worry that he’ll get into it. I also know he can pour his own cereal in the morning (which he does) or make himself simple snacks or sandwiches to eat. He can also make coffee and sometimes makes it for me on Saturdays.

:smiley:

27

You’d be shocked if you met most kids her age that I know. They don’t know how to get a glass of water for themselves.

28

I was half-joking. While I didn’t live in fear of child molesters, they do exist. So if I was going to participate in such a venture, I wouldn’t advertise it.

Secondly, if you did this in my town, you’d risk getting arrested for child endangerment.

29

My parents wouldn’t have done this…
…they would have made me ride my own damn bike to the park.

30

In my experience, if someone starts a sentence with a variation of “Back in my day,” what follows tends to be irrelevant bullshit. Just because you have rosy memories and no one you know happened to have serious repercussions, that doesn’t mean a practice was good or without harm. (I’m sorry, it’s a big gripe for me because people use it as an excuse not to use car seats and other irresponsible, lazy crap.) That’s not to say it automatically means giving kids more independence is a bad idea, just that the Good Old Days stuff doesn’t really prove the opposite either.

Gripe the Second: I’m seeing people verge into quite a bit of false dichotomy here. Either we drop our second graders off at the park alone all day, or our children will go to college not knowing how to do their own laundry! It’s perfectly reasonable to give your kids a certain amount of responsibility and freedom, but draw the line well before “America’s Worst Mom.”

My big issue with leaving elementary schoolers unsupervised away from home for an extended period is more that they’re not fully equipped to deal with thing that are actually likely to happen, never mind esoteric stuff like stranger danger. Just in the course of one day yesterday, my 8yo tripped and scraped a good deal of skin off the left side of her body, then in the afternoon lost a fight with a tree she was climbing and got a decent laceration down her forearm. This a day after she got a giant blister that ripped open while she played on the monkey bars. All three injuries were mild in the scheme of things, but did actually require adult intervention. In addition to not knowing what to do in minor crises, nor having the supplies to deal with them, I’ll also say that most kids this age don’t have well-developed risk assessment skills. They can’t tell when climbing a tree goes from low-risk-of-scrapes-and-bruises to high-risk-of-concussion and stuff like that.

As she approaches 9, my daughter feels comfortable staying home alone while a run a quick errand, but not for hours. We’ve recently set things up so she can get into the house herself if I have an appointment that doesn’t finish until after the bus drops her off, but I’m only comfortable with that this early because the bus driver keeps an eye on her as she goes in the house. She can make scrambled eggs and is learning to do her own laundry.

I can see other kids falling on either side of the spectrum from this. But I have to say I think Free Range Kids often goes too far. They’ve made a fetish of defying safety concerns.

31

I do think “don’t play on anything you never see a grownup playing on!” is reasonable advice. :slight_smile:

At Williams-Sonoma when I was registering for wedding stuff I saw, to my gales of laughter, something packaged as “My First Knife”. Good intentions, I suppose, but wouldn’t you just love to give that as a baby shower gift?

32

Zsofia, that’s awesome! :stuck_out_tongue:

Now that I think about it, my over-protectiveness really isn’t applicable inside. He knows how to “do” laundry - I make him help with his. He isn’t tall enough to reach the knobs, but there isn’t much to wash-and-wear laundry and he definitely has to fold his own clothes.

He made me coffee this morning. :smiley:

He poured his own cereal.

He has to clean his room today and organize that Lego mess before he can go to a movie tomorrow. And no, I’m not helping him. He has bins for everything.

He makes his own bed. (Well, that one isn’t completely fair - he won’t sleep in his own bed, but he’ll mess it up when he plays on it.)

He knows to clean out his backpack and lunch box when he gets home from school.

He ‘flosses’. (He has baby teeth, so it’s kind of silly.)

Recently, he’s wanted to walk home by himself when I’m at the nail salon. It basically consists of him learning how to cross the street. I’m in my car and he’s walking. I can see him the whole time, and he looks to me for verification before he crosses. It’s not a busy street, either, but hey, that’s my only child and there are 10,825 things that could happen to him. imho, parents don’t teach their kids how to cross the street well enough. In the neighborhood where I teach, I’m constantly slamming on brakes because some kid can’t use the crosswalk properly or thinks his bicycle gives him the automatic right-of-way.

My students constantly tell me that he’s about old enough to stay home alone or run off by himself. What?

33

About the age your daughter is, my kids were latchkey kids. They were only home for about an hour and a half by themselves (they still are, but now they are twelve and thirteen). One of their friends was riding his bike in the park that is five houses down the street from us - but farther from him. He fell on his bike. He got to our house. I got a call from my kids that he was hurt. “Call his mom” “we did, no one is home” “how hurt is he” “not bleeding, but he hurt his wrist.” “Well, I’m on my way home.” I was on the road already, but I worked about 40 minutes from home.

I came home to find the kid lying on my couch. His arm was elevated, wrapped, and iced - RICE. All done by my rather flaky elementary school aged daughter. He mother arrived shortly after I did, took him to the hospital - it was broken and the doctor complimented the first aid.

Had he been REALLY hurt and not a hairline fracture, my kids would have called 911 and had him taken away in an ambulance. In fact, they’d have done it for a far less serious injury than I would have - the family in question is strange and I wouldn’t have wanted to obligate them to emergency room bills (I have no idea if they are insured or not). The kids wouldn’t have thought about that.

Knowing what I know about you, I’d be really surprised if your daughter didn’t perform the same in an emergency and wouldn’t have been able to neosporin herself if you weren’t there. The first few times, mine did tend to make a mess with the band aids. :wink:

My son - the latchkey kid - is a really good skateboarder. Which means he has gone through tubes of neosporin and boxes of bandages when I’m not home - half of his injuries I don’t see until they’ve reached the pale scar stage. Only rule - skateboard when someone else is near so if you hurt your head or fall bad enough that you can’t reach a phone, someone else can call for the ambulance. I’m not going to stop him from falling by being around. And his sister or friend can call 911 as well as I can.

Yesterday, my twelve year old daughter, who volunteers as a tutor on Fridays at the elementary school, chose to walk home. Its a long walk. She didn’t realize how long (about 2 miles, it was 90 degrees here yesterday, and her bookbag is ten pounds, she weighs 70). She won’t do it again unless she has to - “its farther than it seems when you bike it or drive it” - but she did it.

I think that sometime Lenore is guilty of “lets cherrypick this one incident to show how ludicrous the world has gotten over these issues” - when, in fact, there are plenty of neighborhoods out there like mine where kids play unattended in the park - at a reasonable age which may not be four (at least, not without significantly older siblings), but is younger than thirteen. But I haven’t seen her advocate for placing your child in peril - just pushing the point of comfort.

34

So, I did take my kid to the park and left her. I didn’t read the whole of the article, did the author say what time my daughter should be back home?
:wink:

35

As long as you armed her with a knife, she should be fine. :slight_smile:

36

Oh, that’s no coincidence.

37

Do I have to go back and pick them up now? The house is so nice and quiet!:smiley: