Free Range Parenting
Gramps49
Shipmate
News item: Child Protective Services in Maryland charge the parents of a 6 and 10 year old for child neglect because they allowed their children to walk unsupervised a half mile from a local park home. https://wjla.com/news/local/silver-spring-parents-charged-with-child-neglect-for-allowing-kids-to-walk-home-alone-112094
Historical memory: How many of us remember playing unsupervised with other kids either in the neighborhood, at a park, or even across town?
Seems like over the years parents have become so hypervigilant, needing to know where their kids are at one time. Kids these days go from one organized activity to another with very little down personal time. Either that, or they are so focused on playing games on their phone, they have little creative time.
Maybe we should advocate for Free Range Parenting. For younger kids, close to home, but as the kids get older let the range expand. After all, it is not like we don't have the capability to track them with trackers you can place in their clothing or on their smart phones. Maybe we should tell middle schoolers get out of the house and don't come back till the street lights come on.
There are many advantages to allowing kids to have independent thought, take some risk, interact with the world on their own.
Yes, there are risks. But parenting means preparing the kids to know what to do in some situations.
https://www.choosingtherapy.com/free-range-parenting/
https://psychcentral.com/blog/do-kids-have-too-much-freedom#recap
Placing this in Epiphanies because I think what I have said can evoke some personal experiences both positive and negative.
Historical memory: How many of us remember playing unsupervised with other kids either in the neighborhood, at a park, or even across town?
Seems like over the years parents have become so hypervigilant, needing to know where their kids are at one time. Kids these days go from one organized activity to another with very little down personal time. Either that, or they are so focused on playing games on their phone, they have little creative time.
Maybe we should advocate for Free Range Parenting. For younger kids, close to home, but as the kids get older let the range expand. After all, it is not like we don't have the capability to track them with trackers you can place in their clothing or on their smart phones. Maybe we should tell middle schoolers get out of the house and don't come back till the street lights come on.
There are many advantages to allowing kids to have independent thought, take some risk, interact with the world on their own.
Yes, there are risks. But parenting means preparing the kids to know what to do in some situations.
https://www.choosingtherapy.com/free-range-parenting/
https://psychcentral.com/blog/do-kids-have-too-much-freedom#recap
Placing this in Epiphanies because I think what I have said can evoke some personal experiences both positive and negative.
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Comments
There were definitely places and circumstances in which we would have and did let our kids walk home alone when they were that age (almost 20 years ago). There were other places and circumstances in which we wouldn’t have dreamed of it because it would have been irresponsible.
This isn’t at all a one-size-fits-all thing; what’s appropriate will vary based on circumstances.
As for it being in Epiphanies, I’m afraid I don’t see how this is an issue “where people are personally invested, where academic detachment just isn't possible, and where issues and identity significantly overlap.”
And people with lived experience of child neglect might also want to contribute
Louise
Epiphanies Host
My 10 year old walks or cycles almost a mile home from his elementary school every day, unsupervised. Half a mile from us is his friend's house: the friend has an older sister the same age as my daughter, and it was completely normal for two 5 or 6 year old boys to travel between the houses under the supervision of two 8-9 year olds.
It was equally normal for my youngest, aged 4, 5, or 6, to go to the playground under the supervision of an older sibling. We knew where they were, because the kids would come and ask us if they could go.
It is apparently illegal in MD to leave a child under 8 alone in a car or building: they require the supervision of someone aged at least 13. So you can hire a teenage babysitter, and that's fine, but you can't leave your 7 year old watching TV while you run to the store. So in the case in the article, the younger child was "too young to be alone" and the older child was too young to be supervision.
It's not entirely clear to me that children alone outdoors is specifically illegal, although "neglect" is a general catchall.
As I was looking for links to support free range parenting, I came across a report detailing a traumatic event where a seven-year-old was killed while walking home with this ten year old brother. Both boys had been grocery shopping with their mother and asked permission to walk home. Somehow, as the younger boy stepped out into the street, a car driven by a 76 year old woman hit him before his brother could pull him back. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/north-carolina-child-killed-car-parents-arrested-manslaughter-charges-rcna211900
This is why I chose Ephephanies to discuss this. It could have been anyone of us that experienced this or other serious trauma. Only takes the blink of an eye for something like this to happen. Instead of a ten year old brother walking with the seven year old, even parents might not have had enough time to pull the kid back. But of course, people could say, well the boy should have been walking on the right side of the sidewalk, furthest away from the curve, but children can easily cross that line of protection.
In the case of this last instance. Think of the guilt the ten year old is likely feeling for not taking care of his brother. The guilt of the mother for allowing the boys to walk home on their own. The guilt of the father for distracting the older boy by talking to him on the phone. The guilt of the woman who hit the boy. Then to slap involutary manslaughter and child neglect on the parents? To me they did everything properly. But the child died.
Could the walkway, the street and the crossing have been more child friendly? Do our cars need more safety devices.
In the case of my children growing up, we lived in largely secluded neighborhoods. The kids all had free range. There was only one time when a cop intervened. The kids had taken to sliding down a hill near a busy street. He simply directed them to a safer hill.
In my case. We walked to our elementary school in a rural community, about a mile away,
We did cross one busy street but there was a crossing guard on station during school days. However, on non school days we had free range over the whole part of town from the time I was about ten on. Can't remember if there was any no go places. We simply did not have to be home until when the street lights were coming on.
Good question. Have they increased or are we more "aware" of such dangers through different media outlets? Do increased awareness actually cause more unnecessary hypersensitivity?
I think the dangers of child abduction etc. are vastly overestimated. It happens, obviously, and these are horrific crimes, but they are rare. They get a lot of media coverage because they are horrific, and that makes them more prevalent in the general consciousness than they really are.
The dangers of road traffic are strongly location-dependent, and also dependent on how much awareness the particular child has. Some children are appropriately cautious near roads; others will casually wander in to traffic with their heads in the clouds.
There is a certain amount of chicken-and-egg with regard to these crimes and parents being more protective, no? Obviously there's also a virtuous circle of less violence in the lives of children leading to fewer violent adults and less violence again in the next generation.
There's also the impact of online offending and the extent to which people who would have been creeping around the bushes at the local park are now online, either satisfying themselves with legal material or predating by other means.
I would suggest that a substantial problem is not that of unsupervised children out of the home, but domestic abuse of children. The fear of what may happen to a child or children out of the home, results in them being cooped up in a confined space, often because there is no demonstrably safe place in which they can play, and that can lead to frustration, loss of temper amongst reasonable people, and much worse when parents and carers are not. Note I have personal experience in my family. See Domestic violence against children
Schools are even more cautious now. Apparently it’s not safe to let a child walk from the classroom door to the school gate unsupervised at the end of the day; the teacher has to deliver each child to a specific adult.
"Not all schools"
Our local elementary school insists that kindergarten children, and perhaps first grade, are seen to a parent, to a parent's car, or on to a school bus. Second grade and older can cycle or walk home by themselves.
(Parents have to tell the school how their child comes home, so if a parent says that their child will be picked up by car, they go in to the "wait here until your car gets to the front of the queue and we'll call you" holding pen, and can't leave by themselves, but if a parent says "my child will walk / cycle", then the child can leave by themselves.
This is a really important point. In South Africa, violence against women and children is at an all-time high but we're talking primarily about domestic violence. Women and children are in more danger from family members and trusted friends than strangers. This means they are safer out on the streets than in their own homes. And this isn't true only of South Africa.
A common problem twenty years ago was cars backing over children. Now cars are required to have backup cameras. In fact many cars have collision avoidance systems to either alert the driver of an impending impact or even stopping automatically. Granted, they don't always work, but they are vastly improved.
Children can easily be trained to stay off the street. A few months ago, I followed my two-year-old grandson to a park he likes. There is a smaller park at the end of the block where he lives, but he took off for the larger park. He knew where it was. Going there met crossing four street corners. Three of them are little used side streets. There was one main street he would have to cross, though. Each time he came to a corner, he would wait for me to catch up so we could cross together. He knew he had to look both ways, twice, to make sure there was no oncoming cars. It was a little confusing for him when we went across the busy street. A school bus had just stopped to let off kids. Its flashers were on and the stop sign was out. He wanted to wait, but the bus driver saw us and waved us over. At that point I had a hold of his hand. I saw the bus driver wave at us. So I told him it was okay to cross. We had a fun time at the park.
Yes, he is still too young to go it alone. An adult is with him when he goes. But if a two-year-old can understand the rules, he will be prepared to do it alone by the time he is in grade school.
The same sometimes applies to my nearly eleven year old. His brain is also organised in a creative and interesting manner!
I think I know what you are referring to. My one grandson is on the Spectrum. He is very good at STEM projects. He loves magic, though. Just today I sent a video through his father to show how physics can be used to do a magic trick. Won't be surprised if he wants to show the trick at the next family gathering.
Back to topic at hand.
Although I have been pleased to see primary school kids riding bicycles to school on the footpath.
But with people using utes and SUVs rather than sedans crossing the road is much more deadly, with drivers thinking they are well protected rather than driving cautiously when pedestrians are around. Twice recently I was halfway across a crossing when a ute passed straight in front of me.
Parents also worry about stranger-danger, while the last I heard was that relative-danger is far more common.
So I walked him across the road when it was safe.
From the age of 13 I babysat my older sister’s 3 children, one of who was a toddler. That was good training for my future nursing career!
The local primary school did not allow my children to walk home alone until they were about 9/10 and that needed parental consent. Yet at age 11 they were taking a public bus to a school 6 miles away.
On the other hand, my middle child, B, is 13 almost 14 and his dad worries significantly about him walking to school alone because of how spacey he is (validly!) (Though B does it. Note that B's school is a pretty straight shot, and there are crossing guards at big streets when B is not late.) Similarly, B's father picks him up in the afternoon because B is absolutely too tired after school to be safe around streets, among other things.
I want to live in a neighborhood where both of those (walking alone at 10 and not doing so at 14) are normal. Even utterly neurotypical children--which neither B nor K are--are ready to do things at different times. I don't want my independent children bothered by adults who doubt my parenting, but I wouldn't want my middle child criticized or shamed as if he's bad for walking around in his own thoughts. If I see someone else's kid with a trouble, I'll offer help. I hope my neighbors would do the same for mine.