I'm having this issue a bit with my wife. I want my 9-yr old daughter to go to the playground a couple blocks away on her own; my wife is reluctant.
My argument is that it's statistically very safe, especially in our neighborhood, and that we and her older brothers all did similar things. Her argument is that a girl needs to be more cautious than a boy, and that although she knows it's unlikely anything bad would happen, it would destroy us if it did.
We're planning to compromise by letting her do it, but only after we get her her first phone.
This really is a great thing about living in Utah with young kids (one of the states mentioned in the article with laws explicitly protecting parents from these randos.)
In my neighborhood the street is literally full of neighborhood kids almost every day, ranging from 2-3 years old to teens, out riding bikes and playing games. There's a park a few blocks away that my kids (3yo-10yo) walk or bike to unsupervised.
Obviously as a parent you still worry - for me I worry more about someone getting hit by a car than being abducted - but it's nice to know at least that child services isn't going to show up just because the kids are out playing.
I live in the Midwest. I am a teacher. My wife is a social worker. I hear this fear about being charged Or having your kids taken by CPS because you let them walk alone to the grocery store or something, but I’ve literally never heard of it happening. I even have known a couple CPS workers in the past. The stuff they deal with day to day is wildly more intense than what people are suggesting here. My
instinct is that it’s a straw man, but clue me in. How common could this possibly be?
Parents today are overprotective (this includes me!) and don't realize that it actually damages their kids. I was 5-years-old when my parents would just drop me off to the kindergarten and then I was on my own pretty much the whole day after kindergarten finishes in the afternoon. I would go to different classes kilometers away, crossing roads, etc. and it was common practice. I don't think kids get injured less today than when I was a kid. Also, my parents would send me to the store to buy them beer or cigarettes - all you needed back then to either bring a handwritten note from your parent or for the salesperson to know you and know your parents - I don't drink, I don't smoke. We always underestimate the power of the forbidden fruit! Leaving kids on their own makes them more responsible and independent.
I am in the same camp. There was this girl I met on tinder that I always noticed the irony of her rescuing a dog from somewhere only for her to lock it up in a cage for 8-12 hours a day while she is working or partying. It's not right at all.
I have to agree - maybe outside of dogs, all other pets are not happy. For example, how can "fixing" cats be acceptable?! Just because we don't want to allow cats to mate and inconvenience ourselves, we "fix" them and everybody seems okay with it! How is this not animal cruelty by the book?! Cats grow obese and feel miserable. I've had cats, I let them go in and out, they lived fruitful lives and were not forced to come back, yet, they did. During the mating seasons, of course, they were gone for weeks.
I have been bothered at times at just how outside the overton window the idea that animals/pets, dog or cats should be able to e.g. see their parents or children, ever again, falls. I'm not a vegan or a big animal person, but it just isn't talked about.
Well, you're right. Dogs are emotional, and get attached to people and happy, but it's only because they don't realize how miserable they actually are and simply don't know any better. I personally like dog breeds closest to wolves like the German Shepherd. And I pity some of the breeds resulting from ages of selective breeding, which don't even resemble dogs.
There are so many people, and some of us have cats and dogs. Cats kill a lot of birds (and mice and rats—-maybe a good reason to have a cat on a farm) and don’t give much back to the ecosystem. Cat and dog poop adds pollution to land and waterways if not picked up (some is okay, but it doesn’t scale well).
I love our dog and feel this non-human person is family. I’m also sad for him not being free to roam and track down deer, elk, bears, coyotes, and potentially end up injured or dead. We run with him often, set boundaries, share affection, and I’m not sure I want to subject another animal to this captivity after he dies. I’d like to switch to helping the land I’m on be more diverse and robust, with healthier soil, more insects, more birds, more mammals (with measures taken to keep rodents out of the house), and to spend time observing this as a way to get me outside.
The first two are very sad honestly and it really doesn't help with a child's psyche if they discover the purpose of their birth was for this reasons. It's almost like your purpose is to become a disappointment specifically because your parents had you as a trophy.
My son just underwent Sex Ed this year - it was so detailed that I'm sure many adults could learn tons of stuff. Yet, accidents happen, but mostly because we don't educate kids. In the past, I remember my grandparents talking to my sister about these things, and teen pregnancies were much less than now with all the Sex Ed, wide availability of contraceptives, etc.
> teen pregnancies were much less than now with all the Sex Ed, wide availability of contraceptives, etc.
While a common perception, that's actually almost entirely false. Teen pregnancies have been dropping pretty steadily for the last ~70 years and they're now almost one quarter the rate of just 30 years ago. Sex ed and availability of contraceptives (especially IUDs) are quite effective at preventing teen pregnancies.
I was a four-year old forty-five years ago. I was walking to my pre-school and back, a couple of blocks and a pretty big and busy street across daily.
The cars weren't a problem. Getting mobbed by primary school kids on my way back and getting beaten up was a problem. A bigger problem was when I told my parents the reason I was getting home later and later was because of the detours I was taking to avoid getting beaten up, and they arranged a meeting with me, the beaters-up and their parents and them -- and in the end, it was clearly my fault, I had never been beaten up, and these were all friendly kids, brought up all wholesome.
The past wasn't a better place, it just was a place where you didn't talk about being abused, no matter what.
We had a bully at school and he beat me up 2 times. After that i always had a stone in my pocket, long story short, he had a hole in his skull and never did it again, no consequences for me (apart from a some explanations). But i was 9.
Given what we have learned regarding the catholic church, boy scouts and penn state athletics program. I'd say young boys have just as much to fear if not more.
That said I'm with you on her walking to the park.
My mom used to take the bus into the city when she was 8, spend the day wandering around, and come back on her own time. This was in the 70s with no smartphones. If there was an issue, she could use a pay phone. Her own mother sent her out of the house to get some free time for herself.
When I was growing up, I did similar things, taking my 5 year old sister on the public bus with me to get to school when I was 10. If I had some pocket change we’d get ice creams from McDonald’s on the way home.
It depends on what neighborhood you live in, but the world is very safe today and if you’re on HN I assume you’re in a decent area.
I think parents have too much time and energy today to spend worrying about their frankly very competent kids. The smartphone thing is a good idea but I really think it’s best to push your kid out of the nest to discover the world themself, lest you end up with a grown up daughter who’s afraid of the world.
In the 90s I walked to school(two busy streets and one market Square with stalls away) on my own at the age of 7, I was expected to leave the house and lock the door behind me on my own(my parents both left to work by that time), make it back at the end of school and let myself in and wait at home for their return.
Nowadays just leaving a 7 year old at home alone would be a crime.
Even back when us kids were 'free range' there were more restrictions placed on the girls, my older sister couldn't get up to as many shenanigans as I could at the same or younger age -- cultural norms and whatnot.
You might try to get longish distance walkie-talkies. They are cheap and probably go far enough. I let my (similar age) kids free range a block or two, especially if they go together and bring a walkie talkie.
Why not just give them a real phone?. That way they are never at risk of being out of range. Parental control it so it can't install apps if you are super paranoid.
> We're planning to compromise by letting her do it, but only after we get her her first phone.
Might I suggest looking into one of those cell phone watches for kids. They allow you to lock down who they can send and receive calls/messages from and have gps and geofencing so you can keep an eye on them. It basically allows you to give them the advantages of a phone, without having to give them a phone.
> I don't like giving cell phones to kids younger than 12 or 13 because childhood should be free of a lot of the technology we use today.
The future is technology. You're holding them back, socially and technology skills wise, if you wait until they're 13 to give them a cell phone.
I was fixing computers and was generally the house technology expert well before I was 13. To get to that point required unrestricted access to tech and the internet. If I was locked down until 13, I would not be as successful as I am today in tech, if I was in tech at all.
Hard disagree. Children with phones don't socialize face to face with other children. That's pretty much the most important skill taught in elementary school and you're taking it away from them. You can still let your child use computers at home, but they should have to interact face to face in order to socialize. Yes, the future is technology, but not being able to interact with people without anxiety is not a path to happiness, and that's what you get when you give children phones.
Interacting with children who have smartphones. Both as a child myself and now. Obviously it's not a universal truth, but I've seen it more than 10 children who suffer from this which is enough to convince me that it's a risk.
Fully agreed. I spent my entire childhood with essentially zero electronics (we lived overseas), and didn't get into computers until we were back stateside, and I was a young teen.
As an adult, I'm proud of my technical accomplishments. But having no social anxiety, because I learned how to communicate face to face throughout my childhood, has been the biggest boon of all. Not joking.
[edit] I feel I should also add that not getting in to tech until already a teen has never felt like a deficit, or that I was starting behind anyone else. On the contrary, the non-virtual skills that came from playing with physical things like lincoln logs, tinkertoys, building models with friends, etc. gave me a intuition of how the world works that has helped me a great deal in getting my head around the nature of more virtual structures.
The computer that you used required skills to use and maintain, and stayed at home. It is vastly different than a dumb (yes) internet appliance kept in a pocket all day long subjecting children to dark patterns and dopamine hits for hours a day.
I don't think the intention behind "free range kids" is that they get unrestricted access to technology and everything the internet can serve up to them.
I'm puzzled by this attitude. It's as if a kid is a monkey of some sort that can randomly call someone. If a kid is smart enough to use a phone, he or she can understand your concerns.
My eldest is also a daughter of a similar age. What my partner and I have said is "yes you're old enough to go do things, as long as you're going with friends." She's not old enough to go places alone, or to go places where she'll be supervising her younger sibs. But she's old enough to be in a setting where peers are watching out for each other and know how to find help if needed.
I know that's still a walk-back from what previous generations enjoyed, but it's not that different from what we both experienced at this age in the 90s. And in parallel to this, we've put a fair bit into teaching our kids to navigate on foot, use public transportation, and safely ride their bikes on the road— all of it an investment in pre-car/non-car teenage autonomy.
The bigger risk is getting run over by an inattentive driver, and yet most parents are worrying about pedophiles. How would a phone guard against distracted driving?
We let our very-capable son and his less-capable-but-bright and more-experienced older sister freely wander the neighborhood on bicycles when they were 5.5 and 7, respectively. Worked out fine so far.
Varies by neighborhood, though. Our current one's busy-body and kids-only-play-with-parental-escort enough that we had a couple neighbors stop by to warn us that they'd seen our kids several streets over, thinking they'd gotten away from us. Not quite busy-body enough that anyone called the cops (I suspect we were right on the edge of that happening, and maybe just got lucky). Our last neighborhood had wonderful mixed-age "gangs" of kids wandering around playing all the time, and it would have been entirely safe there. That was a much younger neighborhood (in terms of both the ages of the houses and the average age of residents) than this one (not sure whether that's related), and, I suspect, there were some class issues at play (the other had a very high-prole character to it, in Fussellian terms, while this one's 100%, gratingly, middle-class as hell)
As for chances of assault, your main worry by a country mile should be cars, not predators. All forms of attacks on kids by strangers are incredibly rare. Leaving your kid in the company of a specific adult or set of adults is far riskier than letting them walk to the park (yet people do that all the time). Shit, statistically siblings or cousins are far "scarier" and worthy of concern, in that regard, than the risk of regular walks to a park 2 blocks away.
> your main worry by a country mile should be cars, not predators
100%, and cars are a reasonable worry that we should do something about. There are well known traffic calming measures that we know slow down traffic substantially (speed being one of the greatest causes of pedestrian fatalities) and even in my very walkable city we're largely not using them.
speed doesn’t cause fatalities, or even cause collisions, it increases severity in the case of a collision. collisions cause (pedestrian) fatalities, and distracted driving is the leading cause of collisions.
Well no; speed does increase severity in the case of a collision as you say, but it also directly impacts your stopping distance, even at the same level of alertness/reaction time/etc. If a kid runs out in front of your car, you are both more likely to hit them at 30 mph than 15 mph (due to not being able to stop in time) and more likely to kill them having hit them.
you see, that's exactly the kind of marginal thinking that gets us into these kinds of shut-in situations for children in the name of "safety". that exact scenario, where only the speed difference rather than a myriad of other factors, is material to life and death, is a tiny, and probably an undifferentiable, portion of collisions. putting forth such imagined scenarios as if they present significant risk is poor rationale.
support traffic calming measures (like narrowing car lanes, adding streetside trees, converting parking to bike lanes, etc.), not for specious reasons like this, but because they reduce distracted driving, and thereby reduce collisions and injury/death. it's at best misdirection to talk about reducing speed, and at worst, leads to poor policy that not only doesn't address the problem (reducing injury/death) but creates unintended consequences (like traffic and more distracted driving).
And focusing just on distracted driving similarly leads to campaigns that are little more than "you, driver, pay attention" PSAs while ignoring the structural reasons that drivers incorrectly feel safe enough to do so.
Of course they both contribute to the problem. So why not both? Traffic calming is the answer, either way.
no, that sounds like a reasonable compromise, but it's just appeasing poor thinking, which is exactly how we get so many bad policies and regulations. addressing distracted driving with traffic calming is a reasonable solution for a correctly identified problem. psa's for distracted driving is a bad solution for the right problem. traffic calming for speed is a bad solution for the wrong problem. it's how we get stupid speed bumps and unproductive stop signs as an energy and time tax on everyone rather than targeting the reckless directly, which is the (other) right problem to address. while excess speed is indicative (but not conclusive) of reckless driving, a focus on reducing speed is a safety theater red herring. just like "think of the children" and ceqa (environmental) challenges to housing, it's used as a brainless cudgel to get a pet outcome approved, not to improve societies.
Ha, yes, actually it was almost exactly like that. With a concerned look, "I think I saw your boy over on [street] and thought I'd better let you know". Was he playing in the road? Getting in the way of traffic? Stomping on flowers? Otherwise behaving like a jack-ass? Nope, just there. OK, uh, thanks for telling us.
Well intentioned and mostly just amusing. At least no-one called the authorities when they realized we weren't planning to confine our kids to the yard or accompany them on every idle play-outing all damn Summer.
"I'm having this issue a bit with my wife. I want my 9-yr old daughter to go to the playground a couple blocks away on her own; my wife is reluctant."
...
"We're planning to compromise by letting her do it, but only after we get her her first phone."
I hesitate to enter into child rearing discussions but ...
May I suggest a slightly different approach: satisfy your wife by following, secretly, your child at a distance the first few times. All the benefits of independence and self-reliance, etc., for your child - and a gradual, baby steps approach for your wife as she gets comfortable with this routine.
May I also suggest that a phone is unnecessary due to the fact that every single other person already has a phone. Further, bad actors will likely assume your daughter has a phone. It's classically selfish behavior but you can piggyback on the (telephone) safety net that everyone else has already constructed. I know from voluminous personal experience that everyone, everywhere, is happy to use their phone to help your child. Just make sure she memorizes your phone numbers :)
> May I suggest a slightly different approach: satisfy your wife by following, secretly, your child
Suspect they already trust their child enough to not need to follow her at all. She's capable. The concern is unforeseen events outside the child's control such as irresponsible drivers, bullies, or worse. None of which is any less likely to happen after you stop following the child.
They're not likely to ever happen, and the child's independence is probably worth the risk, but there's no way to ever completely eliminate those risks or put your mind completely at ease about it.
I agree with your analysis - but this suggestion is for his wife, not the child. It's a way to become comfortable - in a slow and controlled manner - with expanding the range of the child, etc.
Following the child after apparently granting freedom would be a massive breach of trust: bad enough on its own, but potentially very scarring if discovered. Don't add that risk!
As for the phone, you're right if you only think of the phone as somehow protecting against stranger danger. But as someone who lives alone with health problems I think of the phone entirely differently: it's a lifeline to all kinds of potential help, from a medical emergency to being locked out of my car or apartment building. And of course not only in that direction; it works the other way too where having my phone means I can be a point of contact for help for others. This is obviously a somewhat new aspect of our society in the past 20 years, and I'm certainly not saying we couldn't get along without it; but I am asking, "why would you want to go back to a time before these universal lifelines?".
It’s a conversation being had by parents all the time. The mistake is to think that not letting the kids do things doesn’t have an effect.
More realistically you are often balancing a high harm, low risk (sometime tiny, eg abduction) event against a low harm, high risk one. This is inherently difficult, but easier I think when framed this way.
It's the "John Walsh" effect. His son's kidnapping was all over the news and then later he had "America's Most Wanted" and he literally started scaring people from allowing their kids out of their sight. To this day, people still think their kid is going to be abducted if they let them go play.
I remember being 9 and riding my bike miles away to the mall and back. Kids can't do that anymore.
Large businesses have the biggest lobbying groups so their agendas get the most attention, though editorial campaigns, laws, etc.
There are a few groups concerned with personal freedom, and so personal freedom is not forgotten, but is deprioritized over what business wants.
Children have almost no advocates I would argue. The only people lobbying "on their behalf" are trying to gain power in some way, using fear, etc (similar tactics are used to restrict business and personal feedom).
So it's no surprise kids get the short end of the stick.
I think the argument in this case is simply that there isn't a business interest in getting kids to go to the park themselves, so it just doesn't get the attention that business-interest issues do.
But we could also describe how kids being independent and walking to the park bypasses all the market activity they could be doing otherwise: social media, video games, other commercial activities, etc. But that's not the primary argument.
I don’t know if any business has actively engaged in that sort of lobbying, but if I had to imagine a business interest it would be from schools, daycare, tutoring centers, sports programs, etc. If kids can’t be alone, they have to be with someone.
A case where we do have evidence of lobbying is remote schooling, where the education and well-being of children was sacrificed for the well-being of union affiliated teachers.
A number of malls and small retail stores have policies banning or severely limiting unaccompanied minors. The idea is minors are disproportionately likely to cause disturbances. Even if that risk is very small, it’s not really worth accepting any amount of risk there, because minors don’t really spend money either.
Indeed. But note that there's a ton of personal-freedom rhetoric in our world. However, it exists primarily entirely in the form of propaganda that serves the interests of bigger lobbying groups. Personal freedom in that sense matters when it's the freedom to be a consumer in the market buying the products that the business wants to sell. The personal freedoms that have nothing to do with the market or which enable people to function outside of the market, those are indeed deprioritized.
Removing the freedom for kids to move around alone is a huge social inefficiency. Where kids just walk to school alone or walk to a park to play with friends alone kids are not that expensive to maintain. But with constant supervision needed then parents need to drive the kids to their destinations and either stay with them there or drop them of at some paid event where the organizer supervises the kids.
I think the problem "de-risking" childhood is only an instance of the bigger problem of what Roger Scruton calls "Risk De-aggregation". Risk Deaggregation is taking a single point of risk (and its associated metric), and optimizing to reduce that risk as if it exists in isolation from other risks. I.e. Risk occurs in aggregate, not as individual threats. Risk deaggregation happens everywhere from Climate Change policy, to Covid, to children.
I think this type of risk deaggregation arises from the fact that in a sufficiently complicated space (climate, economy, children, etc) there are really only two heuristics:
1) Ignore all but a manageable number of variables and optimize for them
2) Recognize a larger number of necessary variable, acknowledge there is no optimal solution, and balance the trade offs between those variables. [0]
Heuristic 1 is the easiest, requires no nuance, and seems the type of thing our political and media class love to latch onto. Heuristic 2 actually requires admitting you don't get everything you want, or at least the things you want will cost you something you dont.
“Risk de-aggregation” sounds like it edifies an implicit perspective that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Is there a specific reference you might recommend looking at, for Roger Scruton’s take?
It's in his book "How to think seriously about the planet: a case for environmental conservatism"
The book itself is worth the read on its own. He has a very specific meaning of conservatism that doesn't map well to political landscapes. The book doesn't dispute climate change, and seems to basically accept it, but creates a framework for dealing with it from a grassroots bottom up perspective rather than an international top down perspective.
A related way of thinking of these might be legible Vs illegible.
Legible risks are mostly "heuristic 1." They can be measured, quantified, discussed in discrete terms. You can be yelled at over legible things, like ignoring stranger danger on a subway. It's harder to yell about nuance.
Illegible things are less discrete. The consequences, some hard to describe, many unknown, of growing up without freedom and self reliance. There are dangers here too, but they're more nebulous.
It's hard to justify, externally, a trade-off between illegible gains like building a personality and legible dangers like kidnapping. Hard, but not impossible.
Humans don't seem to be very good at managing risks. From an evolutionary perspective, we can only look at what others are doing and follow along. Breaking it out in terms of percentage weights doesn't give us a feel for practical steps to take.
I'm trying to look this up but the only hit for "Roger Scruton Risk De-aggregation" is this comment. Any recommendations on where I can read more about this? I've found other Scruton articles that talk about swing sets and stuff but not the term specifically.
I’ve seen risk deaggregarion at work and wonder if it stems from how easy it is to shoot an idea down with a counter example.
E.g. Should we switch from “status quo” to “change”? Good idea, but if we move to “change” then “this one bad thing will happen”.
A solution might be to use the lieutenant’s cloud, an idea I learned on a thinking course.
With this you simply ask why “bad thing” and then offer a suggestion that solves the why, not necessarily the bad thing.
This is probably easier to do at a closed organisation. In the public eye with an emotive topic like possibility of child abduction, a lot of sensitivity is needed.
Just so I'm clear, risk de-aggregation is when I worry and optimise about the risks of drink driving, and end up killing myself by [drunk walking in front of a bus]/[accepting a lift from a serial killer]/[Cancer I got in the smokey bar I was really careful not to drive home from]
This is a terrible analogy though, because these aren't aggregate risks (one is a risk you present to other people because of your actions, the others are risks to yourself from your own actions).
maybe you worry about drunk driving, so you never leave your house again and die alone and penniless due to tremendous opportunity costs of avoiding all possibility of a drunk driver ever hitting you.
It's a problem everywhere, from bad KPI's to public policy. We have a bias towards metrics that are easy to measure.
It's much easier to measure large effects on a single metric, than small effects distributed over a wide range of metrics. Concentrated effects that affect one individual/org/group are favored over distributed effects that affect everyone. There are so many examples of policies where this thought process has been applied.
Not even easy to measure, just ones that feel like having big impact, unpredictable timing and are not cumulative. That's not a terrible heuristic as black swan events do happen, but then again common risks need to be optimized for too.
I went back to my old school for a tour/"try and get Alumni to donate money" event.
I was shocked at the changes, especially in the "Elf and Safety" (Health and Safety). Pupils are required to wear body and head padding for Rugby. Junior pupils in primary school cannot do full contact tackles until they are older in high school.
I wasn't the most sporty at school, but I appreciated the rough and tumble of rugby, football and military cadets.
Coupled with the digitisation and removal of old whiteboards/blackboards, made the place seem less-tangible and some sort of controlled environment..
Well, there's some argument for stats and science here.
Padding for Rugby might actually make sense whereas the trend where kids can't go to the park or the grocery store alone is counterproductive.
A world where kids playing actually risky sports use safety equipment but also have the independence to go to the park and do pick-up games with friends with no adult supervision, that sounds like the right balance. Not every change today is bad.
It's not settled science but there's decent evidence that the padding and helmets contribute to the more violent nature of American football (where serious and long term injuries are more common than in rugby).
It's difficult to separate out equipment from rules and just general attitudes--at least at lower levels of the sports. (And rugby is certainly not immune from concussion issues.) I do remember long-ago undergraduate we had some major problems in a match against a team where the rugby players were basically castoffs from that school's top-tier football program. We ended up walking off the field because they were basically deliberately trying to hurt people.
That is comparing professional to professional. The reason young children in rugby get padding is not so they can hit harder, but because they haven't internalized proper tackling form yet. So many more kids are going to get a knee to the face as they tackle their opponent, or unintentionally truck a person they're trying to tackle, compared to older people who know how to tackle correctly and safely.
The issue with American football is the "line in the sand" nature of yardage. In rugby, as long as you wrap up the ball carrier and bring him down, it's fine if he gets another couple yards. In contrast, letting a running back get another couple yards is often the difference between a first down and a turnover.
Another reason is the lack of laterals in American football. In rugby, if you commit too hard to tackling a player, he laterals the ball to the player next to him, and you're now in a really, really bad defensive position. In contrast, laterals are so rare in American football that you can commit as hard as you want without consequences.
Neither of these things go away if you get rid of the helmets and pads; it just makes it more likely that people will die on the field, as they frequently did before helmets and pads were introduced. At one point, football was killing so many college students that President Roosevelt threatened to ban it.
The things you've mentioned seem like they fall in to the category of responses to increased awareness of CTE associated with contact sports.
There's not dropping your kid off at the play ground... and there's not wanting your kid to lose their mind in their twenties because of repeated concussions.
I'm mostly aware of it from the high profile pop culture cases like Aaron Hernandez and O.J. but it seems like a serious cause for concern and I don't think football will look the same in the next decade or so as it has in the past - especially in terms of high school athletics.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31610856/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NFL_players_with_chron...
The amount of concussions that happen in high/middle school is staggering, and has real effects. Theres a reason why 'dumb (contact sport) player' is such a pervasive stereotype. I, for one am really happy that full contact sports are being treated with some more caution.
Does anyone else feel like the current climate is partly a by-product of the lazy “think of the children!” Rhetoric that so many law enforcement agencies and politicians use to get their legislation and budgets passed? It’s hard to let kids be unsupervised if the only thing you hear from politicians, police and others is that kids are in so much danger we need to pass otherwise ridiculous laws just to protect them.
At least your friends will be able to let their kids go places once the police are defunded.
I know of communities where they won't let kids go anywhere because the lack of law enforcement (this includes minority communities). So this concern about law enforcement presence is not universal though white allies are big on focusing on that area.
Sadly, most zero-tolerance policies exist because getting sued is simply too expensive for the schools to deal with. Why make a nuanced judgement when you risk getting a lawsuit by trying to be fair?
> Sadly, most zero-tolerance policies exist because getting sued is simply too expensive for the schools to deal with.
No, zero-tolerance policies exist because they are low-effort ways of being seen as addressing issues of political concern (and because minimizing discretion of subordinate staff while avoiding creating an incentive to kick sensitive decisions up the chain is itself desirable to decision-makers); excessive restrictions, like insufficient ones, are sources of lawsuits, if schools were concerned about maximum mitigation of legal risk they would have more carefully tailored policies.
EDIT: It’s worth noting that zero-tolerance policies are sold as necessary for mitigating legal risk, but that's because that’s a more palatable sales pitch than “we want neither to permit subordinates to exercise judgement nor to have to consider details of individual cases ourselves”.
In some cases zero-tolerance is marketing but in others it's not.
Take disciplinary action for example. Very few schools have the same rate of expulsion/suspension for students of all races. How do schools prove to a jury that this is not a result of discrimination or racism? Quite difficult unless they have a zero-tolerance policy.
> Why make a nuanced judgement when you risk getting a lawsuit by trying to be fair?
School policy has exactly 0 legal weight. It won't protect the school against a lawsuit. Maybe the low end of layers believe it, but there's a reason lawyer's compensation is bimodal.
But by the time school administrators figure this out, they are typically being offered an out-of-court settlement with a confidentiality clause.
Zero-tolerance policies are wasy to implement and sound tough. Many people like though and like hearing someone was punishes and "made to learn the lesson".
A whole hell of a lot of people who buy into emotionally appealing rhetoric without thinking critically do not deserve to be shielded from blame. There is no shortage of them among us here.
The author might ridicule the notion of children being raised "like veal," but calling them "free-range kids" just makes me think I'll be paying a hefty premium for cub scout sirloin.
Social trust has been falling for decades, and the blame lies at the feet of nearly all our major institutions: both political parties as well as the permanent bureocracy, corporations, churches, the media and so on. If we want a healthy society, of which independent children are a part, we should work to restore social trust.
The major difference is the vast, vast majority of households were single income. "Working mother" was a non-existent thing. Men went to work, mothers stayed home. So if you let your kids roam the neighborhood in the summer SOMEONE'S mom was there to keep an eye out.
I would say, in general, it also lead to more socializing in neighborhoods because while I would never claim that a stay-at-home mom isn't doing a full-time job, there was far more time for them to hang out during the (potential) afternoon lull. Or when kids were at school during the school-year.
Eyes on the street used to be provided not only by stay-at-home parents, but by other folks going about their lives: people walking through, shopkeepers, etc. Over time, modern suburbanism became more and more locked in: extreme separation of uses, strikingly non-through streets, non-street-interacting access to apartments, houses, and shops, lower density, etc. This isn't the only story, but it's certainly a part of it.
No, I would say we're living in the best times we've ever seen, and I would not want to roll back history.
I do think that modern sprawl suburbanism has some harmful elements and that other styles of urbanism and of suburbanism that don't look like we've built the last 50 years in North America have benefits.
Also just general breakdown of people knowing each other in the community. When I grew up, I was a "latchkey kid" with a single parent, yet I was allowed to freely roam the neighborhood on bicycle. The idea was (or at least the perception was): If I ran into a problem, I could knock on any random neighbor's door, and 1. wouldn't get kidnapped or murdered and 2. the neighbor would know my dad and either watch over me or call him. Today, nobody knows the people who live in their neighborhood. Some people don't even know their next door neighbor. Nobody answers their door anymore either, so if you're a kid your only island of familiarity is at home.
That's why I said "perception". People believe kids are going to get kidnapped or murdered, even though the crime statistics don't bear this out, therefore they don't think knocking on a random door is OK anymore.
Our neighborhood is really good at this. As far as walkability and weather goes I hate it, but we know around 20-30 of or neighbors on a first name basis. And pre-pandemic we would have somewhat regular block parties where we would grill food and setup activities for kids.
We would like to move for other reasons, but what keeps us here is because you just never know what kind of neighbors you're going to get.
> Eyes on the street used to be provided not only by stay-at-home parents, but by other folks going about their lives: people walking through, shopkeepers, etc
Not just eyes but they were empowered to police kids as well, the local shopkeeper could "order" you to go home and confiscate the lighter you're burning leaves with without repercussion, but doing so now could just as likely end up with an angry parent coming back with the big "don't tell my kid what to do" speech. Similarly spanking was a punishment that friends parents could dish out, but this slowly faded out and now everyone is scared to make any physical contact whatsoever.
The accepted rules on what sort of justice could be dolled out by non-parents changed slowly and unevenly leaving many confused to the point where they just stay out of it entirely, or maybe just call the police for the worst infractions.
We must be talking about two very different decades. In the 1950s, which is generally the time people think to when talking about the "good old days" the number of women in the workforce was 27%. It had very little to do with income level. Both of my parents grew up dirt poor, both of them had mothers who stayed home. As the children were old enough to all be attending school, one of my grandma's got a job at the elementary school some of her children were enrolled in a few blocks from the house.
I think the popular opinion nowadays is to have either parents equally likely to stay home and raise the kids, with a negative bias against that being the female's responsibility, where historically there's been a strong positive bias for that.
People should do whatever works for them and their partners, but I think the underlying point is that raising children requires more than just a single parent.
I think it might be. When those who benefit from the current paradigm are forced to experience the pain that everyone else has been dealing with, they get motivated change things and they have the power to make it happen.
Well actually… Thomas Sowell (who is black) talks about how he felt safe going around on his own in Harlem in the 40s and 50s, and never heard a gunshot. So there actually was a fair amount of social trust / actual safety in black communities even then. With the obvious caveat of course that interracial violence was still a risk. But at least within black communities then, yes there was more social trust.
Part of me is glad I grew up on the poorer side for the US, which put me ten years behind a lot of social changes. My same-age peers in middle class households had so much less freedom, I came to learn.
I think this debate is too often a false dichotomy. There's a huge range of choices between never letting kids leave your sight until they're 18, and letting them ride a subway by themselves at age 9. Parents are currently leaning on the cautious side, there may be downsides, but I don't think it's some great tragedy.
I agree, it doesn't seem that extreme to me. Maybe something like letting your 9 year old get on a bus to another state, without a phone, and telling them "come back when you're done having fun!" would be extreme.
My grandfather did this with my father - though with specific marching orders. Regularly, maybe starting when dad was 7. It was the 1920's (s/bus/train/g). So far as I can tell from old family stories, it was considered pretty normal for an extended family with farms that were hundreds of miles apart. When school was out, the "free" young farm labor could be sent to where there was work that needed doing.
Much as we are finding about obesity being caused by the "food environment", there's an unhealthy "kid environment" in many places these days. I have a 12 year old, and he barely would go run around our neighborhood growing up because there weren't any other kids doing it. We tried to get him to do it, but none of his friends would join him. Other neighborhoods achieve a critical mass and have tons of kids that run around playing.
It bums me out a bit, but I've compensated by getting him involved in lots of camps and activities, which I think are more interesting anyway. Growing up, sure we ran around and did some things, but it was usually pretty boring. My son would get to spend summers fishing, learning different sports, kayaking, running through different parks, and many other activities that I never go to experience.
It's a difficult balance, and just excruciating during the pandemic to figure out.
And now that my son is 12 and vaccinated, it turns out most of his friends think playing outside is a "dumb little kids thing". And there are hardly any camps, and the few that exist filled up instantly. So I'm acting as a bit of a camp counselor this summer and working more in the evenings so I can bring him places with friends.
I'm sorry to hear that, it does sound like a bummer. I grew up in a small residential community, and running around with my friends through the neighborhood from the age of 8-15 was a huge part of my development. Really can't imagine who I would be today if it wasn't for those super fun times.
Could you explain why you feel bummed about it? You've clearly exposed your child to a world of fulfilling outdoor activities that are far richer than what a group of kids could get up to in a neighborhood. I myself had the freedom as a child that many in this thread fondly remember, and yes, making friends and spending time with them was highly influential. But all my significant memories involve sleepovers, watching movies/playing video games, or family vacations. Simply being allowed to go outside didn't really do much for me, and my most defining life experiences at this point occurred in high school and the two years after graduating.
I think that if you as a parent are giving your child the freedom to go outside and explore however they want, as well as a minimum amount of advice, that's really where the advantage lies. Being told that the world is dangerous and constantly being smothered definitely causes issues but I don't think there's anything inherently valuable about socializing in a very specific way.
Two things. First, the pandemic has me bummed because our son has largely had to sit around inside for the past 15 months due to living in a relatively barren "kid environment" in our neighborhood. That is most of the reason for me being bummed.
Related, I like balance, and while we tried to fill our son's time with activities, I think some more free play would've done him good, but, again, our barren kid environment didn't really allow for it. I was the opposite growing up, with nothing but "get out and play" for my entire kid life until my first summer camp as a teenager. It had its upsides, but I think I would've been better served by having more structured activities that exposed me to more things in life.
Regardless, kids are resilient and they learn what they learn and find their own way in life, ours is no different!
I think parents may tend to be afraid of the wrong things, but there's plenty of things to be scared of. My oldest walks herself around Brooklyn daily and my number one fear by a mile is her getting hit by a car. Also, I think every single woman I know who rode the subway regularly as a teenager was accosted or flashed by a crazy person at least once if not routinely. Certainly they grew up without permanent injury, but I don't think I'm depriving my kid of a valuable life lesson by protecting them from that.
Most other things I accept the risk, but cars around kids worry the hell out of me. Drivers don’t pay attention, kids don’t either. Even places with sidewalks, it doesn’t take a lot of things to go wrong before taller SUVs can easily have a tire hop onto the curb.
This. Every reasonable statistic shows drivers paying less attention and more in a hurry.
I'd send my 5 year old to the park by himself, if crossing a road by himself wasn't involved.
In my state multiple elderly people have been hit by cars while getting their mail! Like, if grandmas are dying somewhat often while spending 30 seconds on the side of the residential road, what chance does my kid have!?!?!
Jonathan Haidt wrote a book called The Coddling of the American Mind [0]. He'd agree that adults need to give children their freedom back.
He talks about what the consequences for not doing so have been for Zoomers and it is quite worrying: escalating rates of depression and anxiety, increased rates of suicide, fewer friends, even fewer close friends, reduced social trust, more on-campus violence, increased favorability to authoritarian policies.
[0] - He starts the book with a discussion of the title. He initially resisted it because people usually use the word coddled to blame the coddlees but this book very much blames the coddlers.
I’m a big fan of this book. It’s largely about the cancel culture, over protection, and how the voice on college campuses has been changing. How we went from college being a safe place for open debate and discussion to an environment which is becoming less welcoming of differing opinions and perspectives. The authors try to identify the origins of the change and use data and statistics to back up their claims. I thought it was an interesting read and recommend it for parents and non parents alike. The last quarter of the book does talk a lot of parenting and the idea of free range kids.
I think it's far too complex to attribute these results to a particular cause. Almost all of our food packaging and cookware contain new and known bad chemicals which we do not understand the implications of. Social media has gone from nothing to everywhere which has nothing to do with caution and lack of freedom. Cars have become more essential and people are spaced further apart than before.
As well as a better understanding of what depression and anxiety are. I suspect its much more likely a child today would be able to express what they are feeling and have it reported in a statistic instead of being told they need to stop being a girl and have a spoon full of cement.
I've got five kids. The more I loosen up and let the kids take risks and learn for mistakes the better. The challenge is when the adults inject a ridiculous level of risk to something that should be a learning experience. For example, allowing police to arrest and charge a child for bad behavior at school (i.e. won't obey the teacher, outbursts - not for actually criminally violent behavior). Another is lifetime academic and other records. When risk is too high, learning stops and risk avoidance takes over.
I am seeing this, too. Oftentimes, ostensibly in the interest of protecting children from harm, we try to control their behavior with increasingly disproportionate ultimatums, to the point where the authority's response is vastly more harmful than the situation itself.
It seems that nowadays we have an extremely interventionist culture, and it leaves us ill-equipped to recognize situations where the best thing to do is nothing at all.
It's not just around child-rearing. I have chronic pain from a decades-old sports injury, and well-meaning people frequently advise me to get surgery to fix it. There's a tacit assumption that, by choosing to live with it, I'm simply being complacent. (There's also, for that matter, a tacit assumption that an appropriate procedure exists in the first place.) If I point out that the surgery for my sort of thing tends to have much worse long-term outcomes than choosing not to pick at it, then I'm generally told that I just haven't found the right surgeon. Similar for my nearsightedness - I have one family member who thinks I'm crazy for not getting LASIK surgery. My take is myopia can be effectively treated with an inexpensive and non-invasive device, while LASIK comes with significant risk of causing different kinds of visual impairments that cannot be treated, so the risk/reward balance just isn't right for me. But that's not how they see it. What they see is that I'm just being weak-willed, because I'm opting not to do something when there's something that could be done.
But it upsets me more when it's child-rearing, because then it's adults choosing to screw up the life of another person who doesn't have any say in the matter. Ostensibly for their own good, but, more accurately, I think, because the adult feels like this is how they need to perform their role.
> My take is myopia can be effectively treated with an inexpensive and non-invasive device
Like what?
>while LASIK comes with significant risk of causing different kinds of visual impairments that cannot be treated
The numbers behind LASIK (and PRK) are pretty solid such that one can make an objective claim that it is a low risk endeavor unless you have some specific conditions.
It completely depends on the severity of your myopia. If it's mild, yeah, it's pretty safe. If it's moderate or severe, then things start looking a lot more dicey.
The overall numbers give a biased perspective. With the way the risk/benefit ratio varies, people with milder cases are a lot more likely to get it. This is in addition to there being more of them in the first place.
The inexpensive and non-invasive device is corrective eyewear.
I think, more to the point, this advice is typically being offered by people who aren't even thinking in those terms in the first place. They're just operating from a tacit bias toward interventionism.
Well people who are not ophthalmologists who have not diagnosed your eyes should not be commenting on whether or not you are a good candidate for refractive eye surgery.
Low risk -> that paper's definition of "safety" is whether people had good eyesight. It doesn't take into account halos or dry eyes, as far as I can tell.
My feeling has always been... I've been wearing soft contacts for decades--and now multifocals. I do wear reading glasses for, well, reading and other close work when I have the contacts in. (Probably more than I really need to.) So maybe LASIK is super-safe at this point but, honestly, there's very little about my current situation that inconveniences me in any appreciable way.
I would not get refractive eye surgery if I was old enough to have reading glasses (since nothing fixes that yet), but if all you have is run of the mill myopia, a couple thousand dollars to spare, and you are 25 to 30, LASIK or PRK is one of the best quality of life improvements you can make.
The clarity with which you can see everything is stunning at first, and the lack of inconvenience is incredible. If you’re interested in dating, it is probably one of the best investments you can make to improve your experience.
You would get at least 10, maybe even 15 years of not having to deal with glasses.
That's fair. My contacts were always for distance vision. But as I've gotten older, I need readers--only if I'm wearing contacts--for reading. Multi-focals improve but don't eliminate the need. So very manageable.
Personally I had the LASIK surgery done because high correction glasses and contacts are more serious liability in sports or emergency situations than residual -1 diopter nearsightedness. (Compared to -7 D before.) Such as being able to drive a car safely without them, or read. Or work at all.
It didn't cause any halos or dry eye. Those would still be preferable over legal blindness.
The bigger problem is they were unable to correct some astigmatism and so in certain conditions I get doubled image without glasses. Still not even comparable.
For low corrections or farsightedness, the risk benefit situation is very different.
I also suspect that another surgery could be risked to further improve on it once technology advances a bit more.
> Low risk -> that paper's definition of "safety" is whether people had good eyesight. It doesn't take into account halos or dry eyes, as far as I can tell.
Yes, it was a quick search on my phone. I just remember doing a ton of research for it before I got mine done years ago. I know 6 others who got it done too around when I did, and everyone claims it was well worth it.
I just figured it has been around so long and performed so much, that there would be a lot of people claiming issues and it would show up by now.
I had PRK done 6 years ago. I was lucky and never got the dry eyes thing, but I still have some (fairly minor, I guess?) halos around lights at night. I think the trade off is well worth it, though.
I certainly know people who have had worse complications, though, and they might have a different feeling about it than I do.
> I am seeing this, too. Oftentimes, ostensibly in the interest of protecting children from harm, we try to control their behavior with increasingly disproportionate ultimatums, to the point where the authority's response is vastly more harmful than the situation itself.
And IMO, perversely, this incentivizes behavior problems. Kids sooner or later (and often sooner in the case of smarter kids) catch onto when adults are making disproportionate ultimatums, or when the reasoning behind a ruling is disconnected from objective reality. What does this teach a kid? Adults are liars, don't know what they're talking about, are undeserving of respect, are not to be obeyed if the consequences of such are bearable, are to be subverted whenever possible, etc.
I mean, there's going to be a degree of disrespect and disobedience when a kid enters adolescence and they start to try to assert their independence as they approach adulthood. But learning the above attitude as a child is going to make adolescent behavior so much worse.
My kids figured this out... I think the solution is that you have to be consistent and both parents have to back each other up. Some people say that you should setup house rules and let the kids help set them up that way they have ownership.
The other thing would be to go to therapy. We don't teach people how to be parents but there is a lot of applied child development skills you can learn.
Having a disinterested third party to talk to saves my friends and family and internet forums from much of my babble (some clearly gets through:), and it’s a safer place to take risks and grow. The Blindboy Podcast promotes cognitive behavior therapy and other tools one can use on their own vs anxiety and depression, and I’m transitioning away from talk therapy towards these tools. The therapist was pivotal along the way.
> For example, allowing police to arrest and charge a child for bad behavior at school (i.e. won't obey the teacher, outbursts - not for actually criminally violent behavior). Another is lifetime academic and other records.
Just send them to a private school where matters are handled privately.
> For example, allowing police to arrest and charge a child for bad behavior at school (i.e. won't obey the teacher, outbursts - not for actually criminally violent behavior).
Are there any examples of this happening? I do not recall reading about any incident where police responded to a school where the cause was not due to physical violence.
If I was managing a school (or any other establishment), I would instruct staff that no one is to touch anyone outside of administering medical aid, for obvious liability reasons. In such cases, I can see it being necessary to call police if a child has to be physically moved or restrained.
The top two might be good examples, but the YouTube link says the kid was punching a teacher, which is a good example of what I meant by punting that to someone with better legal resources than me (if I am a worker at the school).
That is a systemic problem regarding tort and liability, I would not blame individuals at the school or police for that. The solution would have to be systemic reform.
This will sound terrible, but one theory why parents are so risk-averse with their kids is that 1-2 kids per family is the norm today. When it was more like 3-5 it was harder to keep track of all of them and they (the kids) inevitably did risker things. Moreover, the loss of a kid feels far worse if you don't have more.
There might actually be something to this. My child #3 gets more freedom (and is much more self sufficient!) just because I am often too busy with the many other things to interfere with her learning process.
My parents had/have about 9 siblings each. There is no way in hell my grand parents could have raised those many kids without letting them be free most of the time.
Of course the times were different (between 1930s - 1970s) and in India the definition/threshold of risk is, let's just say, different compared to the west :-)
> Moreover, the loss of a kid feels far worse if you don't have more.
Let me tell you you’re very wrong here. Loosing a kid is the worst thing ever and is independent on the number of kids you have. I have 5 kids and I can’t imagine losing one.
The biggest reason IMO for kids having more freedom is not that we have less time for them but that they play more together instead of with us. This emulation leads to more risk taken.
I know this is another, back in my day story but I think it is relevant. Back in the early 2000's when I wasn't even 10 my parents sent me to spend a week or two with my grandparents who owned 40 acres up in the pacific northwest. The biggest adaptation for me was after breakfast Grandma told us to go outside and that we weren't allowed back in until the temperature had hit 100. It was a little bit uggh for the time, but we had a blast running around, slipping through fences, playing in the barn and a ditch.
Good times, everyone should get shipped off to 40 acres and told not to come in until the temperature hits 100 at least once in their childhood.
I think these discussions are much more useful if split into urban/rural and have/don't-have children. Because roaming a remote private property is very different from "walk solo to school in an urban environment flooded with cars". And theoretical parenting based on scenarios 30 years ago are different to now. (I have three children and my primary concern: cars.)
My in-laws have a large property also, here in Australia. Beside the dams, you'd have to be unlucky/reckless to get yourself in trouble in the rest. Our 3yo was roaming around this weekend just been and it is a large enough space that she didn't get near the main driveway or up the track to the dams. But even then, it would be a different question in summer where the place is all long grass and venomous snakes are spotted.
Back in the day local kids would meet up and roam together. Now even if a kid wants to go out and explore they can't find someone to do it with. Kids used to look out for each other and develop valuable skills. Trying to teach "resilience" and "teamwork" in a class is a nonsense. These skills used to develop naturally.
I can‘t find the link anymore, but in the prologue of (I think) a German norm for building playgrounds it said something along these lines that resonated a lot with me: „Kids have the right to hurt themselves and test their boundaries in a safe and limited way“
That‘s just so important for kids I think. US playgrounds all look sad to no end compared to the 15 meter high rope pyramids you see here in a lot of schools.
First time you see them, you tell yourself: No way I‘m going to let my kids play on that thingy.
But when you take a close look, all ways down you‘d bump into a rope, there‘s no direct free fall and there‘s usually thick rubber or sand below.
Sure it‘s going to hurt and maybe break a bone in the very worst case if you miss, but that is just super rare.
But what it adds in developing courage, resilience and risk awareness is just priceless.
Then again, having your kids break a bone won‘t bankrupt your family for life over here…
> Then again, having your kids break a bone won‘t bankrupt your family for life over here…
That's the key. I've noticed in places with universal health care, they tend to have more fun playgrounds. Because the owner knows they won't get sued for medical expenses.
That applies in general in places with universal healthcare. My friends who live in those places told me their car and home insurance are much cheaper than when they lived in the USA, because there is no risk of getting sued for medical expenses.
To be fair, in many places with universal coverage of health insurance, the owner doesn't know they won't get sued for medical expenses. The European countries that have often been mentioned here (Germany, Switzerland, etc.) most often use a system of private insurers with deductibles and co-pays that patients must pay, although the minimum level of coverage tends to be far more protective than in the US. Medical expenses wouldn't cost tens of thousands (USD/EUR/CHF/...) but would still cost hundreds or somewhere north of a thousand in a place like Switzerland.
Well, they know the lawsuit would be quite limited. If an uninsured person in the US gets hurt, there could be nearly unlimited liability.
Also, my understanding (although it could be wrong) is that insurance companies in the EU can't sue people to recover medical costs, so at worst you're on the hook for their deductible but you don't have to worry about the insurance company coming for the rest like you do in the USA.
In Germany the accident or health insurance company can (and sometimes will) sue the owner of the playground for the cost of treatment, and the parents of the child can sue the owner of the playground for the copay and pain and suffering. So there is still liability of a similar amount, just the parties suing are somewhat different. There are just no punitive damages.
That is why every playground will only buy certified safe devices or get an overall certification by a known certification body. That usually cuts the lawsuit risk down to negligent maintenance. Also, there is liability insurance which everyone in their right minds has (of course you need to check if running a playground is covered).
We used to have playgrounds like that. My favorite playground as a kid had metal slides, a merry-go-round that we used to have fun throwing kids off of by spinning it at high speed, and this gigantic metal turtle that would get so hot in the summer sun that it would burn you. My elementary school had monkey bars at varying heights... etc etc..
But last time I checked that playground replaced everything with bulky plastic toys and one of those boring wood castle things with plastic slides
Of course I had to climb it immediately. My son was only 2 at the time so he didn't make it far. He's old enough now that I really want to find another one.
I found a few similar items in other parts of Oregon, but I haven't found one in California yet.
I thought this article would be about other things judging from the title, but these are good points.
I'm not that old, and I remember "be home before dark" when I was in the single digits. I was going outside, by myself, since about the age of 5. As soon as I could ride a bike that was it. Basically my parents made dinner and paid the rent, the rest was all me in my own life.
There was a phase in my childhood where I was actually in a very dangerous environment, and as a result my freedom was restricted. I can compare the two. I think it damaged me quite a bit. I wonder about kids who never knew the freedom to be human beings.
Again as a teenager I experienced that freedom and the good fitness that comes with having a wide range and only feet to get around. And there was trouble (exposure to drugs, etc). But all in all the trouble didn't affect me negatively in the long term, I think it was less harmful than if I'd otherwise been restricted, and most adults don't avoid those sorts of troubles either way.
There is a network effect reinforcing this trend. Kids don't go outside because there's no kids outside. Also I think that while the fear of abduction or a terrible accident is there, I think we downplay other factors in the trend now, particularly the increased demand for creature comforts over the last 2 decades (and longer, but more pronounced more recently) and the availability of stimulation indoors. I remember the middle of the summer and going outside every day not once thinking it was too hot to go outside, then spending the entire day out there. People think I'm weird now for not using the AC in my car. I remember waking up in the morning and there was no inkling to check a phone. People can be immensely stimulated laying in bed now, with phones and videogames and such, and there are positives that come with these new tools but there are negative changes as well, and many people are beginning to come to the conclusion that the negatives outweigh the positives.
> Kids don't go outside because there's no kids outside.
I don't think it's that simple. If you let your kids outside, away from your supervision, there's a very real (absolutely certain, where I live) risk of the police getting involved.
I can confirm this - last year I had to deal with Redwood City PD because my 11 year old daughter was playing after school on the playground (which is, amazingly, not allowed in CA?!). I stood my ground, but the incident involved the police department and meetings with the principal before it was resolved. California is doing a good job of driving the liberal right out of me.
Thank you for sharing these stories from the trenches. I wonder what practical things I can do when I am a parent that will prevent these harmful interactions.
It reminds me of the fact that I used to be crazy paranoid on weed in uni but I ate some a year or so ago and I just felt good. I was terrified of the consequences of being caught. Once the police disappeared as a threat, the actual thing was fine.
Where I live that's not really a worry and you still don't see children outside all that much by themselves, not like when I was a kid. You see a couple every now and then, when I was little outside belonged to the kids after school let out.
But it's the relationship they need from you. You don't create them for you, you create them for them.
It's not literally I had no relationship with my parents. They got me ready for school in the morning, my mom and I had inside jokes, we spent time together, we went to the grocery store, I had homework. But from the minute I was headed to school until the sun went down most days I was out in the world by myself.
Gen X here. I started riding my bike in my neighborhood as soon as my next door neighbor took off the training wheels. It was a small neighborhood with clear boundaries.
But as soon as I was 10 and 11 I was leaving to visit friends. I was thinking back recently to one forgotten friend who lived about 1.5 miles away and the pathway I would have taken to his house. It involved crossing two 6-lane divided highways and another Avenue.
I was safe and patient. But I would be aghast to see it in action today.
When I was 13 and 14 we would take "tours" of the city. Even on foot, I would meet friends and we would start early and walk as far as we could. Then take the bus or call our parents. I love those memories. So much.
I loved the city for its shape before I was an adult. And that freedom and those memories have filled me my entire life. And when I started driving I knew how to get to all of the places.
Before she died my mother would always tell me "the kids don't play the way you guys used to". We really tore it up.
Sounds awesome, thanks for sharing. Reminded me of this short story by James Joyce called The Encounter [0], (minus the creepy guy). I never did anything like that, and I grew up in the US in the 90s. Typical suburban upbringing, nowhere in particular to go without a car. Were you in the US?
I think I was younger than 13 when Back to the Future came out. I saw that 3 times with my friends, and each time we had to travel by bus by ourselves for about 45 mins across town.
> I was safe and patient. But I would be aghast to see it in action today.
Do you think that's because you believe things are less safe now than when you were a kid? Or is it because societal norms around risks & children have changed?
I say that because when I pass the places I crossed those roads, the traffic itself looks downright frightening. I don't remember this many cars. I don't remember them going _this_ fast.
I spent a some time on my childhood street and saw some teens throwing football. The number of times they had to get out of the street for cars was surprising. And we never had to "dodge" oncoming cars when playing games in the street. I remember someone would say "car" and we would have plenty time to move.
As far as the stranger danger, as an adult male I have zero interest in helping any kids in need. If I saw a kid outside fell and scraped up their knees I would probably not come to their aid. Maybe text a female neighbor.
But as young teens we definitely came across creeps. A female friend's sister took us to a strip club when we were 14. With that as a baseline...
We did things that were dangerous in any context.
We explored abandoned buildings. We jumped on slow moving trains. We rode down steep hills and jumps without any helmets. Swung from insane tree rope swings, some from 10-15 foot tree branches and some from much higher. We climbed bridges under construction. Went out on ledges that seeing today make my feet tingle. We climbed the drive-in theater screen to the top. Carried old bikes up there and threw them off. My dad made me a zip line from my tree house, over the pool, and to a very small perch in a tree. You were meant to jump into the pool (4 feet deep). We made camp fires supervised and on our own. We shot weapons at 10. Explored remote creeks and piloted small craft (15 hp). Drove around the city a good year before my actual license. At 15 we would routinely drive to another state to go a beach. At night sometimes.
Apparently from typing this, I had a real love of heights when I was younger. We had a rope swing in the back yard tied up to a branch some 30 feet. I would climb to the top and grab the branch regularly.
I think I was considered a bit less adventurous than some of my friends. I honestly have no idea how we didn't die.
But as to your question. The city used to be covered with tree swings and I haven't seen one in ages. I would guess they are considered dangerous today, or moreso a liability. Helmets for bicycles were just _not_ a thing - a changed norm for society and myself very gladly. Kids still enjoy access to weaponry, especially in the deep south. But that will be supervised instead of some lessons and "here you go". I know of teenagers that go sailing, boating, etc. I think the age range simply shifted up a few years.
The omitted part, of course, is the stunning increase in children being fed a steady diet of indoor technology, social media, computer games, and other generally passive, low-action activities.
And of course, it would be interesting to ask what role that diet has played in the lives of both children and parents attitudes about 'independence'.
I'd love to let my 6 year old wander the neighborhood freely but there's a good chance he wouldn't see 7 simply because he's shorter than the grill of most SUVs (let alone the lifted bro dozers that are so popular now)
Traffic and lack of walkability is definitely an issue (and not only for kids, btw). I am wondering if the idea that children must always be within arm's reach of an adult, has in a way contributed to building cities in a way such that there is no (safe) walkability in many places?
This is why I think that "when I was a kid I roamed the woods for decades at a time" comments are largely irrelevant in these discussions if we're talking about an urban environment that has changed. "When I was a kid", my street was pretty much empty of cars and we'd skateboard and ride and kick balls around. If a car entered that same street now, the visibility has completely changed, given it has cars parked both sides all up and down.
Bigger cars, more traffic, poorer visibility, everyone rushing.
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[ 0.26 ms ] story [ 240 ms ] threadMy argument is that it's statistically very safe, especially in our neighborhood, and that we and her older brothers all did similar things. Her argument is that a girl needs to be more cautious than a boy, and that although she knows it's unlikely anything bad would happen, it would destroy us if it did.
We're planning to compromise by letting her do it, but only after we get her her first phone.
In my neighborhood the street is literally full of neighborhood kids almost every day, ranging from 2-3 years old to teens, out riding bikes and playing games. There's a park a few blocks away that my kids (3yo-10yo) walk or bike to unsupervised.
Obviously as a parent you still worry - for me I worry more about someone getting hit by a car than being abducted - but it's nice to know at least that child services isn't going to show up just because the kids are out playing.
I highly recommend Free-Range Kids [0]!
[0]: https://www.freerangekids.com/
I have been bothered at times at just how outside the overton window the idea that animals/pets, dog or cats should be able to e.g. see their parents or children, ever again, falls. I'm not a vegan or a big animal person, but it just isn't talked about.
While a common perception, that's actually almost entirely false. Teen pregnancies have been dropping pretty steadily for the last ~70 years and they're now almost one quarter the rate of just 30 years ago. Sex ed and availability of contraceptives (especially IUDs) are quite effective at preventing teen pregnancies.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/08/02/why-is-the-...
The cars weren't a problem. Getting mobbed by primary school kids on my way back and getting beaten up was a problem. A bigger problem was when I told my parents the reason I was getting home later and later was because of the detours I was taking to avoid getting beaten up, and they arranged a meeting with me, the beaters-up and their parents and them -- and in the end, it was clearly my fault, I had never been beaten up, and these were all friendly kids, brought up all wholesome.
The past wasn't a better place, it just was a place where you didn't talk about being abused, no matter what.
I guess that is true, but an interesting question is: Did the past prepare kids better to become responsible and capable adults?
That said I'm with you on her walking to the park.
When I was growing up, I did similar things, taking my 5 year old sister on the public bus with me to get to school when I was 10. If I had some pocket change we’d get ice creams from McDonald’s on the way home.
It depends on what neighborhood you live in, but the world is very safe today and if you’re on HN I assume you’re in a decent area.
I think parents have too much time and energy today to spend worrying about their frankly very competent kids. The smartphone thing is a good idea but I really think it’s best to push your kid out of the nest to discover the world themself, lest you end up with a grown up daughter who’s afraid of the world.
Nowadays just leaving a 7 year old at home alone would be a crime.
https://www.citynews1130.com/2020/07/06/vancouver-bus-dad-ki...
Might I suggest looking into one of those cell phone watches for kids. They allow you to lock down who they can send and receive calls/messages from and have gps and geofencing so you can keep an eye on them. It basically allows you to give them the advantages of a phone, without having to give them a phone.
I don't like giving cell phones to kids younger than 12 or 13 because childhood should be free of a lot of the technology we use today.
The future is technology. You're holding them back, socially and technology skills wise, if you wait until they're 13 to give them a cell phone.
I was fixing computers and was generally the house technology expert well before I was 13. To get to that point required unrestricted access to tech and the internet. If I was locked down until 13, I would not be as successful as I am today in tech, if I was in tech at all.
Where in the world did you pull this out from?
As an adult, I'm proud of my technical accomplishments. But having no social anxiety, because I learned how to communicate face to face throughout my childhood, has been the biggest boon of all. Not joking.
[edit] I feel I should also add that not getting in to tech until already a teen has never felt like a deficit, or that I was starting behind anyone else. On the contrary, the non-virtual skills that came from playing with physical things like lincoln logs, tinkertoys, building models with friends, etc. gave me a intuition of how the world works that has helped me a great deal in getting my head around the nature of more virtual structures.
I know that's still a walk-back from what previous generations enjoyed, but it's not that different from what we both experienced at this age in the 90s. And in parallel to this, we've put a fair bit into teaching our kids to navigate on foot, use public transportation, and safely ride their bikes on the road— all of it an investment in pre-car/non-car teenage autonomy.
Varies by neighborhood, though. Our current one's busy-body and kids-only-play-with-parental-escort enough that we had a couple neighbors stop by to warn us that they'd seen our kids several streets over, thinking they'd gotten away from us. Not quite busy-body enough that anyone called the cops (I suspect we were right on the edge of that happening, and maybe just got lucky). Our last neighborhood had wonderful mixed-age "gangs" of kids wandering around playing all the time, and it would have been entirely safe there. That was a much younger neighborhood (in terms of both the ages of the houses and the average age of residents) than this one (not sure whether that's related), and, I suspect, there were some class issues at play (the other had a very high-prole character to it, in Fussellian terms, while this one's 100%, gratingly, middle-class as hell)
As for chances of assault, your main worry by a country mile should be cars, not predators. All forms of attacks on kids by strangers are incredibly rare. Leaving your kid in the company of a specific adult or set of adults is far riskier than letting them walk to the park (yet people do that all the time). Shit, statistically siblings or cousins are far "scarier" and worthy of concern, in that regard, than the risk of regular walks to a park 2 blocks away.
100%, and cars are a reasonable worry that we should do something about. There are well known traffic calming measures that we know slow down traffic substantially (speed being one of the greatest causes of pedestrian fatalities) and even in my very walkable city we're largely not using them.
support traffic calming measures (like narrowing car lanes, adding streetside trees, converting parking to bike lanes, etc.), not for specious reasons like this, but because they reduce distracted driving, and thereby reduce collisions and injury/death. it's at best misdirection to talk about reducing speed, and at worst, leads to poor policy that not only doesn't address the problem (reducing injury/death) but creates unintended consequences (like traffic and more distracted driving).
Of course they both contribute to the problem. So why not both? Traffic calming is the answer, either way.
Like dogs?!
Well intentioned and mostly just amusing. At least no-one called the authorities when they realized we weren't planning to confine our kids to the yard or accompany them on every idle play-outing all damn Summer.
...
"We're planning to compromise by letting her do it, but only after we get her her first phone."
I hesitate to enter into child rearing discussions but ...
May I suggest a slightly different approach: satisfy your wife by following, secretly, your child at a distance the first few times. All the benefits of independence and self-reliance, etc., for your child - and a gradual, baby steps approach for your wife as she gets comfortable with this routine.
May I also suggest that a phone is unnecessary due to the fact that every single other person already has a phone. Further, bad actors will likely assume your daughter has a phone. It's classically selfish behavior but you can piggyback on the (telephone) safety net that everyone else has already constructed. I know from voluminous personal experience that everyone, everywhere, is happy to use their phone to help your child. Just make sure she memorizes your phone numbers :)
Suspect they already trust their child enough to not need to follow her at all. She's capable. The concern is unforeseen events outside the child's control such as irresponsible drivers, bullies, or worse. None of which is any less likely to happen after you stop following the child.
They're not likely to ever happen, and the child's independence is probably worth the risk, but there's no way to ever completely eliminate those risks or put your mind completely at ease about it.
Following the child after apparently granting freedom would be a massive breach of trust: bad enough on its own, but potentially very scarring if discovered. Don't add that risk!
As for the phone, you're right if you only think of the phone as somehow protecting against stranger danger. But as someone who lives alone with health problems I think of the phone entirely differently: it's a lifeline to all kinds of potential help, from a medical emergency to being locked out of my car or apartment building. And of course not only in that direction; it works the other way too where having my phone means I can be a point of contact for help for others. This is obviously a somewhat new aspect of our society in the past 20 years, and I'm certainly not saying we couldn't get along without it; but I am asking, "why would you want to go back to a time before these universal lifelines?".
More realistically you are often balancing a high harm, low risk (sometime tiny, eg abduction) event against a low harm, high risk one. This is inherently difficult, but easier I think when framed this way.
You can call her. The watch auto-answers, so she can't ignore it. She can call 5 pre-programmed numbers.
And you can see her location in an app.
I remember being 9 and riding my bike miles away to the mall and back. Kids can't do that anymore.
There are a few groups concerned with personal freedom, and so personal freedom is not forgotten, but is deprioritized over what business wants.
Children have almost no advocates I would argue. The only people lobbying "on their behalf" are trying to gain power in some way, using fear, etc (similar tactics are used to restrict business and personal feedom).
So it's no surprise kids get the short end of the stick.
But we could also describe how kids being independent and walking to the park bypasses all the market activity they could be doing otherwise: social media, video games, other commercial activities, etc. But that's not the primary argument.
A case where we do have evidence of lobbying is remote schooling, where the education and well-being of children was sacrificed for the well-being of union affiliated teachers.
I think this type of risk deaggregation arises from the fact that in a sufficiently complicated space (climate, economy, children, etc) there are really only two heuristics:
1) Ignore all but a manageable number of variables and optimize for them
2) Recognize a larger number of necessary variable, acknowledge there is no optimal solution, and balance the trade offs between those variables. [0]
Heuristic 1 is the easiest, requires no nuance, and seems the type of thing our political and media class love to latch onto. Heuristic 2 actually requires admitting you don't get everything you want, or at least the things you want will cost you something you dont.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisficing
The book itself is worth the read on its own. He has a very specific meaning of conservatism that doesn't map well to political landscapes. The book doesn't dispute climate change, and seems to basically accept it, but creates a framework for dealing with it from a grassroots bottom up perspective rather than an international top down perspective.
Legible risks are mostly "heuristic 1." They can be measured, quantified, discussed in discrete terms. You can be yelled at over legible things, like ignoring stranger danger on a subway. It's harder to yell about nuance.
Illegible things are less discrete. The consequences, some hard to describe, many unknown, of growing up without freedom and self reliance. There are dangers here too, but they're more nebulous.
It's hard to justify, externally, a trade-off between illegible gains like building a personality and legible dangers like kidnapping. Hard, but not impossible.
Illegible things are less discrete, but probably more "discreet", on average.
Dont have the page, but the book is good enough that it's worth reading
E.g. Should we switch from “status quo” to “change”? Good idea, but if we move to “change” then “this one bad thing will happen”.
A solution might be to use the lieutenant’s cloud, an idea I learned on a thinking course.
With this you simply ask why “bad thing” and then offer a suggestion that solves the why, not necessarily the bad thing.
This is probably easier to do at a closed organisation. In the public eye with an emotive topic like possibility of child abduction, a lot of sensitivity is needed.
It's much easier to measure large effects on a single metric, than small effects distributed over a wide range of metrics. Concentrated effects that affect one individual/org/group are favored over distributed effects that affect everyone. There are so many examples of policies where this thought process has been applied.
I was shocked at the changes, especially in the "Elf and Safety" (Health and Safety). Pupils are required to wear body and head padding for Rugby. Junior pupils in primary school cannot do full contact tackles until they are older in high school.
I wasn't the most sporty at school, but I appreciated the rough and tumble of rugby, football and military cadets.
Coupled with the digitisation and removal of old whiteboards/blackboards, made the place seem less-tangible and some sort of controlled environment..
Changed times I guess...
This might be the correct term: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_traumatic_encephalop...
Padding for Rugby might actually make sense whereas the trend where kids can't go to the park or the grocery store alone is counterproductive.
A world where kids playing actually risky sports use safety equipment but also have the independence to go to the park and do pick-up games with friends with no adult supervision, that sounds like the right balance. Not every change today is bad.
Another reason is the lack of laterals in American football. In rugby, if you commit too hard to tackling a player, he laterals the ball to the player next to him, and you're now in a really, really bad defensive position. In contrast, laterals are so rare in American football that you can commit as hard as you want without consequences.
Neither of these things go away if you get rid of the helmets and pads; it just makes it more likely that people will die on the field, as they frequently did before helmets and pads were introduced. At one point, football was killing so many college students that President Roosevelt threatened to ban it.
I know for several of my minority friends, they won't let their kids go anywhere alone due to run-ins with law enforcement.
I know of communities where they won't let kids go anywhere because the lack of law enforcement (this includes minority communities). So this concern about law enforcement presence is not universal though white allies are big on focusing on that area.
No, zero-tolerance policies exist because they are low-effort ways of being seen as addressing issues of political concern (and because minimizing discretion of subordinate staff while avoiding creating an incentive to kick sensitive decisions up the chain is itself desirable to decision-makers); excessive restrictions, like insufficient ones, are sources of lawsuits, if schools were concerned about maximum mitigation of legal risk they would have more carefully tailored policies.
EDIT: It’s worth noting that zero-tolerance policies are sold as necessary for mitigating legal risk, but that's because that’s a more palatable sales pitch than “we want neither to permit subordinates to exercise judgement nor to have to consider details of individual cases ourselves”.
I guess I fell for the marketing. In any event I detest zero-tolerance policies for just about everything.
Take disciplinary action for example. Very few schools have the same rate of expulsion/suspension for students of all races. How do schools prove to a jury that this is not a result of discrimination or racism? Quite difficult unless they have a zero-tolerance policy.
(No idea if it would go anywhere in court, but when has that ever stopped someone?)
School policy has exactly 0 legal weight. It won't protect the school against a lawsuit. Maybe the low end of layers believe it, but there's a reason lawyer's compensation is bimodal.
But by the time school administrators figure this out, they are typically being offered an out-of-court settlement with a confidentiality clause.
It all feels good for many people.
Also: "kids are in so much danger, you must elect me to keep them safe!" or "kids are in so much danger, tune in at 6 O'Clock to find out why!"
"We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”
These things have been dysfunctional for decades. What's different now compared to when things were "good"?
I would say, in general, it also lead to more socializing in neighborhoods because while I would never claim that a stay-at-home mom isn't doing a full-time job, there was far more time for them to hang out during the (potential) afternoon lull. Or when kids were at school during the school-year.
I do think that modern sprawl suburbanism has some harmful elements and that other styles of urbanism and of suburbanism that don't look like we've built the last 50 years in North America have benefits.
Crime is much lower now than the past.
We would like to move for other reasons, but what keeps us here is because you just never know what kind of neighbors you're going to get.
Not just eyes but they were empowered to police kids as well, the local shopkeeper could "order" you to go home and confiscate the lighter you're burning leaves with without repercussion, but doing so now could just as likely end up with an angry parent coming back with the big "don't tell my kid what to do" speech. Similarly spanking was a punishment that friends parents could dish out, but this slowly faded out and now everyone is scared to make any physical contact whatsoever.
The accepted rules on what sort of justice could be dolled out by non-parents changed slowly and unevenly leaving many confused to the point where they just stay out of it entirely, or maybe just call the police for the worst infractions.
It very much was but not at the relative income level most of HN is at or was raised in so people forget about it.
Labor participation of men was much higher, but it is absurd to claim that 34% represents nearly non existent phenomenom.
People should do whatever works for them and their partners, but I think the underlying point is that raising children requires more than just a single parent.
Of course then you have the church abuse stories...
Part of me is glad I grew up on the poorer side for the US, which put me ten years behind a lot of social changes. My same-age peers in middle class households had so much less freedom, I came to learn.
I realize it's relevant because Skenazy wrote and talked about doing so, but it's also just so non-extreme.
https://usa.streetsblog.org/2014/12/19/heres-how-much-safer-...
It bums me out a bit, but I've compensated by getting him involved in lots of camps and activities, which I think are more interesting anyway. Growing up, sure we ran around and did some things, but it was usually pretty boring. My son would get to spend summers fishing, learning different sports, kayaking, running through different parks, and many other activities that I never go to experience.
It's a difficult balance, and just excruciating during the pandemic to figure out.
And now that my son is 12 and vaccinated, it turns out most of his friends think playing outside is a "dumb little kids thing". And there are hardly any camps, and the few that exist filled up instantly. So I'm acting as a bit of a camp counselor this summer and working more in the evenings so I can bring him places with friends.
I think that if you as a parent are giving your child the freedom to go outside and explore however they want, as well as a minimum amount of advice, that's really where the advantage lies. Being told that the world is dangerous and constantly being smothered definitely causes issues but I don't think there's anything inherently valuable about socializing in a very specific way.
Related, I like balance, and while we tried to fill our son's time with activities, I think some more free play would've done him good, but, again, our barren kid environment didn't really allow for it. I was the opposite growing up, with nothing but "get out and play" for my entire kid life until my first summer camp as a teenager. It had its upsides, but I think I would've been better served by having more structured activities that exposed me to more things in life.
Regardless, kids are resilient and they learn what they learn and find their own way in life, ours is no different!
Most other things I accept the risk, but cars around kids worry the hell out of me. Drivers don’t pay attention, kids don’t either. Even places with sidewalks, it doesn’t take a lot of things to go wrong before taller SUVs can easily have a tire hop onto the curb.
I'd send my 5 year old to the park by himself, if crossing a road by himself wasn't involved.
In my state multiple elderly people have been hit by cars while getting their mail! Like, if grandmas are dying somewhat often while spending 30 seconds on the side of the residential road, what chance does my kid have!?!?!
He talks about what the consequences for not doing so have been for Zoomers and it is quite worrying: escalating rates of depression and anxiety, increased rates of suicide, fewer friends, even fewer close friends, reduced social trust, more on-campus violence, increased favorability to authoritarian policies.
[0] - He starts the book with a discussion of the title. He initially resisted it because people usually use the word coddled to blame the coddlees but this book very much blames the coddlers.
As well as a better understanding of what depression and anxiety are. I suspect its much more likely a child today would be able to express what they are feeling and have it reported in a statistic instead of being told they need to stop being a girl and have a spoon full of cement.
It seems that nowadays we have an extremely interventionist culture, and it leaves us ill-equipped to recognize situations where the best thing to do is nothing at all.
It's not just around child-rearing. I have chronic pain from a decades-old sports injury, and well-meaning people frequently advise me to get surgery to fix it. There's a tacit assumption that, by choosing to live with it, I'm simply being complacent. (There's also, for that matter, a tacit assumption that an appropriate procedure exists in the first place.) If I point out that the surgery for my sort of thing tends to have much worse long-term outcomes than choosing not to pick at it, then I'm generally told that I just haven't found the right surgeon. Similar for my nearsightedness - I have one family member who thinks I'm crazy for not getting LASIK surgery. My take is myopia can be effectively treated with an inexpensive and non-invasive device, while LASIK comes with significant risk of causing different kinds of visual impairments that cannot be treated, so the risk/reward balance just isn't right for me. But that's not how they see it. What they see is that I'm just being weak-willed, because I'm opting not to do something when there's something that could be done.
But it upsets me more when it's child-rearing, because then it's adults choosing to screw up the life of another person who doesn't have any say in the matter. Ostensibly for their own good, but, more accurately, I think, because the adult feels like this is how they need to perform their role.
Like what?
>while LASIK comes with significant risk of causing different kinds of visual impairments that cannot be treated
The numbers behind LASIK (and PRK) are pretty solid such that one can make an objective claim that it is a low risk endeavor unless you have some specific conditions.
Here is one study:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7727822/
The overall numbers give a biased perspective. With the way the risk/benefit ratio varies, people with milder cases are a lot more likely to get it. This is in addition to there being more of them in the first place.
The inexpensive and non-invasive device is corrective eyewear.
I believe the OP is talking about glasses/spectacles. Although contact lenses would probably also fit that description.
Low risk -> that paper's definition of "safety" is whether people had good eyesight. It doesn't take into account halos or dry eyes, as far as I can tell.
The clarity with which you can see everything is stunning at first, and the lack of inconvenience is incredible. If you’re interested in dating, it is probably one of the best investments you can make to improve your experience.
You would get at least 10, maybe even 15 years of not having to deal with glasses.
Or older, even. I got PRK at 34 and my eyesight is still 20/20 (or better), nearly 6 years later.
It didn't cause any halos or dry eye. Those would still be preferable over legal blindness. The bigger problem is they were unable to correct some astigmatism and so in certain conditions I get doubled image without glasses. Still not even comparable.
For low corrections or farsightedness, the risk benefit situation is very different.
I also suspect that another surgery could be risked to further improve on it once technology advances a bit more.
Yes, it was a quick search on my phone. I just remember doing a ton of research for it before I got mine done years ago. I know 6 others who got it done too around when I did, and everyone claims it was well worth it.
I just figured it has been around so long and performed so much, that there would be a lot of people claiming issues and it would show up by now.
I certainly know people who have had worse complications, though, and they might have a different feeling about it than I do.
And IMO, perversely, this incentivizes behavior problems. Kids sooner or later (and often sooner in the case of smarter kids) catch onto when adults are making disproportionate ultimatums, or when the reasoning behind a ruling is disconnected from objective reality. What does this teach a kid? Adults are liars, don't know what they're talking about, are undeserving of respect, are not to be obeyed if the consequences of such are bearable, are to be subverted whenever possible, etc.
I mean, there's going to be a degree of disrespect and disobedience when a kid enters adolescence and they start to try to assert their independence as they approach adulthood. But learning the above attitude as a child is going to make adolescent behavior so much worse.
The other thing would be to go to therapy. We don't teach people how to be parents but there is a lot of applied child development skills you can learn.
Therapy presents its own risks, often never discussed. And it screams of a total lack of self confidence.
Just send them to a private school where matters are handled privately.
2) Every private school I lived around growing up was religious, and I'd rather children not have religion forced on them.
Are there any examples of this happening? I do not recall reading about any incident where police responded to a school where the cause was not due to physical violence.
If I was managing a school (or any other establishment), I would instruct staff that no one is to touch anyone outside of administering medical aid, for obvious liability reasons. In such cases, I can see it being necessary to call police if a child has to be physically moved or restrained.
Students arrested for social media posts: http://www.5z8.info/openme.exe_bknq
Student arrested for burping: http://www.5z8.info/peepshow_jxbr
Student referred to judge and jailed for not doing homework: http://www.5z8.info/foodporn_axiz
School cops arrest more kids of color, too: http://www.5z8.info/aohell.exe_zane
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/us/orlando-6-year-old-arr...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/maryland-police-5-year-old-boy-...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEDTPxpjDhk
Of course the times were different (between 1930s - 1970s) and in India the definition/threshold of risk is, let's just say, different compared to the west :-)
Let me tell you you’re very wrong here. Loosing a kid is the worst thing ever and is independent on the number of kids you have. I have 5 kids and I can’t imagine losing one.
The biggest reason IMO for kids having more freedom is not that we have less time for them but that they play more together instead of with us. This emulation leads to more risk taken.
Good times, everyone should get shipped off to 40 acres and told not to come in until the temperature hits 100 at least once in their childhood.
My in-laws have a large property also, here in Australia. Beside the dams, you'd have to be unlucky/reckless to get yourself in trouble in the rest. Our 3yo was roaming around this weekend just been and it is a large enough space that she didn't get near the main driveway or up the track to the dams. But even then, it would be a different question in summer where the place is all long grass and venomous snakes are spotted.
That‘s just so important for kids I think. US playgrounds all look sad to no end compared to the 15 meter high rope pyramids you see here in a lot of schools.
First time you see them, you tell yourself: No way I‘m going to let my kids play on that thingy.
But when you take a close look, all ways down you‘d bump into a rope, there‘s no direct free fall and there‘s usually thick rubber or sand below.
Sure it‘s going to hurt and maybe break a bone in the very worst case if you miss, but that is just super rare.
But what it adds in developing courage, resilience and risk awareness is just priceless.
Then again, having your kids break a bone won‘t bankrupt your family for life over here…
That's the key. I've noticed in places with universal health care, they tend to have more fun playgrounds. Because the owner knows they won't get sued for medical expenses.
That applies in general in places with universal healthcare. My friends who live in those places told me their car and home insurance are much cheaper than when they lived in the USA, because there is no risk of getting sued for medical expenses.
Also, my understanding (although it could be wrong) is that insurance companies in the EU can't sue people to recover medical costs, so at worst you're on the hook for their deductible but you don't have to worry about the insurance company coming for the rest like you do in the USA.
That is why every playground will only buy certified safe devices or get an overall certification by a known certification body. That usually cuts the lawsuit risk down to negligent maintenance. Also, there is liability insurance which everyone in their right minds has (of course you need to check if running a playground is covered).
But last time I checked that playground replaced everything with bulky plastic toys and one of those boring wood castle things with plastic slides
https://photos.app.goo.gl/e15h4rK2NPQvUzH37
Of course I had to climb it immediately. My son was only 2 at the time so he didn't make it far. He's old enough now that I really want to find another one.
I found a few similar items in other parts of Oregon, but I haven't found one in California yet.
I'm not that old, and I remember "be home before dark" when I was in the single digits. I was going outside, by myself, since about the age of 5. As soon as I could ride a bike that was it. Basically my parents made dinner and paid the rent, the rest was all me in my own life.
There was a phase in my childhood where I was actually in a very dangerous environment, and as a result my freedom was restricted. I can compare the two. I think it damaged me quite a bit. I wonder about kids who never knew the freedom to be human beings.
Again as a teenager I experienced that freedom and the good fitness that comes with having a wide range and only feet to get around. And there was trouble (exposure to drugs, etc). But all in all the trouble didn't affect me negatively in the long term, I think it was less harmful than if I'd otherwise been restricted, and most adults don't avoid those sorts of troubles either way.
There is a network effect reinforcing this trend. Kids don't go outside because there's no kids outside. Also I think that while the fear of abduction or a terrible accident is there, I think we downplay other factors in the trend now, particularly the increased demand for creature comforts over the last 2 decades (and longer, but more pronounced more recently) and the availability of stimulation indoors. I remember the middle of the summer and going outside every day not once thinking it was too hot to go outside, then spending the entire day out there. People think I'm weird now for not using the AC in my car. I remember waking up in the morning and there was no inkling to check a phone. People can be immensely stimulated laying in bed now, with phones and videogames and such, and there are positives that come with these new tools but there are negative changes as well, and many people are beginning to come to the conclusion that the negatives outweigh the positives.
I don't think it's that simple. If you let your kids outside, away from your supervision, there's a very real (absolutely certain, where I live) risk of the police getting involved.
Same for me. CA seems to be full of control freaks who like to control others.
It reminds me of the fact that I used to be crazy paranoid on weed in uni but I ate some a year or so ago and I just felt good. I was terrified of the consequences of being caught. Once the police disappeared as a threat, the actual thing was fine.
This is not really the relationship I aspire to have with my children.
It's not literally I had no relationship with my parents. They got me ready for school in the morning, my mom and I had inside jokes, we spent time together, we went to the grocery store, I had homework. But from the minute I was headed to school until the sun went down most days I was out in the world by myself.
But as soon as I was 10 and 11 I was leaving to visit friends. I was thinking back recently to one forgotten friend who lived about 1.5 miles away and the pathway I would have taken to his house. It involved crossing two 6-lane divided highways and another Avenue.
I was safe and patient. But I would be aghast to see it in action today.
When I was 13 and 14 we would take "tours" of the city. Even on foot, I would meet friends and we would start early and walk as far as we could. Then take the bus or call our parents. I love those memories. So much.
I loved the city for its shape before I was an adult. And that freedom and those memories have filled me my entire life. And when I started driving I knew how to get to all of the places.
Before she died my mother would always tell me "the kids don't play the way you guys used to". We really tore it up.
[0] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2814/2814-h/2814-h.htm#chap0...
Do you think that's because you believe things are less safe now than when you were a kid? Or is it because societal norms around risks & children have changed?
I say that because when I pass the places I crossed those roads, the traffic itself looks downright frightening. I don't remember this many cars. I don't remember them going _this_ fast.
I spent a some time on my childhood street and saw some teens throwing football. The number of times they had to get out of the street for cars was surprising. And we never had to "dodge" oncoming cars when playing games in the street. I remember someone would say "car" and we would have plenty time to move.
As far as the stranger danger, as an adult male I have zero interest in helping any kids in need. If I saw a kid outside fell and scraped up their knees I would probably not come to their aid. Maybe text a female neighbor.
But as young teens we definitely came across creeps. A female friend's sister took us to a strip club when we were 14. With that as a baseline...
We did things that were dangerous in any context.
We explored abandoned buildings. We jumped on slow moving trains. We rode down steep hills and jumps without any helmets. Swung from insane tree rope swings, some from 10-15 foot tree branches and some from much higher. We climbed bridges under construction. Went out on ledges that seeing today make my feet tingle. We climbed the drive-in theater screen to the top. Carried old bikes up there and threw them off. My dad made me a zip line from my tree house, over the pool, and to a very small perch in a tree. You were meant to jump into the pool (4 feet deep). We made camp fires supervised and on our own. We shot weapons at 10. Explored remote creeks and piloted small craft (15 hp). Drove around the city a good year before my actual license. At 15 we would routinely drive to another state to go a beach. At night sometimes.
Apparently from typing this, I had a real love of heights when I was younger. We had a rope swing in the back yard tied up to a branch some 30 feet. I would climb to the top and grab the branch regularly.
I think I was considered a bit less adventurous than some of my friends. I honestly have no idea how we didn't die.
But as to your question. The city used to be covered with tree swings and I haven't seen one in ages. I would guess they are considered dangerous today, or moreso a liability. Helmets for bicycles were just _not_ a thing - a changed norm for society and myself very gladly. Kids still enjoy access to weaponry, especially in the deep south. But that will be supervised instead of some lessons and "here you go". I know of teenagers that go sailing, boating, etc. I think the age range simply shifted up a few years.
And of course, it would be interesting to ask what role that diet has played in the lives of both children and parents attitudes about 'independence'.
I'd love to let my 6 year old wander the neighborhood freely but there's a good chance he wouldn't see 7 simply because he's shorter than the grill of most SUVs (let alone the lifted bro dozers that are so popular now)
Bigger cars, more traffic, poorer visibility, everyone rushing.