Free-Range Kids

[nwoods]

It is different now, certainly, compared to when I was a kid. I grew up in Michigan, where there are no fences. Like UK4x4, I'd leave in the morning, come home after dark, having free range of huge tracts of land. There was an entire forest between me and my friends, and many an adventure to be had. It would have taken days for our parents to find us should they have the need....

Now, in the much more densely populated California, with multiple registered offenders about, and what seems like monthly reported "approaches" to young girls in the nearby jr. high (that my son also attends), it is a different world altogether. We let our son walk to school, but only in a group of other neighbor kids.

Out in the boonies though, I enjoy hiking away from camp with the kids, then letting them find their own way back....with an FRS radio and whistle, and yes, jackknives on a lanyard around their neck.

[wanderer-rrorc]

my kiddo's out playin in her pool (2ft deep she's 4ft tall)...im headin to the garage where the window that can see her is open and I can keep an eye on her...one of the dogs is out with her...and we live in a "safe" area..

I dont know if I would let a 9yr old ride the subway..depends on the 9yr old..

growin up my brothers and I would take off in the mornin..and be home for dinner..rode thousands of miles over many summers!!..but we never paniced..and KNEW what was safe and what wasnt...

I let my kido have that kind of freedom and responsablity for herself..but thats just teachin them what they need to know..and having faith..

[Superu]

I know us kids got more 'freedom' in the good ole days, but I continue to hear about things that happened back then that just weren't talked about. I keep meeting grown adults are or were in counseling to resolve decades-old abuses. I don't really think it was safer back then; we were just happy in our ignorance.

Call me paranoid if you like, but that's the way it is around our house.

I think it's a bit of both. I rode everywhere on my bike when I was a kid and encountered the occasional creepy looking character, but I was usually with a group of my friends and we knew how to turn and split when things didn't feel right.

The 24hr news cycle does tend to make us more paranoid by bringing every horrible event to our doorstep every minute of the day, but I do think there are more "troubled" people out on the streets than there were before the grand plan of de-institutionalization caught hold in the 70's.

My 9 year old alone on the subway? I'll pass on that one. There are plenty of opportunities for him to develop his independence without what I would consider needless risk.

[5Runner]

IMO my kids are "free-range", but maybe not in the subway riding respect being discussed here. I am speaking more figuratively than geographically.

I try to teach my kids the boundaries of their environment, items, etc. and why, and then give them freedom within those boundaries to make the right choices and the wrong choices. This way they practice making decisions early and learning about the consequences of bad decisions and the satisfaction of good decisions. Hopefully if they learn this young with "small" stuff (broken lamp, glue on couch) they will be more prepared with "big" stuff.

For example: I teach my kids the boundaries of using glue. It is for glueing stuff that needs to be glued, that's it. Then I teach them some good advice about glue, "it's messy and is easy to spill...I would only use it at your arts and crafts table if I were you". Then if I see them with the glue on the table, I remind them of my "good advice" to use the glue at their table, and the rest is up to them. Yes, there is risk in it for me by allowing them to mess up, but that's the cost of parenting. If they get glue on the couch, they would get in big trouble, but I give them the chance make the right choice on their own. I think this is better than just telling them to "get off the couch with that glue!"

I figure this is what we all do in life. We break rules sometimes, and push things to their limit other times...but we had to learn the limits and how to weigh when breaking rules is warrant.

Anyway, I think this is raising your child "free range" let them experience the good and bad in life, within boundaries that they trust and feel safe within. As they grow, the boundaries get larger.

kids, 3, 5, 7, but no way they would be on a subway alone at age 9.

I also think that there are probably just as many weirdos, sex offenders and just plain bad people now as their were when we were kids, but the news media is different. We get news instantly from anywhere and its fed to us much differently than in the past. I think our perception of crime has changed, but not the number of crimes. We just hear about it more and more easily.

[Token]

Several years back here just north of Memphis there was a young boy of about 5 or 6 that went missing one afternoon.. All sorts of police and search crews came out to look for him. About 8 am the following morning he was spotted by a news chopper helping search the area from the air.. He was about 50 yards from the Mississippi River and maybe 4 miles south of his house and he had his dog with him.

He was quickly picked up and taken to the hospital to be checked out even though he kept telling everyone he was Ok.. Wasn't to long before social services was called in to investigate the parents for child neglect.. Keep in mind the boy and his parents live NEAR town, but a long way from town and aren't exactly city folks..

What it came down to was the boy said he'd taken his dog and they'd gone out camping. He wasn't lost, he knew which way home was, he just wasn't done with his adventure so he hadn't headed back home when he was "found".. It just so happened he hadn't told his parents about "going camping" so it all got blown way out of whack really fast when they started asking around the neighborhood if anyone had seen the boy..

[6Pins]

It is statistically much safer for our children than it was for us in the 70s & 80s. We've managed to let the media and the 24hr news cycle convince us we live in a very dangerous world. The Times of London did a study last year assuming that you actually wanted your son to be abducted, to determine how long would you have to leave them, outside, unattended.

"It would take 200,000 years. And then you'd get them back within 24 hours. If you wanted them to be taken for longer you'd need to hang about for around 600,000 years. Because in any one year the average child stands a 0.0005 per cent chance of being abducted by a stranger and a 0.00016 chance of not being recovered alive within 24 hours"

The US population is larger, but the per capita numbers for kidnappings are about the same. It would take approx. 750,000 years for a child left outside, unattended.

Any child that is killed is a horrible tragedy. But when the numbers are about 50 kids in a country of 300 million, it’s also a very random, rare event. It is far more rare, for instance, than dying from a fall off the bed or other furniture.



http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/l...cle4418620.ece

[nargun]

Why all the stories and fear about ‘stranger danger’ when the greatest threat of child sexual or physical assault lies within your circle of friends or family.

My daughter started travelling by suburban trains alone at 13 (and through some pretty tough suburbs) and I see a number of kids daily catching suburban trains at the age of 8 or 9. Admittedly, these are all commuter trains

People look after kids in these environments. A person touching up one of those kids would be confronted at the very least, and probably physically restrained until the police arrived.

Mobile phones are a great security, as well as a little bit of common sense in explaining how to act. At 11 my daughter caught an interstate flight all by herself and had to wait an hour for the rest of the sporting team to arrive. At 15 she travelled overseas; she escorted the other 2 kids travelling with her through customs and immigration at both ends.

The problem I find is how to create the right balance; to let them loose on the world with an understanding of their vulnerabilities but not to be so scared that they cannot enjoy the freedoms that self reliance brings

There was some research a few years ago conducted in Australia where the researchers asked people elderly people whether they had been sexually assaulted as children. The responses indicated that the rate of sexual assault was almost identical to that reported today. I think this mirrored the results of UK studies

[Jacket]

That's why you gotta explore while they're young. That way they'll be losing their minds sitting around your house just like you

So true.

[autoxrs]

My parents have 2 kids, I am the younger by 6 years.

As a lad my brother was coddled, he was after all the first born. By the time I came around my parents had learned by trial and error.

Long before age 9 I was walking back and forth from school which was around 2 miles away (in a third world country, nonetheless). If my parents went anywhere we were left home alone. We survived, and unless what parenting experts will say we both grew up to be reasonable adults.

The over protectiveness towards my brother meant he simply can't survive outside 4 brick walls and away from telephones and so forth. He is in his mid 30s and to date hasn't even been able to spend one night camping in his own back yard in the middle of sprawling suburbia. On the other hand I try to spend as many weekends camping as I can. Through rain, snow and even blazing summer weather. A car, a map and a tent is all I need, and yet when I go somewhere with my brother he needs a multistar hotel while I'm ready to camp out.

So, I give kudos to the mother who let her kid learn discover responsibility as we seem to have lost some of that in modern times.