Of all the adventures my lucky children had this summer — swimming in two oceans, hanging out on their bearded uncle’s commercial salmon fishing boat, endless Popsicles — the biggest one, they told me, was just 495 feet away in their own D.C. neighborhood.
They got to walk to the corner store on Capitol Hill by themselves. Clutch your pearls, America. The boys are 7 and 10. Apparently, I could be arrested for this.
In another disturbing national trend, we’ve sanctioned the criminalization of childhood independence. This summer we heard about a Florida mom arrested for letting her 7-year-old walk to the local park and a mother locked up because her 9-year-old was playing at their neighborhood park in South Carolina.
A recent poll conducted by Reason/Rupe said that 68 percent of Americans think there should be a law prohibiting children 9 and younger from playing in a park unsupervised; and 43 percent think the same about allowing 12-year-olds that kind of freedom.
What has happened to us? My generation grew up, after all, with scratchy yarn and a house key around our necks. We walked home, let ourselves in and played until our parents got home from work.
I rode nearly a mile on my bike to get groceries for my mom when I was 8. I walked down one street and around the corner to the bus stop when I was in kindergarten.
My dad left me and another kid in the car when we were 4 while he visited my mom at the coffee shop where she was a waitress. We ate his cigarettes. But no one abducted us.
If the current judgment upon parents were in place, my folks would have spent my entire childhood in the lockup.
Yes. There are scary people out there. It is always a risk to let your children out of your sight. But truthfully, the most dangerous thing you do every day is drive anywhere with a child. About 300 kids are hurt daily in car accidents; an average of three are killed that way every day.
Yet I don’t see police pulling parents over and locking them up whenever they see someone in a car seat. But playing on the monkey bars without Mommy nearby? Book ’em!
“It’s a different world out there today. It’s not like when I was growing up, and we’d all play in an apple orchard and we were safe. Today, you just don’t know who’s out there,” said a lovely, well-meaning grandmother who was keeping an eagle-eye lookout on her grandchildren at a water park this summer while I let my kids do the water slides by themselves.
Yes, it is a different world. It’s a safer world. It just doesn’t feel like it because we know too much.
Back in the apple orchard and latchkey days, there were plenty of child molesters, killers and pervs lurking around. We simply didn’t talk about them and didn’t hear about what they did. News about a tragedy in Tallahassee didn’t accompany your Wheaties in Portland seven days in a row.
It might not sound that way, listening to the news, but crimes against children committed by strangers are rare and declining.
Since 1993, the number of children 14 andunder who were murdered is down by 36 percent. For children 14 to 17, murders are down 60 percent. Only one-hundreth of 1 percent of missing children are abducted by strangers or even slight acquaintances, according to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
I’ll never forget the days I spent with hundreds of files from the Boy Scouts of America documenting decades of molesters, pedophiles and predators using their uniform as a way to get access.
Back when we thought everything was safe and shiny, not only did some of the men we trusted molest our kids, but also our kids were afraid to tell anyone about it. And if they did tell, the adults in their world usually buried the incidents deep.
According to Justice Department statistics analyzed by the Free Range Kids organization, 3 percent of children murdered from 1976 to 2005were killed by strangers.
Lenore Skenazy started the Free Range Kids movement after she was called “America’s worst mom” for allowing her 9-year-old to take the subway alone in Manhattan.
Statistically, our children’s biggest enemies are the people we know, she says. But instead of focusing on ways to address child abuse, poverty and the mental illness that is at the root of most of the horrible things that happen to kids, we’ve chosen to criminalize parents in a massive, cultural shift that damages the normal, natural development of our children.
The demands on parents — moms in particular, if you notice the arrest stories — are greater than ever to hover and supervise 24/7. That kind of parenting hurts everyone.
Okay, I’ll admit I wasn’t as cool as Skenazy when I let my kids’ leashes go this summer. The boys went to the corner store — a trip they’d walked a thousand times with me — with one of our cellphones and the dog. And I was a wreck the whole 20 minutes that I gave them on the phone stopwatch.
But they were 20 minutes that they talk about nearly every day. And those 495 feet were probably some of the most important steps they took in their short lives.
I'm more afraid of pearl clutchy hover moms calling 911 regarding my unattended child than I am about my unattended child being hurt walking to a corner store.
Good Lord! I cannot imagine my parents accompanying me ANYWHERE at 15. 15 is old enough to be dropped off at the mall. 15 is old enough to take the bus to the mall, to a nearby restaurant, the damned library, etc. 15 is old enough to waltz out of the house at 10 and not walk back in until just before dark, ESPECIALLY now that you carry a cell phone every where.
I wonder if that's the thing, though HBC, kids aren't roving in packs anymore because all the activities are scheduled and programmed so if you let your kid go to the store they are likely going alone and that's scary? I dunno, not a parent.
In my neighborhood, this is absolutely the case. At best, you see two or three kids together.
H and I talk about this a lot because our neighborhood is absolutely full of kids. I know this because I've gotten stuck behind the bus when it stops at our neighborhood entrance, and it's a clown car of students getting off. Then they magically disappear and we never see them again.
Good Lord! I cannot imagine my parents accompanying me ANYWHERE at 15. 15 is old enough to be dropped off at the mall. 15 is old enough to take the bus to the mall, to a nearby restaurant, the damned library, etc. 15 is old enough to waltz out of the house at 10 and not walk back in until just before dark, ESPECIALLY now that you carry a cell phone every where.
This. I mean, people need to calm down.
I started catching the bus to middle school across town at 10. My sister taught me how to catch the bus a few days before school started and that was that. It's just how it is where I grew up, and I suspect based on your 1st post in this thread the same for you. I even started going to an after school program at a completely different school, a high school no less, during this same time period.
I get that the majority of school districts use buses, and they're used to kids always being under some adult supervision, but come on a 15yo can't be anywhere without their parents. That's crazy talk.
I spent summers with my aunt in Amarillo. She had four kids (six in the summer with my sister and me.) The oldest was 16 and the youngest was my sister at 7. We would wander within a 3 mile radius that was her neighborhood. She lived in this great little Mexican barrio where she and my mom grew up. We would talk to the flea market (about a mile from her house along a wide deserted road) and spend hours there alone. We'd walk to the playground, to her office, to main street, to my grandma's house. Sometimes it was all of us. Sometimes it was all just the younger kids (12, 11, 7, and 5). We were out and about from dawn until dusk. It was awesome! This was in the late 80s/early 90s so no cell phones. The bonus was that all the people in that area knew who we were and who was responsible for us because it was a tight nit community, but there was no leash in the summer.
Constrast that with the nosy ass shopper at the nearly empty grocery store who asked my son why he was alone when I let him go to the restroom with out me. When I came to get him, she said, " "Oh good! I thought he was alone here. I was getting worried and about to call the store manager." He was gone for 10 minutes tops and he's almost 7. He didn't need me to take him to the restroom. ^o)
I wonder if that's the thing, though HBC, kids aren't roving in packs anymore because all the activities are scheduled and programmed so if you let your kid go to the store they are likely going alone and that's scary? I dunno, not a parent.
I also wonder if it's also related to kids not going to neighborhood schools anymore?
We got a brochure from Muriel Bowser yesterday that was touting her work on the Kids Ride Free bill that lets kids ride WMATA for free to school. Now, I have no opposition to covering kids' WMATA fare to school. But I've seen a (way too wordy) Catania sign that says, "Support high quality neighborhood schools as a matter of right." (I LOL every time I see it because damn, that's a lot for a sign.) And the whole thing got me thinking about how many kids would need free WMATA fare if everyone had a good neighborhood school. I see so many kids on the train and the bus everyday who are clearly coming from other neighborhoods.
I assume that if you go to school in a different neighborhood from where you live, that makes it a lot harder to have a big group of neighborhood friends to hang out with.
I wonder if that's the thing, though HBC, kids aren't roving in packs anymore because all the activities are scheduled and programmed so if you let your kid go to the store they are likely going alone and that's scary? I dunno, not a parent.
I also wonder if it's also related to kids not going to neighborhood schools anymore?
We got a brochure from Muriel Bowser yesterday that was touting her work on the Kids Ride Free bill that lets kids ride WMATA for free to school. Now, I have no opposition to covering kids' WMATA fare to school. But I've seen a (way too wordy) Catania sign that says, "Support high quality neighborhood schools as a matter of right." (I LOL every time I see it because damn, that's a lot for a sign.) And the whole thing got me thinking about how many kids would need free WMATA fare if everyone had a good neighborhood school. I see so many kids on the train and the bus everyday who are clearly coming from other neighborhoods.
I assume that if you go to school in a different neighborhood from where you live, that makes it a lot harder to have a big group of neighborhood friends to hang out with.
/random musings
I'm surprised they don't already provide kids with free transit. Like you said, there are kids on every day, all day, but maybe it's more defined at the middle and high schoolers, because historically, that's when kids start branching out and going to schools further away.
Where I grew up, every month you were given a new set of bus tickets as a matter of course, unless you lived within two miles of the school.
I also wonder if it's also related to kids not going to neighborhood schools anymore?
We got a brochure from Muriel Bowser yesterday that was touting her work on the Kids Ride Free bill that lets kids ride WMATA for free to school. Now, I have no opposition to covering kids' WMATA fare to school. But I've seen a (way too wordy) Catania sign that says, "Support high quality neighborhood schools as a matter of right." (I LOL every time I see it because damn, that's a lot for a sign.) And the whole thing got me thinking about how many kids would need free WMATA fare if everyone had a good neighborhood school. I see so many kids on the train and the bus everyday who are clearly coming from other neighborhoods.
I assume that if you go to school in a different neighborhood from where you live, that makes it a lot harder to have a big group of neighborhood friends to hang out with.
/random musings
I'm surprised they don't already provide kids with free transit. Like you said, there are kids on every day, all day, but maybe it's more defined at the middle and high schoolers, because historically, that's when kids start branching out and going to schools further away.
Where I grew up, every month you were given a new set of bus tickets as a matter of course, unless you lived within two miles of the school.
I'd have to look at the brochure again, but I think the Kids Ride Free thing started last year? Maybe it expanded an already existing program? I think it said it provides all kids, regardless of public, private, or charter school, free WMATA fare. It's kind of fuzzy. I was tired and hungry when I read it.
I'm surprised they don't already provide kids with free transit. Like you said, there are kids on every day, all day, but maybe it's more defined at the middle and high schoolers, because historically, that's when kids start branching out and going to schools further away.
Where I grew up, every month you were given a new set of bus tickets as a matter of course, unless you lived within two miles of the school.
I'd have to look at the brochure again, but I think the Kids Ride Free thing started last year? Maybe it expanded an already existing program? I think it said it provides all kids, regardless of public, private, or charter school, free WMATA fare. It's kind of fuzzy. I was tired and hungry when I read it.
Got it. That makes sense. I *think* right now, some older public school students get it, but I'm not 100%
... ETA: I let my 15 year old go to the fair with a group of friends this weekend. My friend saw him there and asked where I was. He said at home, and she asked him if I knew he was there. He said yes. She then called me to tell me my son was at the fair with his friends and did she want me to bring him home?
At 15? Your friend is utterly insane.
ETA - at 15, I was riding my bike to the nearby wooded trails and going for hour-long runs entirely by myself, where I would see the occasional person and also the occasional moose. It never even occurred to me that I needed to be around people all of the time. And I didn't even have a cell phone (they didn't exist when I was 15).
I'd have to look at the brochure again, but I think the Kids Ride Free thing started last year? Maybe it expanded an already existing program? I think it said it provides all kids, regardless of public, private, or charter school, free WMATA fare. It's kind of fuzzy. I was tired and hungry when I read it.
Got it. That makes sense. I *think* right now, some older public school students get it, but I'm not 100%
The brochure made it sound like this has already taken effect. From Bowser's website:
In 2013, Muriel created Kids Ride Free, legislation allowing all DC students free bus rides to school in order to remove an all-too-common barrier to attendance. Muriel was able to shepherd this program from idea to reality in just a few months.
I assume that if you go to school in a different neighborhood from where you live, that makes it a lot harder to have a big group of neighborhood friends to hang out with.
/random musings
I think this certainly can contribute. That's what the situation is with my kids since they attend private school. However, they are actually among the few kids who are out and about in the neighborhood on a regular basis, so I don't think attending a different school is necessarily the death knell to the roving neighborhood gaggle of kids. If anything, my kids have made a real effort to make friends within the neighborhood since none of their school friends live near us so they need people to play with.
Got it. That makes sense. I *think* right now, some older public school students get it, but I'm not 100%
The brochure made it sound like this has already taken effect. From Bowser's website:
In 2013, Muriel created Kids Ride Free, legislation allowing all DC students free bus rides to school in order to remove an all-too-common barrier to attendance. Muriel was able to shepherd this program from idea to reality in just a few months.
I wonder if that's the thing, though HBC, kids aren't roving in packs anymore because all the activities are scheduled and programmed so if you let your kid go to the store they are likely going alone and that's scary? I dunno, not a parent.
When I was shorter, in order to from a pack, we children had to be released into the neighborhood. I went out, possibly with my younger sisters, sometimes on my own. My BFF went out, possibly with hers. The neighbor kids down the street went out. No one called anyone. We had to wander around alone and find each other so we could decide what to do.
I have a twin sister so I was never really alone. Apparently 2 is enough for my parents and they could not wait for us to get out of the house. We usually ended up playing with some of the other kids in the neighborhood but if it was just us we still had to get the hell out.
I remember being 8 or 9 and wandering through the woods near our house with a bunch of other kids. We ended up coming out by one of the major roads in town. I was back in that town a few years ago and to this day cannot figure out how we got there or how long it must have taken us. We were miles and miles away from where we started and no one was concerned with every child in the cul-de-sac disappearing for most of a day.
I wonder if that's the thing, though HBC, kids aren't roving in packs anymore because all the activities are scheduled and programmed so if you let your kid go to the store they are likely going alone and that's scary? I dunno, not a parent.
When I was shorter, in order to from a pack, we children had to be released into the neighborhood. I went out, possibly with my younger sisters, sometimes on my own. My BFF went out, possibly with hers. The neighbor kids down the street went out. No one called anyone. We had to wander around alone and find each other so we could decide what to do.
Yep. It's my goal to facilitate roaming packs of children in my neighborhood, but it's tough. It does no good for me to let my kid out if he's the only one. I hear other kids, but they're all in their backyards. We have an awesome neighborhood school, a park, a pool, bike lanes, yet very few roaming children. I don't get it!
ETA: I let my 15 year old go to the fair with a group of friends this weekend. My friend saw him there and asked where I was. He said at home, and she asked him if I knew he was there. He said yes. She then called me to tell me my son was at the fair with his friends and did she want me to bring him home?
I don't get this. In less than a year, he'll be able to drive himself places alone. One of my coworkers had this too - didn't want to leave her kid alone at a public event at 15.
Not a parent, but still surprised each year that the neighbors wait with their kids at the bus stop. One woman stopped her car at a stop sign the first day of school, left it running, and got out and waited on the other side of the road with her kid. I saw the car, stopped, and she flagged me around the car.
Back in my day we walked to school without parents or waited alone at bus stops. We also had 17 year old bus drivers... so maybe not all change is bad.
The parents waiting with older kids absolutely boggles my mind. Like really, your middle school age and older kid can't wait at the bus stop with their peers by themselves. The only way I could see doing this, is maybe if there was a bullying situation, and if it was that severe, I'd likely just drive them to school.
Re the 17yo driving the school bus, my friend told me this recently, and I was so shocked. I guess it was coming when she went to school, but I couldn't imagine a teen driving a busload of kids to school.
I must expand. I Google mapped because I remember there being a pond we would ice skate on with no parental supervision. Top circle is my childhood home and the access point to the woods (I don't live anywhere near there anymore so feel free to stalk), bottom is the pond. Between 6 and 10 kids would routinely disappear in to the snowy woods with ice skates and walk there. TBH I'm questioning my parents right now. This was the early 90s so no phones. But I'm alive!
I'm surprised they don't already provide kids with free transit. Like you said, there are kids on every day, all day, but maybe it's more defined at the middle and high schoolers, because historically, that's when kids start branching out and going to schools further away.
Where I grew up, every month you were given a new set of bus tickets as a matter of course, unless you lived within two miles of the school.
They do. There are no school buses in DC for regular kids, just special needs kids. They all get a transit pass at the beginning of the year.
Thanks.
I thought so, as I grew up in a similar area, but I was doubting myself.
Post by jeaniebueller on Aug 28, 2014 10:13:40 GMT -5
I have dreams of the day my 5 year old will let me out of his sight long enough to roam the neighborhood, wander the county fair with friends and be able to stay in a car while I run in a store.
I'd have to look at the brochure again, but I think the Kids Ride Free thing started last year? Maybe it expanded an already existing program? I think it said it provides all kids, regardless of public, private, or charter school, free WMATA fare. It's kind of fuzzy. I was tired and hungry when I read it.
If it's anything like it is here, they do provide school bus service for all kids public and charter. However, the buses are fucked up and people here are wondering if it wouldn't be more efficient and more convenient to let kids ride a public transportation bus. But the parents don't like that.
THERE ARE ADULTS ON THE BUS. SOME OF THEM ARE CRACKHEADS!
Dude, everyone rode the bus when I was a kid. Again, I was a kid in Brooklyn so you know.
You know, the only reason I would have qualms with leaving my 12-17 year old somewhere is if they were hanging out with their bf and I thought they might have ::whispers:: the secks. TWELVE INCHES BETWEEN YOU AT ALL TIMES and don't snicker at me, young man. You know your baby dick ain't 12 inches.
I must expand. I Google mapped because I remember there being a pond we would ice skate on with no parental supervision. Top circle is my childhood home and the access point to the woods (I don't live anywhere near there anymore so feel free to stalk), bottom is the pond. Between 6 and 10 kids would routinely disappear in to the snowy woods with ice skates and walk there. TBH I'm questioning my parents right now. This was the early 90s so no phones. But I'm alive!
Yep. We did something like this all the time. Except the path to get to the pond was partially an active train track and the pond was at the bottom of a 30 foot cliff that we'd climb down.