New Low in Parenting Trends: Free Range Kids

[lilah]

I read FRK every so often. I do think Lenore is a bit on the extreme side of things but she does bring up a lot of great arguments about the cultural shifts that cause children to be so sheltered and have no self-reliance skills.

I don't see how this relates to fundiesm, they are not really proponents of free range parenting but in sheltering your kids so much they aren't allowed to go to the grocery store or surf the internet without a sibling to keep them accountable.

[Conuly]

My kid is a kid, she can do kid size tasks.

And could theoretically take a kid-sized amount of responsibility for being alone. Not necessarily 5 hours every day, but what's wrong with 15 minutes here or there?

[snarkbillie]

And could theoretically take a kid-sized amount of responsibility for being alone. Not necessarily 5 hours every day, but what's wrong with 15 minutes here or there?

Nothing if she's alone. A lot, in my mind, is wrong with expecting a 10 year old to take care of another child. Maybe 15 minutes would be okay for that, but not for hours while they wait for me to get home from work. I give her more and more space and responsibility as she gets older. I don't really see how this is a horrible thing. Age appropriate experiences seem okay to me.

[theologygeek]

I like some of what the Free Range parents advocate. I've witnessed numerous examples of helicopter/attachment parenting gone haywire, so it's refreshing to encounter parents who actually let their kids run around and play without Mommy hovering over them every single minute. But letting a 9-year-old ride the subway alone in NYC? That's going too far in the other direction.

The subway or city bus are how NYC kids get to school. It's always been done that way.

[gardenvarietycitizen]

My mom used to make me walk up to the gas station -- probably a good four or five blocks away -- to buy her cigarettes when I was 5-6. And I'm only 26. She'd also leave us in the car to run into places from time to time. Windows down and childproof locks off. I was perfectly capable of getting out of the car if I felt hot/tired/bored(!) when I was five or six or seven.

/mom died of COPD a little over a week ago

//smoking is bad

///miss my mom 'tho

Yeah. It's "errands." We were sent with the shopping basket and mom's written shopping list to the local shopping street to pick up stuff, as kids. If we were good about it, mom gave a little extra money we could get candy on the way back.

My family didn't have a car when I was a kid so that wasn't an issue but much later, in college, a friend took me out on some trip to do errands and he was running in some boring store and so I said, nah, I'll stay in the car and read. Well, he took way longer than expected AND it got hot so I decided to leave the car and go look for him in the store. Alas, his automatic key lock or whatever it was had set the alarm, so I let myself out of the car trivially enough but then the alarm went off! and people started looking at me as if, am I stealing this car??? Of course he came running out hearing the alarm but yeah, that was unexpected and embarrassing. No one died though! :) But dammit, I miss normal manual car door locks!

Condolences about your mom. :(

[Conuly]

Nothing if she's alone. A lot, in my mind, is wrong with expecting a 10 year old to take care of another child. Maybe 15 minutes would be okay for that, but not for hours while they wait for me to get home from work. I give her more and more space and responsibility as she gets older. I don't really see how this is a horrible thing. Age appropriate experiences seem okay to me.

Except what you said is you'd "never leave her alone".

To me "never" means just that. It doesn't mean "maybe 15 minutes would be okay" or "when she gets older". It means never.

And you think this is a silly, overly literal comment, but it's not that unusual to find people saying things like "I wouldn't even let my 15 year old do this!" when it's something your average 7 year old could do. If you say never, I assume you mean never.

Yeah. It's "errands." We were sent with the shopping basket and mom's written shopping list to the local shopping street to pick up stuff, as kids. If we were good about it, mom gave a little extra money we could get candy on the way back.

http://www.japanprobe.com/2010/07/29/ja ... rain-trip/

http://www.japanprobe.com/2010/08/01/fi ... d-failure/

http://www.kawaiikakkoiisugoi.com/2011/ ... eal-world/

I can't understand this show, because it's all in Japanese, but it's ridiculously adorable. It's all reality tv about little kids going on their very first errands.

As far as shopping goes, I never picked up cigarettes for my mother. I refused to so much as bring her the pack from the living room. If she was going to smoke them, she was going to get them herself!

That notwithstanding, from the time I was 12 my whole allowance was the change left over from the weekly shopping, which I handled solo until... well, actually, I still handle it solo for both households (my mom and my sister. It's a three family house). I got *very good* at budgeting!

[gardenvarietycitizen]

Agreed. I grew up in Chicago and attended magnet schools, so was taking public transport alone from around 5th grade or so - or walking to school (about two miles) from kindergarten on. I never drove until I was in my 30's - didn't even have a license until I moved rural.

My stepsons went with me on a trip home a few years ago. One was driving at 15, already had two fairly serious accidents...and his mother didn't want him to come visit the very Orthodox Jewish Chicago neighborhood where my brother still lives because "it's too dangerous!' What the fuck did she think could happen there? I really put them in danger by taking the el downtown with them. :roll:

Heh. I have adults visit me in Chicago and when I take them somewhere on the L, they are amazed at "but we're riding the L? Really?"

Well, I don't drive, and you KNOW that, so yeah, if you come to visit me and you want me to take you somewhere in the way that I normally get there that means transit OR biking, so... yeah. :)

[gardenvarietycitizen]

I can't understand this show, because it's all in Japanese, but it's ridiculously adorable. It's all reality tv about little kids going on their very first errands.

Ha!!! I was thinking of mentioning that show in my comment ("hey we even have a show about this!!") but I see you got there anyway! :)

Yeah. Sending kids to do errands is a normal thing. Obviously you have to start small, and most people don't make it to national TV, but yes, kids run errands.

Amazingly enough given the era neither of my parents smoked. I remember making various ashtray gifts in school that ended up holding paperclips at our house...

Lately at a garage sale I found some plates (American) that have a place for your orderves (er, "hors d'ouvres" yeah) and also a place with a rest for the cig. Very 60's...

[chilsa]

My son (7 years old) was allowed, until recently, to play free range on the street we live on. He knows the rules, and is good at obeying. However, he will no longer be playing outside our house. He will not be back at my house from his father's until I feel comfortable with him coming home. Why? Because of the shooting that took place directly across the street from my house yesterday, during broad daylight. Someone was shot in her own home, and from what I hear she was not even the intended victim. I allowed the news access to my yard to get better coverage; the police used my fence to tie their crime scene tape. This happened during the time the neighborhood children are out playing--4 o'clock in the afternoon. Overly paranoid? Probably, but with the escalating occurrence of gunshots from that house--including a drive by shooting two nights before this one--I'm not willing to risk it. No child, no matter how old, can be adequately prepared to avoid stray bullets.

[Conuly]

My son (7 years old) was allowed, until recently, to play free range on the street we live on. He knows the rules, and is good at obeying. However, he will no longer be playing outside our house. He will not be back at my house from his father's until I feel comfortable with him coming home. Why? Because of the shooting that took place directly across the street from my house yesterday, during broad daylight. Someone was shot in her own home, and from what I hear she was not even the intended victim. I allowed the news access to my yard to get better coverage; the police used my fence to tie their crime scene tape. This happened during the time the neighborhood children are out playing--4 o'clock in the afternoon. Overly paranoid? Probably, but with the escalating occurrence of gunshots from that house--including a drive by shooting two nights before this one--I'm not willing to risk it. No child, no matter how old, can be adequately prepared to avoid stray bullets.

That's not paranoid. That's good common sense. You have a (hopefully temporary!) situation that warrants extra concern. Shit. I hope nobody else gets shot.

[chilsa]

That's not paranoid. That's good common sense. You have a (hopefully temporary!) situation that warrants extra concern. Shit. I hope nobody else gets shot.

I hope so too. I realized tonight as I was coming home from work at midnight that I was terrified to get out of my car. I am terrified of a bullet coming through my window. Usually there are children all over the neighborhood. Today, there was no one out on their porches, no kids playing. I'm all for letting my kid outside, all day if he wants, and I am seriously considering moving. I understand the desire for free-range parenting; I also understand the desire to protect your kids at all costs even if that means they don't leave your sight. My son is with his father who lives in public housing, and I feel much safer with him being in podunk projects than in the house he's lived in all his life. Yesterday's events have really forced me to see both sides of this particular argument.

[VintageJen1984]

Heh. I have adults visit me in Chicago and when I take them somewhere on the L, they are amazed at "but we're riding the L? Really?"

Well, I don't drive, and you KNOW that, so yeah, if you come to visit me and you want me to take you somewhere in the way that I normally get there that means transit OR biking, so... yeah. :)

So, my only public transportation experiences are in Houston (light rail, one line, alone) and Paris (many varied forms and multiple lines with other people). Is this a common fear of public transport the people have, or the EL specifically? And why?

I have weird risk/fear issues, I go places as a single woman that are supposedly dangerous for one or more females to be without a dude and don't have problems or have so much as the least bit of fear about it, but I have a physiological terrifying reaction to air vents and public bathrooms even though I know they aren't dangerous. So I realize that decisions I make for myself I should think through and not make for other people. I'd let them walk through the projects alone but tell them to be careful lest they run into one of those stores with air vents EVERYWHERE.

That being said, I've never heard anything actually bad about the El, but I've heard many people worry about riding it. I've also heard many people worry about riding public transportation in general, though. And here in Texas (a.k.a. car country) people are kind of dumb and overly cautious about things like public transportation anyway, because for most of them it's a foreign concept. But is the El supposed to be more dangerous than your typical train system or something? I don't get it.

[freejoytoo]

I grew up in the nineties. From the age of about nine I was allowed to walk to school by myself (ten minutes away) and, after being shown the journey a few times, I always walked to high school by myself, which was twenty minutes away. I don't remember ever being left alone in the car but some of my friends were if their parents were just buying milk.

I think children are slightly overprotected these days but I don't think I would let my hypothetical nine-year-old ride a train by his or herself. I wasn't allowed to get a bus into town by myself until I was twelve. I do think it's crazy to assume that a group of seventeen and eighteen-year-olds are too young to ride a train back by themselves. Immature? Obviously, but they're in their late teens, and some are legally adults.

[dawbs]

In order for there to be a crime, doesn't there have to be intent? Accidents happen.

THis is where I go.

KNow what I did this morning?

I turned on the wrong stove burner. Scalded an empty teakettle in the process--could have been much worse.

Granted, I remembered within a few minutes but...I forgot what I was doing, I got distracted, life happened.

I could have burnt down the house and killed my entire family.

So...if I had remembered 5 minutes later, by this logic, I'd be criminally negligent.

and, Conley said well: Quite honestly, I think if we eliminated the shame of this and the "Oh, this only happens to BAD parents" attitudes then it wouldn't be too hard to invent some sort of carseat alarm that pings if you open the door and there's a little person still buckled in.

And I say to that, AMEN.

Every time I get in the car w/ my kid, I put the diaper-bag on the passenger side seat. Actually, when I don't need the bag, I still grab something to put on that seat that says "hey, dingus, your kid is in the back".

When I put my dog in the back seat, I tie a leash to my purse handle.

When I tell people this, know what response I get? I get "wow, you must be a lousy parent/dog owner/whatever to have to do that to remember"...if we could get rid of the "only bad parents forget" shaming, more people would take steps like that...and fewer kids would die.

(and this has probably been said, I"m readint hte rest of the thread now--I just had to type that before my migraine meds kicked in :)

[AmyP]

THis is where I go.

KNow what I did this morning?

I turned on the wrong stove burner. Scalded an empty teakettle in the process--could have been much worse.

Granted, I remembered within a few minutes but...I forgot what I was doing, I got distracted, life happened.

I could have burnt down the house and killed my entire family.

So...if I had remembered 5 minutes later, by this logic, I'd be criminally negligent.

and, Conley said well: Quite honestly, I think if we eliminated the shame of this and the "Oh, this only happens to BAD parents" attitudes then it wouldn't be too hard to invent some sort of carseat alarm that pings if you open the door and there's a little person still buckled in.

And I say to that, AMEN.

Every time I get in the car w/ my kid, I put the diaper-bag on the passenger side seat. Actually, when I don't need the bag, I still grab something to put on that seat that says "hey, dingus, your kid is in the back".

When I put my dog in the back seat, I tie a leash to my purse handle.

When I tell people this, know what response I get? I get "wow, you must be a lousy parent/dog owner/whatever to have to do that to remember"...if we could get rid of the "only bad parents forget" shaming, more people would take steps like that...and fewer kids would die.

(and this has probably been said, I"m readint hte rest of the thread now--I just had to type that before my migraine meds kicked in :)

It is really easy to forget a baby in the car. Many of these situations happen when parents are trading off for daycare dropoff, and one parent is preoccupied or stressed and just forgets that it was his/her morning to drop off. If you have ever got in your car to run errands and found yourself on the way to work you know that you can get preoccupied and forget something. I think that every parent needs to realize that this could happen to anyone. If you think only bad parents do this, you are kidding yourself. I also have visual reminders in the car so that I don't forget the baby, especially if my older kids are somewhere else and it's just me and baby. That is when I am most afraid, because the routine will be different, the older kids gone, and the baby quietly sleeping could be more easily forgotten back there. A healthy amount of paranoia here can save you a lifetime of pain and regret. I love the idea of an alarm, BTW.

[Rosa]

My son (7 years old) was allowed, until recently, to play free range on the street we live on. He knows the rules, and is good at obeying. However, he will no longer be playing outside our house. He will not be back at my house from his father's until I feel comfortable with him coming home. Why? Because of the shooting that took place directly across the street from my house yesterday, during broad daylight. Someone was shot in her own home, and from what I hear she was not even the intended victim. I allowed the news access to my yard to get better coverage; the police used my fence to tie their crime scene tape. This happened during the time the neighborhood children are out playing--4 o'clock in the afternoon. Overly paranoid? Probably, but with the escalating occurrence of gunshots from that house--including a drive by shooting two nights before this one--I'm not willing to risk it. No child, no matter how old, can be adequately prepared to avoid stray bullets.

Chilsa, that's terrible. We have enough random shootings in the neighborhood that I keep my son's bed away from the front wall of the house - it's been awhile, but about 10 years ago a little girl was hit by a stray bullet while sitting at the dining room table doing her homework. I hope the problem house is gone quickly. I wish we had better solutions for that kind of violence than "evict so it goes away."

[Esther]

I don't know if this is different in America than it is in Europe. Maybe it is, but over here, leaving a kid over say, five years of age in a car for anything up to fifteen or twenty minutes while you run into a store is considered pretty normal. My parents did it with me all the time. Obviously, I rolled the window down a bit and just sat with my comic book. I liked it better than having to go inside to buy garden stuff or God knows what. I don't think that harms a child. Similarly, I took trains by myself when I was twelve or thirteen. I took a night train to Germany alone when I was sixteen. It's not generally considered a big deal, or at all dangerous. And that was just before mobile phones were even around.

I don't think you should leave your kids to fend for themselves, but I think a lot of parents in the USA especially do exaggerate in the other direction.

[latraviata]

I don't know if this is different in America than it is in Europe. Maybe it is, but over here, leaving a kid over say, five years of age in a car for anything up to fifteen or twenty minutes while you run into a store is considered pretty normal. My parents did it with me all the time. Obviously, I rolled the window down a bit and just sat with my comic book. I liked it better than having to go inside to buy garden stuff or God knows what. I don't think that harms a child. Similarly, I took trains by myself when I was twelve or thirteen. I took a night train to Germany alone when I was sixteen. It's not generally considered a big deal, or at all dangerous. And that was just before mobile phones were even around.

I don't think you should leave your kids to fend for themselves, but I think a lot of parents in the USA especially do exaggerate in the other direction.

Same here, I think the situation/culture in the USA is different. Have you ever seen 'World's Worst Mum??'

You don't believe your European eyes, then again read the blogs of fundie parents.

[freejoytoo]

In the UK it's normal for children of secondary school age onwards (eleven and up) to commute to school by themselves and that involves taking a train.

[Katiebug]

It is really easy to forget a baby in the car. Many of these situations happen when parents are trading off for daycare dropoff, and one parent is preoccupied or stressed and just forgets that it was his/her morning to drop off. If you have ever got in your car to run errands and found yourself on the way to work you know that you can get preoccupied and forget something. I think that every parent needs to realize that this could happen to anyone. If you think only bad parents do this, you are kidding yourself. I also have visual reminders in the car so that I don't forget the baby, especially if my older kids are somewhere else and it's just me and baby. That is when I am most afraid, because the routine will be different, the older kids gone, and the baby quietly sleeping could be more easily forgotten back there. A healthy amount of paranoia here can save you a lifetime of pain and regret. I love the idea of an alarm, BTW.

My husband thinks I'm paranoid but if we change the daycare dropoff routine at all, I start getting paranoid - I've seriously made him text me a picture of the empty car seat to confirm that she's safely there. And our daycare center will call the parents if a child is a no-show by an hour after the usual arrival time (you're supposed to call if the child is sick or otherwise not going in one day). It's when the routine is different that these tragedies can happen. We also try to stick to the routine whenever possible for that reason.

I also have visual reminders in the car; this is less of a worry now that she's a toddler who talks my ear off most of the time but I'm in the habit of always glancing back and checking that the seat is empty or occupied as it's supposed to be. We do the extended rear facing thing so I do have a mirror. And when we have another baby I'm getting one of these: http://www.sbtsafety.com/ It's a streamer that attaches to your keychain and to the child's car seat. When you strap the child in, you attach the streamer to your keys and when you take them out of the seat you attach it to the seat. Once you're in the habit of using it, it makes a lot of sense.

I'm an engineer and technically it would be easy to add this technology to car seats or cars. It's just that there's this perception that only an awful parent would forget their child in a car and a lot of folks don't want to admit that given the right circumstances it could happen to them.

[Katiebug]

Also, I was a latch key kid starting in third grade. I went to the before school program, but came home on the school bus by myself, walked to our home from the bus stop, let myself in and locked the door behind me, and paged my mom to let her know I was home safely (this was pre-cell phones, obviously). She was usually home within an hour or so. My brother was not allowed to do this until middle school; our parents felt he was not responsible enough to do it and to follow their rules. They tailored their parenting to suit the needs of both children and our family's living environment, which IMO is kind of how you're supposed to do it. No one who advocates free range parenting would tell a parent to have her kid do something which would be unsafe in the circumstances; the whole concept is to make a sensible assessment of risk and allow children developmentally-appropriate freedoms.

[FlorenceHamilton]

I think I know the reason why the El (elevated train) is often regarded with more caution. Because the El train rins on tracks above ground, the streets below it tend to be very dark. Even in mid-day, they only get filtered sunlight. This means that the passenger enters the station from a darkened area. The street that runs below the El tends to be filled with businesses, both because the dark and noise make it a less desireable street to live upon and also because the transit activities add a lot of commuter traffic.

For all of the things that the El brings, housing near the El tends to be very urban and low income with small pockets of wealth. This is often a high crime area.

[FlorenceHamilton]

I think that this thread is really interesting. It makes me happy to see that the direction of the group is to acknowlege that each child is different. Parenting is often a process of pulling children in close to you while at the same time pushing them into the world.

Our job is to protect them and also to prepare them. It is always a balance. The thing is that every time you allow your child to try a new independent task, you are taking a risk that your safety estimate was not correct. In the vast majority of times, the penalty is a messy problem, a minor injury or a behavior that is not acceptable. So we deal with the error in judgement and we regroup. Rarely, such a misjudgement ends in disaster. That is the unfortunate risk of being a living creature in the universe. We do try to lower that risk wherever we can.

In the effort to lower that risk, there has been a generation of over protectors. These are the helicopter parents. I think that free ranging is a reaction to this tendency. The truth is that parents need to do both. It is a process that depends on the personality of the parent as well as that of the child. It is also dependent on a host of other factors that arise in the environment. Issues such as the safety of the area and the weather and available transportation, behavior and ages of sibling and many other things mitigate parental decisions.

There are not a lot of universal rules for these reasons. That said, it is generally never a good idea to leave a small child unattended in a car. I think that a good rule for that would be that the minimum age for even considering such a decision is that the child would need to be old enough to not require restraint other than a seat belt and be old enough to also be able adjust the window, get out of the car and be able to cross the street or walk through a parking lot independently as well. By those rules, the average reasonably behaved 10 year old could stay in the car for a few minutes while a parent goes into the store as long as they understand instructions and parameters and expectations. I am a big believer in coaching your children prior to activities. You can make your expectations clear and the reasons why there are expectations. Obviosly, a child who so little that they need to be restrained in a seat or too young to acknowledge and follow safety instructions is too little to be left alone....even for a few minutes.

There is a reason why TV commercials often show a parent teaching a child to ride a two wheeled bike. The process is a parallel to the parenting process in general. You start out holding on and then let go for little moments, then bigger ones until the child finally takes off on their own,

[mirele]

I don't get all the hovering that goes on today. By comparison, growing up in the 1960s, we were pretty much turned loose, and stuff happened that would probably get CPS involved today. Like when my 2YO brother wandered off to my elementary school and I found him on the lawn at the end of the kindergarten (!) half-day and brought him home to find my parents and the rest of the neighborhood tearing the place apart looking for him. Or when he opened a car door on a four lane highway and tumbled out...and my sister calmly said from the back seat, "Mom, Jay just fell out of the car." If there'd been kid leashes back in the 1960s, I can only imagine that my mom would have had one for my brother; instead she and dad read him the riot act about never crossing a street without someone holding his hand. And we had to wear seatbelts years before it became the law.

I think there's a lot of overprotecting going on these days--while at the same time kids know more about the world in theory than I ever knew.

[pomology]

Heh. I have adults visit me in Chicago and when I take them somewhere on the L, they are amazed at "but we're riding the L? Really?"

Well, I don't drive, and you KNOW that, so yeah, if you come to visit me and you want me to take you somewhere in the way that I normally get there that means transit OR biking, so... yeah. :)

Public transportation ftw. I especially love the Chicago L. Frankly, metro systems are almost certainly safer, cheaper, and easier than cars. What's with all the hate?

On a note related to this thread, there really is a HUGE difference between the US and the rest of the world. When I was seven, my mother, my brother and I spent the summer in Jerusalem (my dad went back to the US after three weeks because he had to work). My mom let my nine year old brother and I walk home from camp on our own every day, because she was in class. That wasn't her preference, but there wasn't any other easy option and she let us do it. It was normal there. My parents also practically forced me to go on my own to the corner store when I was there. Which was also normal for Israeli seven-year-olds but I objected to because I was shy. My mother also let me wander around outside with my friends.

She didn't let me go on my own to a city in the United States until I was 16 or so. I actually think she would have let me go to the city with friends but no adults a couple of year before that, but I had no social life in high school so no opportunities came up. But once she let me start traveling by train on my own, there were few limits and I traveled all over without her worrying. At 17 I traveled to Buenos Aires alone (my first flight alone which happened to be to a foreign country where I was vaguely acquainted with a total of one person).

I was not a city kid, so I can see why my mother might have objected to me traveling around New York on my own at a certain age where it would be perfectly fine for a New Yorker to do so. And not letting a 17 or 18 year old travel by themselves on Amtrak? Is preposterous. If kids deface property there with no adult chaperones, then they are going to get taken down by the conductor and probably the police. No chaperone to hide behind. Which is what they deserve.

And for the record, I feel safer alone in New York City after dark than I do in my hometown. Because in New York, there are always people around. Many people seem to have a big fear of cities, but, honestly, I really don't get it.