Quote from: jgants;218965Today, a hundred years later, hardly any adolescents have the first clue how to do anything for themselves - including the ability to think for themselves.  I still see people well into their twenties who still live at home because they have no concept whatsoever of self-reliance and no life skills.

A journalist in Toronto raised a furor when she wrote a story about letting her 10-year-old son ride the subway around town alone. Her thinking was that she rode the subway back when she was 10, and the world isn't any more dangerous now than it was then (contrary to common perception).

Fact is, parents today need to needed by their children much more than their own parents or grandparents needed to be needed. They follow their kids all the way to university, hovering over them and fixing problems, because they can't face the notion that their expertise and vigilance isn't absolutely crucial to keeping their child safe, happy, and successful. That's why so many parents resent it when you tell them the world isn't any more dangerous today than it was 30 years ago - if the world isn't a scary and dreadful place, then they don't have any justification for micromanaging and fretting over their childrens' every step.

My old neighbourhood had a family that took the "you gotta let kids be kids" approach to parenting, mixed with some ideas about society being too restrictive about when things are age-appropriate.

Almost everyday when I was coming home from work I would see something... noteworthy.

Some of the activities their 3-4 year old would be up to:

• Hanging out the car window screaming at people on the sidewalk as they drove past.  (No car seat or seat belt)
• Climbing onto the roof of the family car and jumping around
• Using a ladder to climb up onto the roof of the house and running about screaming at people (something about being a sniper)
• Making holes in the front lawn with a pick axe (full sized)
• Destroying various things in the driveway with power tools
• Crashing his battery-powered ride-on car into the other neighbourhood kids
• Recounting stories from Grand Theft Auto or some other FPS game (eg. Gun) he just got for the computer.
• Flipping out and swearing at his parents till he was blue in the face and had to be carried inside
• Flipping out and crying because the other kids didn't want to play with him

The parents would alternately be sitting on lawn chairs in their driveway smiling at their sons activities, or be nowhere in sight.  It really made no difference to the proceedings.

Quote from: walkerp;219011Children don't seem to be allowed to just run around any more.  

That's the biggest one, and marks a sea change between today's North American society and... well, every other society that has walked the planet. There is something fundamentally unhealthy in a society where children are not allowed to play and roam outside unattended. Children need to be physically active, and supervised sports activities involve a fraction of the actual running, climbing, etc. of a bunch of kids playing tag at a park or riding their bikes through the woods.

The anxiety over unsupervised play means parents are now devoting big chunks of what should be their own leisure time to managing their children's leisure - driving them everywhere and watching over them. In the long run, this isn't good for families. Families need to sit down and eat meals together, children need time on their own or with their peers, parents need time alone, time as a couple, and time with their own peers.

The fabricated hysteria over child abductions is largely to blame for the abandonment of free-range outdoor play. The media gives each rare incident today 20 to 50 times more coverage than they did 30 years ago, leaving an already anxious generation of parents with the impression that the incidence of child abduction is skyrocketing.

And yet even when some members of the media and others in the know point out that there isn't a horde of predators out there waiting to snatch children, that the streets are as safe today as they were 30 years ago (actually, safer in most cases), parents get defensive and resentful.

My best buddy is a newspaper columnist. We grew up together and had a very active, free-range childhood. When my buddy has his reporter hat on, he has to follow the policy of his newspaper and try to inspire as much shock and dread as he possibly can. The rule of thumb when it comes to stories about bad things happening to children is to make every parent think it could be their own child, and to terrify them. Apparently, fear sells a lot of newspapers.

However, when he has his columnist hat on he can report facts showing that the world isn't more dangerous for children now than it was when we were kids. It's actually safer. And the risk to children of being abducted by a stranger is infintisimal. Same as it was 30 years ago. He had a retired judge call and thank him for setting the record straight.

Interestingly, his columns arguing that the fears of child abduction are the product of hysteria, and pointing out the role of media itself in creating this hysteria, have inspired some of the most angry reactions of anything he has written. There is a sizeable constituency of people who simply will not believe that the world is no more dangerous today than it was 30 years ago. That belief is so fervent that even when the person who feeds them the shocking stories pulls back the curtain to show them how he whips up hysteria, they don't believe him. It's incredible.

I've come to the belief that if you take away the abductor bogeyman, parents would have to face the true sources of their anxiety and insecurity (jobs, money, marriage, alienation, neurosis). And that would be very uncomfortable for a lot of people.

I hope they'll enjoy doing laundry and making car payments for 26-year-olds.

Quote from: Stuart;219139My old neighbourhood had a family that took the "you gotta let kids be kids" approach to parenting, mixed with some ideas about society being too restrictive about when things are age-appropriate.

Almost everyday when I was coming home from work I would see something... noteworthy.

Some of the activities their 3-4 year old would be up to:

• Hanging out the car window screaming at people on the sidewalk as they drove past.  (No car seat or seat belt)
• Climbing onto the roof of the family car and jumping around
• Using a ladder to climb up onto the roof of the house and running about screaming at people (something about being a sniper)
• Making holes in the front lawn with a pick axe (full sized)
• Destroying various things in the driveway with power tools
• Crashing his battery-powered ride-on car into the other neighbourhood kids
• Recounting stories from Grand Theft Auto or some other FPS game (eg. Gun) he just got for the computer.
• Flipping out and swearing at his parents till he was blue in the face and had to be carried inside
• Flipping out and crying because the other kids didn't want to play with him

The parents would alternately be sitting on lawn chairs in their driveway smiling at their sons activities, or be nowhere in sight.  It really made no difference to the proceedings.

I have a neighbor like that. Around here, it is sitting in your garage, smoking and drinking while watching the tv.

As to the folks saying we are old coots waving our canes, I could give a crap how a person raises their kids...until they interact with me or mine. Let's take the above example. My son had a toy taken from him byt the neighbor boy who is one year older. Slightly taller, he held it beyond Theo's reach. Theo is not violent but these kids are. I observed from a distance prepared to stop violence should it go there. The boy has a sister and when they are not fighting each other, they like to gang up on neighbor kids. Theo asks for his ball back with a please. He only receives taunting. The mother is too busy talking to her friends to be bothered with a correction. I want Theo to handle this. He is 2 1/2 but very big for his age (no, not fat). So, he proceeds to climb up the older boy knocking him down on his sister who was about to jump in. Theo hten proceeds to sit on them while they wail. After a few minutes, Theo gets up and resumes play.

Alternatively, just a few days ago, Theo was at the park and group of eight year olds were playing and one of them wanted the ball Theo and I had brought with us. I was standing back while Theo played on the equipment (rolling the ball down slides, throwing it up slides, etc). Theo was all for playing but the boy WANTED the ball and did not want to deal with a 3 year old. Without blinking an eye, he drops Theo to the ground (in a puddle) and begins shoving Theo's face into the puddle. I am on it in a second and the boy gets thrown several feet as I rip him off Theo. No sign of the parents. No "I am sorry" from the boy. Only a weak lie about the ball being his...the one we brought with us.

The two anecdotes highlight the problems I have to deal with when other parents fail their parenting skill check. The first, should be allowed to play out. It was useful but a good example of how children are about like dogs in their development and need to be trained like that. They will work in packs with those they consider their pack mates and can be dangerous. In the second one, you have several other children who could have intervened but did not. You had an 8-10 year old who should have known better. What will be the result of this attitude not being corrected before the child reaches teen years? Adulthood? And yes, he might get set straight yet, but it is best to start early IMO.

In some cases you need to intervene for the safety of your child, in others you must let them learn from experience. The part that I see most parents falling down on is the observing the child so you know when to intervene.

Bill

Quote from: jeff37923;219054The thing that bothers me about this, is that once that magic 18 year age is reached then many of these overprotected kids are now considered adults. The Real World is not necessarily going to be as nice and/or compassionate to them as their schools - expect much disillusionment for the upcoming generation at least when they learn that

Already happening. In the last decade college authorities have seen a dramatic increase in anxiety among students who can't cope with responsibility. Post-secondary students today are far more likely to cite an unfair professor for poor grades than they were in the past (the study I looked at has been tracking students since the mid-60s). And not coincidentally, educators are seeing growing ranks of parents following their children to college to pick their course, find their lockers, and advocate for their children if things don't go their way - including calling instructors to argue grades. The term is 'helicopter parents', and they've prompted colleges across the U.S. and Canada to offer beginning of the year orientation specifically for parents.

Quote from: Haffrung;219124A journalist in Toronto raised a furor when she wrote a story about letting her 10-year-old son ride the subway around town alone. Her thinking was that she rode the subway back when she was 10, and the world isn't any more dangerous now than it was then (contrary to common perception).

Fact is, parents today need to needed by their children much more than their own parents or grandparents needed to be needed. They follow their kids all the way to university, hovering over them and fixing problems, because they can't face the notion that their expertise and vigilance isn't absolutely crucial to keeping their child safe, happy, and successful. That's why so many parents resent it when you tell them the world isn't any more dangerous today than it was 30 years ago - if the world isn't a scary and dreadful place, then they don't have any justification for micromanaging and fretting over their childrens' every step.

Very, very true.

It's insane how crazy things have become.  And I'm not talking about some golden age view from the 50s or 60s or whatever.  I grew up in the 80s and 90s - that's not that long ago.

I was always allowed to go wherever by myself when I was a kid, without seeing my parents for hours at a time.  My parents made fun of the very rare parent who actually kept an eye on their kids at all times - back then, anyone who did that was considered "overprotective" by most people and mocked.

These days, it's considered "child endangerment" even to have your own kid alone in your own home until they 10, 12, or even 14 or older depending on local laws.  If those rules were enforced back when I was a kid, my parents and pretty much everyone else I knew's parents would have been in jail.  Nobody would leave a toddler home alone, but once you reached even 1st grade it was considered normal.

Back then, spanking was considered normal and appropriate.  And even people who weren't related to you could yell at you if you were doing something you weren't supposed to - which was not only tolerated by parents, but they appreciated it for the most part.  Today, you can't even look at a kid wrong without their parents freaking out on you.  No one punishes their kids anymore, instead they act as their defense attorneys.  And forget spanking - a generation of bleeding hearts decided it was child abuse.  Again, everyone I knew would have been in jail.

And yeah, lots of parts of being a kid sucked.  This isn't a rose-colored ode to the days of yore.  Just a recognition that when I got older, I understood why it was important to be punished, to be taught responsibility, and to be forced to learn to do things on my own.  I pity the children of today - the coddling behavior and constant positive reinforcement method will never prepare them to deal with the harsh realities of life when they are adults.

Great post, Haffrung.  It really is amazing the way it's not just about hysteria being spread, but how defensive and angry people get when you try to disabuse them of this misinformation.  It's like they want their to be dangerous abductors and diseases out there (and let's not forget terrorism; same phenomenon), which I guess was your thesis.

I remember I was taking my toddler nephew out to the farmer's market.  He was around 1 and a half.  I let him climb up this concrete lamp base that he found super fun and fascinating.  At one point he slipped and banged something.  He started crying and I picked him up to comfort him.  I was just getting to the point of taking a look at his face when this dude comes running toward me, his face twisted in some combination of rage, alarm and righteousness and yelled at me in a really accusatory tone "He's bleeding from the mouth!" followed with some other sentence about getting it looked at.  I politely thanked the man, calmly checked his mouth, where there was a small drop of blood coming from the gums.  He had already stopped crying.

It was just so clear that the dude had been watching me let my nephew play and was so psyched that he had hurt himself so he could come and call me out in front of all the other yuppie fuck parents (this was Brooklyn).  I just walked away but I really would have liked to have made his mouth bleed.

Quote from: walkerp;219157It was just so clear that the dude had been watching me let my nephew play and was so psyched that he had hurt himself so he could come and call me out in front of all the other yuppie fuck parents (this was Brooklyn).  I just walked away but I really would have liked to have made his mouth bleed.

So, is that more about you or your nephew? Was it because you were embarrassed or because you nephew was frightened by the man? In the end, to me, it is about how you choose to raise your child or the trust the parents have confided in you and anyone else (so long as they do not physically or legally interfere) are of no concern. If the child wants to climb then fine. If you want to dangle the child over a balcony, not so much.

Overreaction on the part of the guardian is one of the reasons I try to avoid offering aid. Unfortunately, I still do offer to help hurt people and children despite the risk of getting a fat lip, law suits or worse.

Bill

Quote from: Haffrung;219141That's the biggest one, and marks a sea change between today's North American society and... well, every other society that has walked the planet. There is something fundamentally unhealthy in a society where children are not allowed to play and roam outside unattended. Children need to be physically active, and supervised sports activities involve a fraction of the actual running, climbing, etc. of a bunch of kids playing tag at a park or riding their bikes through the woods.

The anxiety over unsupervised play means parents are now devoting big chunks of what should be their own leisure time to managing their children's leisure - driving them everywhere and watching over them. In the long run, this isn't good for families. Families need to sit down and eat meals together, children need time on their own or with their peers, parents need time alone, time as a couple, and time with their own peers.

The fabricated hysteria over child abductions is largely to blame for the abandonment of free-range outdoor play. The media gives each rare incident today 20 to 50 times more coverage than they did 30 years ago, leaving an already anxious generation of parents with the impression that the incidence of child abduction is skyrocketing.

And yet even when some members of the media and others in the know point out that there isn't a horde of predators out there waiting to snatch children, that the streets are as safe today as they were 30 years ago (actually, safer in most cases), parents get defensive and resentful.

My best buddy is a newspaper columnist. We grew up together and had a very active, free-range childhood. When my buddy has his reporter hat on, he has to follow the policy of his newspaper and try to inspire as much shock and dread as he possibly can. The rule of thumb when it comes to stories about bad things happening to children is to make every parent think it could be their own child, and to terrify them. Apparently, fear sells a lot of newspapers.

However, when he has his columnist hat on he can report facts showing that the world isn't more dangerous for children now than it was when we were kids. It's actually safer. And the risk to children of being abducted by a stranger is infintisimal. Same as it was 30 years ago. He had a retired judge call and thank him for setting the record straight.

Interestingly, his columns arguing that the fears of child abduction are the product of hysteria, and pointing out the role of media itself in creating this hysteria, have inspired some of the most angry reactions of anything he has written. There is a sizeable constituency of people who simply will not believe that the world is no more dangerous today than it was 30 years ago. That belief is so fervent that even when the person who feeds them the shocking stories pulls back the curtain to show them how he whips up hysteria, they don't believe him. It's incredible.

I've come to the belief that if you take away the abductor bogeyman, parents would have to face the true sources of their anxiety and insecurity (jobs, money, marriage, alienation, neurosis). And that would be very uncomfortable for a lot of people.

I hope they'll enjoy doing laundry and making car payments for 26-year-olds.

It's worth pointing out that "children don't run around anymore!" is also press-inspired hysteria. To my unprofessional eye (NB, parent of two children), things haven't changed that much.

Ned

Quote from: Ned the Lonely Donkey;219167It's worth pointing out that "children don't run around anymore!" is also press-inspired hysteria. To my unprofessional eye (NB, parent of two children), things haven't changed that much.

Ned

I will back you up on that Ned. Spending a fair amount of time at the park with my 3 year old you see plenty of unattended children running around like goofs.

Bill

Quote from: Haffrung;219151Already happening. In the last decade college authorities have seen a dramatic increase in anxiety among students who can't cope with responsibility. Post-secondary students today are far more likely to cite an unfair professor for poor grades than they were in the past (the study I looked at has been tracking students since the mid-60s). And not coincidentally, educators are seeing growing ranks of parents following their children to college to pick their course, find their lockers, and advocate for their children if things don't go their way - including calling instructors to argue grades. The term is 'helicopter parents', and they've prompted colleges across the U.S. and Canada to offer beginning of the year orientation specifically for parents.

My wife was a student advisor for a while when she was an undergrad (this was back in 2000 and 2001), and she had to deal with a number of parents like this who wanted to pick their children's classes, find out their grades, etc.  I imagine it's only gotten worse since then.

It's spreading into the workplace too.  My father was interviewing applicants for an account manager position a few years back, and after one of the applicants (a guy in his  early 20's) was notified that he didn't receive the job, his mother called my father to ask why he didn't get it and what he should have done differently.

Quote from: Ned the Lonely Donkey;219167It's worth pointing out that "children don't run around anymore!" is also press-inspired hysteria. To my unprofessional eye (NB, parent of two children), things haven't changed that much.

Where I live, even most kids who live within a few blocks of school are driven by a parent. A buddy of mine was pleased to buy a house two blocks away from an elementary school, and remarked to his wife that it would nice that their daughter could walk to school. His wife was appaled - no way their daughter would be walking to school. When my buddy remarked that they both walked to school when they were kids, his wife responded with the ubiquitous refrain "things are totally different today."

At the school my nephews go to in Seattle, kids are not allowed to be sent to school unaccompanied by an adult. Period.

Another friend of mine let his 7-year-old boy walk a block away to a friend's house for a visit. The friend's parent accompanied the boy when he came home, and admonished my friend for letting him out alone.

The City of Calgary is getting rid of a bunch of playground speed zones because it has been brought to their attention that there are never any children playing at the playgrounds. And these are in residential neighbourhoods with lots of families.

I live near the same parkland area I used to play in as a kid. We used to ride our bikes, catch frogs, play cowboys and Indians, etc. When I go jogging there, the only children I ever see are with their families.

A friend was out with her two daughters (4 and 2) and stopped at a streetside shop to run an errand. She could see her daughters the whole time. When she returned to the car, a woman was standing beside it berated her for leaving her children unattended (and it wasn't in hot weather).

My wife recently went to a park and play - a place where stay-at-home moms take the kids to play in ball pits, etc. while they have coffee with their friends. Each adult is assigned a coded access card with photo ID and set of matching bracelets for her and her child. All doors are magnetically locked, and can only be opened by an access card, and only for a child with the matching bracelet.

I stand by my observation of a mass hysteria surrounding child safety.

Quote from: jgants;219153These days, it's considered "child endangerment" even to have your own kid alone in your own home until they 10, 12, or even 14 or older depending on local laws.  If those rules were enforced back when I was a kid, my parents and pretty much everyone else I knew's parents would have been in jail.  Nobody would leave a toddler home alone, but once you reached even 1st grade it was considered normal..

I had thought those days gone by the 80/90s, they certainly were where I raised mine. But it seems that in some places they hung on.

Quote from: jgants;219153Back then, spanking was considered normal and appropriate.  And even people who weren't related to you could yell at you if you were doing something you weren't supposed to - which was not only tolerated by parents, but they appreciated it for the most part.  Today, you can't even look at a kid wrong without their parents freaking out on you.  No one punishes their kids anymore, instead they act as their defense attorneys.  And forget spanking - a generation of bleeding hearts decided it was child abuse.  Again, everyone I knew would have been in jail.

I was raised under the three beatings rule. You get into trouble at school, they could whack you. Then your mom would whack you when you got home. Lastly when Dad arrived home that evening, you'd get the third whacking- and of course the last one would be the worse.

I never had to go through the sequence myself. The very idea of the result stopped any consideration by me of anything that would risk the outcome.

Combined with a "If you end up in jail, don't call us- we'll just laugh", the end result was always a serious judgement about the possible outcome of my actions.

Upon reflection, it may have been bluff. But it was a bluff I believed.

Quote from: Haffrung;219193A friend was out with her two daughters (4 and 2) and stopped at a streetside shop to run an errand. She could see her daughters the whole time. When she returned to the car, a woman was standing beside it berated her for leaving her children unattended (and it wasn't in hot weather).

She's lucky she just had to deal with some obnoxious busybody.  In more and more areas, people are getting arrested for things like that.

And as you said, the schools are making things worse, too.  In some cases, it's almost a secret police atmosphere - where parents have to watch every little thing they do to avoid being informed on by others and getting imprisoned or having their kids taken away.  More and more, people are literally being forced to be overprotective slaves to their children by the mass of deluded fools out there passing laws.

Again, I seriously can only think of one kid's parents from my childhood who wouldn't have been arrested - and they were the ones considered strange and unusual then.

Makes me glad I only have pets and not children.

Oh god, it's all so depressing.

Part of the problem too is that many people of our own generation and younger (in their early 30s now, having kids) were pampered as well.  That's the first wave of kids who started not getting PE as part of the core curriculum and the increase in urban society.  It shocks me today the number of my peers who can't change a bike tire, are freaked out by mosquitoes, wash their hands in anti-bacterial soap.  And these are males!  I count my lucky stars my parents moved to a rural place when I was 10.  I think that's another big part of it.  The town where I grew up in, which was pretty "country" back then is now more and more a suburb of a nearby bigger city, so the kids growing up there are getting more of a suburban upbringing rather than a really rural one.

Just in general, the North American male is becoming such a pussy overall.  It's no doubt his children are going to be wimps.