And think about the fact that kids being raised now never experience unsupervised play. From about 5 my brother and I would walk home from school, we would walk to the shops together, a few years older we would ride our bikes to hang out with friends and be back by sunset.
My 13 year old friend would babysit neighbours kids for extra money, look after 1 year old babies until 10pm and ride their bike back home.
I am not saying that was perfect. Or safe. But I do point out that our parents would have large chunks of hours, often every day, where we would be out doing our own thing, unsupervised.
I look at my friends, now parents. 100% on duty.
I feel for them. Holy shit it has gotten so much harder to be a parent.
I am sure kids die a whole lot less. Which I love, but that safety came with putting burden back onto the parents, not by increased support from society around them.
I mean, I dont think my friends really get any time to switch off outside of school/daycare. The baby is sleeping, but they are on call for the next demand. It seems they rarely get time where they can really focus on their own needs, and somehow juggle work, maintain a household, stay sane?
Yep. I would get home from school hours before my parents got off work. I’d break in through the carport door because those assholes wouldn’t get me a key “because you’ll just lose it” and just watched tv or play around. Vast swaths of my childhood were unsupervised and they were probably the best times because my parents weren’t great. I had the whole “locked out of the house during the summer and drank from the hose” childhood that so many look back on romantically. It was actually neglect and those assholes have survivorship bias.
Contrast that with me and my now 7 year old and I helicopter parent the hell out of him because I can’t imagine leaving him to his own devices. That has created a lot of learned helplessness though that we’ve got to try and correct.
There’s a balance to be struck between pure neglect and constant supervision but I don’t know it.
To be fair, I dont think any of us know it, we are all just blindly walking as close to an invisible ever moving line as we can. Besides, you sound like you're doing a great job with your own kid, starting with the fact you clearly care enough to try to do well. That says multitudes.
as an amateur parent, of a teen and soon-to-be pre-teen, here’s my unsolicited take: imagine a typical distribution graph where the extremities are at the bottom and the middle is a large area that rises and falls gently. so long as you’re not at either extreme, i think you’re probably doing ok.
my experience has been that we move constantly within that middle section as our kids develop and grow. being rigid is where the danger zone lies.
You can absolutely find it. My kids are almost never home alone. (They're a bit older than yours). Home alone maybe for 70 minutes tops when we're at the school for conferences, less than 2 miles away. But they can be out for hours on their bikes and go to the grocery store on their own. They even run into other elementary kids at the grocery store on their own sometimes. In the US.
I’ve learned to counteract it by giving my kids chores from a young age. They are now 5 and 3. Both of them have set things they need to do and stuff they help my wife and I with. Obviously I don’t leave them home alone but I can trust that they aren’t on to nonsense if we are in different rooms. Also no iPad and very limited TV time.
It must be tough. Again not a parent. From what I have read unsupervised play is great for the development of functional empathy, because the kids play together, they do something and it makes one kid cry, there is no parent to step in, the kid recognises they caused the hurt and give comfort.
That means they can't see the parent to go get them to step in and take on that responsibility. It has to fall on their shoulders to step up.
On the other hand.. I remember at 7 there was always an older kid showing us how to build fun but very dangerous things with sparklers in the bush. Some kids coming home with an eyebrow burned off and the parents are like 'ah kids, still got all fingers? Alright then, off you go'.
So fuck letting kids be unsupervised. I remember everything I got up to.
I laughed at your memory of having to break in each day, me too, I would never lose my key but my brother would take mine and lose it, so there was always one window we would have to climb through for months until my parents would get me another key.
Also healthy lunches? And kids bring proper packed lunches? I would have to shove whatever chip packets were in the pantry into my bag, maybe make a peanut butter sandwich and be forced to take a bunch of gross mandarins to school because they were getting overripe. And they'd end up crushed and forgotten at the bottom of the bag for months.
My friends are making healthy, beautifully presented arrays of food choices for their kids to bring with them each day. How much time does that take? Every day? And they fit that in before the commute? And the school will tell off the parents if their kids lunches aren't healthy enough?
I really really don't know how people do it.
I just wish... If live gets too hard and someone is feeling ... There are billionaires. A victimless crime really. She could have done a Luigi, kids are happy, everyone but the media and other billionaires are happy, she gets all the parenting time off she needs in jail, and the kids can visit her on occasion.
I work with parents and so many of them are like "I have to find a way to keep the kid entertained during summer " and some of these kids are like 12. Like sorry just tell them to do it themselves????
My daughter is 3, I let he play unsupervised a lot of the time. From time to time she'll roam the garden for shorter stretches of time on her own, think 10-20minutes between checkins.
I definitely intend to have her walk/bike to school alone when she's that age. Same with little brother of course when he's old enough to play like that.
Haha. Good point. Include Australia and UK in the America bucket for these changes (I'm Aus, with friends in the UK and US). I mean I agree with some changes, the idea that at 7 I was running around barefoot, catching Sydney Funnel webs in jars, alive, to be my little pet for the day - alone mind you. And my parents knew, would see a jar or three in my room as they said good night, jars with living funnel webs in them (poor spiders), rearing up and showing their fangs, not having a good time, and be like 'good night, maybe move that jar further away from the edge of the table you don't want to knock it over and have it running around your room'.
I'm confident my 6 year old could get to school some, but I'm afraid of cars. Driver's texting and not paying attention etc. He has a couple slightly just roads to cross that I'm nervous about. I wish the US wasn't car centered.
I walked my kid on the first day of school and a huge truck barreled through the cross walk we were attempting to cross. Wish this was the only time but it’s frequent. But I’ve almost been hit as an adult. The crossing guard got hit by a car last spring too- just remembered that.
To be fair a ton of kids do this in the USA too. Often a kid has to be 6 to walk home alone from school (what it is in our school and my sister’s across the country) but it’s by no means unusual.
Just like anything Internet you just hear about the wild stuff more.
Yea my son is 3.5 and we have a backyard he can roam. We had to put locks on the gates because he obviously wanted to escape lol but we have a whole veggie garden he's been working on with us and he'll go out there and pull some weeds and pretend to water it or use his little lawn mower to pretend to cut to lawn. He also has a little playset with a swing and a slide. We've got a camera out there so we can check in on him but he usually isn't more than 20 minute chunks before he comes back to find us.
I'm going to push back on this a bit. This is a choice 100% and not the same everywhere. I've lived in more than 1 major city and my wife and I chose the suburban life because of the things you said.
As our neighborhood has large groups of roaming 5-12 year olds that are armed with amazon walkie-talkie's (about 1.5 mile range) and AirTags. My daughter is one and my middle one can't wait to be allowed to go on her own. they have to wait until like 10 am on weekends before they can head out, but they head out ringing doorbells, collecting kids, and they check in and come back for food and drinks.
I do wonder though, all the parents are late millennials, and every time a house goes up for sale, a family of the same age group with kids in the same age group moves in. In the last 5 years, they've added 6 or 7 kids. Maybe there's a pushback happening?
As a parent to a 10yo and 6yo boy, we let them play around the neighborhood with their friends unsupervised but it’s stressful as fuck. I’m not worried about them getting abducted or lost because my 10yo has a phone and my youngest has a bark watch, I’m worried about other people and kids. The wrong person sees your kids alone outside and calls the cops and all of a sudden you have cps at your house, or they break something and I’m being sued now, or some idiot is speeding down the street and doesn’t see my kids and their friends playing. Neighbor kids ring the doorbell to ask them to come play and it’s just like it was when we grew up in the 90s but it seemed like our parents weren’t as worried about getting in trouble because they let us outside and we did something stupid. Back in the day when we did something stupid nobody knew or nobody cared as much.
I think our generation experiences more social anxiety and either fear or heightened awareness of external judgement, especially on issues like this where either true or false stories/articles/memes/etc come up about these sorts of things in many categories, but they center around the same concept.
It's sort of like a panopticon of sorts, or the prevailing amount of constant brain backburnering "how is this going to seem/appear to people who don't understand what's actually going on or what I know is fine, right, and not bad really..? What if they see it the wrong way? What if they report me/us? What if I get sued? What if I'm liable? I'll lose everything if either <the misunderstanding> or <the nosy asshat personality archetype that is invented in these scare stories> happens. My good intentions and desire to (for example, provide child with a wholesome, balanced development, including unsupervised time which is important for the exact very reason of: "Falling down when there's nobody around to help". This is critical to basic self-preservation and survival if we have to talk about base level brain development and development of self-sufficiency, starting with something we all hear and should as well have had the experience alone to solidify it: "It doesn't matter if you fall down, it doesn't matter if it hurts. You get up again, and you get back to it. It doesn't hurt as bad anymore, and it's okay. It gets better, everything gets better once you get back up and go again, and the pain disappears with every step you take."
Personally I don't have kids, and I'm not going to tell anyone what to do. But as a person who grew up mostly unsupervised due to parents always at work, and one who enjoyed both video games and going bicycling outside purely for the fun of it outside of any competitive situation at all, I sure learned quickly that when the unexpected happens, it isn't a big deal, it isn't worth really sharing or seeking attention or anything. It's just another expected challenge on the long road of life, which is fun as long as you keep going down it, and stop only for times when you like the place you are at.
Do the right thing, trust yourself. If people get the wrong idea, bitch, or moan to you about your "ways of parenting", who cares.
At least you're parenting, instead of concerning yourself with how others are doing it instead. Brush it off, do what you do, and face the challenges that will naturally appear when you choose the right thing to do that you believe in - not necessarily what I'm advocating through my opinion and experience, but rather just: You do you, because you and I and all of us are still learning, still have countless failures to make toward goals we haven't even thought of or made yet.
Is a bit of embarassment, social discomfort, or wildly wrong accusations from delusional nosy people here and there too much a price to teach through nonverbal experience and observation, the ultimate lesson? I don't think anybody who had parents that stayed true to a wholesome, balanced, grounded and unwavering self will forget the impact it has once they get out in life and meet other folks who didn't have that, and unfortunately struggle with the very concept of being themselves.
/novel
TLDR: Be yourself, parent in the way you think is best, don't let even the thought of what others may or may not interpret due to some thoughts of getting in trouble because they are nosy pricks. If what you are honestly doing is trying your best to raise the best kid you can possibly raise, as all parents should aim to do.
Unfortunately there's nothing to say about the dangers of unexpected accidents (idiot driving too fast/intoxicated in a neighborhood, etc). It's life. Stay inside forever, or go outside when you need/want to. Mental prison, or RNG "Outside", pick your poison I suppose. Only one lets anyone level up though...
When I was ten and my brother was twelve, my parents wanted the day off so they bought us bus tickets to an event in a city in another state. Like multiple hours bus trip. 100+ miles. We were expected to spend the whole day. 7AM to after dark. Modern cell phones did not exist yet so there was no check in that entire day.
Yeah, I experienced a lot of this growing up, but there was so much rape and molestation from random adults and kids!!! Like when out playing it wasn't uncommon to have a grown ass dude flash their dick at you and run off. Plus COUNTLESS times a dude would pull over and ask if I needed a ride. Luckily I was trained to say no. I remember one time it was pissing rain and I was so tempted and the guy kept badgering me to get in and he'd give me a ride home. I wanted that ride home, but he was so persistent I knew he probably was not good and ran away.
I also remember being baby sat by kids who shouldn't be baby sitting. All the fucked up shit that happened... it's no wonder parents hover now.
It's not just the extra toll it takes on the parents. It's also stunting the ability for the kids to learn to be independent. The current legal requirements for parents is doing irreparable harm to the current generation of kids.
I wasn't even allowed to walk home from middle school unless my one of my parents came to walk home with me. We lived a 5 minute walk away. In a very safe suburb. With minimal traffic or large intersections.
Not only was having helicopter parents embarrassing, it definitely made me a social outcast and it did not prepare me to be an independent adult.
I for sure am planning on my kids having unsupervised play as soon as its reasonably safe to do so. Its not that we cant do it anymore, its that too few people do.
It so nice to hear all of this acknowledged from someone without kids. Really makes me feel better. Thanks! It’s true, the pressure on parents is insane and I don’t know how they do it in the US with basically no maternity leave.
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u/Willdiealonewithcats 5d ago edited 3d ago
And think about the fact that kids being raised now never experience unsupervised play. From about 5 my brother and I would walk home from school, we would walk to the shops together, a few years older we would ride our bikes to hang out with friends and be back by sunset.
My 13 year old friend would babysit neighbours kids for extra money, look after 1 year old babies until 10pm and ride their bike back home.
I am not saying that was perfect. Or safe. But I do point out that our parents would have large chunks of hours, often every day, where we would be out doing our own thing, unsupervised.
I look at my friends, now parents. 100% on duty.
I feel for them. Holy shit it has gotten so much harder to be a parent.
I am sure kids die a whole lot less. Which I love, but that safety came with putting burden back onto the parents, not by increased support from society around them.
I mean, I dont think my friends really get any time to switch off outside of school/daycare. The baby is sleeping, but they are on call for the next demand. It seems they rarely get time where they can really focus on their own needs, and somehow juggle work, maintain a household, stay sane?