Perhaps a debate:Free range parenting.

[anunitu]

This is an issue of our times..as a child I could roam a lot in my neighborhood,alone in a field at about age 6-7..but times change I guess.

http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/ind..._sparks_a.html

Ok,start the discussion,and try not to go all anger in motion...Discuss...

I will say as a child I was not in a lot of danger because even at age 6,I always had a knife on me(for foraging and such) but could also stab someone if they tried to molest me..But I am old,and from another time far far away...

[thalassa]

Re: Perhaps a debate:Free range parenting.

At 6-7 I ran around the neighborhood in a gaggle of other 6-7 year olds--no front yards, stay out of the mean lady's garden, and be home when mom bellows (or when the street lights come on). Also, no pocket knife...and the idea of stabbing someone would never have crossed my mind (kicking them in the balls and running away, however, was fair game). We had about a three block radius that included two schools (with a total of 5 playgrounds between them) and a small, wooded area...along with the dozen or so houses that had kids, and therefore had yards that were fair game for fun.

I've been letting my kids play outside without me for the past two years, both by themselves and with other kids in our apartments. We have a large grassy common area. I don't let them go to the park by themselves, but only because its busy street that they will have to cross. They can, however go with the girls that live downstairs (9 and 11).

I don't believe in helicopter parenting. Kids only learn independence if you give them some independence to learn with.

[Medusa]

Re: Perhaps a debate:Free range parenting.

I think if you live in those places where it's safe, go for it. I was one of those kids allowed to go to neighbors and hang out outside by myself. Go to the market, etc. I got molested by a few different creeps hanging about. Of course no one ever found out. So when we think it's safe because our kids say nothing...that doesn't mean someone wasn't fucking them over. We just learn to shut it all away.
Just the other side of how things happen.

[Maria de Luna]

Re: Perhaps a debate:Free range parenting.

To some extent I imagine it depends on where you live. Living in the suburbs where everyone had a yard and you didn't lock your car when you parked it on the street is going to promote the way thalassa grew up, running around with minimal supervision. Living somewhere less safe, like cler to the city or in some apartment complexes parents need to keep a closer eye on their kids. Sometimes I think it depends on the kids too. I grew up with friends that didn't know the freedom I grew up with. I would stay at their house for a sleepover as a kid and all playtime was mostly structured with parental supervision, which I always thought was odd. I do feel like people need some level of autonomy, even as kids... But I think that comes with constraints and limits. Common sense seems like it would be useful here, but we know how many people can demonstrate that stuff....

[kalynraye]

Re: Perhaps a debate:Free range parenting.

Unfortunately I'm not a parent so I what I believe I'll do and what I think I'll do are two different things. I was raised "free-range" style and I am extremely dependent. I want my children to be independent so I hope to raise them the same way. I've lived in major cities and the country. I played outside without parents all the time. Same rules close enough I could hear them yell or the lights came on. If I was going further I just had to let someone know where I was going. My best friend was not raised that way and as much as I love her has struggled a very long time with her independence. She doesn't raise her girls that way either. Drives me crazy. Let them think and learn for themselves.

- - - Updated - - -

I was also molested but it wasn't by a stranger, it was by my dads best friend at the time. Theres danger everywhere, I think it is the parents call of course to decide how much free range they have. I also agreed with the comment about the neighborliness of a community. You look after all the kids not just your own.

[Torey]

Re: Perhaps a debate:Free range parenting.

I see both sides. The reality is that there is always a chance, no matter how perceptibly safe an area seems, that something terrible can happen to a child - be it an accident or something more sinister. Yes, molly-coddling is certainly no way to teach a child responsibility and independence, but I feel that my children also need to be taught - from myself and my wife - boundaries and the dangers that may surround them. Here in Australia, that could mean looking out for snakes, staying away from the water if they can't swim, etc. I also intend to teach them "stranger danger", but without making them paranoid of every person they encounter.

Where we will be living soon is much akin to a suburb in the middle of nowhere - so a small country town. It will still have its dangers, but I believe that it will be more amendable to "free-ranging" - at least in the sense of the children being able to walk to and from school, etc. as everything is within close proximity, more or less.

I think that, obviously, they would be allowed certain freedoms such as walking to and from school once they're of a particular age - I also feel that if I'm going to allow them to be out on their own at times they would need to have a small, cheap mobile or some way of contacting them and vice versa.

If, however, we were still living where we are now in the part of the city we are now - I wouldn't likely allow them to walk to and from anywhere alone unless it was supervised or with a buddy as the area is just too dangerous, IMHO.

[Medusa]

Re: Perhaps a debate:Free range parenting.

I used to be very against this idea. But then after threads here on the subject I realize some lucky people live in decent neighborhoods. There it's just usually the actual parents fucking the kids over...privately. And in style.

[thalassa]

Re: Perhaps a debate:Free range parenting.

There it's just usually the actual parents fucking the kids over...privately. And in style.

Unfortunately, yeah...I used to babysit for a little boy whose older brother was in juvie for molesting him.

What I want to know is where he got that idea from... :/

[Medusa]

Re: Perhaps a debate:Free range parenting.

My mom was the local babysitter in our apt complex. We had lots of cute little kids to care for during the summer. My mom would take care of our literal neighbor (we had apartments connected with the same wall) in exchange for him teaching me how to cook. He was a Marine. He molested me and I never said a word to anyone. That's how it goes. The sad thing is our kids hide this from us. They do it so well. We think we live in nice places. But ask your kids seriously to tell you what they see at the neighbors or in the park. You'd be surprised at how they learn stuff.

I'm Debbie Downing this thread. Sowwy.

[B. de Corbin]

Re: Perhaps a debate:Free range parenting.

Unfortunately, yeah...I used to babysit for a little boy whose older brother was in juvie for molesting him.

What I want to know is where he got that idea from... :/

Unfortunately, it usually, it runs in the family.

One of the signs of abuse is an inordinate fascination with sex-related body parts. For instance, when I see a student draw penises all over an assignment or desk, I have to wonder what's going on at home.

Although I'm a mandatory reporter (required, by law, to report signs of abuse), drawing penises all over your homework doesn't qualify as a "sign." But it still creeps me out.

And, since students write essays and stories for my classes, I sometimes find out things I wish I didn't have to know. Knowledge is sometimes a horrible burden.

Those go straight to the office.

I am lucky. I live so far out in the boonies that I could turn the kids out into the yard (30 acres of tree'd wilderness), and let them run wild. When they went to a friend's house, I knew exactly where they were, and who they were with - but you'd better believe I checked the "sexual offender's registration" (available on the internet) before they went. This area has a list of sexual offenders about three times that of Detroit (percentage wise), which is scary as shit, believe you me.

It may well be that things happened of which I am not aware, but my kids, from a very early age, knew I would, very literally, skin anybody who touched them inappropriately alive, and laugh while doing it. I don't know if that helped or hurt, but they seem to have made it through childhood OK, and as adults, they haven't told me anything I didn't already know.

The point of that is this: make certain that your kids understand the difference between appropriate and inappropriate contact, that they know that they are trusted and believed when they tell you things, and that mom and dad will deal with bad shit if it happens, one way or another.

There's no certainty in life. But you can stack the deck in your favor. It's really the best that anybody can do, short of 24 hour surveillance.

[Rae'ya]

Re: Perhaps a debate:Free range parenting.

I was completely free range as a kid. We grew up 7 minutes out of town, in a smallish country town... my best mate lived 20mins out of town accross the river... my aunt lived 5 mins out of town... my grandma 3mins out and my other grandma in a different small (as in teeny tiny) town. I was not only completely free range, but responsible for my sister (2 years younger) and when at my aunt's, also my three cousins (3yrs, 5yrs and 7ys younger) and yes, by the time I was 10 we had the 3yr old youngest cousin out there in the paddocks with us. We'd roam the paddocks, go down the road to the neighbours', take the motorbikes out, climb trees, ride our bikes up the road, take my horse and the bikes down to the river, drive the paddock bomb around, swim in the creek or the dam... it's easy to free range as a country kid because once you know some snake sense and river sense, you can be relatively safe in a group of kids. From the time I was 10 we were allowed to go home by ourselves after school rather than to the after-school care program, and my best mate and I would stay at her place by ourselves all day in the holidays... but that was kinda silly because we had been free ranging from a much earlier age, with the only difference being that there was an adult back at the house if something happened. Sometimes we stayed in town, and we free ranged then too... and our rules were 'be back by this time' and that was it. We went as far as our legs would take us, went to the pool on our own, rode our bikes, went to the store, visited friends... I had one friend who's parents would only allow us to go to the end of the street, but otherwise it was free range. I caught the bus, walked or rode my bike to and from school my entire life.

I'm only 29, so this was not THAT long ago, but it was before kids had cell phones. The only safety net was 'stranger danger' and 'Safety Houses', which were the houses with yellow stickers on their mail boxes that were people who signed up to a neighbourhood watch type program. I never had to use one. We had so much freedom as kids, and no sense at all of it not being a safe thing.

Would I allow my kids to do that? No. My sister and I talk about this sometimes, as my nephew is now 4 and my niece is 2. My nephew is the age that my sister and cousins were when we were free ranging country kids, but I can't even imagine him in some of the situations we were in. I certainly wouldn't leave him in the care of a 6yr old, or even a 10yr old. I look back and try to decide if I think my parents were irresponsible, but I don't think that was it. Times have changed, and society has changed. There's a difference with neighbourhoods, but I also think there's a fundamental difference in the way we are raising kids nowdays. We were much more autonomous than the kids I know today are... maybe because we were country kids but maybe also the generation, it's hard to tell. I don't know that we were more mature or more responsible... we were just more independent and autonomous. We knew how to get by with no input from the adults. My parents were nowhere near as interactive with my sister and I as we are with her kids... and I wonder if the newer styles of really engaged parenting are actually reducing the autonomy of our kids. I don't mean that it's a bad thing or that we shouldn't engage at that level, just that maybe part of the 'back when I was a kid' difference is that we were constantly left to our own devices from a young age, while parents now are doing a lot more interacting, playing and hands-on teaching.

[Hawkfeathers]

Re: Perhaps a debate:Free range parenting.

When I was little, in Brooklyn, I was never really unwatched. Everybody's mother and grandmother was peering through the curtains when we were outside, or sitting out on the stoop talking amongst themselves. When we moved to a typical suburban area in New Jersey, I was allowed to roam the neighborhood on my bike, and as I got into high school age, walk or ride to friend's houses, etc. Right after I graduated , my friend was taken off her bike and murdered, right near her house, which was 3 miles from mine. I used to walk/ride over there all the time. It's still unsolved. And I know full well it could have been me, and I'm sure my parents thought about that, but we didn't talk about it.

Just recently, someone contacted me about it on facebook - she was younger (9 years old that summer) and said a man tried to take her from her bike, in a different section of town, but she was able to run away. I think, no matter where you live, there's always that dark undercurrent nobody talks about. It's like Pennywise the clown is always right there at your feet, in the sewer drain, and we'll just keep looking up at the trees so we won't see him.

[thalassa]

Re: Perhaps a debate:Free range parenting.

The point of that is this: make certain that your kids understand the difference between appropriate and inappropriate contact, that they know that they are trusted and believed when they tell you things, and that mom and dad will deal with bad shit if it happens, one way or another.

There's no certainty in life. But you can stack the deck in your favor. It's really the best that anybody can do, short of 24 hour surveillance.

I think this is a good point.

My mom was a pediatric nurse...so bodily autonomy was something that was actively taught and enforced in our home...mostly because of things she saw at work. Hubby had a pretty similar upbringing because his mom was a detective and (since she was the only woman detective in the 80s and 90s, by default) she handled all the child abuse and sex-related crimes. We were both raised with knowledge of sexual predators being a fact of life, and with a strong sense of bodily autonomy, even as kids (though with his family being Catholic, there was a lot more guilt on the subject of masturbation and premarital sex...in my family it was more "let the doc know if you want to go on birth control").

While as a teenager I didn't tell my parents about my rape, it wasn't because I didn't think I could or should tell them...it was because at 15, I already knew what society thought of date rape and I didn't want that kind of attention because I knew my parents would see that it was prosecuted the hell out of. Not making myself a public spectacle was my decision...and while its not the decision I would make today, I don't regret it (though I do regret the possibility that this happened again because of him...but concerning the system at the time, I'm mostly certain it wouldn't have mattered). But before that...my mom knew everything...if I thought a friend was being abused, or depressed, or suicidal, I told her...if something happened to me, I told her...from the time I was bullied, to the friend's older sibling that tied me to a chair and beat me.

And I lived in a nice neighborhood. I dated nice boys with nice families in nice neighborhoods. TBH, I feel better in my upper-lower/lower-middle class neighborhood where I live now than in some of the upper middle class nice neighborhoods I've lived. I actually know my neighbors, they hang out....we talk to them...heck, we've even jumped cars for the neighbors, helped carry in groceries for the crazy old lady across the parking lot, given coffee to the downstairs neighbor, let the college student next door crash on our couch when he lost his keys til his boyfriend got home...helped clean and push stuck cars in this recent storm. And, because I know my neighbors, I know the gossip. And that means I know which kids they can only play with outside. I know which of my neighbors is skeevy, which one is a chronic drunk that beats his wife, and which one keeps her grand kids because her daughter uses heroin.

In a nice neighborhood, people hide that shit. In a nice neighborhood, you let your kid go play at a house where the mom is strung out on pain killers and booze and the dad beats the shit out of everyone and you think they are perfectly lovely people. In my neighborhood, I know some of my neighbors aren't great so I arm my kids with the knowledge of what drugs are, what to do if they go into a house and there is a gun on the table, and that their friends could be abused or neglected. And as a parent I talk about what to do, and we practice how to handle shitty situations, and you give them their own phone, and you let them play anyway because forewarned is forearmed and kids deserve to have their own privacy and their own adventures and their own experiences to shape who they become...and you trust the relationship that you have built, that they will call you, that they will let you know when they need you, and that they will follow the rules and boundaries that you've established together.

And, to be perfectly honest, I live in a pretty diverse neighborhood. We get away with a bit of privilege here. If a crime is committed against one of my kids, statistically speaking, its a smaller suspect list... And (since we seem to be fixating on the idea of molestation here)...I'm not above using such statistics as part of my decision making tree in how safe my kids are.

Thing is, free range parenting isn't (or if it is, shouldn't be) being neglectful or permissive as a parent. Its about taking the time to assess their strengths and weaknesses, and trying to teach them to know how to use their strengths and mitigate their weaknesses, and them giving them a plan of what to do and how to do it, and letting them carry that plan out with you as a safety net that they can come to, but isn't hovering over them every breath they take. I don't throw my kids outside to roam the neighborhood all day on their own--I send them outside to play with a cell phone, boundaries they are expected to stay within, knowledge of which houses they are allowed to go to if they need help (including ours) and that they need to get permission if they want to play with a friend, a watch with an alarm for "checking in with mom", and a plan for "what if" contingencies. Plus I go out there about every 20 minutes and do a head count, without them even knowing...though they know I do it, and if they aren't where they are supposed to be, all hell will break loose. I'm not in the habit of hovering over my children--I've seen too many peers where that went horribly wrong. We are raising our kids to (hopefully) be future (responsible, creative, compassionate, self-aware) adults...and that means (at some point) you have to let them go and have their own experiences. And if you wait til they go to college and move out, instead of steadily increasing their independence as they grow, IMO, you waited too late.

Its interesting to me, because I was raised "free-range" (and that includes the greater responsibility that goes with greater freedom)....my half-brothers were not. They don't have a job (they are in high school--I've been working with a permit since I was 14, and babysitting and doing lawn work since I was 11/12), they don't do their own laundry, they don't do chores or cook their own meals... Its like the kids in boot camp that have never done laundry--the drill instructors make them in charge of laundry...what the hell teenager shouldn't know how to do their own clothes?!?! My kids get to play outside without me because they've demonstrated that they can be trusted to do so, and they've been responsible at home. They've also had (age appropriate) chores since they were 3.

[anunitu]

Re: Perhaps a debate:Free range parenting.

The cooking thing:we,my brother and sisters made our own breakfast from an early age. We learned to fry eggs for an egg sandwich,make pan cakes and cook bacon if we wanted that for breakfast. We did learn from our older sister(She was about 10) not to mention cleaning up after the cooking...yup..could make my own oatmeal if that was what I desired...and not the instant kind..

Might mention,Father was a cook,mother was a waitress...

[Carlin]

Re: Perhaps a debate:Free range parenting.

I grew up in the leafy green suburbs where there was plenty space, woodland, hills, reservoirs and lots of family around, and I went far on my own and with friends.

Unfortunately I haven't been able to provide the same environment for my son - we live in the city, quite far from family. He's autistic and for a very long time he had no awareness of danger, and was so terrified of dogs and flying insects that he would jump into the traffic to avoid them. I pulled him out of the way of a car more than once. So it wasn't until he was quite a bit older (and no longer jumping in front of cars!) than most kids that I let him play outside on his own. He's come on in leaps and bounds since, which is great to see.