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A 4 yr old can also get distracted and walk in front of a car, or climb over a railing and fall of a bridge.
A large number of adults get distracted by their phones and get run over. The child is probably more aware of its environment than most adults.
What I DO have concerns about, however, is overzealous adults who see a kid playing alone at a park and decide to call the police or child protective services.
A 4 yr old can also get distracted and walk in front of a car, or climb over a railing and fall of a bridge.
The article does note that there was a whole process leading up to sending the kid out on an errand. Lots of out-and-about skill acquisition in gradually more-independent settings, culminating in the trip to the store. One assumes that if the child was particularly prone to distractions like that, it'd have come up and been worked on.
A large component here is simply risk tolerance. Society's risk tolerance, especially for kids, has fallen pretty dramatically. This is probably related to just how many fewer kids US society has in general (births per woman has fallen in half since 1960, and it takes a culture some time to catch up). If you have fewer, then the individual ones become that much more valuable. Your attention and time is divided much l…
I think the "Stranger Danger" panic that accelerated in the 80's is probably more responsible for people thinking that a 4-year old is incapable of running errands. It's not so much the lack of mental capacity as it is decades of cultural inculcation that you should not dare to let any child under the age of ___ wander the streets alone, or they will be immediately abducted, assaulted, and decapitated by dark forces.…
I live in a city whose broader region is almost 10000 square miles, and the crime feeds report all crime in this area as occurring in "Houston", even though this region is larger than some US states. I feel like this contributes to panic because people feel like the crime is in their backyard. My local news station targets me on Facebook with stories because I'm in this MSA, but the story they hit me with could be a shooting that's easily a 1.5 hour drive from me.
Heck, here in Texas, my phone has buzzed from what they are calling "Blue Alerts" now, which is a riff off of Amber Alerts, where I've gotten notified that an officer was shot at, literally over 4 hours away from me, almost 300 miles away. It's not surprising that our society is inundated with panic.
A large component here is simply risk tolerance. Society's risk tolerance, especially for kids, has fallen pretty dramatically. This is probably related to just how many fewer kids US society has in general (births per woman has fallen in half since 1960, and it takes a culture some time to catch up). If you have fewer, then the individual ones become that much more valuable. Your attention and time is divided much l…
By all means, let the kid run around town and have fun. I think most of us realize that by the numbers, 'stranger danger' precaution went too far years ago. But errands? They'll have a lifetime of errands when they're older; four years is too young, let them have at least a few years of fun first. Maybe the occasional errand is fun for kids, but I think I know how this ends. Before long it's no longer an adventure an…
A 4 yr old can also get distracted and walk in front of a car, or climb over a railing and fall of a bridge.
But okay, the amount of bruises increases in the wilderness. The amount of crying over that decreases by 99 percent.
A large component here is simply risk tolerance. Society's risk tolerance, especially for kids, has fallen pretty dramatically. This is probably related to just how many fewer kids US society has in general (births per woman has fallen in half since 1960, and it takes a culture some time to catch up). If you have fewer, then the individual ones become that much more valuable. Your attention and time is divided much l…
I think the "Stranger Danger" panic that accelerated in the 80's is probably more responsible for people thinking that a 4-year old is incapable of running errands. It's not so much the lack of mental capacity as it is decades of cultural inculcation that you should not dare to let any child under the age of ___ wander the streets alone, or they will be immediately abducted, assaulted, and decapitated by dark forces.…
By all means, let the kid run around town and have fun. I think most of us realize that by the numbers, 'stranger danger' precaution went too far years ago. But errands? They'll have a lifetime of errands when they're older; four years is too young, let them have at least a few years of fun first. Maybe the occasional errand is fun for kids, but I think I know how this ends. Before long it's no longer an adventure an…
I’ve deliberately chosen to live in a walkable part of the Bay Area in the hopes that my kids can be more independent when they get older, but I’m more worried about the social pushback than I am about their safety.