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A 4-year-old can run errands alone and not just on reality TV

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Re: A 4-year-old can run errands alone and not just on reality TV

#71

Post by tootie »

robonerd wrote: post #8

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…

Risks number 1 by far is cars. They get more than enough adults. Even if kids practice waiting for lights or looking both ways, drivers are nuts and toddlers are not very visible.

Re: A 4-year-old can run errands alone and not just on reality TV

#74

Post by w0rkaround »

Absolutely need to plug Not Just Bikes, a youtube channel done by a Canadian living in The Netherlands about urban planning using Dutch infrastructure as the gold standard. Key points he makes are how bad North American environments are for child freedom. Its almost entirely due to NA urban planning prioritizing cars over everything else, making it just dangerous for anyone to try and walk anywhere, let alone children. A general difference is that Dutch urban planning prioritizes pedestrians, bikes, transit, then cars, in that order. Whereas in NA cars are really the only thing prioritized.

My favorite video of his is about this exact topic, Why I Won't Raise My Kids in Suburbia [0]. This video completely changed my own life, motivating my family and I to move to a city from the suburbs, and fingers-crossed, eventually to The Netherlands.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul_xzyCDT98

Re: A 4-year-old can run errands alone and not just on reality TV

#75

Post by r00fus »

robonerd wrote: post #46
sloreti wrote: post #27

Disappointing that an article like this wouldn’t mention one of the main reasons children are given less autonomy in the US: our built environment. The vast majority of our children grow up in neighborhoods in which one can’t easily be a pedestrian at any age. Low density communities, in which almost all trips have to be taken in cars, are of course not friendly to non-drivers. Japan builds dense, mixed use neighborh…

I don't think this is the main reason. It fails to explain why neighborhoods that kids played freely in decades ago now keep their kids inside. I'm talking about suburban neighborhoods in modest towns that haven't seen population growth or urban development. I used to walk to school frequently, every time I missed the bus it was a two mile walk down country roads. If the weather was nice, sometimes I'd choose to walk…

Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine really hit home on the fear factory that major news networks promote on nonstop 24h basis.

In addition to buying more guns, people also fear everyone else. CPS gone wild is a direct result of that.

Re: A 4-year-old can run errands alone and not just on reality TV

#76

Post by jcutrell »

While the most prevalent narrative in threads like this sounds something like, "back in my day, we weren't so scared!", there's a few assumptions being made. The primary one: people are overestimating the risks associated with autonomy we had "back in the day" as kids.

It's also just as possible that we are adopting a lower tolerance for that risk, or that the risk is better clarified than it once was.

When I was growing up, I was allowed to roam the neighborhood. I lived on a military base in my youngest years, but later I lived in a suburb of a small town.

Nothing seriously bad ever happened to me, but that's anecdotal.

I wonder what is more likely: my parents were more risk tolerant, risk ignorant, or the world has become more dangerous. Both are possible, but I think the former two are broadly more likely than the latter.

Re: A 4-year-old can run errands alone and not just on reality TV

#77

Post by nonameiguess »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #51
beej71 wrote: post #47

I don't have any kids, so I don't really feel comfortable telling folks how to raise theirs. But I will tell you my perspective. As someone who grew up in the "be back home in time for supper" 1970s, today's world seems completely foreign. When I started kindergarten, Mom walked me to school on the first day so that I'd know the route. And after that I walked to school on my own until I learned to ride a bike. I rode…

A major difference between when I grew up and now is the prevalence of the severely mentally ill living on city streets. Would you send your 5 year old self down the streets of San Francisco or Seattle? As a 45 year old I’m frightened often enough - I can’t imagine my daughter being forced to navigate those situations alone. The assault and murder rates due to the untreated mentally ill in the cities I’ve lived in is…

I have a lot of trouble accepting this. One of my more vivid memories of the late 80s and early 90s is the nightly news always having some girl buying ice cream caught in gang crossfire. It was always the ice cream truck. We were banned from wearing blue, red, or Raiders jerseys because supposedly kids were getting shot walking home from school. We had smog days pretty regularly where we weren't allowed to play outside because the air quality was so bad.

I'm pretty sure in every real, quantifiable way, children are much safer on city streets today than they were 30 years ago. We're just also more afraid. It's not like skid row and homelessness didn't already exist back then, along with much worse drug and gang problems.

I'm sorry your daughter had a naked man wander onto the school grounds, but my middle school was shot at during recess by drive bys three separate times in the three years I was there. Things have not gotten worse.

Re: A 4-year-old can run errands alone and not just on reality TV

#78

Post by clsec »

clsec wrote: post #69
fnordpiglet wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A major difference between when I grew up and now is the prevalence of the severely mentally ill living on city streets. Would you send your 5 year old self down the streets of San Francisco or Seattle? As a 45 year old I’m frightened often enough - I can’t imagine my daughter being forced to navigate those situations alone. The assault and murder rates due to the untreated mentally ill in the cities I’ve lived in is…

When I first moved to San Francisco I walked from 10th & Mission to Bessie Carmichael School at 7th & Folsom then took MUNI to Commodore Stockton Elementary in Chinatown every weekday. That was in first grade in 1972. At the time SOMA was an extremely bad place, the TL was the same and HP was a place you didn't go if you had light skin (except for MLB & NFL games). I find that having that autonomy as a child is what…

I should add that my parents bought me my first bike while we lived in SF. The reason they say we moved to Marin when I started second grade was because my parents had nowhere in The City to teach me how to ride it.

Re: A 4-year-old can run errands alone and not just on reality TV

#79

Post by gregjor »

anm89 wrote: post #68
gregjor wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of our neighbors screamed at my wife and me because our six year old son wasn’t wearing a helmet on his Razer scooter to (slowly) go around the corner. That same neighbor let her dog run around off-leash at the park, assuring the parents there that the dog didn’t bite, though it did like to jump on the children. We raised our kids in Portland, where dogs have more rights and freedom than children.

This risk doesn't seem worth it. You are playing CPS roulette. Even if 9/10 CPS agents are going to make the right decisions, that's a 10% chance of having some kind of issue with CPS. If I recall correctly, people have had their kids taken over stuff like this. I think if this is such a big deal ( I think it is too) you should move out of the city. That's just too big to gamble with.

I understand the risk of busybody adults and CPS. We chose to let our kids have some freedom of movement. I have lawyers in my family so we were less worried than other parents we knew. In Portland specifically CPS overreach got a lot of negative press and pushback from parent’s groups — there’s strength in numbers.

Texas, Oklahoma, and Utah have enacted so-called “free range” laws to allow kids to do unthinkable things like walk to the corner store or park without a security detail and body armor. Oregon will probably be among the last states to ease up — dogs will get the right to vegan CBD-infused meals there first. I no longer live there.

Re: A 4-year-old can run errands alone and not just on reality TV

#80

Post by robonerd »

tempnow987 wrote: post #67

Not in the US they can't. "officials placed two brothers into foster care after one, 11, was found playing basketball alone in his own yard." He'd gotten home early from school and his parents came 90 minutes later. He was in his own yard. The family lost their children to foster care. Ironically in foster care ACTUAL abuse rates are pretty darn high! "When Cindy and Fred arrived home they were arrested for child neg…

> I realize big government is here to protect us

Created by people who mean well perhaps, but subsequently captured by another sort.

> Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration. Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc. The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.

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