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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

#91

Post by gernb »

clsec wrote: post #78
clsec wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I feel like the Richmond and Sunset districts of SF are pretty safe places to ride bikes. Plus both of them are near Golden Gate Park. I ride in those areas on weekends and except for a few hot spots there aren't that many cars and streets are quiet

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

#92

Post by gamblor956 »

A 4-year-old on reality TV is being followed by a camera crew, and is therefore by definition not alone.

That being said, it is common in urban areas (at least in LA) to see relatively young children commuting or running errands by themselves. But I never see that when I go back to surburbia. It's not an issue of neighborhood safety; the suburban areas are far safer. It's a parental risk tolerance issue.

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

#94

Post by AdmiralAsshat »

newaccount2021 wrote: post #38
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

"stranger danger" isn't just a delusion of over-protective parents...my own daughter has told me numerous times over the years of being followed and approached by males she did not know (a car following her slowly, a middle-aged man "asking her out" repeatedly in a park, etc) we didn't respond to these instances by locking her up, but I'm not going to dismiss parents who are protective

I don't doubt for a moment that your daughter encountered creeps in public spaces. I'm just not sure that the solution that was impressed upon my generation (I was born at the tail-end of the 80s) really helped. The default behavior shifted from "View some people with suspicion" to "View everyone you are likely to encounter as a potential serial rapist-pedophile-murderer." And don't think just avoiding contact is enough, because you could just be walking down an empty street by yourself when Mr. Serial Killer pulls up beside you in his car, jumps out, pulls you into the vehicle, and we won't hear from you again until your severed head is found in a well.

Could it happen? Sure. Is it likely to happen? Probably not. Is it worth keeping your children unable to leave the house without an escort until they're 18?

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

#95

Post by furyofantares »

I feel like a natural parent-brain thing is that the brain just sits there in the background kind of brainstorming worst-case scenarios and then you make efforts to protect against the ones you've thought about the most, because they're giving you the most anxiety and you want to stop thinking about them.

Protecting against that one thing doesn't stop this brainstorming process; it's a creative endeavor limited only by the imagination.

Meanwhile, yes, the more constant the news is the more it fuels our imagination, and the more global it is, the more we're feeding it with statistical outliers.

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

#96

Post by fnordpiglet »

nonameiguess wrote: post #77
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…

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 outsi…

My point was more that the rate of severely mentally ill living on the streets leads to a very different dynamic. In the 70’s and 80’s we had a functional public health system for the mentally ill. That was dismantled and the situation today is very different. The difference between a hobo and a paranoid schizophrenic is immense. Seedy areas are often simply where poor people live, and poor people have kids and families - they’re just poor, not dangerous. Folks with serious mental Illnesses are frankly considerably more scary for a kid than seeing drug dealers on the corner, and are by nature erratic and unpredictable.

The story of the disturbed man exposing himself wasn’t particularly about him exposing himself, but about the fact there’s no where for him to go to receive help, or if he’s untreatable, somewhere for him to live where his tendencies don’t hurt society at large. The only place for him today is untreated and on the streets - and that changed in the late 80’s and accelerated through the early 1990’s.

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

#97

Post by nottorp »

aequitas wrote: post #5
lupire wrote: post #2

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 describes the child was already engaging in dangerous behaviour (climbing the roof) and pushing boundaries. By giving errands you are (gradually) setting new boundaries for the child you have at least some control over, instead of them suddenly discovering they can go into the neighbourhood or wherever that you don't know about. At least that is what I understand from it. The alternative would be more/str…

> The article describes the child was already engaging in dangerous behaviour (climbing the roof)

I spent a good part of my summer holidays as a kid on the roof of a shed. Or in the tree near it, a bit higher. Different country though.

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

#98

Post by [deleted] »

ericmay wrote: post #50
robonerd wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think it's hard to get a read on this and it really depends. For example, where I live there's an elementary school in the neighborhood, low traffic (even though it is the suburbs), and there's a walking path and a playground at the school. When the weather is halfway decent, there are kids streaming through there all day. During the pandemic it was just a party back there, in a good way. But not all suburbs are li…

[deleted]

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

#99

Post by resoluteteeth »

This image from a daily mail article of all places shows the trend over multiple generations in a family very well: https://i.imgur.com/YcjjsiI.jpg

It's from the UK but it's probably even worse in the US (I think in the US now most kids aren't allowed out of the yard of their house on their own until they're old enough to drive basically.)

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

#100

Post by ARandomerDude »

jeffbee wrote: post #64
robonerd wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Well, that's not the only thing that has changed. 40 years ago when I was walking to elementary school nobody, absolutely nobody, was driving a pick-up truck except to a farm or job site. Now the majority of people are driving vehicles that are much larger than a 1982-model work pickup, and with 5-10x the engine power. Although I admit up-front that the national statistics are badly skewed by the fact that Florida is…

> Now the majority of people are driving vehicles that are much larger than a 1982-model work pickup, and with 5-10x the engine power.

The 1982 F-150 had around 200 horsepower, depending on the configuration. If you believe the majority of people are driving between 1,000 to 2,000 hp cars today you are badly mistaken. An Abrams tank has around 1,500 hp but not too many of my neighbors drive those to work.

https://itstillruns.com/1982-ford-f150-specifications-759817...

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