A 4-year-old can run errands alone and not just on reality TV • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by fnordpiglet » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 5:58 PM UTC

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.

My point wasn’t about seediness or drug use, but about the number of severely mentally ill living on the streets. That has objectively gotten worse since the barriers to commitment went up substantially in the early 1980s and the Reagan dismantling of the national public mental health system and subsequent collapse at the state level. I feel less worried about drug dealers who have a rational economic reason for what they do than an untreated and unhoused paranoid schizophrenic with violent tendencies. IMO, that’s the really big change in at least the urban landscape. (N.b., I see this in NYC, Seattle, SF,and a number of other cities I’ve lived in).

Folks have noted the helicopter behavior permeates even suburbia, but I wonder if that’s more because of sprawl and lack of meaningful pedestrian infrastructure than anxiety.

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

#102

Post by rafiki6 » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 6:01 PM UTC

A lot of the comments make great points but honestly I think the biggest problem no one has addressed is the massive expansion in population since the 70s.

This has lead to much larger "towns" and suburbs where the sense of community is essentially gone. At best you might know a few neighbors on your street. So risk tolerance has gone down for a good reason. And when you see a strange kid out playing and you don't know who's kid they are, you're going to naturally worry about them and just assume the worst.

Another factor too astutely mentioned by someone below is the car dependent nature of most non urban environments, especially in North America. I see lots of kids playing near their homes on their own in the neighborhoods I live in. Parents aren't too far away and they're with the other kids of the neighborhood. Maybe the safe distance a kid can travel on their own hasn't changed, it's what you could actually accomplish in that distance that has changed.

Today's society, especially western society, is much less community focused. So now, not only do I not know what strange adults exist in my 200 home open air neighborhood with a single playground, none of the adults there know me either nor my family and therefore a perceived sense of risk and maybe even actual risk is higher that my kids are in danger.

That's what happens when population explodes and population density increases. All that's happening is the West is finally experiencing what many Asian and Middle Eastern Countries already knew.

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

#103

Post by foobarian » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 6:03 PM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #61

thatsamonad wrote: post #12

We recently started letting our 9 year-old walk down to a nearby park alone to meet and play with friends. It’s helping them build independence and confidence and I have no concerns about kidnapping, etc, because it’s only a couple of blocks away and we live in a safe neighborhood (they also have a phone they take with them and know to call/text us when they change their plans and go to another nearby park). What I D…

That last part is WAY more common and likely than anything else. > Fewer than 350 people under the age of 21 have been abducted by strangers in the United States per year between 2010–2017. > According to the NWS Storm Data, over the last 30 years (1989-2018) the U.S. has averaged 43 reported lightning fatalities per year. So letting kids walk to the park is way less risky than a thunderstorm (though perhaps they sho…

I wonder if it used to be a lot more common before the culture got so paranoid. In which case maybe the shift was warranted.

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

#104

Post by alistairSH » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 6:06 PM UTC

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…

It feels like a mix of both.

Even in my relatively walkable suburb (Reston, VA), it's not really walkable by a child. And things are far enough that a bike is better.

But, just around the beltway in Silver Spring, there was a family that made the news a few years ago because they let their kids walk to/from the playground. This was a few city blocks, in an urban area. Somebody saw the kids, went full Karen and called the police, and child protective services got involved. It was a mess.

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

#105

Post by renewiltord » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 6:08 PM UTC

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…

Hmm, do they? I believe everyone has tales like this but I was visiting Grover Beach a couple of months ago sitting on my friend's porch and you know what happened? A small group of kids came flying down the road on electric scooters. I saw them a mile away later when I went to get a haircut with no sign that they were going back. No helmets or anything. One of them said to the other "I think mine is in low speed or something" and the other said "Why would you do that" and then disappeared over the hill screaming "I AM SPEEEED!". It reminded me of my childhood and that maybe 5% of these kids are going to die of traumatic brain injuries and the rest are going to have incredibly fun memories of childhood.

Fascinating to me.

I wouldn't want a child of mine doing that without a helmet, and I'd prefer a bicycle, but if he's going to break a bone doing a jump over a little hump on the side of the road, haha, more power to you little fellow. Go break that bone. Learn the limits of your power. And I think I could do that in Grover Beach if I wanted.

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

#106

Post by throwaway0a5e » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 6:13 PM UTC

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…

> The only thing that changed was people became more fearful.

Because they got richer and all their "real problems" evaporated.

Kids play in the street where I live. But I live in the kind of place that makes HN demographics hand wring about violent crime and bad schools.

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

#107

Post by robhh » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 6:16 PM UTC

johnzim wrote: post #20

As a parent, none of the risks are as profound as that of some other member of the public calling the police to inform on your “dangerous parenting”. 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.

As a new dad, who also moved to the Bay Area from Europe, I would be interested what parts of the Bay Area would provide such a walkable environment?

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

#108

Post by xeromal » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 6:16 PM UTC

robonerd wrote: post #18

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.…

I think it has much less to do with any particular murder, and is actually related to the rise of cable news that needed to find some way to fill an entire day, every day of the week, with national news. There just isn't that much national news, not the sort that keeps people tuning in. So instead they started taking local news stories that had some sensational elements and presenting them as national news stories. S…

I think their point is that Adam Walsh's murder kickstarted the fear mongering on the news you're talking about.

It might be the columbine to school shooters. Everything else is derived from it.

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

#109

Post by throwaway0a5e » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 6:17 PM UTC

johnzim wrote: post #20

As a parent, none of the risks are as profound as that of some other member of the public calling the police to inform on your “dangerous parenting”. 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.

>As a parent, none of the risks are as profound as that of some other member of the public calling the police to inform on your “dangerous parenting”.

And even when these events are rare they get reported on which increases the chilling effect.

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

#110

Post by bencollier49 » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 6:21 PM UTC

resoluteteeth wrote: post #99

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.)

That's a great graphic.

I can't figure out what it is doing this - I'm UK-based too, and I know logically that everything is now safer - I used to walk two miles to the woods with friends at the age of eight or nine, but I wouldn't trust my own children to walk to the bottom of the hill here.

I don't really understand what has changed. Why were my own parents less paranoid? There are lots of people giving lots of reasons on here. The most credible is the constant "stranger danger" message pumped out in news, but I honestly wonder if there's been a baseline increase in people's general paranoia - my concerns are more around them doing something stupid and getting into trouble.