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

#131

Post by knicholes » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 6:47 PM UTC

tejohnso wrote: post #114

r00fus wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> CPS gone wild is a direct result of that. I read somewhere that some states are passing laws now specifically to protect parents from prosecution for letting 9 year olds play in parks unsupervised. I guess people see kids playing without parents now and think it's some kind of child abuse.

Utah did the same! https://www.npr.org/2018/04/01/598630200/utah-passes-free-ra...

Please don't upvote if you found this helpful. I want to get back down to 777.

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

#132

Post by iso1631 » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 6:48 PM UTC

elliekelly wrote: post #89

jimmyjazz14 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not just personal risk tolerance that plays into it either. I would let my kids largely run free but I know I would probably have to deal with CPS if I did so.

This seems like a bit of an urban myth? Or at least hugely overblown. How often does this really happen?

437,283 American children were removed from their parents last year. Meanwhile fewer than 350 people under the age of 21 have been abducted by strangers in the United States per year between 2010–2017

Now of course CPS handle actual cases of child neglect in that 430k, but it certainly seems that the most likely people to take a child are either

1) The other parent

2) CPS

3) Death from Road traffic, Firearms, Suffocation/Drowning, Drug overdoses

And way down the list is abduction

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

#133

Post by jerkstate » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 6:48 PM UTC

seabird wrote: post #85

jerkstate wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For example, I don't think Tokyo is particularly safer than a (walkable) US city on what do you base this opinion? I looked up a couple of crime stats sites and the assault and murder rates per capita in the US are like, 10x higher in the US than in Japan.

Average assault and murder rates are massively inflated by a handful of exceptional cities. St. Louis (usually highest murder rate in the US or close to it) is pushing 70 murders per 100k. That is roughly double the rate of Cleveland (rank 5). Cleveland has a murder rate over 10 times higher than a city of around ~40k people that I live fairly close to. However, another city (population ~45k) that is about a 20 minut…

based on rough calculation, your 40k city has a murder rate of 3.5 per 100,000; Tokyo has a murder rate of 0.26 per 100,000.

In Miyazaki prefecture, the most violent in Japan according to [1], the murder rate is 0.9 per 100,000

[1] https://nbakki.hatenablog.com/entry/Murder_Rate_Number_of_Ac...

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

#134

Post by gunfighthacksaw » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 6:49 PM UTC

tshaddox wrote: post #87

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…

> 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. This is a good point, although I would like to see some data to know whether this is actually common, or whether it's merely a common perception. If you actually control for things like population d…

In my city in Canada I noticed a lot of kids playing outside last summer. However, they were all East African or Arabs: I assume refugees from Eritrea and Syria. They were doing the stuff I did (playing with sticks, climbing the sand piles, widening the fence holes) and stuff I didn’t (parking lot soccer).

I’ve started seeing more white kids out in my neighborhood this spring though, maybe things are going back?

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

#135

Post by Larrikin » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 6:49 PM UTC

rsync wrote: post #126

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…

"She would be required to report any kid who was walking to school, it simply isn't allowed anymore." With apologies, I don't believe this is true. Where does this requirement come from and to whom would she deliver these reports ?

There are multiple news stories of busy body neighbors and passerbyers calling the cops when they see children walking to places like parks and schools if they don't immediately see a parent, often times with major consequences for the parents

https://nationalpost.com/news/world/child-protection-aervice...

https://www.cnn.com/2014/07/31/living/florida-mom-arrested-s...

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

#136

Post by dave78 » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 6:52 PM UTC

uranium wrote: post #116

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…

"Would you send your 5 year old self down the streets of San Francisco or Seattle?" Yes. We live in San Francisco, and our kids went to a daycare in the Civic Center. We walked [with the kids] by many homeless people every weekday for years. Our interactions with them were almost universally positive; they'd clear the sidewalk to let kids through, try to keep kids from seeing drug use, chat and share candy, etc. On c…

> Our interactions with them were almost universally positive ... [they'd] try to keep kids from seeing drug use

As someone with kids and living in the Midwest, I just don't even have the words to describe my reaction to this. Wow.

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

#137

Post by ars » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 6:52 PM UTC

compiler-guy wrote: post #6

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…

It's explained with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/K_selection_theory - people have fewer kids now, and are more careful with each.

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

#138

Post by pessimizer » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 6:52 PM UTC

jmyeet wrote: post #124

Netflix has a Japanese show called Old Enough. It shows Japanese children doing their first errand. Example: walking a kilometer to the store (including crossing a busy street), buying 3 items and bringing them back. Age? 2 years, 9 months. It's wild. I grew up at a time and a place where I had a lot of independence. I rode a bike everywhere. I'd do things by myself and with friends. I actually feel sad for kids nowa…

> I actually think these risks are made worse by the ubiquity of cars.

But this isn't new.

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

#139

Post by lb1lf » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 6:53 PM UTC

Loughla wrote: post #52

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…

To add to that - the way we do sports and extracurricular activities is absolutely mind blowingly different now, too. Back in my day, neighborhood kids played baseball and football and basketball together as they could. Now everything is structured and scheduled. There are travel teams for kindergartners. There is a coaching structure for 5 year olds. Kids play for competition, winning, and opportunity, not just for…

There are exceptions, though. I wound up being a track and field coach for kids aged 6-9 in the local athletic union.

Much to my surprise and delight, the culture from the national association and down is that kids this young will NOT compete in the traditional sense - sure, they may join local games, but the results will not be published in ranked order, and everybody gets a medal.

During training, coaches are encouraged to focus on the competition with oneself - 'Good, you long jumped 3" longer than you've ever done before!' Rather than 'Wow, Anna jumped longer than everybody else!'

It can get serious later on. When they're kids, let them be kids and have fun.

(This, though, is in egalitarian to a tee Scandinavia)

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

#140

Post by rsync » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 6:55 PM UTC

robhh wrote: post #107

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?

Much of suburban Marin County is a paradise in this regard - the Ross Valley cities of Ross, Larkspur (not larkspur landing), Kentfield, San Anselmo and Fairfax[1] are full of kids of all ages riding their bikes and walking to school every day.

[1] Listed in ascending order of affordability.