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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

#141

Post by zargon »

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 big difference is that today every kid has a mobile phone. So besides the fact that the world is a much safer place than in the '70s, kids have unprecedented communications for emergency situations as well.

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

#142

Post by brabel »

malkia wrote: post #43
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 grew up in Bulgaria, but my experience as a kid (80s-90s) seems like similar to what my (future) boss (in Los Angeles) when he was growing up in SF Valley (60s-70s) - get on the bike, go places, school, etc. We had much smaller amount of cars. For one we had these self-made wood carts with ball-bearings as "tires", and we would slide with them on the streets while other cars were driving. Ok, not on the main street…

> For one we had these self-made wood carts with ball-bearings as "tires", and we would slide with them on the streets while other cars were driving.

HA, I thought that was only in my country we had those :D. In Brazil it's called "carrinho de rolemã"!

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

#143

Post by Melting_Harps »

Cipater wrote: post #129
malkia wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in Bulgaria, but my experience as a kid (80s-90s) seems like similar to what my (future) boss (in Los Angeles) when he was growing up in SF Valley (60s-70s) - get on the bike, go places, school, etc. We had much smaller amount of cars. For one we had these self-made wood carts with ball-bearings as "tires", and we would slide with them on the streets while other cars were driving. Ok, not on the main street…

You have a tracker on your 15 year old son? Isn't that extreme?

> Isn't that extreme?

What do you think smart phones are? That's exactly what they're optimized for, in addition to mass distraction and aimless and feckless doom scrolling for dopamine that is.

I can't post because i triggered the algo:

> My wife and I use Apple's "Find My" feature to keep tabs on when each other will be home. Makes it easy to time dinner so it's hot for everyone.

The Silicon Valley TV series was great not just because it called out the Valley's BS tropes and made fun of it's absurdity, but because Judge really had the best material write itself: this is a prime example of what I could see an episode's plot being based on.

A (smart) phone being used not to actually call each other, but as the spy device that it is.

Sadly, in it's latter seasons it went into a territory it's writers neither understood or articulated well but appealed to the lowest common denominator: Bitcoin and cryptocurrency.

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

#144

Post by [deleted] »

lb1lf wrote: post #139
Loughla wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 encou…

[deleted]

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

#145

Post by pessimizer »

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…

> The assault and murder rates due to the untreated mentally ill in the cities I’ve lived in is high and visible.

And far lower than it was when children generally roamed freely. The late 70s to the early 90s are when US violence peaked, so in the spirit of spurious correlations, a functional mental health system must have caused violence:)

edit:

> Case in point a clearly disturbed person walked into my daughters school grounds and began exposing himself last week.

This happens when you live in a place that has men in it. It certainly happened when I was a kid. The only way to keep occasional masturbators from cruising the streets doing their thing is to ban men.

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

#146

Post by daanlo »

nradov wrote: post #81
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…

Many people trace the inflection point back to the kidnapping of Etan Patz in 1979. The case was highly publicized and made many parents afraid of child predators in a way they really hadn't been before. That case and a few others led to putting pictures of missing children on milk cartons so then the fear was in their faces every day. https://crimereads.com/how-the-disappearance-of-etan-patz-ch...

And today‘s parents were kids then. So they grew up with pics of missing kids on their milk cartons.

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

#147

Post by AniseAbyss »

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…

No post body was provided.

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

#148

Post by Barrin92 »

jcutrell wrote: post #76

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 gro…

>my parents were more risk tolerant, risk ignorant, or the world has become more dangerous

almost certainly not the latter given that a significant drop in crime since the 80s and 90s is an almost global phenomenon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_drop). Drunk driving fatalities are down 90% since the 80s despite miles travelled having doubled etc. I mean just remember the culture a few decades ago, people did not give a fuck about anything.

People really have become comically anxious even though many places are considerably safer and cleaner. Maybe because of it.

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

#149

Post by flakiness »

jerkstate wrote: post #39
flakiness wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also about some collective trust/fantasy, in addition to the tolerance. For example, I don't think Tokyo is particularly safer than a (walkable) US city. But since people there collectively believe Japan is a safe country and are proud of it, they let their child go out. But I agree that the risk tolerance points too. I have talked to a handful of Japanese parents and none of them let their small kids go out wit…

> 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.

Huh. I should've done some research first. Thanks for the catch!

It was based on my personal experience but looking at [1], I realized that I'm in the one of the safest county in the US. The murder rate is very comparable (2x) to Tokyo here.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...

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

#150

Post by rsync »

Larrikin wrote: post #135
rsync wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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...

That was not my question.

My parent commenter stated that she was required to report.

Where does the requirement come from and to whom would she report ?

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