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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

#191

Post by robhh »

gkop wrote: post #121
robhh wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Walkscore.com could be helpful. There are many wonderful walkable neighborhoods in the bay.

Thanks for the link. This goes in the right direction, but so far I have not been able to identify truly walkable neighborhoods through websites. The main problem is that the metrics usually being used, do not reflect the type of walkability that would be beneficial for raising children.

As an example, I randomly picked a particular address on walkscore.com (https://walk.sc/37yZciv) which gets a walk score of 91 (walker's paradise), but that particular address is on a large 7-lane street with not a lot of walking infrastructure around. I'm guessing the score might mostly be driven by proximity to stores, which doesn't necessarily matter in this case. Better metrics may be such things as amount of car traffic, noise levels, size of sidewalks (in comparison with size of streets), amount of small streets and distance to larger roads, etc..

I wonder if a website exists that puts more emphasis on how nice it is to walk in a neighborhood vs. mere practicality?

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

#192

Post by floren »

dqpb wrote: post #159

Off topic: Are there any countries more hostile to pedestrians than the US?

India sure felt like it... no such thing as a sidewalk, and the street is a nightmare of cars, tuktuks dodging around the cars, and motorcycles dodging around the tuktuks and cars. But I was just visiting; maybe if you live there it feels safe, I don't know.

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

#193

Post by kirsebaer »

daanlo wrote: post #146
nradov wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As a child in the US in the 1980s we were told over and over by the TV and school to never talk to strangers, to run away from people offering us candy or asking us to help them find their lost puppy. But there was essentially no education about how to avoid abuse by teachers, sports coaches, and family.

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

#194

Post by vollmond »

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…

We have a 5yo and 8yo. Most of the time, the question for whether they can handle something is less "are they capable?" and more "will someone call CPS?"

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

#195

Post by jacquesm »

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.

> Even if 9/10 CPS agents are going to make the right decisions

That is extremely optimistic.

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

#196

Post by arcticfox »

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 clear the sidewalk to let kids through, try to keep kids from seeing drug use, chat and share candy, etc.

With an adult present, sure, but holy moly would I not leave my kid alone around drug users offering candy and a chat. Hell, I might be one of those hypothetical CPS callers that everyone is worried about if I saw that taking place!

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

#197

Post by enra »

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?

Noe Valley/Bernal Heights is quite good. There is also schools in Noe but I guess SF is some kind of lottery system so it's not guaranteed your kids can go that school.

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

#198

Post by dionidium »

floren wrote: post #55
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…

Getting the kids into structured, college-application-fodder activities early enough, so that the kids can get into Stanford and get a job that pays enough so they can repeat the cycle of abuse, err, pattern of success with their kids.

These societal changes extend far beyond the cohort that will attend Ivy League schools.

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

#199

Post by dionidium »

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…

That's a horrible story that resulted in the Maryland CPS issuing the following statement clarifying that what those parents did was not neglect:

> And in fact, as Donna St. George reported in yesterday's Washington Post, Maryland's CPS has just issued new guidelines, saying, "Children playing outside or walking unsupervised does not meet the criteria for a CPS response absent specific information supporting the conclusion that the child has been harmed or is at substantial risk of harm if they continue to be unsupervised."

This is a big country and that was a rare and particularly egregious case; it's not the norm.

Source: https://reason.com/2015/06/12/kidnapped-by-the-state-trouble...

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

#200

Post by dionidium »

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…

> Recently I drove by that school, and the bike racks were gone.

This is the thing: the bike racks are gone because so are the kids walking/biking to school. If you let your kid do it, they'll be the only one. I walked to school in the 80s and there were lots of kids in my neighborhood walking to school at the same time. That's a very different experience. I also lived in a neighborhood that was laid out in the early 1900s. How many more kids are in car-centric culs-de-sac today? Some of these streets don't even have sidewalks. They're not even safe for adults to walk on.

You can't combat this enormous societal change by making an individual effort to let your kids do more by themselves. Their physical and social environment is very different from what it was like when kids did that.

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