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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

#451

Post by Thlom »

aksss wrote: post #343
dionidium wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Heh, my neighborhood doesn't have sidewalks and it's very safe to walk in because _everybody_ walks in the middle of the street. Can be frustrating when you drive through sometimes, but I'm always mindful of the great benefit this has. Everyone in the neighborhood sees and expects people (and kids) "playing in traffic", so traffic is relatively quite calm. I've developed a bit of the view that sidewalks turn neighbor…

Yeah. In residential areas you shouldn't need sidewalks, but it requires that the street is designed for it. It must be narrow, trees along the street or other street furniture helps make it appear even narrower than it is. Naturally drivers will slow down.

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

#452

Post by hef19898 »

refurb wrote: post #445
User23 wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> who take up all of the local culture to extreme (compared to the average) levels. What does this mean? My dumb brain goes straight to “even more alcoholism and fighting” but that might just be on account of being Irish diaspora myself.

The best example I heard from a friend who was a recent immigrant from India. He had quite a few friends who were the children of immigrants who arrived from India a generation earlier. When my friend’s parents visited (from India where they still lived) they were shocked when these 2nd generation American-India kids greeted them in a super formal way that had disappeared in India decades ago. Basically the immigrant…

The same is true for German immigrants in South America.

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

#453

Post by Symbiote »

itronitron wrote: post #450
CalRobert wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where can I do this without drivers who will kill my kid? Cars (or SUV's and trucks, really) are faster, heavier, taller, more numerous, and driven far more miles now. They are why my kid can't walk/cycle to school.

In many European cities young children still walk themselves to school, teens take the trams, etc. It is much safer than in the US for a number of reasons. The speed limits are much lower, 30 kph (19 mph) is the standard speed limit for a residential road, 40 kph (25 mph) is typical for commercial roads with wide sidewalks, etc.. Most streets have a buffer of parallel parked cars between the driving lanes and sidewal…

Right turns on red are banned by default in all of Europe, and only permitted with specific signs or additional lights.

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

#454

Post by hef19898 »

Thlom wrote: post #451
aksss wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, my neighborhood doesn't have sidewalks and it's very safe to walk in because _everybody_ walks in the middle of the street. Can be frustrating when you drive through sometimes, but I'm always mindful of the great benefit this has. Everyone in the neighborhood sees and expects people (and kids) "playing in traffic", so traffic is relatively quite calm. I've developed a bit of the view that sidewalks turn neighbor…

Yeah. In residential areas you shouldn't need sidewalks, but it requires that the street is designed for it. It must be narrow, trees along the street or other street furniture helps make it appear even narrower than it is. Naturally drivers will slow down.

In Germany we have the concept of a "Spielstraße" (translation: Playing Street?), where walking speed is the max. accepted driving speed and playing kids have the priority in everyway. I grew up in one, it was great!

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

#455

Post by hiharryhere »

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…

The article spends about ten paragraphs describing that show.

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

#456

Post by hef19898 »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #405
a2tech wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife grew up in the city, and I grew up in the country (not the pretend 'doctors commute to the city and have 10 acres they pretend to farm and raise horses on' but 'white trash, holy shit there's no work' county) and my wife is HORRIFIED by how much violence and random crime there is where I come from. My family still asks how we can live in the city since its so dangerous while meth heads are stealing anhydrous…

If it's anything like my experience in a rural town, they'll bemoan the dangers of the cities while Tom's kid got into meth and conned/robbed ten people they know, Dick's kid goes to the bar every night then drives home drunk to beat his family, and Harry's kid was hiding that he had HIV to sleep with several women in town.

The devil I know.

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

#457

Post by jonp888 »

smt88 wrote: post #418
sacrosancty wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>due to the nature of my employment I am no longer employed This is an overlooked problem. Lack of employment protection. Nobody should be able to be fired for being arrested. That doesn't mean they committed a crime. It's not their fault they can't show up to work. There should be employment protection for that. In my country, even schoolteachers being investigated for sexual abuse aren't fired. They aren't allowed…

If they're paid while the justice is being worked out and their trial takes years, that is potentially a burden that the employer can't bear. Also, you're describing a situation where bad behavior becomes a protected class as soon as you get arrested for it. In my high school, a teacher was caught raping one of his teenage students. He was fired for it. In your opinion, if he had been arrested, he should have had his…

Hooray for people having their entire lives destroyed because someone decided they 'know' something which might not even be true.

There are plenty of cases of trials over rape or assault allegations which were entirely fictitious.

This isn't even really the point being discussed. It's more that someone could be fired for an arrest over a an offence which has absolutely nothing to do with their job.

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

#458

Post by hef19898 »

pessimizer wrote: post #145
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…

> 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 sc…

I never lived in the US, but from the outside that is quite interesting. While we don't see that many people exposing themselves at schools over here, there certainly are in parks and the like. I don't worry about that, really, sexual predators aren't exposing in public. The one thing I would be worried about so, if my kids went to school in the US, would be some other student showing up with a gun and shooting up the place.

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

#459

Post by DocTomoe »

hef19898 wrote: post #454
Thlom wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. In residential areas you shouldn't need sidewalks, but it requires that the street is designed for it. It must be narrow, trees along the street or other street furniture helps make it appear even narrower than it is. Naturally drivers will slow down.

In Germany we have the concept of a "Spielstraße" (translation: Playing Street?), where walking speed is the max. accepted driving speed and playing kids have the priority in everyway. I grew up in one, it was great!

Worth mentioning: Those usually are side-roads with little traffic to begin with, and cul-de-sacs.

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

#460

Post by DocTomoe »

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…

I am usually a supporter of 'free-range kids', but I'd draw the line with Skid Row. Sure, the vast majority of homeless folks may be relatively harmless, but I'd wager that the density of less-than-harmless people is higher in that environment.
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