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Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills

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Re: Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills

#491

Post by youniverse »

geoelectric wrote: post #85

IMO, three things need to happen to make this go. First, the media needs a sea change towards not making parents hysterical. We've seen this happen in waves ever since there was mass media (D&D, satanism, metal, gangs, etc., in my personal lifetime) but this is the first time I think it's actually caught on as a cultural standard for something like 2 decades straight. Second, social media needs a sea change towards n…

Recently a friend of mine was walking in a public park in LA while there was a children's event happening on the field. He was making phone calls and watching the kids have fun and play for a few minutes.

He got confronted by a hysterical mob of parents, demanding to see his phone if he was taking pictures of the kids! He shows them that he has no pictures, they still are vivid calling him a threat and call the cops on him. One couple was incredibly heated and both threatening him directly. I believe he said the mom said something like "if there weren't so many ring cameras around I would bash your face in right now".

Police said something to him about "the times we live in..." and being careful lol!

Wildest thing to me is that his appearance is of a young clean cut college student. I would maybe understand if he seemed a bit older but still with no proof nor proximity to children this is a ridiculous experience.

Re: Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills

#492

Post by em-bee »

mtrower wrote: post #490
em-bee wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's that everything is designed around cars. as a 15 year old i traveled through multiple countries in europe on my bike, alone. as a 17 year old in the US i was not able to go anywhere without getting a ride in a car. any interesting places to go to were to far away to even reach conveniently by bike. everything was designed around and dependent on cars. as a very independent youth i considered this experience an i…

> any interesting places to go to were to far away to even reach conveniently by bike. Isn't this just a result of the country being more spread out in general? For this reason, cars are obviously useful. And because people have them... well, yes, it becomes circular. I think bikes are a pretty common thing to own in the U.S., though. Adults mostly use them for recreation, but minors definitely use them to get around…

Isn't this just a result of the country being more spread out in general?

yes, but why is that? because people chose it that way and cars supported it. yes, it is circular. it could have developed differently, only high density urban centers where you don't need cars and large swaths of empty in between. these urban centers exist. eg. new york, dc and a few others that i am not familiar with, but contrast with san diego and los angeles and many others which are spread out for no good reason.

suburbia is the name of the disease that is responsible for this problem.

bikes are a pretty common thing to own in the U.S., though. Adults mostly use them for recreation, but minors definitely use them to get around.

sure, kids bike around in the neighborhood to visit their friends, but that also counts as recreational use. they are not using them to go to school, or to the movies or for errands, because they can't. the distances are to far.

the area i am talking about was one of those bedroom communities outside of D.C. probably the worst example. there was literally nothing of interest there, except maybe forests, but i didn't know about those because i didn't have access to a map. my friend there didn't get a car until he was able to save up for one by himself. his parents weren't poor. but they weren't rich either, so he had to pay for himself. which didn't happen until he was 18.

cars absolutely are the issue because not every youth can afford them, and even if they can, getting the freedom to move around at 16 is a far cry from 10year olds who have access to public transport

Re: Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills

#493

Post by aidos »

Reason077 wrote: post #418
hnick wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over here in Australia I remember the same, kids walking to school at 5 years old. In fact one time my mum forgot to pick me up, so I walked to my friend's house. Turns out it was the wrong day, oops. But now I see cars lined up at the school near me, around the block. They'd rather sit in a line in their car blocking traffic for half an hour, instead of just parking one block away and walking with their kids (there…

Some of the schools near me in London close the street during pick-up and drop off times to prevent exactly that: https://www.royalgreenwich.gov.uk/info/200259/transport_and_... Seems popular and does seem to create a good social vibe on the street: parents actually chatting to each other rather than sitting in their idling cars!

That’s a nice touch. Where we are it’s a little impractical as there’s only a single road through the village but it also means that that we’d only have to man the single point of crossing.

Re: Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills

#494

Post by chx »

pacija wrote: post #438
chx wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> . It shows up in new parents who don't introduce their children to family for risk of covid. This is asinine. Just because politics tells you everything is normal, everything is decidedly not normal. COVID is still an endemic and very serious disease. Dropping mask mandates were a seriously and deadly mistake.

Chicken

alive and not disabled by long covid either

Re: Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills

#495

Post by tutorialmanager »

danjoredd wrote: post #468
MomoXenosaga wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is all well and good for rich people with big backyards or nanny's but how about the rest of the country?

Look man, I grew up in a trailer park. Very few people live alongside highways or in places where it is not safe to play outside. Currently, I live in a low income apartment complex, and I still see kids playing outside. three years ago I lived on the most violent street in our town because rent was so cheap there, and I still saw kids riding around on scooters and playing ball. A lot of it is mentality, and what you…

I frequently go to a trailer park to help someone there. Young kids are often running around and playing with other kids. In the summer I’ve seen a group of 8-10 kids grade and middle school age (some very young) sitting in street after dark playing games and talking. It’s a very mixed group age/gender/race. In my own wealthy neighbourhood I never see kids playing outside.

Re: Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills

#496

Post by kwhitefoot »

ithkuil wrote: post #398
kwhitefoot wrote: post #26

The US seems to be the only country that has this problem. Children here (Norway) walk to school on their own at the age of five or six, some of them take buses. "Ashley Smith, a foster dad, testified about being investigated for neglect because one afternoon his daughter, 8, was doing her homework on the front lawn. A passerby reported an “unsupervised” child (not knowing Ashley was actually inside). The upshot: “We…

Italy is not as ridiculous, but until 14 years kids cannot exit school without a register adult picking them up.

But that is ridiculous!

According to thelocal.it it's no longer true: https://www.thelocal.it/20171114/italy-amends-law-kids-go-ho...

Havs thelocal got it right?

"Italy amends law to allow kids to go home from school alone

Italian schools can let children walk home alone without fear of legal repercussions, after the senate approved an amendment to a law that said they had to be picked up by an adult.

..

Under-14s will require written permission from their parents or guardians to leave school unaccompanied, according to the amendment, which passed the senate’s budget committee on Monday."

Re: Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills

#497

Post by kwhitefoot »

favaq wrote: post #163
kwhitefoot wrote: post #26

The US seems to be the only country that has this problem. Children here (Norway) walk to school on their own at the age of five or six, some of them take buses. "Ashley Smith, a foster dad, testified about being investigated for neglect because one afternoon his daughter, 8, was doing her homework on the front lawn. A passerby reported an “unsupervised” child (not knowing Ashley was actually inside). The upshot: “We…

It's very unfair to compare Norway to the US, you just have to look at the racial composition of both societies to see why

Granted that the average is as you say. But averages conceal the truth that the racial composition of those US districts that I have seen personally is generally not average, they tend to be overwhelmingly white or overwhelmingly black (mostly the Raleigh-Durham Triangle). In Norway we don't have many areas where that happens.

Re: Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills

#498

Post by acchow »

andrepd wrote: post #116
kungfooey wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live about a half mile from my kid's school and we walk most days, or I bike. However, it has been... eye opening. We live in a fairly urban area of Nashville, but my street doesn't have sidewalks. We've been yelled at multiple times (me, my wife, and our kindergartner) by drivers to "Get out of the road!" (This is on a 25 mph street.) There are ditches and uneven ground on both sides of the road. Even the sidewalk…

Car-centric infrastructure and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.

Car-centricity is a result of neighborhood design, which necessitates owning a car. There's almost nothing within walking distance of most houses. As you add cars, you need to add car infrastructure (especially wider streets for car parking, lanes of vehicles, sidewalks, parking lots etc). This further increases walking distances and also creates coverage areas that public transit cannot feasibly satisfy. Cars create a problem that only they themselves can "solve".

Re: Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills

#499

Post by zamadatix »

samtho wrote: post #285
zamadatix wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why concern trolling in particular rather than good old traditional fake concern?

I’m guessing that OP can’t even comprehend what reasonable person of rational mind would report a child in no immediate danger for being neglected. OP is calling it trolling because it’s hard to believe people are that stupid and therefore must be doing it simply to harass others.

Concern trolling isn't the same as just trolling about being concerned it's a specific type of interaction around delegitimizing the other viewpoint via faking support of the view but raising concerns you don't actually have that may raise doubt about the view to others.

Re: Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills

#500

Post by SwetDrems »

mtrower wrote: post #393
SwetDrems wrote: post #94

A big perpetrator of this is the designed environment surrounding car culture. I moved somewhere where there's plenty of foot traffic, specifically so my kid will walk/bike to school and that is seen as completely normal. Most Americans do not understand how horrible car dependence is for personal independence, yet defend it to the end for some reason. It's really a shame.

Could you expound upon this? Specifically, why cars are bad for personal independence, but bicycles are just fine?

Cars are extremely space inefficient, so when cities are built for cars it is done at the expense of more efficient transportation methods. And what you're left with in the end is a very inefficient transportation system that REQUIRES a car. An efficient system would simply make cars optional and therefore you have more independence as you have more options - not to mention a system better at moving people.

Follow Brent Toderian @BrentToderian and Bella Chu @bellachu10 on twitter for more.

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