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Where do the children play?

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Re: Where do the children play?

#131

Post by wffurr »

apexalpha wrote: post #82

While I understand the general sentiment I think grouping kids in a cohort from 8 till 12 is a very wide cohort. The statistics presented have very different implications whether the kid is 12 or 8, I think. That said, as a Dutch parent we tend to let our children grow up relatively unsupervised. At least many foreign parents are a bit startled at first. This article helps me understand them better.

3rd grade, the year kids start at 8 and turn 9 during, is when our city schools will allow them to self dismiss. 8 seems like a reasonable benchmark age to start with.

Re: Where do the children play?

#132

Post by graemep »

tobyhinloopen wrote: post #28
zkmon wrote: post #15

There were reasons for the contrast with Western world. Safety and risk aversion is a major reason. City living means we don't know what the other person on the road is thinking. This was not the case in small villages or tribal settlements. Everyone knows about every move of the others. The whole community is like a single creature with many arms. The other reason is, prosperity means more affordability to avoid ris…

> City living means we don't know what the other person on the road is thinking. Usually something like "I hope I'm not late for my job" or "The weather is shit today". Other people aren't that scary.

A lot of people do think that other people are scary.

The UK has got to the point where a lot of people think parents cannot be trusted with their kids (in an IRL discussion multiple people supported the Online Safety Act on the grounds most parents will let their kids watch porn) let along strangers.

Re: Where do the children play?

#133

Post by mlrtime »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #77
jiggawatts wrote: post #61

Yeah well, we have one kid, and we're too old to have another. He's the only grandchild on both sides of the family. He has no cousins, first or second. That's apparently the new normal in many countries. Of course he's going to live a sheltered life! It's easy to tell parents to let their kids roam free, but that advice is to copy the behaviour of parents that had ten kids. I said "had", because on average, two of t…

>our very civilization would need to change back to the era of every family having half a dozen or more kids. Let's try improving public transportation, making more walkable communities, and encouraging independent exploration first. If those don't work, then sure. We can try the Shinzo Abe initiative to make big families. Japan has had this issue for longer than the US, but it is not impacted the same way in terms o…

I wish people would come up with examples that are more than 'Just look at Japan'. Japan is great, and I think we could learn a lot from them. However, their society is extremely homogeneous (98%+ ethnically Japanese) with deeply shared cultural norms that have been reinforced over centuries. This creates a fundamentally different trust environment than what exists in diverse, multicultural societies.

Re: Where do the children play?

#134

Post by bean469 »

master-lincoln wrote: post #78
johnnyanmac wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and playing smug semantic arguments like that doesn't help. How is it semantic? They go outside and now they are running in a giant parking lot. They go a bit further and now you're a bad parent for not keeping an eye on your kid. Tell them to sit down and play on a tablet and you're also a bad parent. There's no winning here. >you wouldn't tell someone in the library not to hush them. I don't consider a mall the eq…

If you let your kids run around in giant parking lots I would argue you are a bad parent. That seems like asking for an accident. > Tell them to sit down and play on a tablet and you're also a bad parent. Yes. If this is the alternative to playing in parking lots that comes to your mind first, I really wonder what kind of experiences you had. > There's no winning here. Ever heard of parks?

> If you let your kids run around in giant parking lots I would argue you are a bad parent.

> Ever heard of parks?

I remember being bored as hell when my parents used to take me to the city park. Many other kids thought the same, too. I couldn't wait to run around with my friends wherever else in the city afterwards. I'm thankful for my "bad parents" for letting me roam around anywhere I wanted, as was the norm back then for kids where I grew up in Europe

Re: Where do the children play?

#135

Post by tokioyoyo »

fainpul wrote: post #29
emil-lp wrote: post #6

> Consider some statistics on the American childhood, drawn from children aged 8-12: 62% have not walked/biked somewhere (a store, park, school) without an adult This is really not representative for other Western countries. Where I'm from, I would say that 75% of 6 year olds walk/bike to school alone, and 100% of older kids do. > In physical space, Western children are almost comically sheltered. I think the author…

I think a lot of this simply depends on the distance between home and school (or other places kids need to go to) – so it's the difference between a compact city and sprawling suburbs. Where I live (central Europe), the density of public elementary schools in cities is high, so kids walk there alone. The density of secondary schools is lower, so most kids use bicycles or trams / buses. Interestingly, there are a few…

Hundreds of 7 year old kids elementary are taking subway to go to school in my neighbourhood here in Tokyo. What you see is an American solution to an American problem.

To be fair, I saw the same in Canada as well, so I understand USA isn’t alone.

Re: Where do the children play?

#136

Post by mlrtime »

pseudonymcoward wrote: post #14

As a society we find violence or harm against children to be extremely shocking and tragic. As a society we would do almost anything to prevent it. Giving children the kinds of freedoms discussed in this article would lead to some harm coming to them. Accidents, violence, kidnap, etc. Therefore, society won't give them those freedoms. This tendency has been exagerated by mass media in the modern era. Every single cas…

I think you're onto something here. We do a lot to protect children, but we've outsourced that protection to institutions—police, laws, politicians—rather than building it into our communities. If we had stronger communal networks where neighbors actively looked out for each other's kids, parents would feel comfortable letting them roam. Without that social fabric, we're stuck with a binary choice: either rely on law enforcement to intervene after something goes wrong, or keep kids sheltered at home.

Re: Where do the children play?

#137

Post by mlrtime »

cpursley wrote: post #39
pseudonymcoward wrote: post #14

As a society we find violence or harm against children to be extremely shocking and tragic. As a society we would do almost anything to prevent it. Giving children the kinds of freedoms discussed in this article would lead to some harm coming to them. Accidents, violence, kidnap, etc. Therefore, society won't give them those freedoms. This tendency has been exagerated by mass media in the modern era. Every single cas…

Well, this doesn’t exactly check out when you compare to countries and cultures who already give children these freedoms and have the built environment to support it (transport, walkability, parks/spaces to play, etc). They are not only “just fine”, but their children are generally much more mature and confident (as in skilled), than their Anglo counterparts.

Care to list a few examples that aren't Anglo?

Re: Where do the children play?

#138

Post by carlob »

CalRobert wrote: post #11

In the US cars jockey for space with guns to claim the title of leading cause of dead kids. But we often forget that cars kill kids at an astonishing rate -even though kids stopped playing outside-. In that light, the bloodbath that is American suburbia becomes much more clear. When pedestrian deaths go up even as miles walked (in aggregate) goes down, the situation is even more dire than it seems. My kids play outsi…

There was an interesting plot I saw somewhere reversing the old thing about Halloween being the deadliest day for kids by dividing the number of dead kids by the number of kids on the street on a given day. It turns out that Halloween ends up being by far the safest day per capita.

Re: Where do the children play?

#139

Post by windward »

iso1631 wrote: post #63
paxiongmap wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have just done the opposite - left London for the countryside and am currently very much enjoying it. As our toddler gets older it will interesting to see how we deal with the challenges of letting them find their own space.

There's two aspect of "country" relative to somewhere like London. There's an estate in various towns, where there's plenty of actual public space, playing fields and grounds, walk into town, to shops, bus/train to larger towns. Plenty of open space. Then there's the real country, where there's very little public space - nowhere to ride a bike other than narrow country roads, you can walk but only in restrictive foot…

You're right. Personally, now that it's getting wet and cold, I'm getting kind of landlocked by mud. There's one tarmac road out in both directions, but only one of them leads to somewhere that somewhat resembles civilisation, or has pavement.

Re: Where do the children play?

#140

Post by awjlogan »

mlrtime wrote: post #96
goodcanadian wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legal e-bikes are fine. The ones you are complaining about are probably illegal, not that there is any real enforcement.

Serious Q: What is the fundamental difference between a legal and illegal e-bike. This largely is differentiated by the location but I don't know what illegal e-bike means.

Maximum power output and maximum (assisted) speed are generally legislated. In the UK, an e-bike is up to 250 W and 25 kph. More than that, it would classify as a motorbike and you'd need a license (not particularly onerous). The bike itself is often built differently to accommodate the different power profile.

As a pedal cyclist, I feel that's a reasonably sensible limit as much faster than that you should be more experienced as a cyclist to control the bike and anticipate the conditions.

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