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Where do the children play?

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Re: Where do the children play?

#151

Post by CalRobert »

Vinnl wrote: post #68
317070 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Figure 13, there are some Western countries listed for how much children can roam, and Ireland is indeed near the bottom. But the Netherlands, Nordics and Germany are still very much on the other side of the spectrum in these studies. See for instance the books "The Happiest Kids in the World", "Achtung Baby" and "There is No Such Thing as Bad Weather" about raising children in the Netherlands, Berlin and Sweden r…

> Those places are very much not like the USA yet. Though as the article points out, they are definitely going in that direction. In the Netherlands, some things are trending in that direction (e.g. car sizes/hood heights), but I wouldn't call it a general trend; infrastructure, for one, is still massively improving. Where it was bicycle-friendly twenty years ago, it's way more so today, and bound to be even more so…

It’s not a foregone conclusion though, in addition to higher and blunter hoods there’s just more cars (over ten million now), and the EU may recognise US safety standards in trade negotiations. Not that the latter matters when you can import violating vehicles (like Dodge Rams) under individual vehicle approval.

The Netherlands is in danger of resting on its laurels and getting complacent. Some places (Hilversum comes to mind) are still quite mediocre.

Re: Where do the children play?

#152

Post by cpursley »

mlrtime wrote: post #137
cpursley wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

France, Netherlands, Denmark, former commie block come to mind. It was one of the things that really stuck out to me: how mature/well behaved and independent/confident the children were there (for the most part). There's even books on the topic (Raising Bebe, The Danish Secret to Happy Kids) which I was not aware of until after spending a lot of time in those places. At lot of it has to due with the built environment - kids can literally walk out the front door to parks and stuff unlike in suburban places, but also culture.

Re: Where do the children play?

#153

Post by cpursley »

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…

One of the things I like about some of the overseas malls is they have places designated for kids to run around and play. I've even seen that as a common amenity in restaurants (play room).

Re: Where do the children play?

#154

Post by lnsru »

WA wrote: post #116
lnsru wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same phone addiction in Europe as elsewhere. No way to fight addictive stuff. Most parents don’t even try or care. Add tragic demographics and 8-12 year olds are all alone with their phones. Let’s talk about special school system here in Bavaria (Germany). Kids from specific area go to same school for the first 4 grades. Afterwards they are divided between little geniuses going into „Gymnsasium“, average ones going t…

Your scenario paints an overly negative picture. Neither do the majority of the kids move between schools every year, nor do they switch up classes within a school every year. They usually stay with the same class 2-3 years and only switch for individual courses for a couple of hours per week. You can criticize the way how kids are separated into different levels by 5th grade, but this has nothing to do with being ab…

The scenario is shit. I know. I don’t paint it pink. But it is as it is today somewhere between Munich and Alps. The today’s challenge is the demographics. The kids are rare. Retirees live in the majority of houses around us. The few kids of the street were divided between 3 school types in 4 different locations. They meet occasionally, but friendships were lost. There are simply no other kids around to go out together. Some parents are really desperate to organize (paid!!!!) play dates.

I am not scientist of society dynamics, but I don’t see any positive aspects of Bavarian school system. Producing lots of factory workers from “Real-“ and “Mittelschule”? Last factories are disappearing. Early separation of kids and continuous shuffling bewteen classes brings no positive effects for kids. Can a 10 year old boy have any idea what he wants to do in 15 years?.. Can a 10 year old boy know his strengths and weaknesses? I really doubt it. Sometimes I think Bavarian school system was CIA psyop after WW2 to cripple German society development. No close friends, no bonds in the society.

Re: Where do the children play?

#155

Post by watwut »

AndrewDavis wrote: post #25
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…

This is an aside. Yesterday I was in a shopping centre (ie a mall) and a bunch of kids ran through the food court, maybe 10 of them all around the 9-12 A grumpy lady shouted at them "kids you shouldnt be running!" I turned to whom I was eating with and our discussion could be summarised as "kids should be running. The problem isn't they're running, the problem isn't even directly where they're running. Where they're…

Kids should be running, but not in food court. 9-12 old are big enought to recognize space full of plates and food.

Re: Where do the children play?

#156

Post by apexalpha »

gwd wrote: post #32
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…

> Where I'm from, I would say that 75% of 6 year olds walk/bike to school alone, and 100% of older kids do. When I was growing up in the 80's in the US, I walked to school alone; but there was institutional support for that. There were adults paid to help kids cross major roads, and there were older children ("safetys") who wore an orange sash, trained and assigned to help younger kids walk to school. I don't see tha…

>When I was growing up in the 80's in the US, I walked to school alone; but there was institutional support for that. There were adults paid to help kids cross major roads, and there were older children ("safetys") who wore an orange sash, trained and assigned to help younger kids walk to school.

This still exists in the Netherlands: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verkeersbrigadier

Re: Where do the children play?

#157

Post by danielbln »

alt227 wrote: post #147
Arainach wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telling kids not to run around indoors where they can collide with objects or people, break things, injure themselves, and generally get in the way isn't damaging - or at least is significantly less damaging than the perception in this thread that telling kids not to do something is awful.

This is just standard manners and teaching children how to interact with an adult society. Why does anybody think telling kids not to run indoors is wrong?

No need to put words in my mouth. I specifically referred to the fact that just because something has been done since the 50s that it doesn't have automatic relevance when it comes to modern child raising, not that telling kids today to cut it out when running on public places is a bad thing.

Re: Where do the children play?

#158

Post by danielbln »

Arainach wrote: post #144
danielbln wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree with you, but the fact that something has been done since the 50s when it comes to child care is not necessarily an indicator that it's good. We imposed many things on children during that time that would be widely considered damaging and counter productive today.

Telling kids not to run around indoors where they can collide with objects or people, break things, injure themselves, and generally get in the way isn't damaging - or at least is significantly less damaging than the perception in this thread that telling kids not to do something is awful.

Ok, no disagreement there, but that wasn't my point.

Re: Where do the children play?

#159

Post by Earw0rm »

api wrote: post #86
Earw0rm wrote: post #72

It's cars. It was always cars.

Plenty of cars in the 90s and we played outside all day. The biggest change since then is two things. One is that there’s way more to do inside now, mostly games and shows. The second is that baseless kidnapping panics convinced society that children can never be unattended. The main vector was daytime TV and now true crime podcasts. The reality is that kidnapping is statistically extremely rare and more than 95% of…

We did, but some kids got killed or badly injured as a result. It was pretty common where I live.

And while speeds are a bit lower now, the median driver attitude and aggression level seems to be a lot worse. I'm not sure whether that's because of phone distractions, or they're stressed out by exploitative employers, or have cooked their brains online, or some demographic change in who does the most driving, but when I'm on foot, being driven AT is not an uncommon experience at all.

Re: Where do the children play?

#160

Post by lnsru »

cachius wrote: post #47
lnsru wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same phone addiction in Europe as elsewhere. No way to fight addictive stuff. Most parents don’t even try or care. Add tragic demographics and 8-12 year olds are all alone with their phones. Let’s talk about special school system here in Bavaria (Germany). Kids from specific area go to same school for the first 4 grades. Afterwards they are divided between little geniuses going into „Gymnsasium“, average ones going t…

The founders of the Miniaturwunderland Hamburg were in the media describing how they push back against smartphones and media in their family life: https://www.ardmediathek.de/video/ndr-talk-show/miniatur-wun... Strange coincidence: shortly after they were hacked https://www.borncity.com/blog/2025/11/12/miniatur-wunderland...

Every morning I see dozens of kids sitting (this week in unpleasant cold) on pavement or standing somewhere in the rain with their smartphones on the way to school. No phones in/around school building! It’s a plague and doesn’t look normal at all for me. I would expect some regulations from government regarding this insanity. There are phone-watches and dumb phones to reach kids if really needed. It must be profitable to someone to hook kids like that. Weirdest poses in rain, cold just to have quality time with their smartphones. I want scream when I see this every day. In most discussions with adults I end up as a luddite, because I don’t support technology. In my times modern technology was messing with autoexec.bat and we learned something from that for later.
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