Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Kids need freedom, too

persuasion.community

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 391 posts

Re: Kids need freedom, too

#351

Post by LatteLazy »

droopyEyelids wrote: post #316
LatteLazy wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just so I'm clear, risk de-aggregation is when I worry and optimise about the risks of drink driving, and end up killing myself by [drunk walking in front of a bus]/[accepting a lift from a serial killer]/[Cancer I got in the smokey bar I was really careful not to drive home from]

maybe you worry about drunk driving, so you never leave your house again and die alone and penniless due to tremendous opportunity costs of avoiding all possibility of a drunk driver ever hitting you.

Thanks! That makes sense.

Re: Kids need freedom, too

#352

Post by textgel »

Always mixed feelings when we're once again watching HN judder round to the understanding that the sky IS indeed blue decades after the rest of the world figures it out, but hey, progress is progress.

Re: Kids need freedom, too

#353

Post by CalRobert »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #347
CalRobert wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We hoped that this would be our experience moving to the EU (Ireland) but due to housing issues we wound up in a field in the countryside. They DO get free reign of the field and the lovely walking trail, but the road is full of high speed drivers with nothing but a dense, tall hedgerow to jump in to. Ireland copied all the mistakes of America with regards to urban design, too.

Yeah, the Irish countryside is beautiful, but not walkable. Both my wife and I grew up there, hence why we prioritized getting a walkable place in the suburbs.

Funny enough when we were looking it was either between the canals in Dublin or in the countryside. We looked at places in Clonsilla, etc. but they seemed really hostile to walking. Inside the canals was too expensive, sadly. I ended up getting a remote job and we moved to a few acres in Offaly, about a 15 minute bike ride from the train. It's beautiful and there's a lot to like (We even have a walking trail by the house!) but it's definitely a place you need a car.

Re: Kids need freedom, too

#354

Post by marton78 »

wheels wrote: post #273
CalRobert wrote: post #154

It's great to allow your kids to take risks, and we do this with our own as much as we can (they're 1 and 3, so "within reason" is still doing some heavy lifting. I pick ticks off of them now and then and patch up their share of bruises). But fundamentally, what I want most is to be somewhere my kids can ride bikes or walk alone to school, to friends, to the shop, etc. from the age of 7 or so. As best I can tell that…

> the Netherlands, parts of Denmark, or perhaps Japan I think it's far more common than that -- actually, guessing wildly, I suspect most children around the world get themselves to school and that the US is the outlier. In Germany, where I live, and where my oldest will be starting school in two months, it's common and encouraged for kids to walk to school in their first year (age 6). Admittedly, ours is only a quar…

I live in Germany, too and can confirm. In Hungary, where I'm from, it's no different.

What shocked me most in this article was the paragraph:

> A mom wrote that she had been so encouraged that, at the grocery store, she allowed her son to leave her to get cheese from a different aisle. When he came back, she added, “That boy was six inches taller!”

That mother never allowed her son to do that before before being encouraged by the author? Poor child.

Re: Kids need freedom, too

#355

Post by RalfWausE »

rajeshp1986 wrote: post #287

I wonder how much is this specific to US. Does kids in European countries go out and play on their own?

Speaking for the kids of my sister (living in a rural area of germany): Yes, absolutely! The younger girl (10 now) is only expected to be back before a certain time (mostly dinner).

As far as i can observe it is not that much different with the other parents in my social circle.

Re: Kids need freedom, too

#356

Post by dagw »

Oh how I wish I had this 'problem'. I would love nothing more than for my daughter to roam freely with her friends in woods behind our house or to just hop on her bike and set off for random adventures.

Unfortunately there seems to be nothing the outside world can offer her that she finds even a quarter as interesting as a computer screen.

Re: Kids need freedom, too

#357

Post by refurb »

AstralStorm wrote: post #320
refurb wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. I lived in Asia for a while and toddlers ride on scooters without helmets. Shocking! Then I remember back not long ago when seat belt laws came into effect in the US. Before then? Meh. And car seats for 6 year olds?

The difference here is that the these scooters either have a separate lane or are driving on pavement. There are no such provisions in most of the US.

Some parts have a separate lane, most dont. Plenty of scooters get squished under 53 ft trailers. And most scooters don’t drive on pavement in the US? Not sure what you mean.

Re: Kids need freedom, too

#358

Post by marton78 »

tomc1985 wrote: post #172
endymi0n wrote: post #111

I can‘t find the link anymore, but in the prologue of (I think) a German norm for building playgrounds it said something along these lines that resonated a lot with me: „Kids have the right to hurt themselves and test their boundaries in a safe and limited way“ That‘s just so important for kids I think. US playgrounds all look sad to no end compared to the 15 meter high rope pyramids you see here in a lot of schools.…

We used to have playgrounds like that. My favorite playground as a kid had metal slides, a merry-go-round that we used to have fun throwing kids off of by spinning it at high speed, and this gigantic metal turtle that would get so hot in the summer sun that it would burn you. My elementary school had monkey bars at varying heights... etc etc.. But last time I checked that playground replaced everything with bulky pla…

You mean one like in this classic video? https://youtu.be/iRasoZMirRc

Re: Kids need freedom, too

#359

Post by oldandboring »

I've got two kids and I've been listening to, and reading, variations on this opinion since the first one popped out.

"Parents these days are too protective." "Don't be a helicopter parent." "When I was a kid, we didn't even have car seats or seat belts, and my folks didn't even look at my injuries unless they were gushing blood."

After eight years I've decided this is another load of Baby Boomer nostalgia, only this time it's Gen-X and Millennials joining in.

My theory is two part:

First: this is Baby Boomers finding any way they can to call anyone younger than them lazy and coddled, without any sense of irony that we are the way they raised us. And if you are a Gen-X or Millennial and have bought into this way of thinking: congratulations, you've been gaslit by the grand master gaslighters: Baby Boomers.

Second: this is your brain playing tricks on you.

The memories you have from around ages 6-11 are the golden age of your childhood. In your memory, they went on forever. Before 6 the memories are fewer and more scattered. The vast swaths of boring time you spent supervised in school, supervised in after-school care, supervised at home playing, mostly didn't stick around. But as you aged, you were given incrementally more freedom, and that novelty made the experiences feel amazing at first and so they stuck around as memories.

But, your sense of time is warped. Your brain, lying, tells you that because you have a memory of riding your bike around the neighborhood (or into town), that was obviously what you were allowed to do "when you were a kid" in general.

I'm not saying there hasn't been some shift. I won't let my 4 year old ride around the neighborhood unsupervised; perhaps my parents might have let me, but I kinda doubt it, and I don't trust their memories from the 80s any better than my own.

Epilogue:

* I'm not saying there aren't some overprotective parents who take it to extremes. I just promise you those people also existed back in the day.

* Your parents did the best they could.

* You are doing the best you can.

* Your fellow parents who are doing it differently than you -- more protective or less protective or just differently protective of their kids -- they're also just doing the best they can.

Post reply on HN