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What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

stevemagness.substack.com

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Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#401

Post by empressplay »

jghn wrote: post #304
cbondurant wrote: post #296

I remember being young when "kids don't play in the yard anymore, they just play on their phone/consoles/computer" started to be a big talking point. Even then I recognized that the reason I was on the computer so much was, at least in part, because it was so much easier to hang out with my friends online than it was to coordinate with my parents to try and get travel to their house, or to convince my parents to let…

I agree that people don't give this explanation enough credit. I was online in that age group by the late 80s. Just as in your story, that started me down a path of not going outside as much, even though the other kids would be outside doing outside things. Why would I go out and play basketball or something else I didn't like when I could instead be online talking to people with shared interests?

Me too, but I wasn't on AOL or anything long-distance, instead I called local chat systems / BBSes. And because they were local we met up physically as a group at least weekly (almost daily in the summertime).

The summer I was 16 I spent more time away from the computer, hanging out with other teenagers I met on the computer, than I would have otherwise.

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#402

Post by crypto420 »

I spent part of my life growing up in a major Asian city where communal ties are very strong, and spent a very significant fraction of my childhood outside of my house, just because there was so much to do - whether it was playing soccer, playing hide and seek, or taking the local bus/train with friends to shows, coffee shops or restaurants. All of this was before cell phones. If I got lost or needed help I'd ask a stranger for directions or navigation.

Nothing bad ever happened to me, and most people were actually quite kind and helpful to a 14 year old kid asking for help and directions. That sense of confidence in myself - that I could figure out how to pretty much do anything - has stuck with me in a way that a lot of my friends who grew up in sanitized suburban neighborhoods just don't have.

Kids really don't know what they're missing.

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#403

Post by [deleted] »

Aeolun wrote: post #385
buellerbueller wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Maybe I was lucky to not get severely injured or abducted When the statistics are vastly in one's favor, it isn't luck.

I keep telling my wife our son is literally more likely to be hit by lightning than to be snatched by some rando, but somehow that is hard to understand.

[deleted]

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#404

Post by coryrc »

Thlom wrote: post #172
coryrc wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They need to just be banned on public roads. Require what Europe requires for pedestrian safety and visibility. They still have trucks.

We have trucks, but almost no one has a truck as a family car because they are expensive and inconvenient.

They are here too... we just have this epidemic of abject stupidity.

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#405

Post by ge96 »

cbondurant wrote: post #296

I remember being young when "kids don't play in the yard anymore, they just play on their phone/consoles/computer" started to be a big talking point. Even then I recognized that the reason I was on the computer so much was, at least in part, because it was so much easier to hang out with my friends online than it was to coordinate with my parents to try and get travel to their house, or to convince my parents to let…

[dead]

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#406

Post by cbondurant »

BurningFrog wrote: post #349
ryandrake wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point about the proliferation of the absurd “crime” of loitering, which apparently just means “existing somewhere without spending money.” I remember being a teen in the 80s and what we did every day would be considered “loitering” today. There’s not much else for kids to do outside the home besides loiter.

So why were loitering laws introduced? I doubt it was purely a sadistic effort to ruin the lives of kids. My guess is that combatting gang crime was a major reason.

A reason I suspect (though, truly it is only a guess) is as a way to force people to spend money. Something akin to "either buy something or leave" to try and capture just that tiny bit of additional revenue.

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#407

Post by tstrimple »

iamalizard wrote: post #23
alex_young wrote: post #17

I want to let my kids walk wherever they want to. It’s great for them. My 5 year old bikes to school, accompanied by an adult. It’s a bit more than half a mile away from the house. I’d like to tell him he can do this on his own next year, but there’s a single intersection he has to cross that makes this difficult. I’m not worried about him getting lost, abducted by a stranger or any host of movie plot scenarios. I’m…

I'm almost 2 meters tall and was crossing a street at a crosswalk with my bike yesterday, walking and pushing it at normal walking speeds, like the law requires. There was a car about to turn left from the lanes going left. There was a car from the lanes going right (the closest lanes to me) that slowed down as I started crossing the street. I assumed they saw me and that's why they were slowing down. Nope - they alm…

About a block away from me is a private community pool that is highly used during the summer. Across from it and another block down is a park with some trails. There is a cross walk between them, but there is no lighting for it. Basically no one ever stops at the crosswalk when they see pedestrians waiting. It's a steady stream of cars just flying by at 35-40 mph. It's to the point where I don't even want to stop for them because I don't trust the other lane to stop and I don't want to "encourage" pedestrians to walk out because they see me stopped but the other side won't respond leading to an even more dangerous situation. I've even seen cars who stop get passed on double yellows because who would dare slow down a car driver trying to get somewhere. Crazy that two such popular community features are separated by thousands of pounds of steel flying by without a safe way for kids or even families to get across. To reach a protected crossing, you've got to walk about a mile in either direction to reach a stop light intersection.

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#408

Post by dividefuel »

hibikir wrote: post #101

What I see in my deep suburbia is just far less interest in wandering past the front yard, because there's nothing to do: House after house where no front yard has anything for anyone, and quite long distances before you get somewhere you might be welcome, or have a chair. When my son, a pre-teen at the time went to Spain with me, things were quite different: A small town that even had stores targeting kids, places t…

I know the discussion of urbanism vs suburbanism is a common topic on HN, but I don't think suburbs themselves are the root issue here.

When I was growing up in the suburb, there were kids outside all the time. Yes, some friends lived across town in another suburb, but we just biked there instead of walking.

Now when I visit that same suburb, there are no kids in sight. I still see adults of parenting age, so I assume there are still children in the neighborhood, but they're just indoors. The density of the town didn't change, but rather people's attitudes towards where kids can and can't be seem to be what changed. I also suspect the declining birthrate and having fewer kids is contributing to the problem too.

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#409

Post by coryrc »

graemep wrote: post #189
coryrc wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm lobbying my city to make it safer to walk to school. But Traffic Engineers care only about the 85 percentile speed of car drivers and not equity in movement. Non-car users are not important in the United States to the only role cities have for managing road design. "Safe Routes to School" are programs in the US and there's one here in Washington; Seattle has their own partial adoption of this, and I'm hoping to l…

The article cites the huge drop in children's mobility in England since the 1970s. Planning here pays more attention to making it safer to walk than it did in the 70s. The numbers show it is far safer. We still have that decline. Does that not show it has to be a cultural change in parenting?

It does seem like it. However, there's the game theory problem/positive feedback loop where each parent who defects and drives their kid makes it more dangerous for all the other kids who are still walking; iterate a few times and everybody has defected and is worse off than before.

Perhaps it was culture, but the above loop only needs cheaper cars and more income, both things present in the 70s as the effects of WWII wore off.

Re: What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard

#410

Post by jolmg »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #254
jolmg wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not necessary, but it might be necessary for the child to believe that's a possibility. It's like armies. The presence and the possibility do most of the work. My grandfather didn't beat his children, but e.g. spanks and being hit on the butt by a belt were permissible by society. He didn't do that AFAIK, but the children knew it was possible, and a single look from him sufficed to get them to stop misbehaving.…

I was hit with a belt as a child. The possibility nor the reality helped make me a better person. It actually has a negative effect on mental health

It might be like brakes. Some people abuse the brakes for their own self-satisfaction to e.g. brake-check others, others brake hard every time they need to come to a stop (e.g. intersections) because they don't know otherwise, and then others make it seem like the brakes don't even exist as the car glides without disturbance to the point that you might find it normal to have a drink from a open cup throughout. It's always necessary to have the brakes, and always permissible to slam on them in case an emergency is happening, but they're ideally used sparingly and softly. They should ideally be made to seem like they don't exist, even though everyone knows they do.
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