What we lost when we stopped letting kids leave the front yard • Hacker News Board

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

#81

Post by paulryanrogers » Tue, May 26, 2026, 3:12 AM UTC

keepamovin wrote: post #74

PantaloonFlames wrote: post #22

The article is confused. The opinion is, it's so much safer _now_ than it was in the 1970s, it makes no sense to restrict children's wanderings. But the article doesn't consider whether restricting children's wanderings is the REASON it is so much safer for children now. "We have so many fire-safety rules in the building codes in Seattle. But get this: we haven't had any major fires since 1889! It's obvious we don't…

Tangential to risks raised in the article I guess, but I cannot understand something that's happening in the US: it's crazy how many demented people there are. That there is a market that captures children in order to traffick them for sex; that there are hundreds of people doing this regularly being wrapped up by LE raids, and dozens of children freed; that these raids happen on the frequency of weeks, or months; th…

There will be many sick people in a nation of hundreds of millions.

Stigmatizing mental help drives a lot of problems underground. So does our awkward immigration system that keeps all kinds of migrants in precarious positions, even legal agricultural laborers.

Our president has the strongest personal ties to the most prolific sex trafficker in recent decades, second only to Gladwell. Yet he has suffered no legal consequences for his association, nor even serious investigation. Epstein himself seemed afraid to name him under oath, and yet privately called him "the dog that hasn't barked". This leader of the nation bragged to journalists of sexually assauting people, and over 20 victims say it's true. And roughly half of the voting public still checks the box with his name on it.

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

#82

Post by thin_carapace » Tue, May 26, 2026, 3:14 AM UTC

jszymborski wrote: post #27

iamalizard wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't really understand how being scared/traumatized by videos of bike accidents will increase that child's visibility. The onus here is on municipal and federal governments to make roads and cars safer.

i agree with your latter point but i must state that kids probably should be scared of being squashed by american blimp trucks

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

#83

Post by simoncion » Tue, May 26, 2026, 3:16 AM UTC

paulryanrogers wrote: post #76

ninalanyon wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Norway my children sometimes came home from primary school (ages five to twelve) with notes saying things like: "We've planned a trip to the woods for next week, it's expected to be minus twenty Celsius so please make sure they have appropriate clothing, hats, gloves, boots. Also we will have a fire so make sure they bring some sausages and a hunting knife so they can cut sticks for the fire and to hold the sausag…

In the 90s I was taught knife safety before being given blades. Had to pass a test before we were given them. Seems pretty reasonable to require that to handle something that could kill another person so quickly, easily, and even by accident. Also much cheaper than casts, physical therapy, and possibly permanent damage. An ounce of prevention and all that.

> In the 90s I was taught knife safety before being given blades. Had to pass a test before we were given them.

You can teach kids how to safely handle and use blades. This reduces -but does not prevent- accidents... and some kids will handle them carelessly despite the training. [0]

In other words, the fact that a kid on the trip was cut by his friend doesn't mean that there was no blade safety training prior to the trip.

[0] Source: In another life, I used to teach kids these sorts of safety courses.

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

#84

Post by paulryanrogers » Tue, May 26, 2026, 3:16 AM UTC

GlibMonkeyDeath wrote: post #32

I'm in my sixties and reflect sometimes on how much freedom I had as a kid, and why things have changed so much in terms of risks parents are willing to accept. One correlation with "safetyism" this article doesn't mention: the rise of the two income household ( https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2014/04/08/after-d... for the US; the UK appears to be similar.) In reality when we kids were running wild about th…

> You would tell Billy's dad, who would make sure he didn't ever do _that_ again, and that would be the end of it.

By beating the child?

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

#85

Post by jolmg » Tue, May 26, 2026, 3:20 AM UTC

paulryanrogers wrote: post #81

keepamovin wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tangential to risks raised in the article I guess, but I cannot understand something that's happening in the US: it's crazy how many demented people there are. That there is a market that captures children in order to traffick them for sex; that there are hundreds of people doing this regularly being wrapped up by LE raids, and dozens of children freed; that these raids happen on the frequency of weeks, or months; th…

There will be many sick people in a nation of hundreds of millions. Stigmatizing mental help drives a lot of problems underground. So does our awkward immigration system that keeps all kinds of migrants in precarious positions, even legal agricultural laborers. Our president has the strongest personal ties to the most prolific sex trafficker in recent decades, second only to Gladwell. Yet he has suffered no legal con…

> second only to Gladwell

Ghislaine Maxwell, I suppose you meant.

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

#86

Post by vkou » Tue, May 26, 2026, 3:21 AM UTC

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…

Maybe show that to drivers, too, every time they have to renew their license.

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

#87

Post by jolmg » Tue, May 26, 2026, 3:33 AM UTC

paulryanrogers wrote: post #84

GlibMonkeyDeath wrote: post #32

I'm in my sixties and reflect sometimes on how much freedom I had as a kid, and why things have changed so much in terms of risks parents are willing to accept. One correlation with "safetyism" this article doesn't mention: the rise of the two income household ( https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2014/04/08/after-d... for the US; the UK appears to be similar.) In reality when we kids were running wild about th…

> You would tell Billy's dad, who would make sure he didn't ever do _that_ again, and that would be the end of it. By beating the child?

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.

He's very loved by them, BTW. I didn't meet him, but they always talk with admiration of him.

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

#88

Post by qsera » Tue, May 26, 2026, 3:35 AM UTC

We lost grownups.

Modern establishments (businesses/governments) work by making people afraid. It is truly, the age of fear.

Let me quote M.I.B

>There's always an Arquillian Battle Cruiser, or a Corillian Death Ray, or an intergalactic plague that is about to wipe out all life on this miserable little planet, and the only way these people can get on with their happy lives is that they DO NOT KNOW ABOUT IT!

At some point we figured that there is good money to be made by making the people perpetually aware of how they or their loved one are going to die 24x7!

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

#89

Post by LocalH » Tue, May 26, 2026, 3:38 AM UTC

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 hope you live in an area without nosy neighbors. The main issue is not that parents are willingly choosing to helicopter their kids. The main issue is that completely unrelated people are seeing kids in public alone, assuming neglect, and calling police. So, parents are helicoptering their kids under duress.

No wonder kids are being made to make do with alone time on digital devices. That's all we have left (and they're trying to control that too, for good and bad reasons).

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

#90

Post by simoncion » Tue, May 26, 2026, 3:40 AM UTC

lstodd wrote: post #36

debo_ wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a commuter cyclist of over 20 years, my favorite recent trend are is wearing a bike helmet and giant noise-cancelling headphones at the same time.

No idea about bicycle, but for motorcycles, integrated helmet headphones are a thing for long time. It maybe helps that a typical motorcycle helmet is quite noise-cancelling by itself, so one relies mostly on moving faster than traffic and if that fails, on mirrors and not on sound. Besides being an mc person I always considered bicycle helmets a useless compromise in that they don't provide true protection like full…

> You're still as likely to leave half of your face on the obstacle [when wearing a bicycle helmet], so either don't bother or wear something that would prevent that.

With surgical assistance, I can heal from leaving half of my face on an obstacle. Healing from leaving a big chunk of my brain on an obstacle [0] is -at best- quite a bit more involved.

[0] ...or a chunk of an obstacle in my brain...