https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/27/opinion/sunday/motherhood-in-the-age-of-fear.html
Describes an incident where the author left her kid alone in a car on a cool day for five minutes and got the police called on her.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/02/reader-center/free-range-parenting-outside-united-states.html
A compilation of the reactions from international readers.
I’m not international, and I feel the whole thing has gotten out of control. I’m sure I would have been arrested multiple times as a parent thirty years ago.
No wonder all my students are on anxiety meds–they’ve never been allowed to step outside the house alone. This is ridiculous.
Also, while were recently in Europe, we noted multiple examples of parents letting kids be independent people, and it was refreshing. What has happened to us?
And we wonder why we in the US have a generation of neurotic Peter Pan kids. So sad. I am so glad my kids are grown. I was afraid to bring my 70lb dog on an errand this weekend because I was afraid some crazy person would break my car windows to “rescue” my dog. I can’t imagine parenting a child into an emotional healthy adult in this age of “other parenting by the crazed fearful minority.”
Chiming in to agree. It is unbelievable how out of control it has become. True story- I was approached by a woman complaining when I left my daughter in the car in a parking lot a few years ago. I replied that the car belonged to that licensed daughter, so go talk to her in the car if there is a problem.
I basically agree with you @momofthreeboys , except for the Peter Pan kids comment. If anything, they’ll be the opposite. Peter Pan and the Lost Boys reveled in LACK of supervision. What we have here is the opposite. Peter Pan adults are usually described as ones who do whatever they want without worrying about consequences; again, the opposite of what I see developing in my college students. They’re afraid to make a wrong move.
In the “olden days” the only time anybody checked on kids was when it got too quiet…
The fear is crazy and out of control here in the US. Back in 1999, our neighborhood was debating putting in sidewalks. I will never forget one of my neighbors standing up at the meeting and telling us that we couldn’t put in sidewalks because it would result in children getting abducted. He actually put his house up for sale and moved out when the sidewalks went in. I really hope his children overcame his paranoia.
It’s not just going out or being left alone that have been affected by our feasr. I was a Girl Scout leader for years and years and almost every girl in my troop used a knife and matches for the first time when we camped in 4th grade. Meanwhile, my daughter had been making pancakes by herself on a gas stove since she was 5. (I had to find something to occupy her on Saturday mornings so the rest of us could sleep past 6:30am!)
While I generally agree that kids shouldn’t be overprotected, they also shouldn’t be left alone until the parents are sure the kids know and comply with basic rules for safe behavior and know how to ask strangers for help if needed. 4 years old seems a bit too young for this.
" I was a Girl Scout leader for years and years and almost every girl in my troop used a knife and matches for the first time when we camped in 4th grade."
LOL–Very true. We played with matches much earlier! (no matter how much we were warned not to…)
But then again, we learned safety for fire and knives very early especially in GS. We were Brownies with pocket knives and cooking skills.
On the one hand, the mother should have insisted that the child obey her and come with her into the store. A four year old does not get to call the shots. A four year old must learn to say “Yes, mommy” and do what mommy says.
On the other hand, 15 years ago when my kids were youngsters, I let them roam the hills beyond our house freely. They and the neighbor kid built a fort where they’d hang out for hours, not glued to TV. It was the sort of thing I did as a youngster. Freedom from constant surveillance from parents gives children a sense of being able to take care of themselves; in other words self-esteem.
Absolutely it does. My mother is a severe worrier…they have names and drugs for that these days, but it took me several years post high school to get my sea legs (much later than my peers) because of her hovering and smothering and constant fear that “something bad would happen do me”.as I grew up. It drove me apart from her for several years before I could cope with her and repair the relationship. Now I just feel very sorry for her because I realize her paranoia and “bad things” outlook is really a crippling situation and not “normal,”
@TatinG - YES! Let kids develop their self esteem through figuring some (appropriate) things out for themselves and with their peers, not by constant adult praise and attention.
I am a worrier, but I find it astounding how many parents coordinate every waking moment of their kids lives. How do these kids develop any interests or ideas of their own?
Oh boy.
The plan is for us to have a kid within the next year, year and a half and I’m having a LOT of anxiety about it. But having the cops called on me for raising my kids like I was raised was not on my to-worry list.
Side note: I had pretty (what we now call) free-range parents and still have horrendous anxiety and depression. I don’t think these things are at all related.
Partly just because I’m a divorced mom, my offspring had a lot of freedom–which was sometimes abused. However, 4 is IMO too young to be left alone in a car in a public place. I have a not quite 4 year old grandchild who is a fairly well-behaved kid and who is I suspect more independent than most and there is no way on earth that child would be left alone in a car for a few minutes.
Now, the mom who worked in a McDonald’s and left her 9 year old in a well-frequented public park to play with a cellphone to contact her mom in case of an emergency has my sympathy. A nine year old is very different than a 4 year old.
Yes, I would not have left my 4 year olds alone in a car in a public place. They were escape artists and could easily wriggle out of their car seats and release the emergency brake and possibly open the door and get out of the car and walk in the parking lot.
It’s not easy to be a free-range parent if the rest of the parents on the block don’t follow suit.
Our kids did have SOME free-ranging but were never allowed to be unsupervised in another classmate pre-teen’s or younger home with large group of boys. Sorry, too many things could happen and I preferred they come to our home.
D was thrilled to catch the public bus with classmates in middle school. She had never done so before with friends.
We did let them ride around the neighborhood and run errands in grade school but I did hover more than my folks had. Neither kid has anxiety nor depression, so I’m glad they seem to have turned out fine anyway.
This. I heard an awful lot of criticism/judging of parents who let their kids do anything remotely “free range”. To the point of other parents not allowing their kids to hang out with kids who had a bit more freedom. Seems to me like everytime something like this is discussed parents long for the good old days, but few actually put it in practice…
An opposing viewpoint.
I believe kids need freedom and the ability to challenge themselves. At camp I won the Woodsman’s Award for, among other things, starting a good fire, identifying poison ivy, and using an axe to chop a log in quick time. I was 8, and my prize was a big jackknife and sharpening block. I loved to whittle with that knife. I let my kids, by the age of 10, drive an ATV, use a gas-powered log splitter, and wander in the woods on a 200 acre property where we’d had bear sightings.
With that context in mind, I have been that parent who called the police under just the circumstances described in the article.
It was a warm but not hot day and I was in the parking lot of the local grocery store. There was a young child, I would guess about 4, alone in a car. His mother had left him belted in, locked the doors, and set the alarm. We later found out she had his little brother with her.
At some point the child decided he wanted to be with his mom, had unbelted himself, and was trying to open the door. Unfortunately every time he touched the door the alarm would go off. The noise made him panic. He was too young and freaked out to figure out the lock, but had he done so he would have been left wandering a busy parking lot looking for Mom in one of multiple stores. We bystanders tried to reassure him and sent people into the grocery store, hardware store, and pharmacy to look for the mother. He kept trying to get out, setting off the alarm. We were worried that something had happened to the mother and we called the police out of concern. By the time the police arrived the little guy was a red-faced, shaking, sobbing mess. Mom emerged from the grocery store amazed at the fuss. Apparently she’d missed the PA announcement. She was angry the police had been called but I don’t regret our actions one bit.
The anxiety I see in young adults today is way more about the high stakes world that they are constantly having to hear about ( near perfect grades and awards or you won’t get into the college that you want or get that merit scholarship or get that good job or ever be able to buy a house etc etc), than an inability to navigate the world because they were overprotected. I see so many kids here who I knew when they were young who were never let out of their parents sight til they were iin middle school, not permitted to take public transportation til high school etc, yet one after another who are now 22-25 is now living far away from home, traveling around the country and the world for work with nary a problem doing so.
In any event I believe they 4 years old is too young to be left in a car even for what is planned to be “ a few minutes.” Cars are really the last place any young kid should be left unsupervised. Especially with all the automatic seats/windows not to mention how easy it is not to realize your spouse has left their key somewhere in the car which can start the car without being anywhere near, let alone in, the lock. And leaving your kid in the car because you are giving in to their not wanting to come in does not seem like a top choice in parenting either.