Bubble-wrapped kids

Some very interesting thoughts.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-overprotected-american-child-1527865038

Summer camp can be a great way to give kids some of this independence. It’s so empowering!

Can’t get past the firewall to read it. :frowning:

@MaineLonghorn I googled it and was able to get the whole article.

Huh, how did you get it? I tried but all the links took me to the same page with the firewall.

Even when I was a kid 20ish years ago, I was the only one in my neighborhood allowed to bike around the neighborhood alone. People openly judged my parents for leaving me alone as a young teen. For different reasons, Mr R and I were each left alone by our parents as high schoolers for long lengths of time.

It’s strange to me. I never ever had stranger danger pounded into my head. I really hope I can resist being the anxious, overprotective parent because I loved the way I grew up. We were never afraid to go anywhere or do anything.

Yeah, I walked home from elementary school every day. It was a fairly long walk. We lived on a pretty busy street. I do remember one time darting out in front of a car when it was really too close.

@MaineLonghorn I don’t know what I am doing differently than you. I just put the overprotected American child in google and it came up.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-overprotected-american-child-1527865038

It looks like it may be the same link as above. When I clicked the link barrons posted I got the firewall. When I googled it and clicked I didn’t.

Googleamp. I think you need to be logged into your google account. I am not posting the link here because it will contain my id info.

I was babysitting strangers kids st 12, buying all our family’s groceries with a signed blank check every day also at 12, making dinner and helping everyone with homework and typing papers all through middle school.

I admit we let our kids supervise themselves when we went out when they were still fairly young. They preferred being left alone to having a sitter. I believe S was 10 or 11 and D was 2 years younger the 1st time we left them. Both have always been very responsible.

When D1 was 9 and D2 was 6, D2 wanted to be a girl scout. There was no troop so I had to start one. It meant meeting after school and that D1 would be home about 20 before I could get there. I decided she could handle being home a lone for that short amount of time. The first day, I made her call me the minute she stepped in the door and stayed on the phone. After that, I got more and more lax and realized she was quite capable of being home by herself. It just took a catalyst. God knows how long I would have waited to leave the kids alone otherwise. She might still be here!

This sort of dovetails with another current CC thread about parents being overly involved with their students’ college application process. Not to mention the helicopter parent phenomenon.

Yeah, I left my daughter alone for 15 minutes when she was nine. I came home to find her rooting through the silverware drawer. She said, “I wanted to try wood carving but I couldn’t find a knife sharp enough.”

I was babysitting other people’s kids by the time I was 10. I guess people don’t do that anymore? :slight_smile:

I left my 5 year old home alone when I took her older sister to the bus stop (they attended different schools). The five year old attempted to cut a bagel, cut her finger, and got her own Band Aid before I returned home. She tried to hide what happened, but I saw blood on the carpet. She had a pre-scheduled pediatric appointment a few hours later and got stitches while we were there. She was a latch key kid from age 8 onward.

My mom went back to work full time when I was 9 and my sister 7. We lived in a housing project in the South Bronx but attended a private yeshiva. Our bus let us off about 4 blocks away, with other kids, about 4:15. We all walked home but as the neighborhood was turning bad, my parents made an arrangement with a retired neighbor to meet us at the side door of the building, which didn’t open from the outside. The gang members hung out in the front lobby because they could get in there. There was another door that led from the lobby to the corridor where my apartment was and that one required a key to open. So, coming in through the side, we were fairly safe. Nonetheless, we moved out when I was 12. The year I moved, NYC passed a law requiring locking vestibule doors and intercom systems in apartment buildings. It was in part a reaction to the open lobby situation in my building and similar buildings.

Anyway, I raised my kids in a very safe suburb. Nonetheless, I didn’t allow mine to go anywhere alone until they were old enough to walk to middle school. S17 had a friend who lived 2 blocks away. When they were little, the friend’s mom (who was raised in the town) and I would take turns walking them down. When they were about 7, we started walking them midway and watching while they walked the rest of the way. It wasn’t until middle school that I would let him walk there alone. H also had a free range childhood and is even more hovering than I am. I did start leaving D alone with the little boys when she was about 10 for about 15 minutes when I went to pick my oldest son up at scouts. She began babysitting at about 11 but only when I was home if there was a problem.

Even now, I freak out when my D rides the subway after rush hour. Meanwhile, I rode the subways at all hours of the night in the 1980’s, when NYC was a much more dangerous place than it is now! Of course, my D doesn’t know that…

I biked home alone at all hours in college and grad school, with no fears or concerns. I am concerned about our D going on long solo car drives but try not to convey the worry to her. D is pretty independent and we don’t worry or hover about him either. They have long ago graduated from college in a “rough” neighborhood and have some street smarts.

My S ran the neighborhood from about age 7 on. There were lots of little boys, and if I wanted to find him, I looked for the front yard full of bicycles. One day it was getting dark and he wasn’t home. I knocked on the doors of his best buddies and no one had seen him. I was beginning to panic. Then I found him. In his bed. Asleep.

Yep, we were the kids who had to come home when the streetlights went on, parents not knowing exactly where we were in the intervening time. We definitely raised our with a lot of flexibility, living in the country helped make that feel easy.

My DD already gets Mom-shamed at the playground with the ways she lets her DS1 play; he is all boy, extremely agile & incredibly strong for his age (he needs to become a gymnast or join the circus!) and has great comprehension for his age. We all let him do things that raise eyebrows, at one point he carried a gallon size mason jar across the room (empty) and my sister had a fit and yelled at us. His Mom & Auntie & I did not raise an eyebrow, we knew he was strong enough to carry it and knew it was only inches from the ground and not likely to break. DD is determined ot to raise a snowflake :wink:

Great article from the Atlantic on overprotected kids and how we got there.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/04/hey-parents-leave-those-kids-alone/358631/