There are different parenting styles and many times the outcome of adulthood is not that different and sometimes the differences are huge between 16 and early twenties. No snowflakes with my kids…we gave them plenty of leash that got longer as they got older but I absolutely knew a parent or two that disagreed with our parenting styles.
I second @gardenstategal. Summer camp empowered my kid more than anything else. He went to the same summer camp for a month (one year two months as a counselor in training) since he was six (two weeks only that year). It was a traditional, no technology, camp 5 1/2 hours from our home. He grew, he became independent, he became confident. It was at camp he was introduced to archery, leading to him being a state indoor champion. It was at camp he learned polocrosse leading him to play twice in the national championships. It was there he was introduced to polo. It was there he decided on his passion for equine medicine and chose to pursue that as a career. He worked there as a counselor which helped in college admissions. There is so much more he learned there. Anyway, not for all but can be awesome!
When I was a kid, we would come home from school, grab a snack and run outside to play with the other kids. The block was filled with kids and we would run around the neighborhood, to the playground up the street, or ride our bikes. At some point it got dark and we got hungry and came home for dinner. I always assumed it would be the same for my kids.
However, that is not how it has worked out at all. Despite the fact that we live in a similar suburban neighborhood and there are many other children living in the homes around us. None of them come out to play after school. They are all scheduled with after school activities or after care somewhere. If you want your child to have a friend to play with, you have to make an official, pre-scheduled play date. When my little one has a friend over, I wouldn’t dare to let them just run around the neighborhood. They can play in our backyard only. And I am certainly not letting my 7 year old roam the streets alone. But if there were lots of other kids playing in each others backyards, it would be very different. Its really a different world now with a different dynamic.
Maybe parents who grew up during the crime wave period still believe that crime is that high, even though it is much lower in most places?
My sister and I were latch key kids, I was in third grade she was in 5th when my mom started to teach. I was also sent to sleep away camp for 4 weeks when I was 5. Then 8 weeks starting when I was 6. When we were at the family beach house all the kids went to the beach by ourselves, walked to the candy store, rode our bikes all over, too.) I started babysitting in 5th grade.
As a parent, I sent my kid to sleep away for 7 weeks for 8 years starting when he was 6. In 5th grade when the kids in that grade all went to Natures Classroom for 3 days he told me so many of the kids cried and were homesick. Needless to say, he was like “What…!”
Camp was were my kid learned to sail and he sailed on his college’s team.
I also let him ride his bike to school (about 1 mile) at the end of first grade and we don’t even have sidewalks. He ran around the neighborhood, too. During elementary he was only enrolled in one afterschool activity at a time, so most days he just came home and played outside.
I have always wondered why everything is was so scheduled and prescribed. We absolutely did not do that with the kids. Can’t say if it was good or not good. Water under the bridge at this point. I know I never worried that someone would snatch our kids.
I really don’t think it has to do with crime. Our little suburban town is about as safe as you can get. I think it has to do with the fact that there are no parents at home after school any more. Its almost 100% two working parents, so the kids don’t go home after school. (I mostly work from home so I am an outlier). The kids go to after care programs or to a variety of after school extra curriculars, driven by baby sitters. I think part of this is also the pressure that parents feel to push their kids towards these extras early. So the kids are in sports, dance, math “fun”, art class, dance class, music lessons, theater etc.
I don’t remember having any after school “programs” when I was 7, but all the kids do now. On top of that, the kids are getting much more homework at younger grades than in earlier decades. All of it put together means there are no kids playing outside after school anymore.
The article linked in #19 pointed out a fact that I had forgotten: although my mom did not work while I was growing up, she rarely saw us on weekends or summer days as we were roaming the neighborhood until we got hungry or it got dark. But still we knew she was there, the anchor holding down the fort while we did our own thing.
I wonder how this next generation will raise their own kids. I was definitely a free range kid, had a stay at home mom who I rarely saw beyond dinner, and I lived in a neighborhood full of kids in a similar situation.
I don’t think I’ve seen a neighborhood in years where kids were outside playing on their own.
I don’t think it was all good how I was raised, and I don’t think it’s all bad how they were raised with more structure, activities, etc. It certainly makes sense that it all started with lawsuits.
Although there is another thread where the talk is about how adrift college kids can get once they graduate because there is no structure to their lives until they land a job. Some structure is good in my opinion… be home by 6 for dinner or don’t plan on anything after dinner because you need to practice your trombone type structure. But I don’t think there is any reason to not turn your kids lose to figure out how to find and make friends, to solve playground issues, and to learn how to be at peace when alone. Media likes to focus on the extremes while the majority are probably clustered in the middle. My mother has an unhealthy fear that “something bad is going to happen” so I swore I would not behave that way with the kids. My h was totally unsupervised and he was tougher on the kids because he had no structure in his childhood so wanting to be different than our parents also comes into play. But structure in my kids life meant you spent a fair chunk of time with our social group and their kids…skiing in winter and boating in summer and generally hanging out all together which is also a form of constraint and eyeballs on by many parents.
As much as kids might be a little too bubble-wrapped these days, some of the upbringing our generation had was borderline neglect IMO. I saw a lot of self-centered parenting among my parents’ peer group. There is a happy medium.
I love our neighbors. The mom is a hospital doctor and the husband stays home with the six kids (well, some of them have flown the nest by now). She is a runner and in amazing shape. The kids are outside a lot. Very polite and conversational. It’s nice to hear kids laughing and playing when I go outside.
My kids were pretty typical of their generation, mostly had play dates (no boys S’s age in our neighborhood), I walked them to the elementary school bus stop, plenty of organized sports/activities, didn’t roam unsupervised.
You know what? They are now in their 20’s and both are very independent. Both travel/have traveled alone in the US and abroad (even as teens), navigated driving in unfamiliar cities, public transportation, etc. Both got internships in college and jobs without our help. Etc.
So?
Our kids had a happy childhood with me at home until I got part-time jobs once they were 10 years old or so. I still mostly shuttled them where they needed to go. There was only one little girl near our home that lived 4 houses away that D liked to play with—they were buddies for about 4 years or so. S wasn’t close to the boy a few years younger who lived down the street or anyone else in the neighborhood (other than D).
Both have weathered their chronic illness which had them bedbound much of their early teen years.
To my knowledge they never had any adjustment issues for campouts, college, or living with roommates or in an apartment.
My mom worked a factory job. She actually just retired last year so she always had to be at work much earlier than I had to be at school so I was latch key at an early age. I was an only child so I was very independent. The rule was be Home by the time the street lights came on.
Overnight camp was great. At college my daughter was working on a charity project with her sorority and they were meeting with a community activist. In my daughter’s sorority group were some of the wealthiest of the wealthy ( children of NFL owners, celebs, fortune 100 CEO’s etc…). "How many of you have cleaned a toilet "asked the community organizer. Every hand shot up. She looked doubtful. “Camp” said the daughter of a billionaire.
Ours did camps and various kid programs and were fine. But at home, we had to watch them for a few reasons, (including a busy-ish street a block away.) They survivied that. Early, D2 could ride the bus to NYC, manage to meet friends and get home the next day.
But I’ll admit D1 didn’t have street smarts for a long time. She could stay on the sidewalk, (but there was the time she ran her bike into a moving car.) Another time she mouthed off to some not-pleasant kids at the mall, who then followed her and her friends. In college, she was lucky to have a defined campus and a very city savvy bff.
And then, off to that third world country, a town with no street lights, late walks home on a country road, in the utter dark, jogging runs through woods and cow fields. An odd local van transportation to the next larger town or the capital city. A language she didn’t speak. Sigh. I held my breath and she learned. I trust her now.
This delayed learning wasn’t the least our bubble wrap. We grew up wandering. But time and place were different.
The fact that parents are both out of the house working creates difficulties when the kids are running loose on their own after school and don’t have to be home until dinner time. In elem school, parents pay for the after school program but there isn’t anything like that starting in 6 th grade in our school system. Middle school kids got out of school at 2:30 and the free range plan often led them to congregate at the homes where there were no parents. This was an issue at our house - my son seemed to be unable to tell kids they couldn’t come in and it ended up being like the cat in the hat.
Yup, this is a problem in our town as well. Sometimes I think that 6-8th graders are LESS able to be left alone than younger kids.
My kids basically learned to drive before they learned to cross the street. I’m kind of kidding, but not that much. They were driven to school until 5th and 7th grade. They didn’t have many friends in our old neighborhood, and were driven to play dates and sports practice. When they did start taking the bus, they only had to walk to the corner, and the only intersections were courts.
BUT, to leave our neighborhood you need a car. We live At the intersection of 2 highways (speed limit 55).