Partly, it’s due to child protective services.
@roethlisburger What a travesty! I was walking around the corner to my friend’s house when I was 5 years old! These kids can’t walk home two blocks from the park without being taken away from their parents? Can you imagine how scaring and traumatic that is for those poor kids? You’d think child protective services has more important things to worry about.
A generation ago, kids would go on their own to friends’ houses without pre-scheduled playdates supervised by all of the parents involved, whether or not the friends had stay-at-home parents. Or they would play pickup basketball or some other sports on the school’s playground or in someone’s driveway for a while before going home. Parents mostly just wanted their kids home by dinner.
Seems like it would be easier now to give older elementary and middle kids freedoms with cell phones. I do think kids miss small lessons with decreased recess time and less equipment to play with. I am glad much of the brew haha occurred after my boys were through elementary.
My two older kids are both pretty straight laced and really never got into any trouble in high school. They both had/have a small group of friends with similar interests. They were never partiers. I never had any worries about leaving them alone after school once they were old enough. My youngest girl on the other hand - I’m afraid if I left her alone long enough we would have a “Risky Business” situation on our hands. Wish me luck everyone!
We moved to a new house when I was 8. I was sent out to explore the neighborhood and after I announced that I’d found our new school (about 2/3 of a mile from home) I was given the task of showing my 5 year old brother the route. We got lost but found our way home and I took him on the correct route the next day. I remember being so proud of myself.
I haven’t quite gone that far with my kids but I’ve tried to give them a fair amount of freedom.
I just loved exploring when I was a kid. I would spend hours by the creek in our first neighborhood. Then at our new house, there were huge fields and woods behind our house. There was a horse stable, an old abandoned house, dry creek beds, cactus, and other interesting features. I guess it’s a good thing I never ran into a rattlesnake!
When we bought the lot for our house in the mid-90s, I was so excited because it was wooded and on a river. I pictured my kids exploring for hours as I did. DH built them a really cool treehouse. And I can count on one hand the times they played back there. Oh, well.
I’m one of the very few parents in my peer group who doesn’t phone track their high school (even college age in some cases!) Kids. Did not want to cross that creepy line.
Wow. That is creepy. I didn’t realize it was a mainstream thing to do that. Do the kids know?
Glad I don’t know anybody who does that. What kind of peer group are you in?
I’ve really enjoyed our neighborhood for the kids as they’ve grown up. Safe, with an elementary and middle school to walk to and lots of kids. My kids werent quite as free-range as I was growing up, but they had plenty of space to move around without worry. The boys seemed to roam more (take off for the afternoon on their bikes) the girls seemed to have more organized play.
My two Ds have the gps locator on their phone which i will use for emergencies only. Friend used to watch her daughter’s blue dot all the time in college - like leaving her dorm at midnight, walking downtown, going to another place, and returning back to dorm at 2:30 or so. It was stressful for her so she gave it up!
When I was 5, my kindergarten class had an outing to a park in town. I went down a large slide and ended up sitting in a large mud puddle at the bottom of the slide. Since I needed a change of clothing, my kindergarten teacher asked me if I knew how to get home from the park. I did, because I had walked there and back a number of times with my mother–not in preparation for the outing, just to go this park. So the kindergarten teacher said that I could walk home–alone. From Google maps, it looks as though the distance was just under a mile. That’s not happening these days!
I’m a huge proponent of time out in the woods. I think it helps build confidence and self-reliance. We bought a second home in the country after I realized our kids had no nature to roam in our decidedly safe suburban neighborhood.
We have all sorts of dangerous things-dirt bikes, a pond, compound bows, air rifles, a utility vehicle, tools of all sorts, a couple hundred acres of land with unmarked trails-all of which the kids have used freely since the youngest was 8. I know some people would be aghast, but in 8 years the only person who’s ever gotten hurt was a kid who, in full safety gear, hurt himself starting a dirt bike. Not riding it, starting it.
We had a large group of kids and their parents at the house and at one point all the parents started comparing scars. It was kind of fun to hear the stories. “This one was from skateboarding down the huge hill, this from when my brother hit me on his backswing, from falling out of a tree, my first jackknife, the fort incident,” I think today’s kids are safer, but I’m not always sure they’re better off.
“We have all sorts of dangerous things-dirt bikes, a pond, compound bows, air rifles, a utility vehicle, tools of all sorts, a couple hundred acres of land with unmarked trails”
Where I live, the most dangerous thing in the woods is the ticks (maybe the occasional bear but they don’t want to mess with you any more than you want to mess with them).
Folks, you will be surprised at how many of your acquaintances use the family “find your iPhone” tracking app on their iPhone. They say this:
"My kids have the gps locator on their phone which i use for emergencies only. "
Supposedly they all never check it (but they do).
Another reason “easier to just check it than to ask where they are all the time” which is mutually exclusive from reason 1.
Yes, kids know - it’s all part of the lifetime bubble wrap experience.
I highly recommend a “Black Mirror” episode on this subject. It’s very thought-provoking - here is an article about it:
http://www.vulture.com/2017/12/black-mirror-season-4-recap-arkangel.html
“Nobody else at Arkangel, the company specializing in brain implants that live-stream a child’s eyesight to a parent’s iPad, seems to realize what a colossally bad idea they’re sitting on, either.”
The mother stops using the service at one point, but can’t resist starting it again when the girl becomes a teenager. It doesn’t end well. 
Tracking your college student is really going beyond the pale! I don’t track my kids phones, but I do expect them to let me know where they are. If my college student is visiting home, she also needs to let me know where she is. Its not stalking. Its courtesy. If I go out, I let me kids know where I’m going. But, when my college student is at college, I assume that she is an adult and can take care of herself.
I have to admit that I just made a dental appointment for my college student, so lets say I treat her as “adult-ish”
There’s an app called Life 360 which lets you track your kid’s every move. Not just their location, but how fast they’re driving, and sudden driving moves like sudden stops and gives you a weekly driving analysis. I don’t use it but my boys’ friend’s mom does. This kid is so scared when he’s on the road because he knows his mom tracks his every move - literally.
We had a creek and woods at the bottom of our neighborhood, a woods above us, colonial homes, an abandoned church, graveyards, one room schoolhouse. Local kids hung out by the water, my brother and I rode bikes out through the historic places. DH and friends had the same experience. My cousin walked to the “corner store” by himself at maybe 8.
The freedom and the setting formed us. But that was then. I don’t think we can assume the same safety now. Neighborhoods and those areas around them can be more transient. People are weird.
In fact, there had been a murder in my woods, along the path from the creek to town, in my own youth. I’m not sure how I feel about the fact that didn’t stop parents from letting their kids play there.
And today, some news can and should concern parents. Or at least alert us that some caution is wise.