We’re lucky CPS didn’t take our kids. We sent our 9 year-old son out to go visit a friend about a mile away. He was wearing his jump stilts and it was raining. He would run/jump his way down the street.
It was not unusual for us to have no idea where our kids were for a couple of hours. We live less than 1/4 mile from the elementary school and they would often meander over without telling us. Sometimes they were in the greenbelt or at a neighbor’s house. They knew enough not to wander too far or be gone too long.
They each got a cell phone the summer after they turned 13. None of them have a tracking app.
Does it bother you that kids are now conditioned to think it’s OKAY to track or BE tracked by someone?
That to me is just a scary thought. And it’s not just parents–it’s every app that asked for your location. It’s Facebook and yelp which asks for your current location. It’s the “find my phone” that allows it.
My dad told me he found a service that for a dollar it would track any phone number and tell you the location.
Scary thought. (Course I told him he could just dial me instead! Still. )
“Does it bother you that kids are now conditioned to think it’s OKAY to track or BE tracked by someone?”
Yes, very much so. My kids care if I wanted to track them (which I don’t) but don’t care that every app on their phone tracks them. It’s an ongoing fight. They said they don’t care and that I’m old and paranoid.
Kids deserve to have some privacy and even some secrets. No phone or car tracking apps for us although I encouraged my kids to set up findmyphone so they can locate their phone if they leave it somewhere by mistake.
When my kids were babies I refused to have the close circuit monitor in their cribs. Listening to their cries was fine but watching them ( to me) was not. We live in a town where everyone knows everyone else. My eldest often exclaims “Who’s that?” If someone we don’t know is walking down the street. LOL. We have large acreage all around. The kids walk here and there and nature is close at hand ( you can’t escape it) All that being said, I don’t let them walk alone at night or through large wooded areas alone. And we talk about dangerous people. My kids have limited city experiences, we’re usually there only for a day or two. So they are not as well versed with the homeless, mentally ill and others who city kids have learned to avoid.
I’m grateful my kids have grown up near nature and in a bucolic setting but I realize that few have. Our kids are very independent but they do lack some street savvy which could be a problem if they attend an urban university or one in a less than idyllic spot. Where you grow up impacts your perception of the world. I grew up in a very tough neighborhood and that experience stays with me. I am more careful than most because I have seen some bad things. Maybe it’s good, maybe it’s bad. But I don’t think my kids grew up bubble wrapped so much as they grew up in a bubble where people have more than they need. They were shocked when we took a road trip and they saw regular houses in states far away. Absolutely floored.
I never tracked my kids, but did know moms who did. If that had existed when I was a teen ager, I would have been in so much trouble.I had a wild, seventies kind of childhood/teenhood with woods and driving and drinking and pot and fireworks and firearms and sex and hooboy I am glad my kids did not have all that!
Things were different when we were kids. We didn’t wear seat belts in cars or helmets when we rode our bikes to rivers and the spillway. We had dirt bikes and motorcycles that we rode off trail. We had knives in our pockets. Those things were dangerous then and even more so now. My parents should have been a little more involved. Dumb luck that we all lived.
The kids in Baltimore were walking over a mile away across some business park areas. There was no one to help them if they needed it, and the little girl was only 6. It’s one thing if it is a park at the end of the street and neighbors are there, the kids could run home for help, someone might notice that a kid was in trouble. In our area a few years ago, a group of kids always walked home together after school. Lived within a mile of the school so no buses. The 5 year old had a fight with her brother so ran ahead so she didn’t have to walk with him. Never made it home. Guy came out of his house and grabbed her.
Just because everyone does it doesn’t make it safe. I’d never let my kids ride their bikes to the river and jump off bridges with the other kids, even though I did it and I didn’t die. I didn’t even let them go to the park just around the corner without an adult because there were groups of teens that would just show up to play basketball, drink, smoke and I didn’t want my kids around that behavior. My 10 year old walked home from middle school with a group of friends and they walked IN the street because of bullies on the walk/bike path. She didn’t walk alone and didn’t walk if she couldn’t leave with a large group immediately after school got out. Even a 10 minute delay meant the street could be empty.
Yep, bubble wrap them, take the cords out of their hoodies, require seat belts and pajamas that won’t ignite. Require babysitters until they are 12. When I went out of the country, I made my 16 and 17 year olds stay with friends. They could have stayed at our home but I didn’t trust them and I really didn’t trust their friends.
I’m less hovering than a fair number of local parents, but that’s not saying much. My son (14 years old) does get annoyed when his friends frequently request they meet up at locations within a few blocks or their own homes because a parent can’t give them a ride. My son will take two buses to get to the meet up and can’t see why his friend won’t do the same. I do get less astonishment from folks about letting him bus all over town than I did when my daughter started.
I’ve never tracked our kids nor anyone else. I also only checked their status online as we got close to graduation to see if they were actually going to be graduating as we were buying airplane tickets and making pricey, FINAL hotel reservations where you didn’t get a refund. I did convince S that an incomplete was calculated as an F until he got a grade inserted instead, so he got that done.
My folks had no idea where I was in HS, but I did call around or before meal time to say whether I’d be home. I was a “good kid” who got nearly straight As, so they left me alone.
You always do some kind of risk assessment with kids. My kid could do things without supervision when he was mature enough to behave reasonably in these specific situations. Hanging around the neighborhood is different from hiking in the wilderness or driving a car on a highway. I have no patience with people who say “we did all these crazy and dangerous things when we were kids, and we survived with just a few scars”. Yes, because those who didn’t survive aren’t here to contradict you.
“Those things were dangerous then and even more so now.”
I hear this a lot, and the data don’t bear it out. Riding in a 2018 car without a seatbelt is way safer than going without in a 1978 car with the crummy lap belts. Motorcycles and dirt bikes and knives are exactly the same. Trauma medicine is much better. Then and now, abduction is rare and sexual abuse is common, and both are usually committed by family members and trusted adults.
We don’t think enough about the danger of disabling anxiety. We should.
But there is no reason to take the risk of riding without a seat belt. Some progress is good and really doesn’t take away from kids growing up to have more restrictions if they make life safer. Kids weren’t free ranging across office parks on weekends in the 1960’s because there weren’t that many opportunities to do that. Arguing that it is under a mile doesn’t matter if that mile is a dangerous one.
My grandfather sent me for 2 packs of cigarettes and the evening paper when I was 5 years old. It was only about 3 blocks, but it was under the railroad bridge and across a very busy street. It wasn’t safe then and it wouldn’t be safe now. Not to mention the cigarettes.
I think motorcycles and dirt bikes and (some) knives are safer now, and other protective gear is available too, but parents shouldn’t get a false sense of security. The abductors don’t care if your kid has a phone for protection
We have the Find Friends app, it comes on all iphones. You can opt in or out, and choose the people you opt in for. It’s been useful, especially for finding wayward phones.
Snapchat now has a map feature so opt out of that if you don’t want your snap friends able to follow you.
“The abductors don’t care if your kid has a phone for protection”
Stranger abductions are rarer than people being struck by lightning in the United States, so when we highlight the first and not the second, that’s because of media attention, not actual risk.
“I think motorcycles and dirt bikes and (some) knives are safer now”
OK, but you asserted there’s more danger now than there used to be, and that isn’t true. It’s a myth that ends up hurting kids and parents.
My kids don’t have disabling anxiety. They would love to have stayed home by themselves when I was out of the country. They wanted to rent a condo at the beach for prom night with their friends but I said no. They would have gone to the park with the dangerous high school boys in a second if I would have allowed it. They didn’t see the danger, just the fun.
I think it is the parents who are fooled into thinking phones make kids safer walking alone, or that wearing a helmet makes it fine to ride on a busy street. I’ve seen parents give a 6 year old a phone to call home for a ride from the park or even after school. If the child is too young without the phone, they are too young with a phone.
I’m big in risk v reward. Riding without a helmet is stupid. Letting kids who are 6 whose brains cant yet accurately assess how fast cars are moving cross busy streets alone is stupid. What’s to be gained? There’s plenty of time. Do you think they will never be able to cross a busy street?
When S was in preschool, I was scolded by another preschool parent for inquiring if there would be swimming at her D’s 4 year old birthday party. The mom said I was over protective. I said fine but S is not a good swimmer and also shy in large groups where he doesn’t know others. As it was, he only knew me and the birthday girl — had NEVER seen any of the other kids.
She did end up with about 2+ hours of her party at a swimming pool with very minimal supervision and I was glad I was there.
To me, the risk vs reward required that I be there. A swimming pool party and lots of lightly supervised older youngsters who don’t even know my kid is not scenario I was willing to accept for my 4-year-old weak swimmer.
Neither of my kids have disabling anxiety and are fine in social situations, even when they know few people and now, in most bodies of water.
I don’t think anyone would argue that it’s helicopter parenting to insist your child wear a seat belt or bike helmet. If nothing else, in my state it’s illegal not to do so. I think what we’re talking about here is not letting your middle school child climb a tree because they might fall or walk to the corner store with a friend out of fear they’ll be abducted.
According to an article in Psychology Today titled “Yes, Overprotective Parenting Harms Kids”