^^^^^^^Maybe! I can’t believe we lived so close to each other in college, too! Of course, if you were hanging out at the engineering school, I would never have met you as I was always in the Music building or the Education areas.
@MWCDSS, interesting article. Thanks for the link.
My mom and dad would have been tossed in maximum security prison for sure.
At 5 I walked about 1/2 mile to kindergarten – in a group of kids in the morning, but back by myself at 11:30 since the older kids had to stay full day.
At 6/7 I walked a block and waited at a bus stop for a school bus.
At 8-15 I walked between 1/2 mile and 1 mile to and from school, mostly by myself.
Beginning at age 8 I was allowed to walk about 8 blocks to the public library and spend hours there, or to our town’s Main Street.
At 10 I was allowed to go out on rowboats with friends and go crabbing in the canals.
At 11 I was allowed to take a public bus to Jones Beach with a friend and spend the day at the beach.
At 13 on field trips we were dropped off at Lincoln Center in NYC and allowed to roam the city by subway as long as we were back before the bus departure time.
As the oldest of seven I often had some sibling in tow.
Just like the TSA, there is a lot of security theater in parenting these days. Your kid is way – way – more likely to be in a car accident when you’re driving than he or she is to be abducted or hit by a car while walking. Feeding kids with the idea that every stranger out there is dangerous is what leads to idiotic situations like the kid lost in the forrest who didn’t respond to rescuers because mom had told him not to talk to strangers.
We used a different rule: If you approach an adult for help, that person is likely to be helpful. If the adult is in uniform, even better. If an adult approaches you with no reason to approach you, run away, yell, and under no circumstances go with that person.
I let my boys start becoming more independent and growing up from age 11. And they did fine.
A child from the swim team that practiced before ours was molested in the local rec center…very nice, local rec center. My youngest was still old enough that I chose to have him change from then on in the family changing room with me outside it for a while until I felt he was old enough to fight a perv off and scream and yell, etc.
Our county has ordinances about the ages children can be home alone. It starts at11 and at that age it is for only one hour in daylight hours,etc and definitions of what age can babysit, how many, how long, what hours etc. I feel there is a reason for these parameters.
So, shoot me. I was NEVER a helicopter parent and trust me, I knew some classic h.p’s.
Of course crime has always been around. My 93 year old mom had a young friend disappear from their rural neighborhood when she was a child in the 1920’s.
I was one of the first cohorts of children with the super over protective parents. I was the only one in my neighborhood allowed to ride my bike around the block or walk to the park by myself. Made for a really boring childhood in many respects.
I don’t remember when I started staying home by myself but it was before the age of 11 (I remember life events by which house I was living in at the time). I started traveling alone across the country at the age of 12. I started going on vacations with my boyfriend when I was 15.
I never, ever got the “stranger danger” message at home. I was sexually assaulted by someone we considered a family friend (and the president of the local rec league) when I was in middle school. My family and I know the dangers that exist out there, but we also know that my case is FAR more typical than anything involving a random stranger off the streets. I’m quite glad that I was never raised in fear.
“It starts at11 and at that age it is for only one hour in daylight hours,etc and definitions of what age can babysit, how many, how long, what hours etc. I feel there is a reason for these parameters.”
Gosh, I was babysitting at 11 for infants & toddlers.
This is very much a YMMV depending on kid and using absolute minimum ages may impede some children who have the maturity, independence, and good sense from further opportunities strengthening those qualities.
Also, getting lost on a regular basis is something some people never outgrow well into adulthood. In my social circles, there are a few adults…including 30-somethings who get ribbed a bit because they’re known for regularly getting lost on their way to some outings. Including places they’ve been to multiple times before or even in their own neighborhood on their way home.
Emilybee-so was I-as the oldest of 5 I was watching all 4 younger siblings for unspecified amounts of time when my mother did volunteer work. My youngest sister was a “mother’s helper” for a toddler and infant when she was 12…and when I worked at my father’s drugstore, little neighborhood kids came in alone all the time to buy penny candy. I do know kids who were sexually assaulted in middle or HS. It was always someone they knew.
UCB-I absolutely believe the helicopter parenting epidemic is related to today’s college kids and their experiences. Even here on CC how many times have we seen parents trying to solve their adult kids’ problems-things that most of us had managed long before reaching that age? Nothing happens in a vacuum.
“Is this a regional or geographic thing?”
In one sense: the rural families I know let the kids play outside all day where there are livestock, wild animals, creeks, bugs, etc. Some of these families allow risks that I wouldn’t, like letting kids ride on tractors or ATVs, but I’m grateful to have had some country freedom when I was at camp at 7-8 years old.
Re the possibility of the two children being separated – that can happen when a parent is walking the child, too. How many parents pay at least one visit to the “lost child” department at malls, amusement parks, etc.? Plenty of 4-year-olds can be taught that if you’re lost, you either stay where you are or tell a policeman. I was an escape artist, so my parents drilled that into me. I still remember ending up in the “Lost Parents” play center at 6 Flags (which was awesome).
I’m a little surprised that technology hasn’t made parents a little more relaxed. I can see where a kid’s first bus ride alone might make everyone nervous, but nowadays he can just call mom if there’s a problem.
“getting lost on a regular basis is something some people never outgrow well into adulthood.”
Yep. And it’s good to learn how to cope with those situations and treat them like problems to be solved, not like catastrophes. Kids watch parents to learn whether to panic or not. I’ve gotten on the wrong train now and then, including in Japan. Nobody died.
When I get “lost” somewhere and am not in a rush to get to work/social engagement, I take it as the beginning of another adventure. 
So how about letting your 16-year-old drive to a friend’s house? I bet statistically, that’s more dangerous than letting your 6-year-old walk a few blocks with a 10-year-old sibling.
Maine-I know several people who won’t allow their kids to get their driver’s license until they are 18 for that very reason; others who won’t allow their kids-of any age-take public transportation, and some who simply driver their older teenagers everywhere for everything. I even knew someone who drove her senior in HS D to school 2 blocks away because she “looked young” and it was “too dangerous”. That D has moved pretty far away as an adult, who not surprisingly, found adulthood rather challenging.
I just want to add that I live in a working-class neighborhood --the kind of place where neighbors are working on their cars in their front yard-- and which started out some 60 years ago as a tract of simple ranch style homes. I just don’t want to give the impression that I live in some wealthy enclave. I wouldn’t use the word “idyllic” – it feels middle class to me. I do agree that different neighborhoods have different characters
Some of the things I would worry about with young kids these days: Dangerous trampolines. Diving into shallow water. Unsecured firearms in someone’s home.
calmom, I didn’t read “wealthy enclave” into your description. “Idyllic” to me means very pleasant, beautiful or peaceful. I think my kids have had an idyllic childhood in our community and we are far from wealthy.
I think my neighborhood is a great place for kids to grow up, but it’s hard for me to see it as “idyllic” - nor is “peaceful” a way to describe a neighborhood where kids are playing ball in the street. (Kids tend to make a lot of noise).
It is a relatively small housing tract cut off from easy access in most directions – so that tends to keep the traffic flow limited to people who live here or are visiting residents. Generally if anyone else is driving around, they are lost and will ask someone for directions – which is the primary reason that adults in cars are beckoning to the kids on the sidewalk. (Though they tend not to be solitary male drivers…)
I jut think that different neighborhoods do have different characters, and parents make judgments accordingly-- as well as considering other factors about their kids. I can understand in the Silver Springs case why someone contacted the police – and I can understand why the police wanted to talk to the father after encountering the kids – but I just think that the CPS reaction was way out of line. There is a huge difference between giving kids freedom – even too much freedom – and parental neglect.
According to one report I saw, the situation with the Meitiv family escalated after the police brought the children home and asked the father for some ID, and the father refused to provide it. Sounded to me like the Louis Gates scenario - someone so outraged to be contacted and questioned by the police that he got defensive and combative. Or maybe that report was wrong. When the police bring your kids home, though, even if you and your kids were doing nothing wrong, it probably makes sense to thank them for their concern and talk to them rather than refusing to cooperate.
I don’t think there are more sexual predators out there today than there were j the 60s and 70s. What I do think is that there is more awareness today. And that then as now, the number of children who simply never report to anyone is very high.
The link to the Washington Post story shows where the kids were, on Georgia Avenue, which is a very major, heavily trafficked MD-DC thoroughfare. Personally, I think that it was not safe in these circumstances and with the ages of the children in question. All it takes is one mistake in judgment.
This is not to condone how this was handled by CPS and the police, including threatening the father, entering the house, and interviewing the kids at school. I do think some of it snowballed when the father was uncooperative from the start, to the point of not even being willing to show his ID.
I was raised in the “free range” 1960s, played outside with friends by five, and travelled all over a major city by bus and train by the time I was in middle school. There were actually a number of very close calls. I consider myself street smart in one respect and just plain lucky in others. I don’t romanticize a free range parenting style as making me a better, more problem solving, or independent person than my kids have turned out to be as a result of increasing freedom and responsibilities.
My children may not have been allowed to walk unsupervised along a virtual highway at six, but they had plenty of opportunities to develop increasing age appropriate independence both at home and away. They went to sleep away camp by 9 or 10 and travelled internationally as teenagers. In many ways, our kids have been exposed to experiences and opportunities that we could not have envisioned.
Mixed feelings…not specifically about this case,but about the idea in general of young kids having that type of freedom. Perhaps this family is basically getting caught in the net designed to catch negligent parents. When I was growing up, it was fine to walk to a friends, etc…but there was one very young kid in the neighborhood who always seemed to be left to his own devices…caused some issues in the neighborhood…and made the other families feel responsibility for him, since the parents didn’t appear to be acting responsible. There was a similar family in our neighborhood a few years ago. It’s deciding where that line is that can be tricky.
We may be more aware now, but we mostly seem to think we were better off before. As has been mentioned here more than once, the vast majority of sexual harrassment and assault cases are and have always been by family or acquaintances. But perception seems to trump reality.
The comment above about sleep away camp (which my kids did do) made me think - my MIL went to sleep away camp at age 5. That was not uncommon in her circle. Can’t imagine doing that nowadays.