Posted on 08/26/2014 7:37:21 PM PDT by Eric Pode of Croydon
A whopping 68 percent of Americans think there should be a law that prohibits kids 9 and under from playing at the park unsupervised, despite the fact that most of them no doubt grew up doing just that.
What's more: 43 percent feel the same way about 12-year-olds. They would like to criminalize all pre-teenagers playing outside on their own (and, I guess, arrest their no-good parents).
Those are the results of a Reason/Rupe poll confirming that we have not only lost all confidence in our kids and our communities—we have lost all touch with reality.
"I doubt there has ever been a human culture, anywhere, anytime, that underestimates children's abilities more than we North Americans do today," says Boston College psychology professor emeritus Peter Gray, author of Free to Learn, a book that advocates for more unsupervised play, not less.
In his book, Gray writes about a group of 13 kids who played several hours a day for four months without supervision, though they were observed by an anthropologist. "They organized activities, settled disputes, avoided danger, dealt with injuries, distributed goods... without adult intervention," he writes.
The kids ranged in age from 3 to 5.
Of course, those kids were allowed to play in the South Pacific, not South Carolina, where Debra Harrell was thrown in jail for having the audacity to believe her 9-year-old would be fine by herself at a popular playground teeming with activity. In another era, it not only would have been normal for a child to say, "Goodbye, mom!" and go off to spend a summer's day there, it would have been odd to consider that child "unsupervised." After all, she was surrounded by other kids, parents, and park personnel. Apparently now only a private security detail is considered safe enough.
Harrell's real crime was that she refused to indulge in inflated fears of abduction and insist her daughter never leave her side. While there are obviously many neighborhoods wrecked by crime where it makes more sense to keep kids close, the country at large is enjoying its lowest crime level in decades.
Too bad most people reject this reality. The Reason/Rupe Poll asked "Do kids today face more threats to their physical safety?" and a majority—62 percent—said yes. Perhaps that's because the majority of respondents also said they don't think the media or political leaders are overhyping the threats to our kids.
But they are. "One culprit is the 24 hour news cycle," said Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods, when I asked him why so few kids are outside these days. Turn on cable TV, "and all you have to do is watch how they take a handful of terrible crimes against children and repeat that same handful over and over," he said. "And then they repeat the trial over and over, and so we're conditioned to live in a state of fear."
Rationally understanding that we are living in very safe times is not enough to break the fear, he added.
So what is?
Experience. Through his Children and Nature Network, Louv urges families to gather in groups and go on hikes or even to that park down the street that Americans seem so afraid of. Once kids are outside with a bunch of other kids, they start to play. It just happens. Meanwhile, their parents stop imagining predators behind every bush because they are face to face with reality instead of Criminal Minds. They start to relax. It just happens.
Over time, they can gradually regain the confidence to let their kids go whoop and holler and have as much fun as they themselves did, back in the day.
Richard Florida, the urbanist and author of The Rise of the Creative Class, is one of the many parents today who recalls walking to school solo in first grade. He was in charge of walking his kindergarten brother the next year. The age that the Reason/Rupe respondents think kids should start walking to school without an adult is 12.
That's the seventh grade.
Florida has intensely fond memories of riding his bike "everywhere" by the time he was 10. Me too. You too, I'm guessing. Why would we deny that joy to our own kids? Especially when we're raising them in relatively safer times?
"Let your kids play in the park, for God's sake," Florida pleads. "We'll all be better for it."
Why should South Pacific toddlers have all the fun?
Parents waiting in their front yards for the school bus, watching their kids, who are thirty feet away on the sidewalk, until they get on the bus.
And these are eight, nine year old kids, not toddlers.
We are truly raising a generation of paranoid little pansies.
Don’t get exercised. Pols are bunk.
Yup. I was wandering the woods and fields alone at 6 or 7 years old.
Nanny state silliness.
If modern-day parents could see some of the things we tots did unsupervised back in the Fifties, they’d have an instant coronary.
How about unsupervised teens like Mikey Brown gallivanting through the neighborhood unsupervised?
When I was 4 1/2, I walked to kindergarten by myself 8 blocks away. Never was a problem until I bumped into a dog who scared me. The owner drove me home. The owner was a friend of my mom’s.
Even at 6, I was going to school on my own, going to the park on my own, and generally exploring all over the place on foot and on my bike. I did not grow up in BFE out in the country. I grew up in Los Angeles in the 70’s.
I would be more inclined to raise the age limit to 19 in some parts of this country.
Insanity.
Teach them self defense, Teach them to have safety in numbers.
Run in a pack.
It is a proven fact that most Americans are too stupid to breathe. The re-election of Obama is proof. You get the government you, as a people deserve.
America is still too fat, dumb, and happy to take elections seriously and the democrats are busy importing ignorant, third-world socialists at the present time.
Just this morning I was telling a friend that when I was 10 my mother sent me downtown on a errand. Had to walk a few blocks to get a streetcar then walk a few blocks when I got downtown. My mother was far from nuts or irresponsible. Would I suggest somebody do that today? Not a chance.
Things were saner back then and many parents today tend to treat their children like babies.
Mom walked me to kindergarten on the first day at age 5, showed me the bad intersections, after that i was on my own and had a key to the house.
Put dinner on when I got home.
Parents waiting in their front yards for the school bus, watching their kids, who are thirty feet away on the sidewalk, until they get on the bus.
Speaking of school buses, I am just reminded of when I was a kid, our bus driver had one of those naked lady steering wheel handle accessories. . . .until my mother reported it.
They think pre-teens should not play outside unsupervised? That is insane. More than 68 percent of parents allow their 11 or 12 year olds play outside unsupervised. It would be funny watching all these parents out chasing their kids zooming past on their skateboards and bikes. This poll cannot be correct. Perhaps they just polled idiots and single folks who don’t want to deal with the kids on their street.
What we have is worse; perhaps a majority of parents - terrified into near insensibility by news media scaremongering - who have internalized standards for parental supervision of children that seem to me insane, and impossible to maintain.
Don’t get exercised. Pols are bunk.
*********************************
Yes. I only get heated when they report poll results by saying “most Americans”, instead of “most of the responders” to their stupid polls. ............Most Americans refuse to take part in phone polls.
The overwhelming majority of child molestation takes place within the home, by a relative or mommy's "boyfriend".
I wouldn't be in the least surprised to find out that kids are safer in the park.
You sir, have a point!!!!
Only the Government is capable of supervising children.
let the parents be parents
and LE and city official make the streets safe so the parents can be parents.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.