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?
When I was a kid, my parents encouraged me to be independent!
The main precaution was, I WAS NEVER TO GO WITH AN ADULT UNLESS THEY GAVE ME THE SECRET PASSWORD!
I still remember it. The secret password my parents gave me was, “candy”
I remember when Dad taught me to swim. I thought I would surly drown, but once i got out of the burlap sack I was OK, but them kittens kept scratchin me!☺
Then: "Boys will be boys."
Now: "OH MY GOD HE MIGHT HURT HIMSELF!!!"
What this shows is that maybe we Americans are not exceptional anymore. We were in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, but like a frog in a slow boil we have slowly reverted to peasants in the 20th and 21st centuries. Starting about 100 years ago our nation’s people decided to give away our personal independence a little at a time. All for the children you see. We value security over liberty. The Founders would be weeping if they could see what we have become. Everybody today wants someone to rule their lives, to tell them what to do. The majority are sheep, peasants. They are eager to hand their lives to those few who delight in telling them what to do. The totalitarian mindset is in place for both the rulers and the ruled. This is not what they had in mind back in 1776.
“Anyone remember when Thrifty ice cream was 5 cents a scoop?”
No,but I recall when a Hershey Bar was a dime, 7 years old a mile away from my house alone at the Time Saver.
At age 8 I would walk a mile to the Mississippi River with my buddies and explore around ships and barges that Hurricane Betsey wrecked a few years earlier.
My mother and every mother up and down the blocks of the suburban town I lived in when growing up would be in jail today for child neglect. I walked two blocks to elementary school, alone. I walked about three quarters of a mile to my junior high school, alone. I walked over a mile to my high school when I missed the bus (which was quite often, actually), alone. On the way back home, usually there was company as we kids met up after school to walk part way with each other. I played outside after school, just as long as I made it home by when the streetlights went on or it was dinnertime. On weekends, I played with other kids; I played alone. There was a favorite tree one could climb up on the low branches in the middle of an empty field. I’d climb up with a good book and read perched on a favorite limb of that tree. I lived to post about all of this. My mom and all the other moms did not get arrested or go to jail.
“at the rate we’re going, each will have their own drone assigned to them.”
Hey, that’s one way for the kids to get a buzz on.
Maybe.
Yeah, well the place probably wasn't crawling with murdering child molesters then.
Crime was ALLOT worse for most of the twentieth century. Hell in the mid Seventies and early Eighties it was at least twice as bad, but we ran the streets from before sun up til sundown on a daily basis. I am talking 5, 6, 7 years old.
I had my first paper route at 10 years old, a weekly Sun News route. I had a full 100 paper daily Plain Dealer route at twelve, Delivered 100 papers daily BEFORE 6 am at twelve years old. ALONE! My brother had 100 of his own. We collected the money OURSELVES alone every week or month, can’t remember. Everyday, including Sunday, no breaks no days off. We filled out paperwork, kept records, reported our progress and solicited new business, regularly. All before being teenagers.
I had my first 40 hour full time summer job at 12 working the summer janitorial crew at my Catholic School for $2 an hour. Made $3.35 the next year, minimum wage. This on top of the paper route.
My brother and I would go to the park about 3/4 of a mile away daily at 8 am with two other boys and play baseball ALL DAY. We where truly unsupervised. No cell phone, no ride, just a bike, no adults. Oldest kid was 7 or 8. Never had a problem, made lots of friends at the park. This wasn’t any small town or suburban park. This was Cleveland in the neighborhoods.
At 13 when I started High School, I took the RTA trains from my far West Side neighborhood to Buckeye And East BLVD to go to High School. I had to walk to the end of the street, pick up a metro RTA bus, transfer to the Red Line trains, transfer from their either at Union Station (Tower City) or on E 55th to the Low level Blue/Green Line trains and WALK 1/2 mile from E 116th St rail station to my school, DAILY for four years. about an hour each way. BTW that part of East BLVD is now MLK Dr. so you know how nice that neighborhood is and was, 1981.
Never had a ‘play date’ in my life. Never heard of a car seat, never wore a helmet to ride a bike. It is amazing that we lived to adulthood.
Today’s kids are pussies!
Don’t worry the Feds are working their way towards charging your per breath while mandating exercise programs to meet Obamacare guidelines.../s
We where told about stranger danger and not talking to weirdos.
Crime was MUCH WORSE in the late Seventies and Eighties than it is now. We have arrested and incarcerated a great deal of the problems.
Sounds like a Rodney Dangerfield joke.
‘Anyone remember when Thrifty ice cream was 5 cents a scoop?’
No, but I remember a Scooter Crunch Bar was a a quarter.
your story was quite similar to mine. My mom still tells the story about my 1st day at school. At the 1st recess I walked home and mom said, “what are you doing here?” I said “I had enough of that.” She said “Oh yea.” and marched me back and the nuns said they never missed me. I thank God I didn’t grow up with zero tolerance, I luckily grew up in a large family and could always deny it was me. I think I’d have been locked up had it not been the military for me when I came of age. I don’t know how my mom made it through all the stress I put them through.
‘How are these kids supposed to learn how to be independent?’
They aren’t! That is why it seems reasonable that a man of 26 can be on his mommy’s health insurance and live in her basement until he is thirty five.
Would anyone over thirty five admit that they lived with mommy and daddy for four years after college?
We are raising an entire society of Nancy-boy sissies!
Then you have the other extreme where the parents drop their kids of at the library or the park all day. If kids are going to be in the park or playground all day, the parent's should be home so the kids can go home if they want to. All day is a bit excessive.
Fifty years ago, at age ten, I would go 40 blocks by myself from home to Beers Book Store and buy a grocery bag full of science fiction paperback books. I could have taken the bus, but that took 15¢—or three books—each way, so I walked. I had a bicycle, but balancing a bag full of books didn’t work well. Besides, I’d have to ride in the streets, and traffic on H and J Streets in Sacramento then was terrifying.
After buying my books, I had the clerk hold my bag—minus one I really wanted to start reading—and walk another ten blocks from 14th to about 4th to Harvey’s Hamburger’s to begin reading over a lunch of a burger, fries and a milkshake for 67¢.
On the way back, I’d pick up my bag of books, stop at the Hobby Shop at 16th and J Streets to drool over the brass HO locomotives ($150-$1000) and remote-control aircraft. and then walk home to 54th Street. I’d be gone from 9am to about 3pm.
Mom’s only interest was to check what books I got.
From the age of seven, several other neighborhood kids and I played in the large vacant lot at 53rd and F Streets where Sutter Memorial Hospital and Sutter Medical Offices stand today. All the kids referred to it just as “The Lot.” We built grass mazes, forts, did treasure hunts, had rock fights with our own rules the rocks couldn’t be larger than a half inch in diameter, so they couldn’t hurt when you got hit. The only time any parents got involved was when some older kids (from the North Neighborhood (Junior High aged) decided we were good targets for their BB guns. A dad (not one of ours) who lived right across the street came over, all upright and stern, and put a stop to it, confiscated three BB guns, which were later returned to the boys’ parents, all three of whom were summarily spanked by their dads. We were back at The Lot the next day but the BB gun boys weren’t seen until they were off grounding, then they came and apologized.
Other days, we’d go to East Portal Park, to play in the playground. . . or walk 14 blocks with a bag lunch, dime and towel to McKinley Park to go to Clunie Pool to swim and borrow books from Clunie Library.
One day, my year older sister (at five) decided to run away with two little neighbor girls after being told she couldn’t have some toy she wanted. They packed some dolls, a loaf of bread, peanut butter and jam, a knife (Oh, my), took my little red wagon, and headed off. Mom knew what they were up to because my sister had announced her intentions. . . so she kept a distant eye on them. She followed their trek in the car, keeping back about a block. They were making PB&J sandwiches before they reached the end of the block.
They got an amazing mile and a half into River Park before deciding they had to turn back. Mom still followed. She turned into the driveway of our house before they turned onto our block and went into the house. When my very tired sister came in the house, extremely upset, she cried, “Why didn’t you come after me?”
Mom answered, “Oh, were you gone?” My sister never tried that little drama again.
I was a Cub Scout. . . and all good scouts needed a pocket knife with all the tools. In third grade I paid $1.75 through a school program and soon, along with the other pack members in my class, about ten of us, had my Boy Scout pocket knife duly delivered by my teacher. We all proudly carried our knives to school every day. It was really strange. No body got killed, stabbed, or even cut. We must have been an aberration.
At what point does playing in the park all day become loitering? Because you know that’s the logical progression.
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.