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.
Americans desperately need to have more than one or two children! Have three or four + and see how much you want them outside playing unsupervised!
This poll is puke!
There are certainly places where young children should be watched, mostly in the cities where the crud lives too.
In the outer suburbs and rural areas, kids are best left to learn on their own.
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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”
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.
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.
I used to go explore all over the place. I’m glad I grew up when I did.
i don’t.
I am one of those parents. In my neighborhood which averages $750-$1.75MM per house we have dozens of sex offenders in a five mile radius plus more of Obama’s sons because of the forced social engineering of high density, low income housing being built in our town.
I agree, but this isn’t 1956 or the 70’s when I grew up as a kid.
Another reason to remove “land of the free and the home of the brave” from the national anthem.
I wonder how the questions were worded to arrive at this conclusion that the kids should be “criminalized”.
yep
well when you get thrown in jail for being more realistic with regard to safety people tend not to learn.
I just pray that we can devise some legally acceptable technological substitute for Constant unnecessary attention.
No parent should be expected to spend 100% of their time watching their children. Children MUST as a matter of growing up be exposed to ample amounts of unsupervised fun, that is how you learn things like how to order yourself among others, and o lets not forget HUMAN NATURE.
When we were out of school in the summertime we would disappear after breakfast and mom would probably not see us again until dinner time. That was a rule, you had to be back home at dinner.
Progressives incrementalists stategy / next move:
Cities and rural areas zoned into different classifications with each citizen given a list of zones they can work I and travel within. Zones outside of the ones assigned will require authorization and a debit from their ACA account (used once the private banking system has been removed).
The proggies want us to live like this while they declare themselves exempt due to grandfathered ogliarchial privilege. You will find they kind on Elysium.