I raised free range boys. They all grew up to be responsible, smart, hardworking engineers and fathers... I guess I did something wrong. s/
I was a free-range chicken err, child and i grew up Republican!
I have no problem with parents who watch over their children carefully. Even if they over do it. But I have a huge problem if DCFS or other government agency gets involved. Agencies can’t raise children. They can only take a child out of one home and put them in another. There is no guarantee that the home that lost a child was a bad one. Or that the home that got a child is a good one. The government agency does not take ownership of the child’s future. They just criticize without any skin in the game.
Do kids today have to wear helmets to climb trees? Are they even allowed to climb trees I wonder.
Back when all kids wee pretty much free range:
Families had 6 or more children
A ‘dad’ made enuf money (after taxes) that stay at home moms were the norm
The Gove didn’t take 40 50 50% of a families income (and try to control every aspect of a bodies life)
Homes were affordably/MI rates were under 5%
Criminals were locked up and drugs were something that was confined to small areas of major burgs.....
A good many of my neighbors still treat their 30 and young 40 year olds like kids. For example, the parents bought both boys engagement rings. They buy roofs for homes. They run out of state if the kids need a dog sitter. They constantly text their kids. They pay HOA fees. Buy security systems for their homes. And no not just one set of parents but multiple. One of my neighbors said they’d rather help their kids now and not after I’m dead. She’s talking her inheritance of course. It’s crazy!!!!! My kids must think my wife and I are evil. Lol. We let them figure out how to pay for everything. After the weddings, they are on their own. And he’ll no would I buy my sons engagement ring. Nuts!!!!
As a kid I found lots of places to play that were far more interesting than parks and playgrounds. I liked to investigate lumber yards, churches, roofs, attics and unfinished basements and abandoned buildings of any kind. Basically any unsupervised place that I could explore.
I was raised as a free range kid.
We lived in Hampton, Virginia (1956) and I remember my mom giving me a couple of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to eat when my buddies and I would bicycle to Yorktown about 15 miles away.
I was ten. We’d play on the battlefield all day, eat our bagged lunches, wash it down with water from the drinking fountain and then bicycle home in time for dinner.
My parents would have gone to prison and we’d have been in CPS if that happened today.
Excellent!
However, there is a more basic problem to solve:
It is dangerous for children to roam freely, stay at home alone, walk home from school, etc. because crime in America has escalated!
Kidnapping and sex trafficking are serious dangers everywhere in America.
So are illegal drugs! Drug pushers prey on American children in their grammar schools!
There is no excuse for this!
American children--the American People--are in danger, and their government does not protect them adequately. In fact, the government is the problem: it de facto enables violent, vicious criminals and makes the safety of its citizens impossible.
Violent criminals continue to pour into America across its porous borders! Government actually enables them! It prevents US citizens from protecting themselves and their children!
This is part of the Decadence of Western Civilization in America.
"Liberalism" ("progressivism," the Democrat Party et al.) IS the Decadence. Liberals--Americans who have drunk the Koolade are sick with the Decadence and are allowing this plague to infect the rest of America and to destroy America.
In typical Decadent ("Liberal") manner, they attack the symptoms but ignore the basic cause of the disease.
They make it a crime for parents to allow their children to roam freely but ignore the crime and its causes which make it dangerous for the children to roam freely.
Fundamental to the Decadence is mendacity. Decadent people cannot be honest. If they were, they would attack the basis of the problem: crime.
But if they were honest, TRUTH would shatter their entire delusional paradigm and everything they believe, and, to them, nothing is worth that, and it is probably impossible for them to think outside the mass groupthink psychosis. They probably lack the intellect to do so.
For parents in Utah, it is now legal for their children to walk or bike to and from school without an accompanying adult. They can also let their kids play outside unsupervised, and be allowed to stay at home unattended.
These newfound freedoms are the result of the “Free-Range Parenting Bill,” unanimously passed by the Utah legislature and recently signed into law by Utah governor, Gary R. Herbert. Utah’s law is said to be the first of its kind in the nation.
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I live in Utah, raised 4 kids in Utah and raising a Grandson in Utah and when I heard this, I did a ‘Happy Dance’...
It’s about time to let kids find out what life is about...there are rules to live by (set by the parents, not the gov.) and if you break the rules then things happen, that’s how I raised my children and they are fine and so am I and by the looks of it, my grandson is going to be also...
There is a place for Gov. but NOT in the bedroom or raising our children, even if some believe that the Gov. own the children, they didn’t have them, we did, and my husband and I supported them, not the Gov. so thank you Utah for having some brains!!!
The problem comes from agencies trying to avoid charges of discrimination.
Ghetto moms might neglect children to the extent of staying out all night, not feeding them, etc. But if DFCS disproportionately goes after black welfare moms, they have big trouble. So they have to adopt a “zero tolerance” policy against white middle-class families, in order to make their numbers work out.
I must be a helicopter parent and I’m not apologizing for it. I will not allow my 9 year old daughter to go riding her bike or walking the streets of our neighborhood by herself. I am always within arms reach of her and if and when we go on walks or rides I have “my little friend” in my pocket. I do not like having to be this protective of her but where we live there are multiple convicted sex offenders within a 5 mile radius. I’m not taking her safety for granted at all.
If my parents were arrested for every time I walked home alone, they would still be in jail.
Proud to say I was a free range kid.
bkmk
Our boys have been raised to be boys....my wife is a bit coddling and will get in the schools face mostly because she thinks schools are run by women who wish to emasculate boys into subservient drones and if they can’t ...drug them
This soy boy phenomenon happened fast
It’s not genetic
It’s conditioned
Weak dads and strident moms
And culture
It’s like a disease
I first noticed it in hipsters 15 years ago
I guess I was sort of a helicopter parent by default.
In the fourth and fifth grade, I attended a two room country school. All the dozen, or so, kids played "Work-up" softball together at recess. Every kid would work-up his way to bat, by everything from shagging dead balls to catching fly balls, so everyone from first through eighth grade would play all positions. We had a very strict gun policy: anyone bringing a gun to school, had to unload it, and leave it in the coat room.