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?
It is not secret but largely unknown that typically only 10% of the people sampled actually give them any information.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/is-the-polling-industry-in-stasis-or-in-crisis/
“Yup. I was wandering the woods and fields alone at 6 or 7 years old.”
Same here. I wasn’t much older when allowed to do so with a rifle.
Jeez we used to run the railroad tracks back in the woods all the time, hop trains and stuff.
Nuthin ever happened, cuz you had yer wits.
We used to play “jarts” too LOL
All of the above, IMO have alot to do with a child's environment.
Okay, so how does this work. Your eight-year-old asks if he can ride his bike down to his friends house. You say, wait, I have to come with you.
I remember walking to the store on Saturday morning, leaving home without so much as a penny in our pocket. Along the way we would find pop bottles, turn them in and get enough for an ice cream.
Anyone remember when Thrifty ice cream was 5 cents a scoop?
at the rate we’re going, each will have their own drone assigned to them.
Different days. My buddy and I threw a paper route in the morning before school. Papers were delivered flat to his house early and we folded them for throwing. He took one long street and I took the parallel one. We raced to the other end then went to school. 8 or 9 years old.
We sold “Grit” in the evenings and went to Cub Scouts on Tuesdays after school.
On Saturday we ranged to the south side of town and stopped off at the Cattleman’s Cafe at the stock yards for a burger. Bellied right up to the bar on the high, round, red covered swivel stools then it was across the highway and off to the airport to hang out a bit with a kindly airplane mechanic. We ranged out 5 or 6 miles from home.
We rode downtown for haircuts and sometimes the slot car track but our Mom’s thought the element there were too old for us to be around so we got the message of discouragement.
We went to the movies on Saturday afternoons sometimes.
We had a great life.
What a shame my grandchildren won’t experience it except by my stories.
What a shame we have lost our way. I grieve for our dead nation.
Why, there outta be a law...
“Hiddy Ho! We’re from the government and we’re here to help”
I experienced none of the "helicopter parenting" nonsense growing up. I walked half a mile to school, and half a mile back, starting at age 5. After school I ran all over the neighborhood with my little gang. When I was nine I routinely walked the three miles into what passed for downtown, visited my hangouts, then walked back.
Parental supervision usually consisted of "Be home in time for dinner!" and "Soak those pants in cold water so that blood stain won't set!"
It seemed like the right way to do things. Still does.
So if a kid decides to play at the park when he is left home alone while his parents are at work, the parents will get in trouble?
No kidding. What cross section of folks were polled in this nutso poll?
I was 2 months shy of my 5th birthday when I walked to kindergarten which was 6 blocks away with the usual warnings and admonitions.
When I was 9-10 years old, I was routinely sent to the “package” store which was 6 blocks away with a note and money for my Mom’s cigarettes—unfortunately, a habit she couldn’t kick for about 60 years until near the end of her life.
I was running wild when I was 5.
Had a blast, had a loving family and a posse.
“Soak those pants in cold water so that blood stain won’t set!”
Sounds like my mom. I was always banging myself up doing something stupid. I remember her stopping me at the back door with an old towel and making me stop leaving a blood trail before I was allowed in.
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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