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?
yep
I Doubt it!
You can buy an old house in Detroit for $100. and be in a private neighborhood of 1.
But still funny!
Yep, there were cylinder shaped scoops. You remember correctly. They were 5 cents a scoop.
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.
Good catch!
You parents picked the on secret password every pedophile was bound to say?
I remember going to the store to pick up smokes for my uncle when I was like 10 or so. Oh,the horror!
I walked to school every day from when I started. We moved when they started bussing—forced integration never was the panacea the leftists promoted. It has ruined schools everywhere.
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.
Most boys from the 60’s would be shot by police now.
Growing up in Albuquerque when I was about 11-12 in the early 60’s. My friends and I would get our canteens, bayonets and .22’s plus enough food for an all day trek up LaLuz trail to Sandia Peak at just over 10,000 feet. Was a challenge to make it home before total dark. And the horrors of no cell phones or adults around were not apparent.
Same with us in North Dakota in the early 70s. If we carried guns it was the occasional BB gun...my dad trusted me out alone with a .22 but a group of boys was different.
No phones no plan no worries and damned little trouble.
Those were blessed days.
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.
> 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.
Poll most likely taken on university campuses from students who’ve never had any children. Or abortion clinics. I could take a poll at Chick-Fil-A or any Christian bookstore and ask them if they believe in God and get the results I wanted...
Kids who know they'll be restricted to only activities with their parents and will lose recreational access to computers and video games for one year will not skip school.
As far as "there are perverts everywhere"? There always have been. Children need reasonable rules of staying in groups of two or three, have safe places to walk and wait for the bus, and in areas where there are adults who can keep an eye from a distance. A far worse danger, if there are reasonable rules in place, is that the children never learn to think for themselves, follow rules when left alone even for a few minutes, and learn how to stay safe and recognize danger. They need time and space to develop creativity and time management. If they don't learn those things as they mature, they'll be terrible adults.
I walked to and from school by myself when I was in elementary school, whatever age that was.
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