>>My kids were latchkey kids who walked home from school when they were 8 and 9. Lots of grandparents lived on our cul de sac block who always kept a watchful eye out. But that was during the early 1970’s when the environment wasn’t as dangerous. Didn’t have to worry about keys either because we didn’t even lock our house.
But even people who live in gated communities 20 miles from the nearest city bus stop talk as if there are roving rape gangs rolling up and down their streets.
As an example of how times changed, we had a child molester who hung out in the playground we used back in 1974-ish. He just sat on a bench and watched us play. Every kid knew that was creepy and we stayed far away from him. We hadn’t grown up with a sense of entitlement that the world must conform to our needs. We didn’t assume the CPS would make the playground safe. We didn’t think of lawyers when something happened.
The parents would shoo him away when they saw him. One day, he exposed himself to a little girl who got too close. The teenage boys chased him while the younger kids went to get their dads. The dads came out with baseball bats and guns. The guy ran and never showed up again.
We didn’t go on lockdown. The parents didn’t end our childhood because of this guy, because the teenage boys acted like the men they were in training to be and the dads acted like men.
Fast forward to today. I was out in a field, alone, playing with my RC car one day. A car pulls up and a woman gets out and walks out to me and asks me when I’ll be leaving because her kid wants to play and she can’t let him out while I’m there. Because of the exaggerated and localized news, she thinks that I am so dangerous that I will ignore her just to take her child. So, I tell her my batteries will be dead in about 30 minutes and I’ll leave then, but she’s free to use the rest of the field. I’m literally just using one little patch of dirt in a 4 acre field.
She sat there in the car with her kid for 30 minutes until I left.
Interesting story. DIL teaches kindergarten class and said that almost none of her students even play outside any more, have absolutely no stamina and lack motor skills. So sad to see what we have become as a nation.