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Posted on 08/23/2014 9:08:42 AM PDT by Drew68
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?
Beautiful! Thanks for posting
maybe we should just surrender our children to the state until their 18 that way they’ll be well cared for! /s
Bulls***
The crime rates today for serious crime – murder, rape, robbery, assault are the lowest they've been since Kennedy was President.
It's the "fear" of crime that is going through the roof.
I recap the sixties growing up in suburb. We were allowed free reign by our parents but there were certain ground rules. First, we knew that other moms were watching us and would not hesitate to report our behavior and faced punishment when we returned. Second, the older kids looked out for and protected the younger kiss. Third, our parents knew which neighbors were odd and gave us strict instructions to stay away from them. Finally, our parents taught us to be wary of adults we did not know and impowered us to make judgments about strangers based on incomplete information.
In other words, it’s the “You kids get off of my damned lawn” law.
I think that's the liberal's societal goal -- free-range crazy people and criminals, so the rest of us need to lock ourselves in jail.
This must be the same generation of people who have made our Rules of Engagement protection for our enemies...can't fire until fired upon or not having real bullets to start with.
That’s a very good point, there’s plenty of things within the home or even private property that can be just as dangerous as out in the middle of the city. I would bet that you would be referring to drugs, porn, and illicit sex as threats within a home. Although with my young kids, I expect them to in their rooms at night anyways, because they simply need their sleep. That and the fact that latr at night, your judgement isn’t as sound.
I posted a great thread on this last weekend:
That was what I was thinking.
Lots of supposed conservatives will brag on one had about how we used to go off for hours to play in the past, while being the most paranoid about there being a pedo or kidnapper around every mailbox.
Caution is a no-brainer, but so I teaching kids to be their own best protection.
The big secret of the Great Recession is that thugs had to move home.
Their momma is saying, “You can stay here, but you are not crawling in here at all hours of the night...I have to get up and get to work.”
There is still plenty of crime and plenty of thugs. But the ones on the margin are living in the basement.
ehhh no thanks LIBTARD NAZI COMMIE SCUMBAGS..... but..... LET’S HAVE MANDATORY DEATH SENTENCE FOR PEDOPHILES..... televised on all msm and cable channels so peds can see their fate if they act.......
As soon as school was out yesterday my yard filled up with kids, ranging from 9 to 14. We looked in on them, but it was hardly supervised.
Good Lord our nation is becoming weak, spineless and a bunch of wusses.
This poll is either a load of BS, or the story is an indictment of our failed society.
OTOH, maybe it’s possible a cross-section of the US could be polled resulting in that grossly-inflated figure.
Seriously: If you consider all the Libs/Rhinos that believe more government is the answer to everything, coupled.with the fact that stupid people are now encouraged by the State to breed...then yeah...
...the poll numbers jive and it reinforces my view of the country in general.
I’m confused now: Was my comment sarcastic, racist or simply pejorative?
(THAT’s /s)
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