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Yup! We approached that iteratively, until our son was properly 'free range.' We noted cases where other adults ask our son where his parents were. He didn't

Yup! We approached that iteratively, until our son was properly 'free range.' We noted cases where other adults ask our son where his parents were. He didn't know; we were watching from afar. That happened a couple of times. Beyond a couple of judgmental parents, no action was taken. One parent asked our son for his name, first and last. Our son, per instructions, refused to give his last name. At that point, the parent has a difficult decision to make. Do they call 911? The answer is 'no'. There is no emergency. I want to make it clear that I feel what you are describing. My wife and I have felt it, and we still feel it. But objectively, the risk is very low. Engineer the situation such that a 'hover-parent' has no choice but to call 911. Our son carried a cheap pre-paid cell phone from a relatively early age too. He had only to open it and push the 'send' button twice and we would be there. So even in the extremely unlikely event of cops showing up, we would be there minutes later. This thing that feels so strongly like a risk really isn't.

ghurtado 10y ago
> Engineer the situation such that a 'hover-parent' has no choice but to call 911. Sounds like you were using your kid as a prop in a social experiment with the goal to push your own particular agenda through "teaching moments" on strangers. What did you intend to accomplish?
- Diederich 10y ago
  Huh, I guess you could read my account as such, but that's a pretty narrow perspective. Our primary goal was to ease all of us (our son, my wife and myself) into being comfortable with our son becoming 'free range'. Mostly it was my wife and I confirming what we suspected: that he would be safe, primarily from other over-reactive parents. We'd already objectively accepted that he would be physically safe, even though emotionally it was challenging for us. We secretly shadowed him at the park six or seven times before letting him go full solo. My account of other adult interactions with him were from those experiences. So he became fully 'free range' at the age of 9, and has been ever since, with absolutely no problems. So was it a social experiment? I guess that could be accurate, as a side effect. Were we trying to give strangers "teaching moments"? Far from it, though I suppose its possible somebody else learning something, I don't know, and don't much care. I guess you could say we were pushing our own 'particular agenda'...we were pushing it on our son and ourselves. And we are all three better off for it. I wonder if you can expand on your implication?
  - ghurtado 10y ago
    I'll freely admit that I probably misread your intent, as I half suspected. If all your goals in this situation had your kid's well being in mind, then I misunderstood you and I apologize for that. From your wording (specially the "engineer the situation" bit) it sounded to me like you behaved differently in those situations because other adults were around. The assumption I made was that you did so to teach them a lesson, so to speak. If your method towards overseeing your child is the same whether there were other adults around or not, then I obviously misunderstood you and I apologize for that. I originally understood "engineer the situation" as "provoke a misunderstanding - where none would have taken place otherwise - with the goal of making other adults uncomfortable and so they may understand their mistaken view". It seems obvious now that this was the wrong reading, but would mind explaining further what you meant by "engineering the situation"? [EDIT] I have one other question: > Our son, per instructions, refused to give his last name. May I ask why? If my son got lost, or needed to ask for help from other adults, or was caught in an emergency situation at school, I would want them to be armed with as much information as possible in order to enable an adult to contact me as soon as possible.
    - Diederich 10y ago
      Sure, no worries. Text is a very sub-optimal medium to transmit the intent behind potentially emotionally charged questions. To be clear, we certainly were behaving differently because there were adults around. We were worried that they might over-react, and so preemptively guard against such entanglements. The 'engineering' was pretty simple: 1. Instruct our son to not release any information that someone could use to file a complaint against us. Specifically, last name, address or phone number. There are, of course, other good reasons to not release such data! 2. This would force someone who wanted to take official action to call 911, or otherwise contact the police. A non-911 police contact would not pose much of a problem since they lacked any contact information. 3. This would serve to give them pause: is this situation really an emergency? Of course it's not! But the final point was... 4. Make sure our son had a functional cell phone, make sure he would be able to call us at need. So if the police were summoned, or the adult pushed him too hard, he'd call us. We live 5 minutes away, so we'd be there right away. I'm not sure this is 'engineering' per se, but in my brain mental steps felt similar to the engineering I do in my profession.
GFischer 10y ago
I'm sorry, why did you instruct him not to give his last name? I didn't get it.
- Diederich 10y ago
  Given a first and last name, it's possible that judgmental parents who were worried about a 9 year old being at the park could file some kind of official complaint against us. Given only a first name, their only course would be to call the police if they wanted to take any kind of official action. That's decision is about giving them pause to consider: is this child playing in the park without parents nearby actually an emergency? When I call the police, and they come, will I be able to defend my decision?

ghurtado 10y ago

> Engineer the situation such that a 'hover-parent' has no choice but to call 911. Sounds like you were using your kid as a prop in a social experiment with the goal to push your own particular agenda through "teaching moments" on strangers. What did you intend to accomplish?

Diederich 10y ago
Huh, I guess you could read my account as such, but that's a pretty narrow perspective. Our primary goal was to ease all of us (our son, my wife and myself) into being comfortable with our son becoming 'free range'. Mostly it was my wife and I confirming what we suspected: that he would be safe, primarily from other over-reactive parents. We'd already objectively accepted that he would be physically safe, even though emotionally it was challenging for us. We secretly shadowed him at the park six or seven times before letting him go full solo. My account of other adult interactions with him were from those experiences. So he became fully 'free range' at the age of 9, and has been ever since, with absolutely no problems. So was it a social experiment? I guess that could be accurate, as a side effect. Were we trying to give strangers "teaching moments"? Far from it, though I suppose its possible somebody else learning something, I don't know, and don't much care. I guess you could say we were pushing our own 'particular agenda'...we were pushing it on our son and ourselves. And we are all three better off for it. I wonder if you can expand on your implication?
- ghurtado 10y ago
  I'll freely admit that I probably misread your intent, as I half suspected. If all your goals in this situation had your kid's well being in mind, then I misunderstood you and I apologize for that. From your wording (specially the "engineer the situation" bit) it sounded to me like you behaved differently in those situations because other adults were around. The assumption I made was that you did so to teach them a lesson, so to speak. If your method towards overseeing your child is the same whether there were other adults around or not, then I obviously misunderstood you and I apologize for that. I originally understood "engineer the situation" as "provoke a misunderstanding - where none would have taken place otherwise - with the goal of making other adults uncomfortable and so they may understand their mistaken view". It seems obvious now that this was the wrong reading, but would mind explaining further what you meant by "engineering the situation"? [EDIT] I have one other question: > Our son, per instructions, refused to give his last name. May I ask why? If my son got lost, or needed to ask for help from other adults, or was caught in an emergency situation at school, I would want them to be armed with as much information as possible in order to enable an adult to contact me as soon as possible.
  - Diederich 10y ago
    Sure, no worries. Text is a very sub-optimal medium to transmit the intent behind potentially emotionally charged questions. To be clear, we certainly were behaving differently because there were adults around. We were worried that they might over-react, and so preemptively guard against such entanglements. The 'engineering' was pretty simple: 1. Instruct our son to not release any information that someone could use to file a complaint against us. Specifically, last name, address or phone number. There are, of course, other good reasons to not release such data! 2. This would force someone who wanted to take official action to call 911, or otherwise contact the police. A non-911 police contact would not pose much of a problem since they lacked any contact information. 3. This would serve to give them pause: is this situation really an emergency? Of course it's not! But the final point was... 4. Make sure our son had a functional cell phone, make sure he would be able to call us at need. So if the police were summoned, or the adult pushed him too hard, he'd call us. We live 5 minutes away, so we'd be there right away. I'm not sure this is 'engineering' per se, but in my brain mental steps felt similar to the engineering I do in my profession.

GFischer 10y ago

I'm sorry, why did you instruct him not to give his last name? I didn't get it.

Diederich 10y ago
Given a first and last name, it's possible that judgmental parents who were worried about a 9 year old being at the park could file some kind of official complaint against us. Given only a first name, their only course would be to call the police if they wanted to take any kind of official action. That's decision is about giving them pause to consider: is this child playing in the park without parents nearby actually an emergency? When I call the police, and they come, will I be able to defend my decision?