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This is next level helicopter parenting in action. Kids these days are twice the age of millennials when they start roaming their surrounding environment withou

This is next level helicopter parenting in action. Kids these days are twice the age of millennials when they start roaming their surrounding environment without supervision. When I grew up we had a comedy movie called the Truman Show and we were actually laughing about a similar situation. This is guaranteed to set up a generation for failure if kids are never exposed to any risk taking activities.

novok 7y ago
My mom brought up a point, that in the 50s-70s, maybe even the 80s, there was a vast informal network of housewifes and grandparents that kept watch on the kids playing outside in the neighborhood, that they felt like they could trust. Also there were not laws that made it kids had to be supervised by adults until age 12. Now CPS will be called on you if you have your kids go on the bus by themselves: https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2017/09/06/a-dad-in-bc-let-his-kids-ride-the-bus-alone-and-it-sparked-a-national-debate.html https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2017/09/06/a-dad-in-bc-l... In today's dual income norm where you don't know your neighbors, that doesn't exist anymore. That & the new laws creates helicopter parenting to assuage these new anxieties.
- lowdose 7y ago
  Sounds like an administration completely out of control. This is the kind of nonsense you actually sue a government for. Is Canada providing the support for parents working full time to accommodate these kinds of demands? > After a weeks-long investigation, the ministry concluded that children under the age of 10 cannot be left unsupervised — whether on a bus, riding bikes around the neighbourhood or walking to the corner store, he said. It's so sad our world has never been as safe as today.
  - novok 7y ago
    Basically the expectation is you bring them to school yourself either via driving them or maybe walking them to the school bus, and then they stay at home or they are supervised by other adults in activities, the school/daycare, scheduled play dates and so on. Kids walking over to the neighbors house 'unsupervised', playing in your private back yard and other small things isn't enforced in practice, but stuff like this is.
  - qball 7y ago
    >Sounds like an administration completely out of control. This isn't an administration completely out of control. This is a society completely out of control. The administration simply reflects the prevailing social attitude, and that attitude is that we want to take away the rights of children to properly develop (and more to the point, limit the rights of parents to allow their children to develop) and hand it over to concern trolls and/or the paranoid so that they may exercise power over their neighbors under the guise of looking out for them- remember, abuse from CPS is always initiated by a "concerned citizen". Oppression, after all, is always at its worst when the oppressors act with the approval of their own conscience. Societies typically fail to deal with this kind of person appropriately, because when risk is exposed it both presses emotional buttons and provides an easy way out (by banning the risk). The way it's correctly dealt with is to write laws that ban society from paying that kind of Dane-geld. These laws codify things called "rights"; and their primary function is to prevent unwarranted risk aversity (be it genuine, or fake to score political points) by setting down a baseline beyond which those that spread terror are not negotiated with (that your children will be abducted unless you pay the ransom of never letting them outside, or that they'll grow up to be mass killers unless you pay the ransom of banning rock music, D&D, and video games), even if the allegations are correct (a child raised in a locked cage will by definition never be abducted). Utah has passed such a law (I'm not sure about other places, though Red states are by current definition more likely than Blue ones to do this) explicitly codifying the right of way of minors of "sufficient age and maturity" in its state definition of "neglect" so that State power can't be abused to harass them. While it's not a permanent solution explicitly recognizing the rights of persons of sufficient age and maturity (as it could easily be changed later, and even if minors had the explicit right of way they would be unlikely to realize if it was being infringed), it's a good first step.
- WalterBright 7y ago
  Humans have evolved to look for risk everywhere. Where there isn't any risk, they'll just invent risk. Also, parents read in the newspaper every day about terrifying incidents that happen to other people. So they believe those are likely in their neighborhood. They are in the newspaper because they are rare. But people aren't very good at evaluating probabilities.
  - lowdose 7y ago
    Would be awesome to have a paper that prints nothing happend today.
    - the8472 7y ago
      Print current events. Choose font size and page number log-scaled to match the probability of it happening to a random reader.
- sidibe 7y ago
  I feek the lack of closeness with neighbors is key here. Having close neighbors made all the parents just take it for granted their kids are out and about in a pack somewhere with adults they know around. Cell phones made people are more connected with friends on the other side of town at the cost of their neighbors, who used to be default friends because it was just logistically easier to hang out with them than anyone else.

novok 7y ago

My mom brought up a point, that in the 50s-70s, maybe even the 80s, there was a vast informal network of housewifes and grandparents that kept watch on the kids playing outside in the neighborhood, that they felt like they could trust. Also there were not laws that made it kids had to be supervised by adults until age 12. Now CPS will be called on you if you have your kids go on the bus by themselves: https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2017/09/06/a-dad-in-bc-let-his-kids-ride-the-bus-alone-and-it-sparked-a-national-debate.html https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2017/09/06/a-dad-in-bc-l... In today's dual income norm where you don't know your neighbors, that doesn't exist anymore. That & the new laws creates helicopter parenting to assuage these new anxieties.

lowdose 7y ago
Sounds like an administration completely out of control. This is the kind of nonsense you actually sue a government for. Is Canada providing the support for parents working full time to accommodate these kinds of demands? > After a weeks-long investigation, the ministry concluded that children under the age of 10 cannot be left unsupervised — whether on a bus, riding bikes around the neighbourhood or walking to the corner store, he said. It's so sad our world has never been as safe as today.
- novok 7y ago
  Basically the expectation is you bring them to school yourself either via driving them or maybe walking them to the school bus, and then they stay at home or they are supervised by other adults in activities, the school/daycare, scheduled play dates and so on. Kids walking over to the neighbors house 'unsupervised', playing in your private back yard and other small things isn't enforced in practice, but stuff like this is.
- qball 7y ago
  >Sounds like an administration completely out of control. This isn't an administration completely out of control. This is a society completely out of control. The administration simply reflects the prevailing social attitude, and that attitude is that we want to take away the rights of children to properly develop (and more to the point, limit the rights of parents to allow their children to develop) and hand it over to concern trolls and/or the paranoid so that they may exercise power over their neighbors under the guise of looking out for them- remember, abuse from CPS is always initiated by a "concerned citizen". Oppression, after all, is always at its worst when the oppressors act with the approval of their own conscience. Societies typically fail to deal with this kind of person appropriately, because when risk is exposed it both presses emotional buttons and provides an easy way out (by banning the risk). The way it's correctly dealt with is to write laws that ban society from paying that kind of Dane-geld. These laws codify things called "rights"; and their primary function is to prevent unwarranted risk aversity (be it genuine, or fake to score political points) by setting down a baseline beyond which those that spread terror are not negotiated with (that your children will be abducted unless you pay the ransom of never letting them outside, or that they'll grow up to be mass killers unless you pay the ransom of banning rock music, D&D, and video games), even if the allegations are correct (a child raised in a locked cage will by definition never be abducted). Utah has passed such a law (I'm not sure about other places, though Red states are by current definition more likely than Blue ones to do this) explicitly codifying the right of way of minors of "sufficient age and maturity" in its state definition of "neglect" so that State power can't be abused to harass them. While it's not a permanent solution explicitly recognizing the rights of persons of sufficient age and maturity (as it could easily be changed later, and even if minors had the explicit right of way they would be unlikely to realize if it was being infringed), it's a good first step.
WalterBright 7y ago
Humans have evolved to look for risk everywhere. Where there isn't any risk, they'll just invent risk. Also, parents read in the newspaper every day about terrifying incidents that happen to other people. So they believe those are likely in their neighborhood. They are in the newspaper because they are rare. But people aren't very good at evaluating probabilities.
- lowdose 7y ago
  Would be awesome to have a paper that prints nothing happend today.
  - the8472 7y ago
    Print current events. Choose font size and page number log-scaled to match the probability of it happening to a random reader.
sidibe 7y ago
I feek the lack of closeness with neighbors is key here. Having close neighbors made all the parents just take it for granted their kids are out and about in a pack somewhere with adults they know around. Cell phones made people are more connected with friends on the other side of town at the cost of their neighbors, who used to be default friends because it was just logistically easier to hang out with them than anyone else.