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Well, if you report 24x7 hate and danger, scare the crap out of people, and report that there is danger behind every tree, then yes, childhoods are ruined. Thi

Well, if you report 24x7 hate and danger, scare the crap out of people, and report that there is danger behind every tree, then yes, childhoods are ruined. Things are getting safer and the only way you would know it is go look at the CDC stats. Kids need time with their friends away from parents. I'm so glad I was able to grow up in the (sadly last) "be home for dinner, be back by dark" generation.

bgravinz 7y ago
The wisdom of the "may you live in interesting times" curse rears its head once again.
Causalityl 7y ago
Indeed. There is no better example of a failure to do basic math than running active shooter drills when 98% of child gun homicides happen outside of school hours.
- jcranmer 7y ago
  Columbine, Sandy Hook, Parkland, Santa Fe, and Red Lake are the mass shootings of my lifetime to take place in schools. Virginia Tech and another community college also saw mass shootings, if you want to include tertiary education. Note that three of these are in the top 10 (and 2 in the top 5) if you rank them by deaths.
  - Causalityl 7y ago
    Yes they did. They are also a tiny drop in the bucket of child gun homicides, an even smaller drop for child gun deaths, and an incredibly small bump in child deaths overall.
    - jcranmer 7y ago
      Active shooter drills aren't about preventing child gun homicides. They're about active shooter situations inside schools, which are actual events that have happened. You may debate how useful they are, or if the frequency of school shootings is sufficient to justify them, but I will point out that the number of times I have had to evacuate a school (admittedly, due to a bomb threat) is equal to the number of times we had to "assume the position" for a tornado threat (exactly once).
  - jakelazaroff 7y ago
    As far as I know, there’s also no evidence that active shooter drills make students safer.
  - protomyth 7y ago
    Homicide isn't even in the top 10 ways to die in the US. The students are in more danger from drowning, by a wide margin, than any school shooting. https://www.cdc.gov/homeandrecreationalsafety/water-safety/waterinjuries-factsheet.html https://www.cdc.gov/homeandrecreationalsafety/water-safety/w...
    - flukus 7y ago
      In Australia at least this is an area we are getting worse at (https://lsv.com.au/research/water-competency-of-victorian-children/ https://lsv.com.au/research/water-competency-of-victorian-ch...). 3 out of 5 fail the current standard of swimming continuously for 50 meters at the end of primary school. The standard has dropped too, ~25 years ago when I was tested the standard was 200 meters and most of the "training" happened in unstructured time.
      - oska 7y ago
        That's disappointing. I feel like being able to swim and handle ocean surf is a "birthright" of Aussie kids. I remember being taken out in fairly big crashing surf as young as 5 and 6 years old by my parents so I could learn how to handle it (dive under breaking waves, judge currents, etc). I would guess the trend is not so bad in Queensland. One thing that is very impressive here is the number of pools in schools, including public schools, and the very, very active swim programs that go with them. Brisbane probably has one of the best swimming cultures in the world (backed up by the number of swimmming champions that have come from here).
        flukus 7y ago
        I grew up on the Gold Coast and definitely enjoyed that birthright, playing in the ocean shallows from before I could walk, doing nippers at age 6, etc, but I believe the Queensland standard has also dropped to 50m. I don't think many public schools there have pools even now though, it was almost all private ones when I was a kid. A big differentiator in Qld was the huge number of backyard pools, but they seem to be disappearing as Qld catches up population wise with the southern states, not to mention costs with recent droughts. Watching my nephews that nature of their swimming seems to be a bit different, for me we were riding or bikes to pools/beaches by ourselves from the age of about 9, they live in Brisbanes suburbia and have to be driven to a pool/beach and then supervised. They're largely left to their own merits once they get there, but it's more of a family thing than a friends thing and they don't have to learn there own dispute resolution and the like, nor do they get to decide when to go and when to leave.
- mandelbrotwurst 7y ago
  Do you know what the composition of the other 98% looks like? i.e. accidental firings at home, murders, suicides, etc?
  - Causalityl 7y ago
    I restricted my comparison to homicides only. They're basically statistically insignificant compared to the other much more common causes of child firearm death.
    - mandelbrotwurst 7y ago
      Thanks, sorry, misread. Was asking because am curious about how the deaths break down overall as this would affect what we might want to focus on when attempting to reduce them.
  - protomyth 7y ago
    The CDC does an amazing job of gather stats on what kills people in the USA. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm and those statistics have a section on child mortality.
    - mandelbrotwurst 7y ago
      Thanks!
    - erklik 7y ago
      Interesting, by gathering data on what kills people, they inadvertently also gather data on how dangerous guns are. Although, props to the CDC. That is some serious data gathering, cleaning etc. Most countries don't have that level of detail. At least not publically available.
      - protomyth 7y ago
        Beware of comparing the data with other countries as the definition for what looks like the same terms is hidden in the details. Infant mortality is one area where there are some fundamental differences in definition (yeah, this is a surprise). Guns are a far cry in danger from quite a lot of activities.
- mandelbrotwurst 7y ago
  @Causalityl , @jranmer - question for both of you (or whoever) - at what rate of death if any would it become appropriate to do these types of drills and why?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - sixstringtheory 7y ago
    I don’t know where the line is, but I think I would sooner pull my kids out to homeschool than have them be further traumatized/militarized by letting them participate in active shooter drills. It’s insane and will be a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more you expose kids to this kind of lifestyle, the more it becomes... part of their lifestyle.
    - mandelbrotwurst 7y ago
      Yeah, that came to mind for me as well / seems like a pretty serious drawback to say the least.
    - lonelappde 7y ago
      Yeah, look how utterly ruined we were because we had nuclear bomb drills(!) and earthquake drills.
      - Nasrudith 7y ago
        I know you were being sarcastic but you might be accidentally right. Have you seen the level of fear mongering in politics and a lack of regard for the future from the eras when they existed? I think the nuclear bomb drills may have really ruined them - that or the leaded gasoline.The 'I turned out just fine insistence' is often seen from people who support beating the pattern of abuse in beating their children. I'm not trying to be a snide jackass here - I suspect it had real deleterious effects but they were normalized and went uncommented upon. The Black Death appeared to have some similar precedent as western culture became utterly desensitized to skeletons and 'the end is nigh' beliefs became a sizeable reoccurring minority to majority. I believe Rome had similar beliefs as some saw the writing on the wall of their decline. I'm not an expert but I wouldn't be surprised it died out in the dark ages as people were in the actual 'post apocalypse' and doing things like former Roman seamen founding Venice.
mandelbrotwurst 7y ago
Agree with your general point, but: 1. There were children born before you with frightened helicopter parents and there will be children born tomorrow who grow up with more freedom than you did. Generational experience is not homogenous. 2. Current trends do not set our future paths into stone, and it is possible that we will be able to plant seeds to move things in freer, saner directions going forward.
xenocyon 7y ago
As a parent, I actually do pay attention to CDC stats. And because of this, I am worried - not because of kidnappers, but because of cars - which unlike most other dangers have only gotten deadlier (to pedestrians) over the years (source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/07/us/pedestrian-deaths.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/07/us/pedestrian-deaths.html). Despite living an urban lifestyle, walking or biking to destinations, and teaching our kid basic traffic safety, we are nonetheless at the mercy of other people driving deadly weapons all the time.
- nostromo 7y ago
  The DOT doesn't show that to be the case. https://cdn3.vox-cdn.com/assets/4315981/DeathsOverTime.png https://cdn3.vox-cdn.com/assets/4315981/DeathsOverTime.png Remember, the correct way to look at this data is per person. The US has 30% more people now than it did in 1990. So, even though there were similar number of deaths, you're children are still safer than you were in 1990. A not-so-fun fact most people don't know: > One in every three of fatal pedestrian crashes involved a pedestrian with a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of at least 0.08 grams per deciliter (g/dL) https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/pedestrian_safety/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/pedestrian_safety/ind...
  - idoubtit 7y ago
    > The DOT doesn't show that to be the case. Your graph stopped at year 2012 with a rate of 15.1 pedestrian fatalities. The latest report on the CDC website has the following text under "key findings": "In 2016 there were 5,987 pedestrians killed in traffic crashes, a 9-percent increase from the 5,495 pedestrian fatalities in 2015. This is the highest number of pedestrians killed in one year since 1990." Unless I'm mistaken, this give a rate of 18.1 in 2016. It is a large increase from 15.1 in 2012, though the discrepancy in sources may invalidate the comparison. Anyway, this 2016 report points to a increased fatality rate. From the same source, it seems the problem is that accidents have not much increased in frequency, but they are more fatal. The fatality rate went from 11% to 15% in 10 years. https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812493 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...
Scoutmaster 7y ago
I recently became a Scoutmaster. That's what I'm trying to do: give the kids the same opportunity we had - freedom to explore the outdoors. Confidence to take care of themselves and not need an adult to do everything for them. To give them opportunites to build character.
- neverartful 7y ago
  Kudos to you -- much respect. I was an adult leader when my son was a Scout and I went on a number of weekend campouts and 1 week of Scout summer camp. One of the big challenges I saw was to get the boys to leave their electronics behind. Nevertheless, we had some really fun outings and the boys were able to enjoy the outdoors.
- brightball 7y ago
  It's really one of the reasons that I got my son into Scouts in the first place. It forces the type of activities that should really just be normal.
- creaghpatr 7y ago
  Great memories from cub scouts- I would not have learned how to camp otherwise (until later in life perhaps)
- gen220 7y ago
  Scouts was a hugely formative time in my life, precisely because our Scoutmasters decided to buck the trend of the other Boy Scout Troops in our area (adult-dictated Eagle Scout factories). The strongest memories I have of Scouts were of the older boys teaching us things, and of myself doing the same for younger boys. These “things” ranged from profound reflections on life to very practical skills. We ran our own fundraisers, planned our own trips and periodic events, and staged our own elections for very meaningful leadership positions. “The Adults” were always in the background, jumping in to support and advise when asked for. I always thought that they had chosen the easy path, because they didn’t have to work too hard! In retrospect, I realize this was actually the hardest path – to trust that your kids and their insane friends are actually capable of intelligible self government etc. And this didn’t come at the expense of excellence, but quite the contrary! Our troop had a proud legacy of winning the various prestigious awards at summer camp year-after-year, and the boys were very good at passing down this expectation of integrity and success to successive generations of kids. That’s something that is hard to maintain in troops with very hands-on adult leaders - once a Scoutmaster’s kids age out, the culture of the troop can change dramatically. On the flip side, troop culture seems to be more resilient when it’s boy-led. Anyways, I wish you the best of luck! Thank you for bringing these pleasant memories into my head to reflect on. Your kids will thank you for your restraint :)
phkahler 7y ago
>> I'm so glad I was able to grow up in the (sadly last) "be home for dinner, be back by dark" generation. My grandfather collected bells - the ones they had in the old schoolhouses 100 years ago (he'd get them when the schools closed). I grew up in the suburbs but we had a steel bell about 1m diameter on our front porch. For grins mom would ring it occasionally at dinner time. You could hear it 3 streets over. She didn't always know where we were. Sometimes other kids would ring it at night and run away - if you thought ringing doorbells was annoying....
- deleted 7y ago
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- imglorp 7y ago
  We had one too! "Go play, and don't come back until you hear the dinner bell." Plenty of range. So important for kids to grow up and explore.
JKCalhoun 7y ago
And yet there was "danger, scare the crap out of people" then too. Don't take candy from a stranger. Razor blades in apples… Unless it's a difference in degree, that alone is not what has changed. To be sure we seem to be a more fearful society then we were then.
- protomyth 7y ago
  "Unless it's a difference in degree" Let your kids play outside by themselves or walk to school, and get reported to Child Protective Services. It is very much a different world these days.
  - neverartful 7y ago
    Right! It's the combination of new laws/regulations and the higher likelihood of litigation when kids get hurt. On the other hand, there are plenty of parents who completely neglect their kids. We don't want that either.
  - noonespecial 7y ago
    Child Protective Services is the thing I've most feared as a parent. Getting caught up in that system is about the worst thing that can happen to a child.
  - rbritton 7y ago
    Utah actually passed something to mitigate against that kind of response last year. https://www.sltrib.com/news/2018/01/24/utah-lawmakers-pass-bill-legalizing-free-range-parenting/ https://www.sltrib.com/news/2018/01/24/utah-lawmakers-pass-b...
  - germinalphrase 7y ago
    Look - I'm sure you can find some outlier news article about this happening, but as someone who actually has professional contact with CPS once in a while, this is - in my opinion - wildly hyperbolic. The social workers I know who work for CPS have excessive work loads of really intense circumstances (like, children being preyed upon, beaten, chained to radiators...). They're not doing parent interviews because someone let their 10-year-old walk to the park.
shioyama 7y ago
> Kids need time with their friends away from parents. I'm so glad I was able to grow up in the (sadly last) "be home for dinner, be back by dark" generation. Completely agree with your comment, but "sadly last" here is not accurate unless you're talking about North America and maybe Europe. I live in Japan and it's quite normal, even in a big city like Tokyo, to let kids play on their own until it gets dark. I feel quite lucky to be in a country not yet afflicted by this disease that has hit all of North America and (I hear) Europe as well - a disease of over-protecting kids to the point of suffocation. People need to call this trend for what it is. They're not doing the next generation any good, and probably lots of harm.
- fzeroracer 7y ago
  To be fair, I don't think Japan is exactly a good model to bring up here. Kids are independent with their free time, but most of their free time is taken up having to study seven days a week while dealing with absent parents having to work long hours and a grueling school system that is part of the reason why Japan has such a high suicide rate among youths. Which I think is more of a problem than helicopter parenting in America and is what I think our school system is turning into. We're already working longer hours for less pay and increasing pressure on children to perform well even in Kindergarten.
  - shioyama 7y ago
    > Which I think is more of a problem than helicopter parenting in America Sorry, as a parent in Japan, I beg to disagree. The system here has lots of problems, don't get me wrong - and I really don't like the "juku" (cram-school) model at all. But particularly at younger ages (which in many ways are the most important ones), there is still that fundamental freedom to be on your own with your friends. Kids age as young as 5 are often out on their own with their friends outside, or walking to school, etc. That's something you would be arrested for in the U.S. I see the North American situation as much more scary, TBH.
    - seattle_spring 7y ago
cmroanirgo 7y ago
From the article: > The suicide rate for children is twice what it is for children during months when school is in session than when it’s not in session,” according to Dr. Gray. “That’s true for suicide completion, suicide attempts and suicidal ideation, whereas for adults, it’s higher in the summer. It seems that families are particularly under stress if such observances can be made. As a single white guy, I find this a bit alarming because I've always had this notion that a family unit would be an easier way to ride out deep depression, rather than not. It just goes to show.
- darkerside 7y ago
  Uh, winter???
  - Izkata 7y ago
    The stats are school/not school, not summer/winter. If I had to guess, it's the daily socialization during school that reduces it from a baseline, rather than an increase during summer (as winter depression is often described).
neverartful 7y ago
I too grew up in the be home for dinner generation and am very grateful for having lived it. One of the comments I sometimes make to others when this topic comes up is that I'm glad that cell phones and the Internet didn't exist when I was a kid. Why? Because I likely would have missed out on the best parts of being a kid. Boredom was great. We would then find something non-boring to do, such as: ride bikes, play basketball/football/baseball, swim, listen to music, ride go carts, and so on.
- WalterBright 7y ago
  My brother and I built a go-kart out of scrap angle iron and an old lawnmower engine. We had an unbelievable amount of fun with it.
tootie 7y ago
Honestly, the generation of my-kid-has-a-phone-with-gps is probably going to have even more freedom.
- reaperducer 7y ago
  The same way that having ad tech companies track our every movement online is going to deliver a better experience? Freedom comes from being free. Not from being surveilled.
  - Mtinie 7y ago
    I strongly disagree with your assertion. The two are not at all similar. Parents, by common definition and biologically, are there to support and protect their offspring. Keeping an eye on where your kids are is vastly different than commercial entities doing it.
gumby 7y ago
> ... last) "be home for dinner, be back by dark" generation. It's a US newspaper talking about a particular US pathology. China manifests this in a different way (heavy tracking of kids) but I think most countries are perfectly ok with kids being kids.
Iv 7y ago
See, I like the point you are making, but how do we know that overprotection was not a cause of the increased safety? The numbers quoted in this article look ridiculously high to me: https://abcnews.go.com/US/missing-children-america-unsolved-cases/story?id=19126967 https://abcnews.go.com/US/missing-children-america-unsolved-... But even at a tenth of that, making your kids harder to abduct may be the main driving factor in lowering kids abductions.
ecoled_ame 7y ago
Probably when you were a kid the global population was around half of what it is know, i.e. twice the amount of space per kid.
nandreev 7y ago
I'm curious -- what decade was that? I grew up in 90s Russia, it was literally "be home for dinner, be back by dark." The things we did without supervision...
- protomyth 7y ago
  Gen X in the USA. The Millennials got hosed, badly. Not only did their playgrounds get replaced with child-safe equipment that looks really unfun[1], they got a whole load of parental and school supervision over recess. Never mind the whole no going out without parents crud. 1) the 20' dome monkey bars I played on as a youth got tore down and replaced with a molded plastic installation to play on.
morpheuskafka 7y ago
Exactly... there is not a single day when a story of a violent crime and/or serious injury to someone isn't the first story on all the local news outlets.
tmaly 7y ago
I grew up being able to stay at my friends and bike home in the dark. Aside from school demands, there is this whole helicopter parenting phenomenon
oneepic 7y ago
Kids also need time away from computers, TV, etc., I'd think. Unless they have some condition where they literally can't leave the house, or do much else every day... If you're a normal kid, you should use the opportunity to go outside, see the world, talk to people, etc.

bgravinz 7y ago

The wisdom of the "may you live in interesting times" curse rears its head once again.

Causalityl 7y ago

Indeed. There is no better example of a failure to do basic math than running active shooter drills when 98% of child gun homicides happen outside of school hours.

jcranmer 7y ago
Columbine, Sandy Hook, Parkland, Santa Fe, and Red Lake are the mass shootings of my lifetime to take place in schools. Virginia Tech and another community college also saw mass shootings, if you want to include tertiary education. Note that three of these are in the top 10 (and 2 in the top 5) if you rank them by deaths.
- Causalityl 7y ago
  Yes they did. They are also a tiny drop in the bucket of child gun homicides, an even smaller drop for child gun deaths, and an incredibly small bump in child deaths overall.
  - jcranmer 7y ago
    Active shooter drills aren't about preventing child gun homicides. They're about active shooter situations inside schools, which are actual events that have happened. You may debate how useful they are, or if the frequency of school shootings is sufficient to justify them, but I will point out that the number of times I have had to evacuate a school (admittedly, due to a bomb threat) is equal to the number of times we had to "assume the position" for a tornado threat (exactly once).
- jakelazaroff 7y ago
  As far as I know, there’s also no evidence that active shooter drills make students safer.
- protomyth 7y ago
  Homicide isn't even in the top 10 ways to die in the US. The students are in more danger from drowning, by a wide margin, than any school shooting. https://www.cdc.gov/homeandrecreationalsafety/water-safety/waterinjuries-factsheet.html https://www.cdc.gov/homeandrecreationalsafety/water-safety/w...
  - flukus 7y ago
    In Australia at least this is an area we are getting worse at (https://lsv.com.au/research/water-competency-of-victorian-children/ https://lsv.com.au/research/water-competency-of-victorian-ch...). 3 out of 5 fail the current standard of swimming continuously for 50 meters at the end of primary school. The standard has dropped too, ~25 years ago when I was tested the standard was 200 meters and most of the "training" happened in unstructured time.
    - oska 7y ago
      That's disappointing. I feel like being able to swim and handle ocean surf is a "birthright" of Aussie kids. I remember being taken out in fairly big crashing surf as young as 5 and 6 years old by my parents so I could learn how to handle it (dive under breaking waves, judge currents, etc). I would guess the trend is not so bad in Queensland. One thing that is very impressive here is the number of pools in schools, including public schools, and the very, very active swim programs that go with them. Brisbane probably has one of the best swimming cultures in the world (backed up by the number of swimmming champions that have come from here).
      - flukus 7y ago
        I grew up on the Gold Coast and definitely enjoyed that birthright, playing in the ocean shallows from before I could walk, doing nippers at age 6, etc, but I believe the Queensland standard has also dropped to 50m. I don't think many public schools there have pools even now though, it was almost all private ones when I was a kid. A big differentiator in Qld was the huge number of backyard pools, but they seem to be disappearing as Qld catches up population wise with the southern states, not to mention costs with recent droughts. Watching my nephews that nature of their swimming seems to be a bit different, for me we were riding or bikes to pools/beaches by ourselves from the age of about 9, they live in Brisbanes suburbia and have to be driven to a pool/beach and then supervised. They're largely left to their own merits once they get there, but it's more of a family thing than a friends thing and they don't have to learn there own dispute resolution and the like, nor do they get to decide when to go and when to leave.
mandelbrotwurst 7y ago
Do you know what the composition of the other 98% looks like? i.e. accidental firings at home, murders, suicides, etc?
- Causalityl 7y ago
  I restricted my comparison to homicides only. They're basically statistically insignificant compared to the other much more common causes of child firearm death.
  - mandelbrotwurst 7y ago
    Thanks, sorry, misread. Was asking because am curious about how the deaths break down overall as this would affect what we might want to focus on when attempting to reduce them.
- protomyth 7y ago
  The CDC does an amazing job of gather stats on what kills people in the USA. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm and those statistics have a section on child mortality.
  - mandelbrotwurst 7y ago
    Thanks!
  - erklik 7y ago
    Interesting, by gathering data on what kills people, they inadvertently also gather data on how dangerous guns are. Although, props to the CDC. That is some serious data gathering, cleaning etc. Most countries don't have that level of detail. At least not publically available.
    - protomyth 7y ago
      Beware of comparing the data with other countries as the definition for what looks like the same terms is hidden in the details. Infant mortality is one area where there are some fundamental differences in definition (yeah, this is a surprise). Guns are a far cry in danger from quite a lot of activities.
mandelbrotwurst 7y ago
@Causalityl , @jranmer - question for both of you (or whoever) - at what rate of death if any would it become appropriate to do these types of drills and why?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- sixstringtheory 7y ago
  I don’t know where the line is, but I think I would sooner pull my kids out to homeschool than have them be further traumatized/militarized by letting them participate in active shooter drills. It’s insane and will be a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more you expose kids to this kind of lifestyle, the more it becomes... part of their lifestyle.
  - mandelbrotwurst 7y ago
    Yeah, that came to mind for me as well / seems like a pretty serious drawback to say the least.
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    Yeah, look how utterly ruined we were because we had nuclear bomb drills(!) and earthquake drills.
    - Nasrudith 7y ago
      I know you were being sarcastic but you might be accidentally right. Have you seen the level of fear mongering in politics and a lack of regard for the future from the eras when they existed? I think the nuclear bomb drills may have really ruined them - that or the leaded gasoline.The 'I turned out just fine insistence' is often seen from people who support beating the pattern of abuse in beating their children. I'm not trying to be a snide jackass here - I suspect it had real deleterious effects but they were normalized and went uncommented upon. The Black Death appeared to have some similar precedent as western culture became utterly desensitized to skeletons and 'the end is nigh' beliefs became a sizeable reoccurring minority to majority. I believe Rome had similar beliefs as some saw the writing on the wall of their decline. I'm not an expert but I wouldn't be surprised it died out in the dark ages as people were in the actual 'post apocalypse' and doing things like former Roman seamen founding Venice.

mandelbrotwurst 7y ago

Agree with your general point, but: 1. There were children born before you with frightened helicopter parents and there will be children born tomorrow who grow up with more freedom than you did. Generational experience is not homogenous. 2. Current trends do not set our future paths into stone, and it is possible that we will be able to plant seeds to move things in freer, saner directions going forward.

xenocyon 7y ago

As a parent, I actually do pay attention to CDC stats. And because of this, I am worried - not because of kidnappers, but because of cars - which unlike most other dangers have only gotten deadlier (to pedestrians) over the years (source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/07/us/pedestrian-deaths.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/07/us/pedestrian-deaths.html). Despite living an urban lifestyle, walking or biking to destinations, and teaching our kid basic traffic safety, we are nonetheless at the mercy of other people driving deadly weapons all the time.

nostromo 7y ago
The DOT doesn't show that to be the case. https://cdn3.vox-cdn.com/assets/4315981/DeathsOverTime.png https://cdn3.vox-cdn.com/assets/4315981/DeathsOverTime.png Remember, the correct way to look at this data is per person. The US has 30% more people now than it did in 1990. So, even though there were similar number of deaths, you're children are still safer than you were in 1990. A not-so-fun fact most people don't know: > One in every three of fatal pedestrian crashes involved a pedestrian with a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of at least 0.08 grams per deciliter (g/dL) https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/pedestrian_safety/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/pedestrian_safety/ind...
- idoubtit 7y ago
  > The DOT doesn't show that to be the case. Your graph stopped at year 2012 with a rate of 15.1 pedestrian fatalities. The latest report on the CDC website has the following text under "key findings": "In 2016 there were 5,987 pedestrians killed in traffic crashes, a 9-percent increase from the 5,495 pedestrian fatalities in 2015. This is the highest number of pedestrians killed in one year since 1990." Unless I'm mistaken, this give a rate of 18.1 in 2016. It is a large increase from 15.1 in 2012, though the discrepancy in sources may invalidate the comparison. Anyway, this 2016 report points to a increased fatality rate. From the same source, it seems the problem is that accidents have not much increased in frequency, but they are more fatal. The fatality rate went from 11% to 15% in 10 years. https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812493 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...

Scoutmaster 7y ago

I recently became a Scoutmaster. That's what I'm trying to do: give the kids the same opportunity we had - freedom to explore the outdoors. Confidence to take care of themselves and not need an adult to do everything for them. To give them opportunites to build character.

neverartful 7y ago
Kudos to you -- much respect. I was an adult leader when my son was a Scout and I went on a number of weekend campouts and 1 week of Scout summer camp. One of the big challenges I saw was to get the boys to leave their electronics behind. Nevertheless, we had some really fun outings and the boys were able to enjoy the outdoors.
brightball 7y ago
It's really one of the reasons that I got my son into Scouts in the first place. It forces the type of activities that should really just be normal.
creaghpatr 7y ago
Great memories from cub scouts- I would not have learned how to camp otherwise (until later in life perhaps)
gen220 7y ago
Scouts was a hugely formative time in my life, precisely because our Scoutmasters decided to buck the trend of the other Boy Scout Troops in our area (adult-dictated Eagle Scout factories). The strongest memories I have of Scouts were of the older boys teaching us things, and of myself doing the same for younger boys. These “things” ranged from profound reflections on life to very practical skills. We ran our own fundraisers, planned our own trips and periodic events, and staged our own elections for very meaningful leadership positions. “The Adults” were always in the background, jumping in to support and advise when asked for. I always thought that they had chosen the easy path, because they didn’t have to work too hard! In retrospect, I realize this was actually the hardest path – to trust that your kids and their insane friends are actually capable of intelligible self government etc. And this didn’t come at the expense of excellence, but quite the contrary! Our troop had a proud legacy of winning the various prestigious awards at summer camp year-after-year, and the boys were very good at passing down this expectation of integrity and success to successive generations of kids. That’s something that is hard to maintain in troops with very hands-on adult leaders - once a Scoutmaster’s kids age out, the culture of the troop can change dramatically. On the flip side, troop culture seems to be more resilient when it’s boy-led. Anyways, I wish you the best of luck! Thank you for bringing these pleasant memories into my head to reflect on. Your kids will thank you for your restraint :)

phkahler 7y ago

>> I'm so glad I was able to grow up in the (sadly last) "be home for dinner, be back by dark" generation. My grandfather collected bells - the ones they had in the old schoolhouses 100 years ago (he'd get them when the schools closed). I grew up in the suburbs but we had a steel bell about 1m diameter on our front porch. For grins mom would ring it occasionally at dinner time. You could hear it 3 streets over. She didn't always know where we were. Sometimes other kids would ring it at night and run away - if you thought ringing doorbells was annoying....

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imglorp 7y ago
We had one too! "Go play, and don't come back until you hear the dinner bell." Plenty of range. So important for kids to grow up and explore.

JKCalhoun 7y ago

And yet there was "danger, scare the crap out of people" then too. Don't take candy from a stranger. Razor blades in apples… Unless it's a difference in degree, that alone is not what has changed. To be sure we seem to be a more fearful society then we were then.

protomyth 7y ago
"Unless it's a difference in degree" Let your kids play outside by themselves or walk to school, and get reported to Child Protective Services. It is very much a different world these days.
- neverartful 7y ago
  Right! It's the combination of new laws/regulations and the higher likelihood of litigation when kids get hurt. On the other hand, there are plenty of parents who completely neglect their kids. We don't want that either.
- noonespecial 7y ago
  Child Protective Services is the thing I've most feared as a parent. Getting caught up in that system is about the worst thing that can happen to a child.
- rbritton 7y ago
  Utah actually passed something to mitigate against that kind of response last year. https://www.sltrib.com/news/2018/01/24/utah-lawmakers-pass-bill-legalizing-free-range-parenting/ https://www.sltrib.com/news/2018/01/24/utah-lawmakers-pass-b...
- germinalphrase 7y ago
  Look - I'm sure you can find some outlier news article about this happening, but as someone who actually has professional contact with CPS once in a while, this is - in my opinion - wildly hyperbolic. The social workers I know who work for CPS have excessive work loads of really intense circumstances (like, children being preyed upon, beaten, chained to radiators...). They're not doing parent interviews because someone let their 10-year-old walk to the park.

shioyama 7y ago

> Kids need time with their friends away from parents. I'm so glad I was able to grow up in the (sadly last) "be home for dinner, be back by dark" generation. Completely agree with your comment, but "sadly last" here is not accurate unless you're talking about North America and maybe Europe. I live in Japan and it's quite normal, even in a big city like Tokyo, to let kids play on their own until it gets dark. I feel quite lucky to be in a country not yet afflicted by this disease that has hit all of North America and (I hear) Europe as well - a disease of over-protecting kids to the point of suffocation. People need to call this trend for what it is. They're not doing the next generation any good, and probably lots of harm.

fzeroracer 7y ago
To be fair, I don't think Japan is exactly a good model to bring up here. Kids are independent with their free time, but most of their free time is taken up having to study seven days a week while dealing with absent parents having to work long hours and a grueling school system that is part of the reason why Japan has such a high suicide rate among youths. Which I think is more of a problem than helicopter parenting in America and is what I think our school system is turning into. We're already working longer hours for less pay and increasing pressure on children to perform well even in Kindergarten.
- shioyama 7y ago
  > Which I think is more of a problem than helicopter parenting in America Sorry, as a parent in Japan, I beg to disagree. The system here has lots of problems, don't get me wrong - and I really don't like the "juku" (cram-school) model at all. But particularly at younger ages (which in many ways are the most important ones), there is still that fundamental freedom to be on your own with your friends. Kids age as young as 5 are often out on their own with their friends outside, or walking to school, etc. That's something you would be arrested for in the U.S. I see the North American situation as much more scary, TBH.
  - seattle_spring 7y ago

cmroanirgo 7y ago

From the article: > The suicide rate for children is twice what it is for children during months when school is in session than when it’s not in session,” according to Dr. Gray. “That’s true for suicide completion, suicide attempts and suicidal ideation, whereas for adults, it’s higher in the summer. It seems that families are particularly under stress if such observances can be made. As a single white guy, I find this a bit alarming because I've always had this notion that a family unit would be an easier way to ride out deep depression, rather than not. It just goes to show.

darkerside 7y ago
Uh, winter???
- Izkata 7y ago
  The stats are school/not school, not summer/winter. If I had to guess, it's the daily socialization during school that reduces it from a baseline, rather than an increase during summer (as winter depression is often described).

neverartful 7y ago

I too grew up in the be home for dinner generation and am very grateful for having lived it. One of the comments I sometimes make to others when this topic comes up is that I'm glad that cell phones and the Internet didn't exist when I was a kid. Why? Because I likely would have missed out on the best parts of being a kid. Boredom was great. We would then find something non-boring to do, such as: ride bikes, play basketball/football/baseball, swim, listen to music, ride go carts, and so on.

WalterBright 7y ago
My brother and I built a go-kart out of scrap angle iron and an old lawnmower engine. We had an unbelievable amount of fun with it.

tootie 7y ago

Honestly, the generation of my-kid-has-a-phone-with-gps is probably going to have even more freedom.

reaperducer 7y ago
The same way that having ad tech companies track our every movement online is going to deliver a better experience? Freedom comes from being free. Not from being surveilled.
- Mtinie 7y ago
  I strongly disagree with your assertion. The two are not at all similar. Parents, by common definition and biologically, are there to support and protect their offspring. Keeping an eye on where your kids are is vastly different than commercial entities doing it.

gumby 7y ago

> ... last) "be home for dinner, be back by dark" generation. It's a US newspaper talking about a particular US pathology. China manifests this in a different way (heavy tracking of kids) but I think most countries are perfectly ok with kids being kids.

Iv 7y ago

See, I like the point you are making, but how do we know that overprotection was not a cause of the increased safety? The numbers quoted in this article look ridiculously high to me: https://abcnews.go.com/US/missing-children-america-unsolved-cases/story?id=19126967 https://abcnews.go.com/US/missing-children-america-unsolved-... But even at a tenth of that, making your kids harder to abduct may be the main driving factor in lowering kids abductions.

ecoled_ame 7y ago

Probably when you were a kid the global population was around half of what it is know, i.e. twice the amount of space per kid.

nandreev 7y ago

I'm curious -- what decade was that? I grew up in 90s Russia, it was literally "be home for dinner, be back by dark." The things we did without supervision...

protomyth 7y ago
Gen X in the USA. The Millennials got hosed, badly. Not only did their playgrounds get replaced with child-safe equipment that looks really unfun[1], they got a whole load of parental and school supervision over recess. Never mind the whole no going out without parents crud. 1) the 20' dome monkey bars I played on as a youth got tore down and replaced with a molded plastic installation to play on.

morpheuskafka 7y ago

Exactly... there is not a single day when a story of a violent crime and/or serious injury to someone isn't the first story on all the local news outlets.

tmaly 7y ago

I grew up being able to stay at my friends and bike home in the dark. Aside from school demands, there is this whole helicopter parenting phenomenon

oneepic 7y ago

Kids also need time away from computers, TV, etc., I'd think. Unless they have some condition where they literally can't leave the house, or do much else every day... If you're a normal kid, you should use the opportunity to go outside, see the world, talk to people, etc.