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This is completely cultural. Here in Israel kids as young as 5 walk to school alone (not legally, just reality), and you'll frequently see a 6 year old taking t
by cik 6y ago
This is completely cultural. Here in Israel kids as young as 5 walk to school alone (not legally, just reality), and you'll frequently see a 6 year old taking the bus. The community looks out for them, parents give them cellphones (dumb phones), and we don't worry about stranger danger in this way.
I send my 7 year old to the corner store a couple of times a week (pre British Super-COVID) to buy missing ingredients, a bottle of wine... basically whatever's missing. It takes a village to raise a child, and we're all responsible for society's coherence.
- dmje 6y agoCame here to say this. I think it's more than cultural, it's a US obsession to helicopter parent. We're in the uk and kids are widely allowed to roam, and good on the parents and kids for giving them autonomy. We live by the sea in a small town: my kids are 13 and 16 now but have been encouraged out for some years. How else are they going to learn how to interact with the world, learn how to negotiate roads, know not to fall in the sea? I'm sounding blase. I'm not, they're my kids and as such are as important to me as it gets, but parenting - maybe the hardest thing about parenting - is about letting go, knowing that you're making strong, independent adults.
- cik 6y agoI really like that idea of making strong, independent adults. I firmly believe the whole point is to help them be better than I am, to guide but not push (well, push sometimes), and I think that independence is the key part of this. It has subtle ways of teaching other skills like critical thinking, story telling, decision making, communication, math, and others. I could never go back to the old model.
- dmitriid 6y agoSame in Sweden, though probably for kids starting from around age 8.
- checkyoursudo 6y agoIn Sweden here, my 6 y.o. takes the city bus to school from our town to the town a couple km away. When I lived in Germany, I would regularly see fairly young kids taking the U-Bahn, though I don't exactly know how young they were. Probably older than 6, but maybe not much older.
- dmitriid 6y agoOne thing that I like in Sweden (and the same most likely goes for other European countries, too): kindergarteners are routinely taken on field trips via subways, commuter trains and busses. By the time they are out of kindergarten they know the public transit system even better than some adults.
- coryrc 6y agoThe important part is you have community to look out for them. The US no longer has shared community in a given locale.
- mbg721 6y agoWorse than that, even as community cohesion has evaporated, US culture still encourages Mrs. Kravitzes (from the tv show Bewitched), who hand-wring about other people's parenting for sport. It's the worst of both worlds.
- dfxm12 6y agoWhy is that? Because the adults in these locales are anti-social? Something else? Whatever the problem, we should take responsibility and try to better our neighborhood for our kids. I'm glad I wasn't raised and don't currently live in such locales of the US. I knew all my neighbors and a lot of store owners growing up. I know a lot of the neighborhood kids today, and luckily it's never come to this, but I hope they know they can knock on my door if they need something.
- coryrc 6y agoBowling Alone[0] is usually the referenced tome. I would also throw "rising inequality" in the list of causes, but also a lack of unifying culture beyond nihilism, which isn't conducive to holding people together. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone