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> who in their right mind calls the cops on a kid walking around his own neighborhood? I wish I knew. My children have had the cops called on them for playing
by kelseyfrog 4y ago
> who in their right mind calls the cops on a kid walking around his own neighborhood?
I wish I knew. My children have had the cops called on them for playing in our front yard. I wish they could spend their afternoons climbing trees and playing in the grass like I did growing up, but there's a group of people who see children playing outside of direct parent supervision as a categorically dangerous activity.
I'm always struck when I take my kids to school and see the high schoolers gathered around waiting for their bus to pick them up. You wouldn't even know they exist otherwise - there's no other signs of their existence, no groups of them playing at the park, no sounds of games in the streets, no hoots or hollers from down the block - just nothing, silence. Each house is an island and each teen a castaway from 4pm when they get home to 7am when they leave for school, severed from the neighborhood and each other while the same folks say, "How come kids don't play outside anymore?"
- menomatter 4y agoKids from the project/poor neighborhood in metro cities still do this to a dangerous extent. I dunno what's a good balanced approach ..
- kickout 4y agoThis, unfortunately, mimics my experiences. No idea when or how it happened, but it is noticeable
- alcover 4y agoCould it be the deluge of televised fear-inducing content ? A great deal anxiety feeds on this distorted view of "what's happening". But go and have a walk. What do you see "happening" ? nothing.
- soco 4y agoIn Switzerland you'd get called by the teacher if you don't let your kid walk by itself to kindergarten, because independence and learning and all.
- jakewins 4y agoWe just moved to Sweden from Missouri; yesterday I picked up our 3yo from daycare and had this exchange: Kid: <Happily playing with clay> Teacher: Oh, by the way, he fell out of a small tree today, he was climbing and fell, so he may have a small bruise, just so you are aware Me: Oh ok. What tree? Teacher: Oh we took them to <forest 5 miles from daycare> and grilled hot dogs today! Kid: I found a snail!
- mkopinsky 4y agoHow did they get to that forest 5 miles away?
- jakewins 4y agoThe city has buses specifically equipped for small kids / toddlers, which the various daycares take turns using
- I-Robot 4y agoGod! This is so AWESOME!!! Freedom
- LaLaLand122 4y agoI have visited nurseries that don't let kids go out to the playground when it rains... in the UK! I suspect some of my child classmates were Gremlins.
- soco 4y agoWednesday is forest trip day, weather schmeather. Once after a stormy Wednesday the kindergarten stayed closed for the rest of the week as most of the involved - kids and educators - got a cold. Still Switzerland yes.
- necovek 4y agoLOL. We've got Gremlins here in Belgrade, Serbia too. But in my kid's preschool (for 5-6 year olds), when they were presenting a plan for this year and how they'll be crossing the street to another of their buildings for a few hours, one of the parents was worried they'll do that even if it rains or snows! When asked how will they bring their kid to preschool not dressed for the elements, it was (not-surprisingly) "by car". I guess going outside is limited to sunny weather for their kids!
- tjr225 4y ago
- noahtallen 4y agoWell, part of the problem is our infrastructure choices over the past many decades. When you build suburbs that are very isolated from places you need to go and then need to drive to literally everything you do, nearly everyone starts viewing normal activities like walking to a grocery store as abnormal. As a result, kids can’t actually go anywhere until they turn 16 and get a car. :/ There are a lot of excellent videos about this sad problem, like this: https://youtu.be/oHlpmxLTxpw https://youtu.be/oHlpmxLTxpw But at the end of the day, when it’s not actually possible to be independent every day, you just loose this culture. And countries that made different infrastructure and development decisions 6 decades ago are in a much better place today — it doesn’t have to be this way.
- chromanoid 4y agoI think this is a very important point. City planning/the space we live in is basically presetting the architecture of our daily life.
- ishjoh 4y agoOf the high school and jr high kids I know, for most of them their life is on their phone. It doesn't cover that age group but I thought this graph was pretty interesting: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1310218/time-spent-using-smartphone-age-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1310218/time-spent-using... Generally the younger you are the more likely you are to be a heavy user of your phone. There is no data for it but I would expect that high school and jr high kids are probably even higher users than 18 - 34.
- soco 4y agoBecause what else there's left to do? Getting your family arrested for playing in the front yard or walking to your friend or hanging in a parking lot? So we destroyed all fun activities then we're still complaining they don't do any fun activities?
- kelseyfrog 4y agoI agree that we've destroyed all of the third spaces. It's also important to point that those that didn't literally get razed to the ground have been monetized. There are very few third spaces left that are free to engage with. There's either the real threat of "buy something or get out," or the social expectation to do so. This impacts teens especially so because their money must either come from their parents ie: "Mom can I have five dollars to spend on going to <place> with <friend>?" which is an impediment to spending real relationship building time with peers or they have to get a job to earn such money which precludes them from going out in the first place. As a footnote: Yes, I know this seems fairly reductive and there's a lot of nuance left on the table. A single counter example won't change my mind because I'm talking about tendencies instead of black or white expression.
- jasonladuke0311 4y agoYeah no shit. There are numerous videos on Instagram of teens literally being physically assaulted by 50-70 year old "adults" for skateboarding.
- kentm 4y agoThis is a serious worry of mine. I often let my elementary kids walk home from school by themselves because we live close enough and they have good sense around what little traffic there is. But I always worry that someone will throw a fit about it. I worry about that a LOT more than kidnappers.
- ajford 4y agoSame. I let my kids walk about 0.5mi to the park and I'm more afraid of some nosey busy-body calling CPS on them than I am about traffic or kidnappers. When I was growing up in the 90s, I'd routinely bike many miles away from home and disappear for hours before I came home. Nowadays letting your kids do that is liable to get CPS called on you. How the heck did we end up here?!
- midoridensha 4y ago>How the heck did we end up here?! In my view, America as a society became paranoid after 9/11. What you're seeing is a symptom of this. It isn't like this in other countries: kids walk around by themselves all the time.
- orwin 4y agoI think it's the suburbs effect. I've been in one of the most rural county of West Virginia, i saw kids outside each time i left the "house".
- midoridensha 4y agoIf it's the suburbs effect, then it's been very slow to come to this point, because America has had subdivisions since the 1950s. Back in the 80s and 90s, what we're reading about here never happened.
- TheHappyOddish 4y agoAlso, most other western countries have been suburbanised just as long and don't have this madness.
- brightball 4y agoIs there some type of penalty/law for intentionally using the police to harass people?
- jstarfish 4y ago"Abuse of emergency services," but this isn't that.
- actionfromafar 4y agoSounds exactly like that.
- zhdc1 4y agoMy son is expected to walk to and from school without parental support once he starts kindergarten. We don't live in the states.
- ddalex 4y agoSwitzerland ? One of the places that is somewhat normal...
- Zvez 4y agoactually this is more than normal in all 3rd world countries. Starting from 6-7 years most kids walk to/from school on their own.
- cypress66 4y ago> in all 3rd world countries Not true.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- 0xedd 4y agoYes, the poverty stricken parents have all the time in the world to walk their kids around all day. /s They'd be lucky to even have two live parents and in the picture.
- cypress66 4y agoYou have some really deep knowledge of what 3rd world countries are like. Please continue and tell me more about the topic.
- Markoff 4y agoI'd go even that far that 7-9 yo kids in Vietnam, Laos or Thailand already ride motorbike (scooter) at that age, I crashed because of them once in Laos (on the way to Plain of jars), just suddenly stopped in front of me on dusty road, I stopped as well, but sadly I had passenger behind me who balanced in other direction, so we flipped to side when bike slipped a bit.
- PragmaticPulp 4y ago> My children have had the cops called on them for playing in our front yard. Where do you live? Whenever I read these stories it feels like I live on a different planet from everyone else.
- kelseyfrog 4y agoI live in a vast Californian suburb dominated by single family residences built in the 90s. The homes are priced around the median for the area. The residents are split about 50/50 politically and racially plural. The majority are married and earn ever so slightly below median income. It's about as average as you can get. Note: I looked up these stats to make sure I got them right. They are mostly at the voting precinct, and census BG level, but I'm abstaining from posting them for obvious reasons.
- SoftTalker 4y agoMove to a sane state. I live in the midwest, in a smaller town. You still see kids playing in the neighborhood and parks and running around. Kids walk and bike to school. Nobody would call the cops over a kid walking by himself unless he looked to be lost or in distress.
- meowfly 4y agoUtah has a free range parenting law on their books. https://www.npr.org/2018/04/01/598630200/utah-passes-free-range-parenting-law https://www.npr.org/2018/04/01/598630200/utah-passes-free-ra...
- notch656a 4y agoYeah I lived in the midwest and there are roaming bands of ~10 year olds who are legit criminals, ripping off and stealing things from myself and other neighbors and basically living independently outside of school and sleeping at home. Cops and CPS can't be bothered (note I never personally called them, although I have had to address the children directly to ask them to stop stealing from my house). I still prefer that to a "safe" place where my kids have to risk getting ripped away from their parents for walking to a park. The key to not dealing with police is moving to a high crime area with a weak police presence. These kind of CPS paranoia stuff is generally not enforced in places that are actually less safe for children. If the area is safe, that's when CPS/police will have the time to focus on you to call it unsafe. That is, kids aren't really safe from CPS of accusing them of being unsafe unless it is actually unsafe, in which case authorities never responded in the first place because CPS and the police are busy visiting an abandoned crack-baby.
- christophilus 4y ago> but there's a group of people who see children playing outside of direct parent supervision as a categorically dangerous activity We can broaden that a bit to: “There’s an ever growing group of people who think they can and should be the arbiter of other people’s behavior.” Everyone needs to learn to mind their own fucking business.
- paperwasp42 4y agoKudos to you for bucking the trend and encouraging your kids to do things like spending afternoons romping around outside! Complete anecdata, but the parents in my close friend group are split between "parents with a more free-range kid mindset" and "typical upper-middle-class parental paranoia." The free-range kids are mostly happy-go-lucky, emotionally stable, and thriving. Almost every single kid over the age of 10 with paranoid parents is diagnosed with a mental health condition of some sort. I mean I literally can only think of one who is not in therapy or taking medication. I think the isolation and lack of unsupervised group activities that you describe is a big part of it. One of my more paranoid friends made a judgmental comment recently regarding my other friend's daughter not being in therapy. I was extremely confused and asked if the kiddo was having emotional issues. Her response was, "Well not yet, but 12 is a very stressful age, and I think that when you have the money to do so, it's just good parenting to ensure your kid is talking to a therapist on a regular basis." The level of paranoia needed to believe that every single perfectly stable 12-year-old needs weekly visits with a mental health professional to ensure their health and safety, and that not supplying this is neglectful, is just... bizarre. I cannot help but believe this sort of behavior is severely damaging the psyche of these kids. And I also don't see how it can't be hurting the parents as well. Imagine how incredibly stressful it must be to be a parent who believes every stranger, every walk around the block, and every pre-teen mood swing is a serious danger to their child.
- origin_path 4y agoOur society is way too tolerant of that kind of behavior. It's similar to how there are still occasional people wearing masks, even outdoors. It needs to become socially acceptable to tell people they're being paranoid and weird, in the same way they feel it's acceptable to tell others they're not paranoid enough.
- paperwasp42 4y agoMasks are a bit trickier, since some people are severely immunocompromised or have loved ones who are immunocompromised. If you are undergoing chemo, or your parent is on hospice care, it actually makes sense to keep wearing a mask everywhere, and doctors are encouraging this (not just to defend against COVID germs, but all germs). But as for outside masks, I agree, it's just straight up unscientific. Especially when people are wearing flimsy cloth masks that do little to ward off COVID germs in the first place! Although I know some people keep them on outside if they're walking between buildings, just because it's easier than taking it on/off constantly. So anyway, masks kind of fall into that category of "I ain't gonna judge if I don't know your exact situation." But I agree, it would be nice to be able to tell my friends who are perfectly healthy with no at-risk loved ones, hey, you really don't need to keep wearing a mask outside for the rest of your life. Both because it's silly, and because it seems genuinely damaging to their mental health... I have a couple friends who still get anxious/upset when someone gets within 6 feet of them without a mask on, and it's just a needlessly stressful way to live that is taking a very, very serious toll on their mental health.
- honkycat 4y agoWe basically jail our children at this point. It was like this when I was in high school as well: There is no place where young people are allowed to gather and explore their personalities.