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Giving kids no autonomy at all has become a parenting norm

285 points by jseliger 4y ago

drak0n1c 4y ago
No autonomy except when it comes to devices and the internet. Far too many parents are either ignorant of or too lazy to set up parental controls on new phones, tablets, and computers before handing them to kids. The TikTok ban debate would have never been needed if there were basic parental awareness. They instead resort to manual snooping and device taking after the damage is done. They’re helicopter parenting the wrong areas of life.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  Idk, seems like YouTube recognizes their responsibility with children. Can we really expect parents to do better than app level moderation?
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  > Far too many parents are either ignorant of or too lazy to set up parental controls on new phones, tablets, and computers before handing them to kids. To be fair, the parental controls on modern devices feel like they were developed by a bunch of childless early 20-somethings.
  - vegetablepotpie 4y ago
    I’m curious what you think parental controls are missing that are needed by parents?
    - rch 4y ago
      Forced IRC only hours.
    - thom 4y ago
      Templated, reusable schedules so I don’t have to set up downtime for each kid individually. Allow overrides for holidays etc. Apple let you press a button for ‘one more minute’ that seems impossible to disable. Password management is horrible as a family, as is having to set up my fingerprint on all my kids’ devices to be able to help them with stuff without faff. More generally, every time I have to set up any sort of account for my kids it’s absolute torture. Try to log in with Apple ID, can’t cos they’re a kid. Try to log in with a google account, remember Family Link doesn’t work for my normal account because it was set up for a domain, so log in as my other google account, set kid up, still doesn’t work. Give me one place in my whole life to manage identity for my family, one that works, with permissions and downtime settings that integrate with every app and website in the world (including the half dozen each of my kids’ schools require us to use). I’ll pay loads of money for this.
    - 1123581321 4y ago
      Vastly smoother settings adjustment or profile selection per combo of kid/activity/device.
    - oakashes 4y ago
      The ability to make all content opt-in instead of opt-out would get you 90% of the way there. Very few services that I know of offer this. Most of them offer gating by age range into all content the service considers appropriate for that age, and most allow you to block specific content as well, but all I really want for my young kids is to know exactly what content is available to them because I have added it specifically. Beyond that, there are some nice things you could do like a workflow for a kid to request new content and a parent to review and approve/deny it. But that's definitely a nice-to-have.
      - cameldrv 4y ago
        This. There is some fantastic stuff for kids on YouTube (most of it though is actually made for adults and is not available on YouTube kids). However, there is a tremendous amount of trash, and the recommender loves it. I wish I could add a bunch of good channels and let the kids pick their own content, but only from that list.
  - klyrs 4y ago
    > they were developed by a bunch of childless early 20-somethings. Can confirm, I know a few people who work in a social media "for kids" group and they fit this description to a tee and display significant naivety.
  - scruple 4y ago
    Streaming services in particular are driving me crazy. They don't have parental controls. Not really. You can make a kids account or whatever but you can't dictate what can or can't be seen. I'm at a point with streaming services -- and this stems from the 24/7, 365 on-demand access we have to television and movies today that was not reality when I was a child -- where I'm ready to cancel everything and curate my our experience for myself and my kids with a NAS and torrents. edit/ So I check Netflix to see what they offer. Viewing restrictions limits content based on parental guidelines ratings. That's really it. It's like someone else commented, it's as if these places are staffed by people who don't have children.
    - eru 4y ago
      You can ban individual shows in kids' Netflix.
      - scruple 4y ago
        I can't find it, despite trying for the last ~10 minutes. edit/ You'll have to pardon the evening Dad brain, I googled it. Thank you, kind stranger!
        eru 4y ago
        I had to look that up on the web recently, too. To remove some shows that have recently seen heavy rotation, or are otherwise too annoying for the parents.
      - wink 4y ago
        Sounds just as useless, I'd expect "allow these shows" and not "oh, I need to ban 500"
        eru 4y ago
        Depends on your use case. We just use it to remove shows as they start to annoy us. Not to pre-emptively control what the kid watches.
- mouse_ 4y ago
  Parental control software is counterproductive, and will generally only lead to them trying to outsmart you, which is a bad precedent. If you really want to keep your kids safe online, the most important thing to do is establish trust and understanding with them that the boundaries you set are important and reasonable. You need to respect them as people, and they need to understand and appreciate why you set the limits that you do. On top of that, you need to supervise them, and even then, they should not be allowed to use social media, which ought to be 18+ anyways. I understand this is all a lot to ask in our society. There is no "good" answer to this problem. But we should all try to do the best we can, and not forget that big tech puts hundreds of millions, if not billions, into making social media as addictive as possible. I'd say we're at a point where it's sensible to conclude it's now more addictive and harmful than tobacco, though our society has yet to come to terms with this fact. Even if we put a stop to it now (we won't), our current social media infrastructure will likely haunt us for centuries.
  - Dalewyn 4y ago
    What's sad is parents today all grew up with the internet. They should know how children should interact with it. To put it into context: Facebook was founded in 2004. That is 19 years ago. Youtube was founded in 2005. That is 18 years ago. Twitter was founded in 2006. That is 17 years ago. Google was founded in 1998. That is 25 years ago. The World Wide Web (remember that name?) came to be in 1989. That is 34 years ago. Social media is old enough to be in the history books, let alone the internet at large. What the hell are the parents and would-be parents of today doing to be this fucking incompetent?
    - sli 4y ago
      You're very much overestimating the average persons knowledge or ability to care about the internet beyond their relatively narrow use of it. It's hard to think critically about things that one takes for granted, and non-tech people frequently just take tech for granted. Tech people frequently do the same thing and appear completely out of touch with the average person's needs, but we call those "disruptive startups" instead.
- chrisco255 4y ago
  The TikTok ban isn't about teenage responsibility on the internet. It's just that it's a Chinese owned communications network in an era of increased tension with US gov. > They’re helicopter parenting the wrong areas of life. Helicopter parenting is always a bad idea. Either you teach your kids ethics, morals, responsibility, self-respect, and assertiveness or they will fail as adults.
- 29athrowaway 4y ago
  Don't underestimate kids. https://www.fastcompany.com/2681011/ethiopian-kids-hacked-their-donated-tablets-in-just-five-months https://www.fastcompany.com/2681011/ethiopian-kids-hacked-th... “We left the boxes in the village. Closed. Taped shut. No instruction, no human being. I thought, the kids will play with the boxes! Within four minutes, one kid not only opened the box, but found the on/off switch. He’d never seen an on/off switch. He powered it up. Within five days, they were using 47 apps per child per day. Within two weeks, they were singing ABC songs [in English] in the village. And within five months, they had hacked Android. Some idiot in our organization or in the Media Lab had disabled the camera! And they figured out it had a camera, and they hacked Android.”
  - bigDinosaur 4y ago
    I don't underestimate kids, but I suspect healthy skepticism towards 1st graders 'hacking Android' is warranted. What exactly did they do?
    - 29athrowaway 4y ago
      The OLTP devices distributed to them had the camera disabled. They figured out the way to correct the problem.
      - Dylan16807 4y ago
        That is much too vague to be useful.
  - maphew 4y ago
    I surmise those kids had near complete freedom to do whatever they wanted with those tablets. No parental helicoptering.
- kube-system 4y ago
  > The TikTok ban debate would have never been needed if there were basic parental awareness. The TikTok issues have never been about the health or safety of children. If it was, it the discussion would involve other social media. It has always been about the TikTok’s governance structure, which legally and functionally enables espionage and/or psyops against a significant portion of people who do may be involved in things that are of a US national security interest. For example, you don’t want your government personnel doing important things while carrying a device that sends important contextual data to organizations which have CCP oversight.
  - jonathanlb 4y ago
    > It has always been about the TikTok’s governance structure, which [...] enables espionage and/or psyops [...] The proposed solution to the TikTok problem is the RESTRICT Act, with language so broad and vague that it would make VPN usage a felony. It may just be incompetence on Sen. Warner's behalf, but otherwise, it's also about an opportunistic power grab by the US federal government.
    - kube-system 4y ago
      That bill surely has problems, but the way it is worded throughout, it seems fairly apparent that any impact it might have on VPNs was not the intended target. (Presuming that the language actually would ban VPNs, which is not entirely clear) Regardless, my point is that it definitely isn’t about the kids, and that is very clear in that bill.
- pteraspidomorph 4y ago
  Well, if the recent Utah thing is any sign, they're ready to overdo it when it comes to the internet, too. > The bills will give parents full access to their children's online accounts, including posts and private messages. Where "children" is defined as anyone younger than 18. I can see the point of some of these controls, but legally disallowing a 17 year old from having privacy from their parents? Absolutely not. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65060733 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65060733
DueDilligence 4y ago
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pknomad 4y ago
This writing kind of confirms what I’ve experienced as a 1st-gen Korean American growing up in New England (so n=1). I knew my parents meant well when they made sure I studied and did well at extra curricular activities (going to math Olympiad at MIT during summers, playing classical instruments, etc) and that type of “helicopter parenting” yielded good performance… when I had to do something that was highly structured. But it also meant I did not do well (or was always uncomfortable) when I had to do something that’s not highly structured (basically adulting) and I felt like I had to figure out who I really was at 30 which is not necessarily a good thing. I’m still thankful that I had parents who cared and tried best they knew how so I don’t really hold it against them, though.
- notefaker 4y ago
  Thanks for sharing this comment. I’ve had similar feelings recently, and I came to the realization that all parents will fail to teach their children certain things. Life has a funny way of revealing those areas to us as we age. Part of adulthood is the painful process of discovery and learning for ourselves. By the way, I think 30 is the perfect age to figure out who you really are.
scionthefly 4y ago
We gave high school kids some time for self-directed activities, like go see teachers for help, make up work, get a snack, hang out with friends if you have your work done. We had kids standing around looking confused. They didn't know what to do. They asked for directions on what to do. We said to look at their grades and decide what to do. When they finally pulled up the gradebook on their laptops, they would point at it and say "what do you want me to do?" Something. We want you to decide, on your own, to do something. Anything. Just make a choice. Most kids did figure it out, though not always making the wise choices (but that's part of the reason we're giving them the freedome). But there was a minority who couldn't grasp the idea that they were personally able and responsible to decide what to do.
- prawn 4y ago
  Almost need to give them a flowchart or a list or more strongly link the sessions to an outcome (improving at something, working towards a line of work, etc). It would be great if 6-12 year olds were stronger at this also.
  - rescripting 4y ago
    Having them determine what their desired outcome is and then learning how to draw up a plan to get there is more valuable for them long term than the outcome itself. A flow cart is just more hand holding.
- maxbond 4y ago
  Is it possible they didn't believe you? Eg, they thought you had something particular in mind, and they wanted you to drop the pretence and make the expectations clear? I've had limited teaching experience, all at a college level, but I would try to engage students with questions & get them to predict things they hadn't been taught yet. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it seemed like they wanted me to cut the crap and just tell them the answer, because they felt like I was setting them up to fail by asking them a question they didn't know (because it was new material). I don't think it's necessarily a lack of critical thinking skills on their part as much as an unwillingness to engage with that style of teaching, which is fair. So I'm wondering if similarly it's an unwillingness to engage in independence in a context without the requisite trust, where they might be suspicious that you'll penalize them for picking "wrong" (regardless of whether that's the reality).
pyuser583 4y ago
As the article points out - this doesn’t end at 18. Arguably, it gets worse.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  It’s also far less common to own a house, car, or have a child, dog, etc. Pretty normal to move to a big city, rent, not have kids, and play with whatever you want. And that’s the well adjusted case.
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    None of those things seem linked to autonomy.
    - nonethewiser 4y ago
      Sure is. Ownership begets autonomy. On the other end of the spectrum is renting/dependence on public services
  - Capricorn2481 4y ago
    This reads like propaganda. There's nothing wrong with not having kids or living in the city in your 20's. Buying a house as a single person in this current market would be financially irresponsible. The second person in your example has more autonomy than the first. I know plenty of husbands who can't do laundry. So implying that you're somehow developmentally stunted if you live alone in the city is extremely weird.
    - nonethewiser 4y ago
      This reads as overly defensive because as I said, that’s the well adjusted case.
      - Capricorn2481 4y ago
        > as I said, that’s the well adjusted case Because you meant it as a testament to how little autonomy everyone has across the board. And then you used "not having kids" and "living in the city" as an example. You're describing someone with more autonomy than a person with kids and a mortgage has. > Ownership begets autonomy. On the other end of the spectrum is renting/dependence on public services Can you describe how being a homeowner makes you less dependent on public services?
sidlls 4y ago
Part of this simply has to do with nosy busy-bodies ready to pounce on the phone to call Child Protective Services (or equivalent) whenever they see a child out and about on their own. I'm not afraid to send my kids to the park (few blocks down the street) alone, ride their bikes alone or instruct them to go outside after breakfast on the weekend on not come back before lunch, or hell even dinner (not that it matters for socializing--I see hardly any kids their age, pre-teens, outside, even though there are plenty around). I am afraid of what my neighbors would do. The other part is that, unless one lives in the country, it has become much harder to find neighborhoods where kids can safely roam free. I lived in both a small rural town and a larger, more urban (but not "big city") city as a child, and was able to run around the neighborhood in both places without issue, back in the 80s. I've visited the larger city I spent the second half of my childhood in as a child recently: there simply isn't any space for kids to roam anymore there. Some might say my generation's parents were too extreme in the freedom they gave us. Perhaps, but the pendulum has swung too wide in the other direction, in my opinion.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  Urbanization has that affect on adults too. You own less, are more dependent on public services, and are subject to far more rules. It’s a convenient trade off for many.
  - eru 4y ago
    Out in the sticks, you need a car to get around. Especially, your kid needs to be car-ed around. In a well-functioning city, your kid can walk places, ride a bike or take the bus or train. About rules: there a lot more social rules in small towns than in cities, where no one cares who you are?
  - em-bee 4y ago
    i strongly disagree with that claim. short of living in the wilderness far from everyone else where you can do what you want, i don't believe that this is true. and public services don't make me dependent but they free me from having to take care of things myself.
- 4y ago
prawn 4y ago
I think a major change over time has been about vehicles, and there are no relevant mentions of "car" or similar in the article. They're larger, often faster, there are more of them and sightlines are poorer. Drivers potentially on their phones too. As a parent of a 10yo, vehicles are my major concern with out-of-home autonomy. Growing up in the 80s, we kicked a football on the street and towed each other on skateboards with bikes. I barely remember a car being parked out there; they were all in driveways. That same cul-de-sac now is choked with parked cars that are each household's second or third vehicle and left on the street because it's easier than shuffling cars in a narrow driveway. Now, you couldn't kick a ball without hitting someone's car. A car driving down that street will have terrible sightlines with seeing a kid chasing a ball out onto the street or even seeing someone short trying to cross the road from behind an SUV or 4x4. Out camping in the bush, I'm comfortable letting my kids roam (as long as they watch out for snakes). Lots of other ways for them to get injured, but no cars. There's a difference between a "learning injury" and the bonnet of a 4x4 hitting their head/neck.
- crooked-v 4y ago
  On that note, there's the video essay "These Stupid Trucks are Literally Killing Us" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN7mSXMruEo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN7mSXMruEo, which includes various statistics and some striking visual examples of the absolutely absurd grill heights of modern production vehicles.
  - nonethewiser 4y ago
    What do you mean by “production” vehicles?
    - crooked-v 4y ago
      As in, off the factory floor, before even considering aftermarket lift kits or other modifications.
    - samtho 4y ago
      Not op, but in this context, it likely refers to mass-produced vehicles with stock configuration.
fnordpiglet 4y ago
Yet somehow kids are surviving and thriving into adulthood. I don’t buy that kids are so fragile they have to be raised by the 1985 norm, even if it makes great episodes of Stranger Things. Human beings were been reared in concentration camps or horrific refugee camps and went on to live rewarding and happy lives. Likewise kids have been raised pampered as royalty and went in to live rewarding and happy lives. There are a lot of things you can do to screw up your kids, but paying close attention to them is probably not the worst thing.
iosystem 4y ago
I personally think the no autonomy of kids is increasing the obesity epidemic. I know as a kid I rarely wanted to do anything proposed by my parents. So whenever I went outside to explore the world with a friend, it was either my idea or my friends' idea. The norm seems to blame smart phones or tablets as the culprit but my intuition will always lean towards lack of autonomy as the main cause.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  I’m not following the obesity connection.
  - lotsoweiners 4y ago
    Me neither. I was pretty much an “indoor kid” growing up at least until high school. My parents didn’t drink soda, eat chips, or other snacky junk food or keep any of that in the house so I guess that (along with metabolism) was why I was a 5’9” 110 lb 7th grader.
wyclif 4y ago
I'm in the Philippines. I was down the sari-sari store yesterday (the Filipino version of a bodega, but not walk-in...more like a storefront with a little door where you push your money through and the owner pushes items out in return). Little kids run around unsupervised here all the time, and nobody bats an eye. Anyway while I was there laid out on a bamboo bench drinking a beer, there must have been five or six kids under four years old who came down there alone with change to buy something for their parents. So different from the helicopter parenting I'm used to seeing back home.
- gexla 4y ago
  Those kids were probably from relatively poor families. The neighborhood I live in, the kids of person who is probably the most well off hardly leave the house. When they do, they are closely watched by the helper.
  - herbst 4y ago
    That's a single exception tho. In general it's pretty obvious that the general child has way more freedom nearly everywhere than the typical child in the US.
    - wyclif 4y ago
      Yep, that's precisely the point I was trying to make.
- jpgvm 4y ago
  Pretty similar in Thailand. I normally live in Bangkok and even the rich kids that attend the expensive International School nearby frequent the malls and park nearby with no supervision. There is definitely still some overly-sheltered children but it seems far from the default. My GFs hometown in Nakkon Si Thammarat (Southern Thailand, semi-rural) kids play outside just like we did when we were kids (90s, Australia). The insane helicopter parenting seems to be US phenomena primarily but is also spreading to other Western-sphere countries like Australia.
Beaver117 4y ago
In Japan kids as young as elementary regularly walk by themselves to school, stores, ride the train, go hang out with friends, etc. Doubt it would ever work in the US because everywhere is just plain dangerous, among other reasons.
- l33t233372 4y ago
  > Doubt it would ever work in the US because everywhere is just plain dangerous What do you mean by this?
  - Beaver117 4y ago
    Walkability is low, too many cars, and crime is high, mainly
    - midoridensha 4y ago
      Don't forget all the people walking around with guns.
    - drstewart 4y ago
      [flagged]
      - Beaver117 4y ago
        Why don't you ask ChatGPT? I'm just giving my thoughts
  - nonbirithm 4y ago
    Not so much about the danger, but Japanese culture is much different from the US; being a collectivist society there is immense pressure on each person to do the right thing. Anyone who doesn't fit in can suffer immense social consequences. This is instilled at a societal level, so that is one reason that everything is so clean, there is not as much danger, etc., but it comes with its own downsides.
- 4y ago
throwawaysleep 4y ago
And why are virtues like “resilience” valuable over actual achievement (like being at Stanford)? So they depend on parents and managers more and take longer to be independent. Why does this matter? This is perfectly normal in Asian cultures for kids to be attached to their parents until their 30s, much more slowly but in a more stable and reliable fashion building their own lives.
- samtho 4y ago
  The “soft life skill” like resilience are very important for any adult. Achievement is great but is meaningless if all you got out of it was trivial knowledge. Being resilient, for example, allows a young adult to take difficult situations in stride knowing that they can get through this.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  Until their 30s? In many places they live with them their entire lives. It’s more about economic conditions than ideal child development. As for someone’s 30’s, it’s just rather late in life to become independent. People are capable of it much sooner. You don’t want to hold back a grown adult.
- bigDinosaur 4y ago
  Independence is really the only way to have a good chance at achieving what you want, rather than only what others want or expect of you. There's surely some value in being able to branch out which requires lots of skills related to resilience.
anon291 4y ago
Too many people live in unwalkable neighborhoods.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  Didn’t they choose to be there though?
  - skinpop 4y ago
    just like poor people choose to be poor.
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    Don't think the kids chose where they live.
- lotsoweiners 4y ago
  I live in what I’m imagining you would consider an “unwalkable neighborhood”. It is very safe and suburban. There are 2 parks in about a 3 minute walk and 2 more in less than 10 minutes. There is also a canal a few minutes walk away and a McDonalds within 10 minutes. This is the kind of stuff kids like to do yet I see no reason why my 10 or 5 year old have any business doing it on their own.
  - anon291 4y ago
    If you can walk to the park on sidewalks, then it's a walkable neighborhood. I have a four year old, and when she's six or seven, I hope she'll be walking to the park with friends on a regular basis. When she's ten, I'm hoping she'll be responsible enough to take her younger sister with her. What is unsafe about it? Dumb phones are cheap. If you invest in knowing your neighbors, they'll know people on each block.
varunjain99 4y ago
Hm, this seems a bit contrary to my personal anecdotal experiences. I've generally seen more coddling of kids, and that has been accompanied with lax rules / letting kids have what they want. Especially when it comes to digital tech / roaming the web. Perhaps both extremes of parenting - giving autonomy and helicopter parenting - are both becoming more common?
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  That’s an interesting point. Kids definitely do have more autonomy with those things and it’s not helping. Generally I think it’s because it’s easier on the parent (which is no slight to parents).
nstart 4y ago
This extends to a lot of areas outside of physical freedom. There seems to be a lot of pressure kids face to just do well and perform from an absurdly young age. I don't think that this starts with the current generation of parents either. I know that growing up there were a lot of children, myself included, who were made to feel worthless if we were incapable of winning at our sport of choice or performing at a top 10 range in the classroom in the subjects of "importance". Science, Math, that kind of stuff. I'm trying my best right now to let my kid manage himself and learn how to ask for help where needed. I want him to go through his own choices, both good and bad, and experience success and failure on his own. I try to teach him that the only value I care about is not being a burden to others. Raising people up is true success instead of winning by pushing others down. Those core beliefs are the only ones I hope I can pass on to him. But I want to do whatever I can to make it come from him and for him to learn it from me through example rather than control. I know that no matter how strict my parents were, it never actually did anything to increase my performance. It never did anything to increase the obedience of my siblings. All of us just went underground over time because we couldn't trust our parents to be reasonable when we talked about our experiences at school and sports. If it wasn't up to their standards they would just make us feel like we weren't living up to their standards. I've heard this being referred to as "ego" parenting or something like that. But part of the reason we could go underground was because of physical freedom. I cycled to school and sports. I took public transport and was free to sort myself out from completely from teenage years. Instead of addressing the bit though about making a safe space for kids and not chasing them underground, it feels like parents have taken the approach of encroaching on their physical space as well to ensure that they do not escape the boundaries of the standards they demand. And now children are giving up on trying to find freedom in physical spaces. How could they when the parents are following them to every event and class that they go to? They can't even go to a mall with friends anymore without having parents around in some form or another. I feel like the desire to go underground in the digital spaces is a natural evolution although I have nothing but my own anecdotal experiences to share to support this. This is a tangential sharing of experience and opinion in relation the article. I leave this as a thinking point because I think physical freedom is being dampened for more than just the reason of fears of safety. There's also a strong desire to control children and have them grow up in our image of "perfection". If we want to reverse this trend, it may take a lot of parents having to get really uncomfortable with themselves and understanding that there's a significant amount of their own ego that needs to be removed. Else the end is going to be a never ending unhealthy war to find ways to control children's spaces every time they find a new one to go underground in.
stillbourne 4y ago
Millennial here that grew up in that exact same situation. I eventually ran away from home @ 16 and moved in with my uncle. I don't talk to my dad except on major holidays. I expect him to die alone and frankly thats none of my fucking business.
screwturner68 4y ago
So X'ers what happened to us? If you are a "kid today" your parents are either X'ers or Millenials. As X'ers we've made it a point of pride that we played till the street lights came on, we walked to school, we walked where ever we wanted. We had jobs and started adulting at a much younger age, living at home with mommy at 25 wasn't cool it made you a joke. So what happened? Why did we raise these kids and never let them out of our site? Why did we drive them to school? Why did we invite fully employed adults to live in their childs room instead of letting them grow up? Who thought this was a good idea? I think we fucked up a whole generation of kids. Please don't say safety because things are much much safer now than they were in the 70's, 80's and 90's.
- lotsoweiners 4y ago
  Not sure this is a generational thing or perhaps a how you were raised thing? I’m an X’er and I don’t think I ever went in the front yard (or beyond) unattended until I was in late junior high out perhaps even high school. I just hung out playing video games or dicked around inside or played in the backyard. My guess is that the people of my generation who were adventurous kids probably have more adventurous kids now.
  - retrac 4y ago
    I'm a millenial. At 7, I was allowed to cross the street and walk within one block (quiet suburb). At 12 I went to a school outside my immediate area, and I took the city bus there on my own. At 14 or so, I was allowed to travel anywhere in the city, provided my parents approved. Went to a concert with friends around that age. I took my first overnight trip away from home on my own at 16 to go visit a friend who had moved. That experience seemed normal to me at the time, but me and my friends may have been the tail end of that degree of freedom. Funnily enough I rarely exercised it. My parents encouraged me to explore more than I did. I was a very introverted and nerdy type who spent most of the time indoors. But I would spend my weekends and summers with my friends. And my parents wouldn't usually be willing to drive me once they considered me old enough to walk there or take the bus.
  - s__s 4y ago
jmyeet 4y ago
You can't talk about this without talking about car culture. In many cases, there's simply nowhere for kids to actually go on their own without being driven there. This also leads to streets being designed 100% for car convenience to the point of making them unusuable, dangerous and/or hugely inconvenient to anyone else. Another issue is the compltely overblown fear or crimes such as abduction. The #1 and #2 causes of child death in the US are firearms related and automobile related (respectively). Those are completely normalized.
kelseyfrog 4y ago
I've written about this here before, but the social forces that incentivize parents to restrict autonomy is intense. I live in a massive California suburb, median in almost every way. It's my perception that letting kiddo play outside, climbing trees, biking on the sidewalk in front of the house should be a low risk activity for a 2nd and 4th grader if done together. Not in the perception of neighbors. Every time I say yes to them asking to play in public, I'm taking a risk that someone will call the cops for the simple act of a child playing outside without a parent. How do I know? It's happened three times already. There's a group of folks who see that as inherently dangerous and have no problem invoking the police to shut it down. They've also been approached by strangers asking where their parents are. They're obeying the laws, not being reckless or getting into trouble. They're minding their own business and because of that they are confronted for it. It's these encounters that weigh on my mind when I'm deciding how to respond when they ask if they can play outside each day. Sometimes I say no, because I'm not prepared to deal with the possibility of that scenario occurring again.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- forgotmypw17 4y ago
  Have you talked about how they should respond to someone engaging them that way? Is don't talk to strangers a workable strategy?
  - IG_Semmelweiss 4y ago
    Nosy nancy doesn't care. She will still call the cops. I've seen this myself. The looks i get for letting my kids scoot ahead of me on a sidewalk of a large city (while I walk behind them) are beyond belief.
- davnicwil 4y ago
  I don't known if more laws and regulations are the answer here, or if it'd have undesirable secondary effects in certain situations where it really matters, but I feel like this behaviour as you describe it should itself be unlawful. You should not be permitted to deliberately harass people you don't know doing nothing wrong in this way, it's that simple. It's a question of individual liberty in the end. I'd hope the police would actually have a private word with them to this effect to be honest, when they do 'report' it. I assume not, but do you know if any ever have?
xwowsersx 4y ago
I'm a fan of this non-profit organization Let Grow https://letgrow.org/ https://letgrow.org/ co-founded by Jonathan Haidt. In part, they've fought legislation that would make it a prosecutable offense to leave a child unsupervised in a public park.
jalapenos 4y ago
I wonder if there may be a simpler underlying reason, such as having few kids. When a parent only has one, it's both easier to control them from a time & energy perspective, and also more understandable biologically from a risk perspective, than if they had say five.
- Nicholas_C 4y ago
  Scrolled way down to find this answer. I also think this is the primary cause. If you have one kid you’ll be way more protective than if you have four.
- jgwil2 4y ago
  This was my thought as well, but fertility rates in much of Europe are even lower than in the US and they don't seem to be experiencing this issue to the same degree.
andrewfromx 4y ago
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/04/hey-parents-leave-those-kids-alone/358631/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/04/hey-par...
semireg 4y ago
I regularly see kids aged 8-13 playing outside on our block. I always look to make sure they are OK, not hurting anyone or anything, and I’m reminded of my childhood of roaming the suburbs of Minneapolis. I have a 5 and 2 year old and will definitely let them play unattended when they are older. We are just at the “you can play in the next room unattended while I cook dinner” stage. Yet, I can totally see the pressure from others with them seeing it as neglectful. Cars and deep water. Those are my two biggest fears. And they scare me to no end because they are very real threats. To a lesser extent: trains.
orionblastar 4y ago
https://www.loveandlogic.com/ https://www.loveandlogic.com/ https://www.criticalthinking.org/ https://www.criticalthinking.org/ The two links above are good for raising children and teaching them to think with empathy and compassion. Schools should follow one or the other. My father was a Drill Instructor Dad, always yelling at me, ordering me around. But he let me play outside with my friends in the streets and parks. Back then you didn't have to worry about pedophiles grabbing kids or school shooters. So I can see why some parents want to be helicopter parents. But you want your child to grow up independent from you so they can do their own thing. You don't want the dependence for the day you die, they won't know what to do.
fmajid 4y ago
I actually know the author (my daughter went to pre-school with two of hers) and she is a perfectly grounded and no-nonsense parent. Cities are way safer today than in the 80s when I myself was growing up and as a 11 year old it was perfectly normal for me to commute by train and Tube from Reading, UK to Kensington, London for school with my 7 year old brother in tow. I aim to instill the same confidence in my daughter, albeit a year later.
pier25 4y ago
All of this is so strange to me. I grew up in Spain. I walked alone to school as young as 6-7 years old. This was completely normal. Most kids did this. I even remember taking a plane alone at 10 with a one of those UM tags.
interpol_p 4y ago
I get this from other parents. A few years ago I let my 3 year old ride his bike with his older sister and brother (5 and 7 years old). I walked with them, but allow them to get ahead of me, up to about 500m - 1km (~0.6mi). My instructions were always "wait at the next road so we can cross together." Once, when they were out of sight for a while, I rounded the corner to find them surrounded by a concerned couple who proceeded to tell me off for allowing the youngest one out of my sight. I disagreed with them and continued to allow my youngest to ride many hundreds of times since. I got dirty looks from them a few times on subsequent walks.
- DigiDigiorno 4y ago
  People need to let their kids out more, but common, a 3 year old at an intersection? That's not what this thread is about. Even in your story you were trying to supervise them and weren't far behind.
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    It IS what this thread is about. His 3yo was out of sight (not by much, and was accompanied by his older siblings), and that was enough to get some busybodies to criticize his parenting. It's part of the same problem: that in America today, parents are considered "neglectful" if their children are out of their sight for even a minute. Heck, parents have had CPS and police visits just for letting their kids play in their fenced-in back yards!
    - DigiDigiorno 4y ago
      Again, the fact that he was actually just out of sight IS what makes this situation fine. Without this fact, putting the supervision responsibility of road safety of a 3-year-old solely on a 5 and 7-year-old is unfair to them all. But that isn't what happened, he was literally there. I think all parties seem reasonable in the scenario. Supervision is not an all-or-nothing thing. When someone calls the cops on your 10 year-old climbing a tree in your front yard or the neighborhood woods (let alone in your fenced-in back yard), that is ridiculous. But, there is a problem when you equivocate a toddler on a public road and a grade-schooler playing outside. One is able to stumble into problems and solve them while building confidence--the other just learned it's name and how to put on their shoes and pedal the bike. Like, all 3-year-olds are different, perhaps his was closer to 4. Perhaps they were developmentally way ahead of their peers. Perhaps this was the most rural quiet and safe road ever. But without knowing that extra stuff, I think it is reasonable to voice your concern after finding a 3 year old on a road without real supervision.
thetopher 4y ago
(2021)
zuminator 4y ago
The rise of the mobile phone device has become a curse as much as a blessing. Previously there was no way for parents to be apprised of their children's activities at every moment. Now, not only is it a simple matter for neurotically overbearing parents to check on their children constantly, but it's also simple for total strangers to "karen" your lack of parental attention. If a busybody passed by a bunch of kids playing without supervision in 1990, they would have to wait until they got home or to their destination, remember the location of the children, call up the police, and by that time the kids might not even be there. Even if they are, the busybody's sitting at home by the landline and doesn't get the visceral satisfaction of seeing the prepubescent gangbangers brought to justice. Where's the fun in that? Now, as a meddler, it's a simple matter of spying the unlicensed skateboard wielding urchins from a safe distance and reporting them to the cops in real time while you triumphantly wait there for the squad car to arrive and haul those little miscreants off to cps and hopefully get their parents' rights terminated for good measure.
bityard 4y ago
When we try to give our kids complete autonomy for the day (and we occasionally do), one spends the whole 16 hours or so on a video game and the other will be glued to her phone the whole time. Sure, we could make them go outside or put away the screens but that's not really autonomy, is it? Your move, progressive parenting advocates.
- __turbobrew__ 4y ago
  Check out “indistractible” by Nir Eyal. One of the techniques in the book is to have your kids set what they think is a reasonable limit for media consumption and then hold them to it. It is a more balanced approach than giving kids absolute self determination.
  - bityard 4y ago
    Thanks for the suggestion. I like that idea and will give it a shot.
- imtringued 4y ago
  What makes you think this doesn't happen to children that have trouble leaving the house because of their overprotective parents?
divan 4y ago
Some links in the article indirectly refer to SDT (Self-Determination Theory), but I think it deserves more attention here. It's the very mature and well-studied theory on human motivation, and three main predictors for intrinsic motivation are: autonomy, competence and relatedness. Autonomy - the opposite of being controlled - is the major predictor and the one used build the spectrum of motivations: from intrinsic to four types of extrinsic and to amotivation. Motivation is basically what makes us do stuff. Unsurprisingly, these three psychological needs (autonomy, competence, relatedness) are also linked and are good predictors of the wellbeing, fullfilment, vitality and, for the lack of the better word, happiness in life. I see this as "motivation to live" essentially. Studying SDT opened my eyes to the modern views on parenting, sports coaching and some other fields. It just all started to make sense, and I would say that SDT is one of those theories that can change your worldview.
atmosx 4y ago
In the his book "the tyranny of merit" Harvard political philosophy professor, Michael J. Sandel, best known for his podcasts on BBC Radio 4 makes the same argument. Lately, Harvard students have had all their lives programmed to the point where they cannot complete trivial university related tasks without parental assistance and presence. The students that require psychological support after failure (e.g. failing a class or failing to join a ridiculous club) have skyrocketed as well.
- than3 4y ago
  Its a common theme, there's a book I read called The Coddling of the American Mind, very similar.
the_common_man 4y ago
Such a long winding article, though i agree with the gist.
Psychoshy_bc1q 4y ago
*in north america
illiac786 4y ago
As the article states, "free range parenting" is called "parenting" everywhere else... I hope this trend does not catch on too much where I live. My kids took the bus at 9 and it was and still is not uncommon.
smsm42 4y ago
I am reading all this and wondering how I - and my whole generation of peers - survived. I was walking to school (~15 mins on foot) alone (well, sometimes with my class mates) since I was 7. Playing outside without parental supervision (well, when not reading books, on which to be honest I spent a lot of time, being a geek) since about the same age. Going to relatives on public transport (~20 min) since about the same age. Going to high school on public transport (~1hr one way) since about 13. In fact, most of the day I didn't see my parents and they didn't see me - they were at work and I have been at school, or at the relative's or at home mostly tending to myself, doing chores, or homework, or reading books. Literally everybody my age was the same. I don't remember anybody having stay-at-home parents or somebody supervising non-toddler child the whole day. This probably sounds as insane to some Americans as the American idea that school age kids need constant adult supervision sounds to me. But from what I read in the literature it used to be this way in the US too. Just somehow people got super-paranoid one day...
- midoridensha 4y ago
  >I am reading all this and wondering how I - and my whole generation of peers - survived. I was walking to school (~15 mins on foot) alone (well, sometimes with my class mates) since I was 7. I walked to school at those ages too. But we didn't all survive: one of my classmates in 7th grade was hit by a car crossing a busy road and died. It's long been dangerous for kids to be outside because of America's obsession with cars, but decades ago, having some kids get splattered on car hoods was considered OK and an acceptable sacrifice for a car-dependent society. Now, risk acceptance is lower so parents keep their kids inside all the time, while buying huge SUVs to protect their kids when they do go outside.
- serpix 4y ago
  You hit the nail on the head with how much we saw and interacted with our parents. It was not much.
  - smsm42 4y ago
    Except for the weekends - on weekends there was much more interaction. But really it was normal to spend much more time with peers - or books, in a case of a geek like me, pre-internet times - than with parents. I think now it is considered bad but many societies have lived like that for generations. Spent a lot more time with my grandparents actually - which had significant influence on many aspects of my early development.
moltar 4y ago
The lady in the intro paragraph would be shocked to learn that Danes leave their babies to sleep outside in a stroller, in midst of the winter, meanwhile they are enjoying a coffee or buying something indoors. To be clear, I think that’s awesome.
majikaja 4y ago
Here in Japan you see 5 year olds taking the train by themselves to school all the time..
digitalengineer 4y ago
From an American perspective, of course. So what happens when a US family moves to Europe? Here's a quick video of a mom now living in Europe explaining the details: " 5 Ways my Kids Lives Would be Different in USA vs EU" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xKOfT5TKHQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xKOfT5TKHQ
camgunz 4y ago
My partner and I wanted to leave the US to have kids and this was one of the reasons we were looking abroad. We eventually chose the Netherlands because they have a strong culture of encouraging independence in kids, which matched up w/ our values. We just had our first kid, and I've discovered that the amount of internalized guilt is out of control. No one has to say anything to you to make you doubt your decisions, you do great on your own. (I'm oddly OK on this front, it really messes with my partner). This kind of thing doesn't really happen in the Netherlands; but you will get occasional "you should"s from people from time to time. I really bristle at those, and I can barely imagine the insane rage I would feel if a total stranger of an adult approached my kids at a playground to ask where I was, or if someone outright chastised my partner for a decision she made. Calling the cops or social services is unimaginable; I'd probably lose it and move to the woods like Captain Fantastic. As soon as you get pregnant something clicks in busybody brains everywhere and they suddenly swarm. I don't know what weird cultural phenomenon is responsible for it, but it's insufferable. We have stuff like uBlock and Pi-hole for surveillance capitalism getting all up in our business; is there something out there for busybodies?
mcv 4y ago
I'm trying to teach my kid autonomy, but he doesn't want it. When I was 12, I traveled around the country by train on my own for 4 days. Dutch railways had a special ticket for that: Tienertoer: 4 days of free train travel within a 10 day period, only for teenagers, and you got a booklet with all sorts of discounts for museums and other stuff to visit. At 12, I figured I was a teenager and therefore old enough to do this. My son, almost 14 now, is not remotely interested in anything like this. Though he does claim to be old enough to stay home on his own for a weekend while we are away. But I don't trust him to actually come out from behind his (my, actually) PC if we do this.
TiredGuy 4y ago
I once left my kid in a minivan that had both sliding doors open and all windows open. It was in front of a house and I had just gone to the back of the house. Someone called the cops on me and also had the audacity to scold me and my wife. People can be very quick to judge when it comes to stuff like that. They hear stories about hot car deaths and see a kid that is in no real danger but they see a car and a kid and draw a thoughtless conclusion. I'm not sure how we can as a society improve this situation though. There do seem to be a lot of PSA commercials about stuff like that, but I don't think we need to decrease those. Or would it be better to add more detail to the PSAs to clarify when someone's not in danger? Seems like overcomplicating what should be common sense...
konne88 4y ago
I think a big problem is just how US suburbs are built. Growing up in Germany, there were sidewalks, protected crossings, and public transportation everywhere, so I was just always expected to go to school and visit my friends on my own. Now that I live in the US, it's often hard to let your kids roam free, because there is a real danger of them being hit by a car.

285 points by jseliger 4y ago

No autonomy except when it comes to devices and the internet. Far too many parents are either ignorant of or too lazy to set up parental controls on new phones, tablets, and computers before handing them to kids. The TikTok ban debate would have never been needed if there were basic parental awareness. They instead resort to manual snooping and device taking after the damage is done. They’re helicopter parenting the wrong areas of life.

nonethewiser 4y ago
Idk, seems like YouTube recognizes their responsibility with children. Can we really expect parents to do better than app level moderation?
ceejayoz 4y ago
> Far too many parents are either ignorant of or too lazy to set up parental controls on new phones, tablets, and computers before handing them to kids. To be fair, the parental controls on modern devices feel like they were developed by a bunch of childless early 20-somethings.
- vegetablepotpie 4y ago
  I’m curious what you think parental controls are missing that are needed by parents?
  - rch 4y ago
    Forced IRC only hours.
  - thom 4y ago
    Templated, reusable schedules so I don’t have to set up downtime for each kid individually. Allow overrides for holidays etc. Apple let you press a button for ‘one more minute’ that seems impossible to disable. Password management is horrible as a family, as is having to set up my fingerprint on all my kids’ devices to be able to help them with stuff without faff. More generally, every time I have to set up any sort of account for my kids it’s absolute torture. Try to log in with Apple ID, can’t cos they’re a kid. Try to log in with a google account, remember Family Link doesn’t work for my normal account because it was set up for a domain, so log in as my other google account, set kid up, still doesn’t work. Give me one place in my whole life to manage identity for my family, one that works, with permissions and downtime settings that integrate with every app and website in the world (including the half dozen each of my kids’ schools require us to use). I’ll pay loads of money for this.
  - 1123581321 4y ago
    Vastly smoother settings adjustment or profile selection per combo of kid/activity/device.
  - oakashes 4y ago
    The ability to make all content opt-in instead of opt-out would get you 90% of the way there. Very few services that I know of offer this. Most of them offer gating by age range into all content the service considers appropriate for that age, and most allow you to block specific content as well, but all I really want for my young kids is to know exactly what content is available to them because I have added it specifically. Beyond that, there are some nice things you could do like a workflow for a kid to request new content and a parent to review and approve/deny it. But that's definitely a nice-to-have.
    - cameldrv 4y ago
      This. There is some fantastic stuff for kids on YouTube (most of it though is actually made for adults and is not available on YouTube kids). However, there is a tremendous amount of trash, and the recommender loves it. I wish I could add a bunch of good channels and let the kids pick their own content, but only from that list.
- klyrs 4y ago
  > they were developed by a bunch of childless early 20-somethings. Can confirm, I know a few people who work in a social media "for kids" group and they fit this description to a tee and display significant naivety.
- scruple 4y ago
  Streaming services in particular are driving me crazy. They don't have parental controls. Not really. You can make a kids account or whatever but you can't dictate what can or can't be seen. I'm at a point with streaming services -- and this stems from the 24/7, 365 on-demand access we have to television and movies today that was not reality when I was a child -- where I'm ready to cancel everything and curate my our experience for myself and my kids with a NAS and torrents. edit/ So I check Netflix to see what they offer. Viewing restrictions limits content based on parental guidelines ratings. That's really it. It's like someone else commented, it's as if these places are staffed by people who don't have children.
  - eru 4y ago
    You can ban individual shows in kids' Netflix.
    - scruple 4y ago
      I can't find it, despite trying for the last ~10 minutes. edit/ You'll have to pardon the evening Dad brain, I googled it. Thank you, kind stranger!
      - eru 4y ago
        I had to look that up on the web recently, too. To remove some shows that have recently seen heavy rotation, or are otherwise too annoying for the parents.
    - wink 4y ago
      Sounds just as useless, I'd expect "allow these shows" and not "oh, I need to ban 500"
      - eru 4y ago
        Depends on your use case. We just use it to remove shows as they start to annoy us. Not to pre-emptively control what the kid watches.
mouse_ 4y ago
Parental control software is counterproductive, and will generally only lead to them trying to outsmart you, which is a bad precedent. If you really want to keep your kids safe online, the most important thing to do is establish trust and understanding with them that the boundaries you set are important and reasonable. You need to respect them as people, and they need to understand and appreciate why you set the limits that you do. On top of that, you need to supervise them, and even then, they should not be allowed to use social media, which ought to be 18+ anyways. I understand this is all a lot to ask in our society. There is no "good" answer to this problem. But we should all try to do the best we can, and not forget that big tech puts hundreds of millions, if not billions, into making social media as addictive as possible. I'd say we're at a point where it's sensible to conclude it's now more addictive and harmful than tobacco, though our society has yet to come to terms with this fact. Even if we put a stop to it now (we won't), our current social media infrastructure will likely haunt us for centuries.
- Dalewyn 4y ago
  What's sad is parents today all grew up with the internet. They should know how children should interact with it. To put it into context: Facebook was founded in 2004. That is 19 years ago. Youtube was founded in 2005. That is 18 years ago. Twitter was founded in 2006. That is 17 years ago. Google was founded in 1998. That is 25 years ago. The World Wide Web (remember that name?) came to be in 1989. That is 34 years ago. Social media is old enough to be in the history books, let alone the internet at large. What the hell are the parents and would-be parents of today doing to be this fucking incompetent?
  - sli 4y ago
    You're very much overestimating the average persons knowledge or ability to care about the internet beyond their relatively narrow use of it. It's hard to think critically about things that one takes for granted, and non-tech people frequently just take tech for granted. Tech people frequently do the same thing and appear completely out of touch with the average person's needs, but we call those "disruptive startups" instead.
chrisco255 4y ago
The TikTok ban isn't about teenage responsibility on the internet. It's just that it's a Chinese owned communications network in an era of increased tension with US gov. > They’re helicopter parenting the wrong areas of life. Helicopter parenting is always a bad idea. Either you teach your kids ethics, morals, responsibility, self-respect, and assertiveness or they will fail as adults.
29athrowaway 4y ago
Don't underestimate kids. https://www.fastcompany.com/2681011/ethiopian-kids-hacked-their-donated-tablets-in-just-five-months https://www.fastcompany.com/2681011/ethiopian-kids-hacked-th... “We left the boxes in the village. Closed. Taped shut. No instruction, no human being. I thought, the kids will play with the boxes! Within four minutes, one kid not only opened the box, but found the on/off switch. He’d never seen an on/off switch. He powered it up. Within five days, they were using 47 apps per child per day. Within two weeks, they were singing ABC songs [in English] in the village. And within five months, they had hacked Android. Some idiot in our organization or in the Media Lab had disabled the camera! And they figured out it had a camera, and they hacked Android.”
- bigDinosaur 4y ago
  I don't underestimate kids, but I suspect healthy skepticism towards 1st graders 'hacking Android' is warranted. What exactly did they do?
  - 29athrowaway 4y ago
    The OLTP devices distributed to them had the camera disabled. They figured out the way to correct the problem.
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      That is much too vague to be useful.
- maphew 4y ago
  I surmise those kids had near complete freedom to do whatever they wanted with those tablets. No parental helicoptering.
kube-system 4y ago
> The TikTok ban debate would have never been needed if there were basic parental awareness. The TikTok issues have never been about the health or safety of children. If it was, it the discussion would involve other social media. It has always been about the TikTok’s governance structure, which legally and functionally enables espionage and/or psyops against a significant portion of people who do may be involved in things that are of a US national security interest. For example, you don’t want your government personnel doing important things while carrying a device that sends important contextual data to organizations which have CCP oversight.
- jonathanlb 4y ago
  > It has always been about the TikTok’s governance structure, which [...] enables espionage and/or psyops [...] The proposed solution to the TikTok problem is the RESTRICT Act, with language so broad and vague that it would make VPN usage a felony. It may just be incompetence on Sen. Warner's behalf, but otherwise, it's also about an opportunistic power grab by the US federal government.
  - kube-system 4y ago
    That bill surely has problems, but the way it is worded throughout, it seems fairly apparent that any impact it might have on VPNs was not the intended target. (Presuming that the language actually would ban VPNs, which is not entirely clear) Regardless, my point is that it definitely isn’t about the kids, and that is very clear in that bill.
pteraspidomorph 4y ago
Well, if the recent Utah thing is any sign, they're ready to overdo it when it comes to the internet, too. > The bills will give parents full access to their children's online accounts, including posts and private messages. Where "children" is defined as anyone younger than 18. I can see the point of some of these controls, but legally disallowing a 17 year old from having privacy from their parents? Absolutely not. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65060733 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65060733

DueDilligence 4y ago

[dead]

pknomad 4y ago

This writing kind of confirms what I’ve experienced as a 1st-gen Korean American growing up in New England (so n=1). I knew my parents meant well when they made sure I studied and did well at extra curricular activities (going to math Olympiad at MIT during summers, playing classical instruments, etc) and that type of “helicopter parenting” yielded good performance… when I had to do something that was highly structured. But it also meant I did not do well (or was always uncomfortable) when I had to do something that’s not highly structured (basically adulting) and I felt like I had to figure out who I really was at 30 which is not necessarily a good thing. I’m still thankful that I had parents who cared and tried best they knew how so I don’t really hold it against them, though.

notefaker 4y ago
Thanks for sharing this comment. I’ve had similar feelings recently, and I came to the realization that all parents will fail to teach their children certain things. Life has a funny way of revealing those areas to us as we age. Part of adulthood is the painful process of discovery and learning for ourselves. By the way, I think 30 is the perfect age to figure out who you really are.

scionthefly 4y ago

We gave high school kids some time for self-directed activities, like go see teachers for help, make up work, get a snack, hang out with friends if you have your work done. We had kids standing around looking confused. They didn't know what to do. They asked for directions on what to do. We said to look at their grades and decide what to do. When they finally pulled up the gradebook on their laptops, they would point at it and say "what do you want me to do?" Something. We want you to decide, on your own, to do something. Anything. Just make a choice. Most kids did figure it out, though not always making the wise choices (but that's part of the reason we're giving them the freedome). But there was a minority who couldn't grasp the idea that they were personally able and responsible to decide what to do.

prawn 4y ago
Almost need to give them a flowchart or a list or more strongly link the sessions to an outcome (improving at something, working towards a line of work, etc). It would be great if 6-12 year olds were stronger at this also.
- rescripting 4y ago
  Having them determine what their desired outcome is and then learning how to draw up a plan to get there is more valuable for them long term than the outcome itself. A flow cart is just more hand holding.
maxbond 4y ago
Is it possible they didn't believe you? Eg, they thought you had something particular in mind, and they wanted you to drop the pretence and make the expectations clear? I've had limited teaching experience, all at a college level, but I would try to engage students with questions & get them to predict things they hadn't been taught yet. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it seemed like they wanted me to cut the crap and just tell them the answer, because they felt like I was setting them up to fail by asking them a question they didn't know (because it was new material). I don't think it's necessarily a lack of critical thinking skills on their part as much as an unwillingness to engage with that style of teaching, which is fair. So I'm wondering if similarly it's an unwillingness to engage in independence in a context without the requisite trust, where they might be suspicious that you'll penalize them for picking "wrong" (regardless of whether that's the reality).

pyuser583 4y ago

As the article points out - this doesn’t end at 18. Arguably, it gets worse.

nonethewiser 4y ago
It’s also far less common to own a house, car, or have a child, dog, etc. Pretty normal to move to a big city, rent, not have kids, and play with whatever you want. And that’s the well adjusted case.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  None of those things seem linked to autonomy.
  - nonethewiser 4y ago
    Sure is. Ownership begets autonomy. On the other end of the spectrum is renting/dependence on public services
- Capricorn2481 4y ago
  This reads like propaganda. There's nothing wrong with not having kids or living in the city in your 20's. Buying a house as a single person in this current market would be financially irresponsible. The second person in your example has more autonomy than the first. I know plenty of husbands who can't do laundry. So implying that you're somehow developmentally stunted if you live alone in the city is extremely weird.
  - nonethewiser 4y ago
    This reads as overly defensive because as I said, that’s the well adjusted case.
    - Capricorn2481 4y ago
      > as I said, that’s the well adjusted case Because you meant it as a testament to how little autonomy everyone has across the board. And then you used "not having kids" and "living in the city" as an example. You're describing someone with more autonomy than a person with kids and a mortgage has. > Ownership begets autonomy. On the other end of the spectrum is renting/dependence on public services Can you describe how being a homeowner makes you less dependent on public services?

sidlls 4y ago

Part of this simply has to do with nosy busy-bodies ready to pounce on the phone to call Child Protective Services (or equivalent) whenever they see a child out and about on their own. I'm not afraid to send my kids to the park (few blocks down the street) alone, ride their bikes alone or instruct them to go outside after breakfast on the weekend on not come back before lunch, or hell even dinner (not that it matters for socializing--I see hardly any kids their age, pre-teens, outside, even though there are plenty around). I am afraid of what my neighbors would do. The other part is that, unless one lives in the country, it has become much harder to find neighborhoods where kids can safely roam free. I lived in both a small rural town and a larger, more urban (but not "big city") city as a child, and was able to run around the neighborhood in both places without issue, back in the 80s. I've visited the larger city I spent the second half of my childhood in as a child recently: there simply isn't any space for kids to roam anymore there. Some might say my generation's parents were too extreme in the freedom they gave us. Perhaps, but the pendulum has swung too wide in the other direction, in my opinion.

nonethewiser 4y ago
Urbanization has that affect on adults too. You own less, are more dependent on public services, and are subject to far more rules. It’s a convenient trade off for many.
- eru 4y ago
  Out in the sticks, you need a car to get around. Especially, your kid needs to be car-ed around. In a well-functioning city, your kid can walk places, ride a bike or take the bus or train. About rules: there a lot more social rules in small towns than in cities, where no one cares who you are?
- em-bee 4y ago
  i strongly disagree with that claim. short of living in the wilderness far from everyone else where you can do what you want, i don't believe that this is true. and public services don't make me dependent but they free me from having to take care of things myself.
4y ago

prawn 4y ago

I think a major change over time has been about vehicles, and there are no relevant mentions of "car" or similar in the article. They're larger, often faster, there are more of them and sightlines are poorer. Drivers potentially on their phones too. As a parent of a 10yo, vehicles are my major concern with out-of-home autonomy. Growing up in the 80s, we kicked a football on the street and towed each other on skateboards with bikes. I barely remember a car being parked out there; they were all in driveways. That same cul-de-sac now is choked with parked cars that are each household's second or third vehicle and left on the street because it's easier than shuffling cars in a narrow driveway. Now, you couldn't kick a ball without hitting someone's car. A car driving down that street will have terrible sightlines with seeing a kid chasing a ball out onto the street or even seeing someone short trying to cross the road from behind an SUV or 4x4. Out camping in the bush, I'm comfortable letting my kids roam (as long as they watch out for snakes). Lots of other ways for them to get injured, but no cars. There's a difference between a "learning injury" and the bonnet of a 4x4 hitting their head/neck.

crooked-v 4y ago
On that note, there's the video essay "These Stupid Trucks are Literally Killing Us" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN7mSXMruEo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN7mSXMruEo, which includes various statistics and some striking visual examples of the absolutely absurd grill heights of modern production vehicles.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  What do you mean by “production” vehicles?
  - crooked-v 4y ago
    As in, off the factory floor, before even considering aftermarket lift kits or other modifications.
  - samtho 4y ago
    Not op, but in this context, it likely refers to mass-produced vehicles with stock configuration.

fnordpiglet 4y ago

Yet somehow kids are surviving and thriving into adulthood. I don’t buy that kids are so fragile they have to be raised by the 1985 norm, even if it makes great episodes of Stranger Things. Human beings were been reared in concentration camps or horrific refugee camps and went on to live rewarding and happy lives. Likewise kids have been raised pampered as royalty and went in to live rewarding and happy lives. There are a lot of things you can do to screw up your kids, but paying close attention to them is probably not the worst thing.

iosystem 4y ago

I personally think the no autonomy of kids is increasing the obesity epidemic. I know as a kid I rarely wanted to do anything proposed by my parents. So whenever I went outside to explore the world with a friend, it was either my idea or my friends' idea. The norm seems to blame smart phones or tablets as the culprit but my intuition will always lean towards lack of autonomy as the main cause.

nonethewiser 4y ago
I’m not following the obesity connection.
- lotsoweiners 4y ago
  Me neither. I was pretty much an “indoor kid” growing up at least until high school. My parents didn’t drink soda, eat chips, or other snacky junk food or keep any of that in the house so I guess that (along with metabolism) was why I was a 5’9” 110 lb 7th grader.

wyclif 4y ago

I'm in the Philippines. I was down the sari-sari store yesterday (the Filipino version of a bodega, but not walk-in...more like a storefront with a little door where you push your money through and the owner pushes items out in return). Little kids run around unsupervised here all the time, and nobody bats an eye. Anyway while I was there laid out on a bamboo bench drinking a beer, there must have been five or six kids under four years old who came down there alone with change to buy something for their parents. So different from the helicopter parenting I'm used to seeing back home.

gexla 4y ago
Those kids were probably from relatively poor families. The neighborhood I live in, the kids of person who is probably the most well off hardly leave the house. When they do, they are closely watched by the helper.
- herbst 4y ago
  That's a single exception tho. In general it's pretty obvious that the general child has way more freedom nearly everywhere than the typical child in the US.
  - wyclif 4y ago
    Yep, that's precisely the point I was trying to make.
jpgvm 4y ago
Pretty similar in Thailand. I normally live in Bangkok and even the rich kids that attend the expensive International School nearby frequent the malls and park nearby with no supervision. There is definitely still some overly-sheltered children but it seems far from the default. My GFs hometown in Nakkon Si Thammarat (Southern Thailand, semi-rural) kids play outside just like we did when we were kids (90s, Australia). The insane helicopter parenting seems to be US phenomena primarily but is also spreading to other Western-sphere countries like Australia.

Beaver117 4y ago

In Japan kids as young as elementary regularly walk by themselves to school, stores, ride the train, go hang out with friends, etc. Doubt it would ever work in the US because everywhere is just plain dangerous, among other reasons.

l33t233372 4y ago
> Doubt it would ever work in the US because everywhere is just plain dangerous What do you mean by this?
- Beaver117 4y ago
  Walkability is low, too many cars, and crime is high, mainly
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    Don't forget all the people walking around with guns.
  - drstewart 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - Beaver117 4y ago
      Why don't you ask ChatGPT? I'm just giving my thoughts
- nonbirithm 4y ago
  Not so much about the danger, but Japanese culture is much different from the US; being a collectivist society there is immense pressure on each person to do the right thing. Anyone who doesn't fit in can suffer immense social consequences. This is instilled at a societal level, so that is one reason that everything is so clean, there is not as much danger, etc., but it comes with its own downsides.
4y ago

throwawaysleep 4y ago

And why are virtues like “resilience” valuable over actual achievement (like being at Stanford)? So they depend on parents and managers more and take longer to be independent. Why does this matter? This is perfectly normal in Asian cultures for kids to be attached to their parents until their 30s, much more slowly but in a more stable and reliable fashion building their own lives.

samtho 4y ago
The “soft life skill” like resilience are very important for any adult. Achievement is great but is meaningless if all you got out of it was trivial knowledge. Being resilient, for example, allows a young adult to take difficult situations in stride knowing that they can get through this.
nonethewiser 4y ago
Until their 30s? In many places they live with them their entire lives. It’s more about economic conditions than ideal child development. As for someone’s 30’s, it’s just rather late in life to become independent. People are capable of it much sooner. You don’t want to hold back a grown adult.
bigDinosaur 4y ago
Independence is really the only way to have a good chance at achieving what you want, rather than only what others want or expect of you. There's surely some value in being able to branch out which requires lots of skills related to resilience.

anon291 4y ago

Too many people live in unwalkable neighborhoods.

nonethewiser 4y ago
Didn’t they choose to be there though?
- skinpop 4y ago
  just like poor people choose to be poor.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  Don't think the kids chose where they live.
lotsoweiners 4y ago
I live in what I’m imagining you would consider an “unwalkable neighborhood”. It is very safe and suburban. There are 2 parks in about a 3 minute walk and 2 more in less than 10 minutes. There is also a canal a few minutes walk away and a McDonalds within 10 minutes. This is the kind of stuff kids like to do yet I see no reason why my 10 or 5 year old have any business doing it on their own.
- anon291 4y ago
  If you can walk to the park on sidewalks, then it's a walkable neighborhood. I have a four year old, and when she's six or seven, I hope she'll be walking to the park with friends on a regular basis. When she's ten, I'm hoping she'll be responsible enough to take her younger sister with her. What is unsafe about it? Dumb phones are cheap. If you invest in knowing your neighbors, they'll know people on each block.

varunjain99 4y ago

Hm, this seems a bit contrary to my personal anecdotal experiences. I've generally seen more coddling of kids, and that has been accompanied with lax rules / letting kids have what they want. Especially when it comes to digital tech / roaming the web. Perhaps both extremes of parenting - giving autonomy and helicopter parenting - are both becoming more common?

nonethewiser 4y ago
That’s an interesting point. Kids definitely do have more autonomy with those things and it’s not helping. Generally I think it’s because it’s easier on the parent (which is no slight to parents).

nstart 4y ago

This extends to a lot of areas outside of physical freedom. There seems to be a lot of pressure kids face to just do well and perform from an absurdly young age. I don't think that this starts with the current generation of parents either. I know that growing up there were a lot of children, myself included, who were made to feel worthless if we were incapable of winning at our sport of choice or performing at a top 10 range in the classroom in the subjects of "importance". Science, Math, that kind of stuff. I'm trying my best right now to let my kid manage himself and learn how to ask for help where needed. I want him to go through his own choices, both good and bad, and experience success and failure on his own. I try to teach him that the only value I care about is not being a burden to others. Raising people up is true success instead of winning by pushing others down. Those core beliefs are the only ones I hope I can pass on to him. But I want to do whatever I can to make it come from him and for him to learn it from me through example rather than control. I know that no matter how strict my parents were, it never actually did anything to increase my performance. It never did anything to increase the obedience of my siblings. All of us just went underground over time because we couldn't trust our parents to be reasonable when we talked about our experiences at school and sports. If it wasn't up to their standards they would just make us feel like we weren't living up to their standards. I've heard this being referred to as "ego" parenting or something like that. But part of the reason we could go underground was because of physical freedom. I cycled to school and sports. I took public transport and was free to sort myself out from completely from teenage years. Instead of addressing the bit though about making a safe space for kids and not chasing them underground, it feels like parents have taken the approach of encroaching on their physical space as well to ensure that they do not escape the boundaries of the standards they demand. And now children are giving up on trying to find freedom in physical spaces. How could they when the parents are following them to every event and class that they go to? They can't even go to a mall with friends anymore without having parents around in some form or another. I feel like the desire to go underground in the digital spaces is a natural evolution although I have nothing but my own anecdotal experiences to share to support this. This is a tangential sharing of experience and opinion in relation the article. I leave this as a thinking point because I think physical freedom is being dampened for more than just the reason of fears of safety. There's also a strong desire to control children and have them grow up in our image of "perfection". If we want to reverse this trend, it may take a lot of parents having to get really uncomfortable with themselves and understanding that there's a significant amount of their own ego that needs to be removed. Else the end is going to be a never ending unhealthy war to find ways to control children's spaces every time they find a new one to go underground in.

stillbourne 4y ago

Millennial here that grew up in that exact same situation. I eventually ran away from home @ 16 and moved in with my uncle. I don't talk to my dad except on major holidays. I expect him to die alone and frankly thats none of my fucking business.

screwturner68 4y ago

So X'ers what happened to us? If you are a "kid today" your parents are either X'ers or Millenials. As X'ers we've made it a point of pride that we played till the street lights came on, we walked to school, we walked where ever we wanted. We had jobs and started adulting at a much younger age, living at home with mommy at 25 wasn't cool it made you a joke. So what happened? Why did we raise these kids and never let them out of our site? Why did we drive them to school? Why did we invite fully employed adults to live in their childs room instead of letting them grow up? Who thought this was a good idea? I think we fucked up a whole generation of kids. Please don't say safety because things are much much safer now than they were in the 70's, 80's and 90's.

lotsoweiners 4y ago
Not sure this is a generational thing or perhaps a how you were raised thing? I’m an X’er and I don’t think I ever went in the front yard (or beyond) unattended until I was in late junior high out perhaps even high school. I just hung out playing video games or dicked around inside or played in the backyard. My guess is that the people of my generation who were adventurous kids probably have more adventurous kids now.
- retrac 4y ago
  I'm a millenial. At 7, I was allowed to cross the street and walk within one block (quiet suburb). At 12 I went to a school outside my immediate area, and I took the city bus there on my own. At 14 or so, I was allowed to travel anywhere in the city, provided my parents approved. Went to a concert with friends around that age. I took my first overnight trip away from home on my own at 16 to go visit a friend who had moved. That experience seemed normal to me at the time, but me and my friends may have been the tail end of that degree of freedom. Funnily enough I rarely exercised it. My parents encouraged me to explore more than I did. I was a very introverted and nerdy type who spent most of the time indoors. But I would spend my weekends and summers with my friends. And my parents wouldn't usually be willing to drive me once they considered me old enough to walk there or take the bus.
- s__s 4y ago

jmyeet 4y ago

You can't talk about this without talking about car culture. In many cases, there's simply nowhere for kids to actually go on their own without being driven there. This also leads to streets being designed 100% for car convenience to the point of making them unusuable, dangerous and/or hugely inconvenient to anyone else. Another issue is the compltely overblown fear or crimes such as abduction. The #1 and #2 causes of child death in the US are firearms related and automobile related (respectively). Those are completely normalized.

kelseyfrog 4y ago

I've written about this here before, but the social forces that incentivize parents to restrict autonomy is intense. I live in a massive California suburb, median in almost every way. It's my perception that letting kiddo play outside, climbing trees, biking on the sidewalk in front of the house should be a low risk activity for a 2nd and 4th grader if done together. Not in the perception of neighbors. Every time I say yes to them asking to play in public, I'm taking a risk that someone will call the cops for the simple act of a child playing outside without a parent. How do I know? It's happened three times already. There's a group of folks who see that as inherently dangerous and have no problem invoking the police to shut it down. They've also been approached by strangers asking where their parents are. They're obeying the laws, not being reckless or getting into trouble. They're minding their own business and because of that they are confronted for it. It's these encounters that weigh on my mind when I'm deciding how to respond when they ask if they can play outside each day. Sometimes I say no, because I'm not prepared to deal with the possibility of that scenario occurring again.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
forgotmypw17 4y ago
Have you talked about how they should respond to someone engaging them that way? Is don't talk to strangers a workable strategy?
- IG_Semmelweiss 4y ago
  Nosy nancy doesn't care. She will still call the cops. I've seen this myself. The looks i get for letting my kids scoot ahead of me on a sidewalk of a large city (while I walk behind them) are beyond belief.
davnicwil 4y ago
I don't known if more laws and regulations are the answer here, or if it'd have undesirable secondary effects in certain situations where it really matters, but I feel like this behaviour as you describe it should itself be unlawful. You should not be permitted to deliberately harass people you don't know doing nothing wrong in this way, it's that simple. It's a question of individual liberty in the end. I'd hope the police would actually have a private word with them to this effect to be honest, when they do 'report' it. I assume not, but do you know if any ever have?

xwowsersx 4y ago

I'm a fan of this non-profit organization Let Grow https://letgrow.org/ https://letgrow.org/ co-founded by Jonathan Haidt. In part, they've fought legislation that would make it a prosecutable offense to leave a child unsupervised in a public park.

jalapenos 4y ago

I wonder if there may be a simpler underlying reason, such as having few kids. When a parent only has one, it's both easier to control them from a time & energy perspective, and also more understandable biologically from a risk perspective, than if they had say five.

Nicholas_C 4y ago
Scrolled way down to find this answer. I also think this is the primary cause. If you have one kid you’ll be way more protective than if you have four.
jgwil2 4y ago
This was my thought as well, but fertility rates in much of Europe are even lower than in the US and they don't seem to be experiencing this issue to the same degree.

andrewfromx 4y ago

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/04/hey-parents-leave-those-kids-alone/358631/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/04/hey-par...

semireg 4y ago

I regularly see kids aged 8-13 playing outside on our block. I always look to make sure they are OK, not hurting anyone or anything, and I’m reminded of my childhood of roaming the suburbs of Minneapolis. I have a 5 and 2 year old and will definitely let them play unattended when they are older. We are just at the “you can play in the next room unattended while I cook dinner” stage. Yet, I can totally see the pressure from others with them seeing it as neglectful. Cars and deep water. Those are my two biggest fears. And they scare me to no end because they are very real threats. To a lesser extent: trains.

orionblastar 4y ago

https://www.loveandlogic.com/ https://www.loveandlogic.com/ https://www.criticalthinking.org/ https://www.criticalthinking.org/ The two links above are good for raising children and teaching them to think with empathy and compassion. Schools should follow one or the other. My father was a Drill Instructor Dad, always yelling at me, ordering me around. But he let me play outside with my friends in the streets and parks. Back then you didn't have to worry about pedophiles grabbing kids or school shooters. So I can see why some parents want to be helicopter parents. But you want your child to grow up independent from you so they can do their own thing. You don't want the dependence for the day you die, they won't know what to do.

fmajid 4y ago

I actually know the author (my daughter went to pre-school with two of hers) and she is a perfectly grounded and no-nonsense parent. Cities are way safer today than in the 80s when I myself was growing up and as a 11 year old it was perfectly normal for me to commute by train and Tube from Reading, UK to Kensington, London for school with my 7 year old brother in tow. I aim to instill the same confidence in my daughter, albeit a year later.

pier25 4y ago

All of this is so strange to me. I grew up in Spain. I walked alone to school as young as 6-7 years old. This was completely normal. Most kids did this. I even remember taking a plane alone at 10 with a one of those UM tags.

interpol_p 4y ago

I get this from other parents. A few years ago I let my 3 year old ride his bike with his older sister and brother (5 and 7 years old). I walked with them, but allow them to get ahead of me, up to about 500m - 1km (~0.6mi). My instructions were always "wait at the next road so we can cross together." Once, when they were out of sight for a while, I rounded the corner to find them surrounded by a concerned couple who proceeded to tell me off for allowing the youngest one out of my sight. I disagreed with them and continued to allow my youngest to ride many hundreds of times since. I got dirty looks from them a few times on subsequent walks.

DigiDigiorno 4y ago
People need to let their kids out more, but common, a 3 year old at an intersection? That's not what this thread is about. Even in your story you were trying to supervise them and weren't far behind.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  It IS what this thread is about. His 3yo was out of sight (not by much, and was accompanied by his older siblings), and that was enough to get some busybodies to criticize his parenting. It's part of the same problem: that in America today, parents are considered "neglectful" if their children are out of their sight for even a minute. Heck, parents have had CPS and police visits just for letting their kids play in their fenced-in back yards!
  - DigiDigiorno 4y ago
    Again, the fact that he was actually just out of sight IS what makes this situation fine. Without this fact, putting the supervision responsibility of road safety of a 3-year-old solely on a 5 and 7-year-old is unfair to them all. But that isn't what happened, he was literally there. I think all parties seem reasonable in the scenario. Supervision is not an all-or-nothing thing. When someone calls the cops on your 10 year-old climbing a tree in your front yard or the neighborhood woods (let alone in your fenced-in back yard), that is ridiculous. But, there is a problem when you equivocate a toddler on a public road and a grade-schooler playing outside. One is able to stumble into problems and solve them while building confidence--the other just learned it's name and how to put on their shoes and pedal the bike. Like, all 3-year-olds are different, perhaps his was closer to 4. Perhaps they were developmentally way ahead of their peers. Perhaps this was the most rural quiet and safe road ever. But without knowing that extra stuff, I think it is reasonable to voice your concern after finding a 3 year old on a road without real supervision.

thetopher 4y ago

(2021)

zuminator 4y ago

The rise of the mobile phone device has become a curse as much as a blessing. Previously there was no way for parents to be apprised of their children's activities at every moment. Now, not only is it a simple matter for neurotically overbearing parents to check on their children constantly, but it's also simple for total strangers to "karen" your lack of parental attention. If a busybody passed by a bunch of kids playing without supervision in 1990, they would have to wait until they got home or to their destination, remember the location of the children, call up the police, and by that time the kids might not even be there. Even if they are, the busybody's sitting at home by the landline and doesn't get the visceral satisfaction of seeing the prepubescent gangbangers brought to justice. Where's the fun in that? Now, as a meddler, it's a simple matter of spying the unlicensed skateboard wielding urchins from a safe distance and reporting them to the cops in real time while you triumphantly wait there for the squad car to arrive and haul those little miscreants off to cps and hopefully get their parents' rights terminated for good measure.

bityard 4y ago

When we try to give our kids complete autonomy for the day (and we occasionally do), one spends the whole 16 hours or so on a video game and the other will be glued to her phone the whole time. Sure, we could make them go outside or put away the screens but that's not really autonomy, is it? Your move, progressive parenting advocates.

__turbobrew__ 4y ago
Check out “indistractible” by Nir Eyal. One of the techniques in the book is to have your kids set what they think is a reasonable limit for media consumption and then hold them to it. It is a more balanced approach than giving kids absolute self determination.
- bityard 4y ago
  Thanks for the suggestion. I like that idea and will give it a shot.
imtringued 4y ago
What makes you think this doesn't happen to children that have trouble leaving the house because of their overprotective parents?

divan 4y ago

Some links in the article indirectly refer to SDT (Self-Determination Theory), but I think it deserves more attention here. It's the very mature and well-studied theory on human motivation, and three main predictors for intrinsic motivation are: autonomy, competence and relatedness. Autonomy - the opposite of being controlled - is the major predictor and the one used build the spectrum of motivations: from intrinsic to four types of extrinsic and to amotivation. Motivation is basically what makes us do stuff. Unsurprisingly, these three psychological needs (autonomy, competence, relatedness) are also linked and are good predictors of the wellbeing, fullfilment, vitality and, for the lack of the better word, happiness in life. I see this as "motivation to live" essentially. Studying SDT opened my eyes to the modern views on parenting, sports coaching and some other fields. It just all started to make sense, and I would say that SDT is one of those theories that can change your worldview.

atmosx 4y ago

In the his book "the tyranny of merit" Harvard political philosophy professor, Michael J. Sandel, best known for his podcasts on BBC Radio 4 makes the same argument. Lately, Harvard students have had all their lives programmed to the point where they cannot complete trivial university related tasks without parental assistance and presence. The students that require psychological support after failure (e.g. failing a class or failing to join a ridiculous club) have skyrocketed as well.

than3 4y ago
Its a common theme, there's a book I read called The Coddling of the American Mind, very similar.

the_common_man 4y ago

Such a long winding article, though i agree with the gist.

Psychoshy_bc1q 4y ago

*in north america

illiac786 4y ago

As the article states, "free range parenting" is called "parenting" everywhere else... I hope this trend does not catch on too much where I live. My kids took the bus at 9 and it was and still is not uncommon.

smsm42 4y ago

I am reading all this and wondering how I - and my whole generation of peers - survived. I was walking to school (~15 mins on foot) alone (well, sometimes with my class mates) since I was 7. Playing outside without parental supervision (well, when not reading books, on which to be honest I spent a lot of time, being a geek) since about the same age. Going to relatives on public transport (~20 min) since about the same age. Going to high school on public transport (~1hr one way) since about 13. In fact, most of the day I didn't see my parents and they didn't see me - they were at work and I have been at school, or at the relative's or at home mostly tending to myself, doing chores, or homework, or reading books. Literally everybody my age was the same. I don't remember anybody having stay-at-home parents or somebody supervising non-toddler child the whole day. This probably sounds as insane to some Americans as the American idea that school age kids need constant adult supervision sounds to me. But from what I read in the literature it used to be this way in the US too. Just somehow people got super-paranoid one day...

midoridensha 4y ago
>I am reading all this and wondering how I - and my whole generation of peers - survived. I was walking to school (~15 mins on foot) alone (well, sometimes with my class mates) since I was 7. I walked to school at those ages too. But we didn't all survive: one of my classmates in 7th grade was hit by a car crossing a busy road and died. It's long been dangerous for kids to be outside because of America's obsession with cars, but decades ago, having some kids get splattered on car hoods was considered OK and an acceptable sacrifice for a car-dependent society. Now, risk acceptance is lower so parents keep their kids inside all the time, while buying huge SUVs to protect their kids when they do go outside.
serpix 4y ago
You hit the nail on the head with how much we saw and interacted with our parents. It was not much.
- smsm42 4y ago
  Except for the weekends - on weekends there was much more interaction. But really it was normal to spend much more time with peers - or books, in a case of a geek like me, pre-internet times - than with parents. I think now it is considered bad but many societies have lived like that for generations. Spent a lot more time with my grandparents actually - which had significant influence on many aspects of my early development.

moltar 4y ago

The lady in the intro paragraph would be shocked to learn that Danes leave their babies to sleep outside in a stroller, in midst of the winter, meanwhile they are enjoying a coffee or buying something indoors. To be clear, I think that’s awesome.

majikaja 4y ago

Here in Japan you see 5 year olds taking the train by themselves to school all the time..

digitalengineer 4y ago

From an American perspective, of course. So what happens when a US family moves to Europe? Here's a quick video of a mom now living in Europe explaining the details: " 5 Ways my Kids Lives Would be Different in USA vs EU" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xKOfT5TKHQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xKOfT5TKHQ

camgunz 4y ago

My partner and I wanted to leave the US to have kids and this was one of the reasons we were looking abroad. We eventually chose the Netherlands because they have a strong culture of encouraging independence in kids, which matched up w/ our values. We just had our first kid, and I've discovered that the amount of internalized guilt is out of control. No one has to say anything to you to make you doubt your decisions, you do great on your own. (I'm oddly OK on this front, it really messes with my partner). This kind of thing doesn't really happen in the Netherlands; but you will get occasional "you should"s from people from time to time. I really bristle at those, and I can barely imagine the insane rage I would feel if a total stranger of an adult approached my kids at a playground to ask where I was, or if someone outright chastised my partner for a decision she made. Calling the cops or social services is unimaginable; I'd probably lose it and move to the woods like Captain Fantastic. As soon as you get pregnant something clicks in busybody brains everywhere and they suddenly swarm. I don't know what weird cultural phenomenon is responsible for it, but it's insufferable. We have stuff like uBlock and Pi-hole for surveillance capitalism getting all up in our business; is there something out there for busybodies?

mcv 4y ago

I'm trying to teach my kid autonomy, but he doesn't want it. When I was 12, I traveled around the country by train on my own for 4 days. Dutch railways had a special ticket for that: Tienertoer: 4 days of free train travel within a 10 day period, only for teenagers, and you got a booklet with all sorts of discounts for museums and other stuff to visit. At 12, I figured I was a teenager and therefore old enough to do this. My son, almost 14 now, is not remotely interested in anything like this. Though he does claim to be old enough to stay home on his own for a weekend while we are away. But I don't trust him to actually come out from behind his (my, actually) PC if we do this.

TiredGuy 4y ago

I once left my kid in a minivan that had both sliding doors open and all windows open. It was in front of a house and I had just gone to the back of the house. Someone called the cops on me and also had the audacity to scold me and my wife. People can be very quick to judge when it comes to stuff like that. They hear stories about hot car deaths and see a kid that is in no real danger but they see a car and a kid and draw a thoughtless conclusion. I'm not sure how we can as a society improve this situation though. There do seem to be a lot of PSA commercials about stuff like that, but I don't think we need to decrease those. Or would it be better to add more detail to the PSAs to clarify when someone's not in danger? Seems like overcomplicating what should be common sense...

konne88 4y ago

I think a big problem is just how US suburbs are built. Growing up in Germany, there were sidewalks, protected crossings, and public transportation everywhere, so I was just always expected to go to school and visit my friends on my own. Now that I live in the US, it's often hard to let your kids roam free, because there is a real danger of them being hit by a car.