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I don’t disagree that children need to engage in risky behavior, but the claim that it needs to be unsupervised and then viewing it through the lens of yesterye
by chomp 3y ago
I don’t disagree that children need to engage in risky behavior, but the claim that it needs to be unsupervised and then viewing it through the lens of yesteryear is a combination of survivor bias and nostalgia. Children pre-1990s were also a lot more likely to have less present parents across the board, and there’s a lot of strings attached to the unsupervised play those children got. I agree unsupervised play is important, I let our kids play by themselves all the time, it’s very important for learning conflict resolution. But make room in your argument also for having a strong and engaged presence in their lives.
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago> viewing it through the lens of yesteryear Given that those critical adult-free hours were the norm ~throughout human history, I think the year part of yesteryear sells it short. How about Yesterever?
- 15457345234 3y ago> survivor bias Using that phrase is... 80s childhoods weren't some sort of trial by fire threshing machine, dude. By and large everybody survived. Children being lost to quicksand or stumbling across gangs of counterfeiters holed up in abandoned mills who black-bagged them is a thing that happened in Scooby Doo and The Hardy Boys, not real life. This elides the main issue; children need to be left to play unsupervised as the machiavellian instigator types only reveal themselves when nobody's watching. It isn't so much about letting the children take risks as it is about figuring out who's always present when something odd and painful happens to somebody else.
- forgetfreeman 3y agoStrings? You over there pretending the latchkey generation didn't happen or something? Waking up to an empty house with $5 and a note on the kitchen table was hardly remarkable bitd. The entire point of the exercise is for there to be -no- presence, forcing kids to work through stuff on their own.
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- bcrosby95 3y agoLatchkey is a historical anomaly due to atomic families transitioning into dual income households leaving no adults at home and not knowing what to do with their kids. When my mother grew up there was always an adult at home - her mom. Same with her parents. Same with my mother-in-law. You also don't have to go too far back, just 150 years, to when children were largely used for labor. Childhood itself is a relatively new invention. The idea that kids sat around doing nothing but getting in trouble with other kids all day is just wrong.
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- MisterBastahrd 3y agoDepends on what you mean. If you are within earshot of your children, you are not "letting them play by themselves." You are supervising their play from a distance. They are not the same. Know why bullies have it so easy nowadays? Because once upon a time, a bully was usually a kid who came from an abusive household and they were just demonstrating what they learned at home. Eventually, they'd end up getting their asses kicked by a kid who had the means and background to defend himself, and they'd learn something from it. Today, the world is full of little Eric Cartman wannabes: little asshole kids whose parents hover around them and will defend them to the ends of the Earth. It's screwed up child socialization and it's ruined childhood education because teachers with three degrees would rather do anything than take abuse from those bad kids and their pathetic, enabling parents.
- rightbyte 3y agoEric Cartman's mother does not defend just him though. She defends all sides and is forgiving. Kyle's mother do though. But Kyle is not an asshole.
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- rightbyte 3y agoYe I agree. I think "safe playgrounds" is just a scapegoat and a straw man. You don't learn much from accidents. Anything that is climbable is dangerous enought. You don't need to add rocks on the ground, to use another strawman.