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Parenting Paranoia: Historical Reality Check

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    Parenting Paranoia: Historical Reality Check

    what your 6 yo should know...in 1979

    I really want to check these books out now (I've already read a few 19th century ones, and they are pretty interesting too)...
    Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of HistoryPagan Devotionals, because the wind and the rain is our Bible
    sigpic

    #2
    Re: Parenting Paranoia: Historical Reality Check

    8. Can he travel alone in the neighborhood (four to eight blocks) to store, school, playground, or to a friend's home?

    O.o

    Do parents let their kids do this anymore? If my neighborhood is any indication, parents apparently don't even let their kids play outside anymore, let alone have them wandering around unattended.

    Of course, I remember when I was 4, 5, 6... my mother used to throw me out of the house on the weekends the minute I was awake & she didn't even want to see me til around 8pm or so. On summer vacations, if she'd had it her way, I'd have been living rough for three months. Of course, this was back before Chris Hansen & all that, in the kinder gentler years between 1977 - 1983.
    The forum member formerly known as perzephone. Or Perze. I've shed a skin.

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      #3
      Re: Parenting Paranoia: Historical Reality Check

      In 1st grade I was walking home from school on my own with friends.
      In about 5th grade I was also let out at summer time in the am and came back dirty and hungry in the pm.
      Satan is my spirit animal

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        #4
        Re: Parenting Paranoia: Historical Reality Check

        LOL dude,

        I was born in August and I was only 6 years old and a few weeks old when I started first grade!

        I didn't have any permanent teeth.

        I was afraid to take my training wheels off until I was 7...true story

        Otherwise I could do most of that and more (I was a very articulate child), but lacking the above didn't seem to hold me back any lol. I was in top of my class right from first grade until I graduated.

        ---------- Post added at 08:20 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:18 AM ----------

        Originally posted by perzephone View Post
        8. Can he travel alone in the neighborhood (four to eight blocks) to store, school, playground, or to a friend's home?

        O.o

        Do parents let their kids do this anymore? If my neighborhood is any indication, parents apparently don't even let their kids play outside anymore, let alone have them wandering around unattended.
        Depends where you are. I walked to school alone but it was just down the street. I wasn't allowed farther than around the corner alone until I was 10, and I think this is still pretty standard in Canada. But here, kids go places by themselves alllll the time. I even see kids riding the subway alone fairly often. They seem to be ok.

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          #5
          Re: Parenting Paranoia: Historical Reality Check

          Originally posted by perzephone View Post
          8. Can he travel alone in the neighborhood (four to eight blocks) to store, school, playground, or to a friend's home?

          O.o

          Do parents let their kids do this anymore? If my neighborhood is any indication, parents apparently don't even let their kids play outside anymore, let alone have them wandering around unattended.

          Of course, I remember when I was 4, 5, 6... my mother used to throw me out of the house on the weekends the minute I was awake & she didn't even want to see me til around 8pm or so. On summer vacations, if she'd had it her way, I'd have been living rough for three months. Of course, this was back before Chris Hansen & all that, in the kinder gentler years between 1977 - 1983.
          Not in the US...seriously, its ridiculousness. I get dirty looks from other parents (but compliments from grandparents) when I let Sophie (with her dollar or two clutched in her little hand) go up and buy an ice cream cone or other treat and wait (where I can see her) from the other side of the shop. Funnily enough, the rudest encounter I had was when she was buying herself an apple, so I know its not *what* she's getting...and since she says please, thank you, excuse me and ma'am/sir, I know its not her manners...

          If you read through the comments on the freerange kids blog, there are COPS that try to pick up 8 yo kids in their own suburban neighborhoods to take them back home to their parents like they've escaped from their prison and need to be handed back over to their warden, who needs to be given a lecture on how DANGEROUS it is.

          No wonder kids are so effed up and needing to rebel in such dramatic fashion--they've never had an iota of freedom (or they've had entirely too much without ANY parental involvement) to make their own mistakes (and suck up the consequences).
          Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of HistoryPagan Devotionals, because the wind and the rain is our Bible
          sigpic

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            #6
            Re: Parenting Paranoia: Historical Reality Check

            Originally posted by thalassa View Post
            Not in the US...seriously, its ridiculousness. I get dirty looks from other parents (but compliments from grandparents) when I let Sophie (with her dollar or two clutched in her little hand) go up and buy an ice cream cone or other treat and wait (where I can see her) from the other side of the shop. Funnily enough, the rudest encounter I had was when she was buying herself an apple, so I know its not *what* she's getting...and since she says please, thank you, excuse me and ma'am/sir, I know its not her manners...

            If you read through the comments on the freerange kids blog, there are COPS that try to pick up 8 yo kids in their own suburban neighborhoods to take them back home to their parents like they've escaped from their prison and need to be handed back over to their warden, who needs to be given a lecture on how DANGEROUS it is.

            No wonder kids are so effed up and needing to rebel in such dramatic fashion--they've never had an iota of freedom (or they've had entirely too much without ANY parental involvement) to make their own mistakes (and suck up the consequences).
            I think it's getting so ridiculous in North America...seriously it's going to be a whole generation of people who can't really do things for themselves in the same way. I was reading an article a while back that was talking about how a lot of parents wouldn't let teenagers babysit their kids, and I'm thinking, yeah, tough luck going out on a regular basis when you have to pay adults, who likely wont work for $5 an hour (it was a Canadian article and the lowest minimum wage in Canada is $8.75 an hour...most provinces are $9-10 now). And it was talking about how teens wouldn't know what to do if there was a fire or something....I don't know about everyone but I knew how to dial 911 and give an address when I was 15! I'd even taken a first aid course by then.

            Germany has its own fails with parenting, but that's not one of them.

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              #7
              Re: Parenting Paranoia: Historical Reality Check

              Let's see... when I was a kid (early 60's), my parents didn't think anything about letting us out to wander - we were kind of like the kids in Little Rascals, we'd spend the entire day without seeing our parents once. This was typical where i lived - it was a friendly Detroit neighborhood, but also, if you walked out to the busy road and turned left instead of right (the way to the dime store), you'd come to a vacant lot littered with empty heroin baggies.

              I still rebelled pretty ferociously. I don't think this has that much to do with the inclination to rebel.

              On topics like this, I really don't know what a parent should do - I guess I'd suggest allowing as much freedom as the parent is comfortable with, and stretch that out just a bit. Statistically, your child is unlikely to come to grief, but applying statistical rationality to our own kids is difficult, and maybe not even a good idea. Fortunately, I've never had to deal with this too much.... I live far enough from everything that I've had to drive my kids pretty much anywhere they wanted to go - it's about an hour walk to my daughter's nearest friend. After that, I let them run wild (although when the BF's come over, I lock the deer blinds ).
              Every moment of a life is a horrible tragedy, a slapstick comedy, dark nihilism, golden illumination, or nothing at all; depending on how we write the story we tell ourselves.

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                #8
                Re: Parenting Paranoia: Historical Reality Check

                I didn't learn how to ride a bike until I was 11, and I didn't know how to tie my shoes until I was 12...I was a....special child.

                Also, the paranoia of parents in the US is ridiculous, especially if a male is involved. If you're a guy, and you're nice to a kid, you immediately get branded as a pedophile. When a kid tries to talk to me, I always ignore them like they don't exist and walk away for exactly that reason. The only time I've ever paid attention to a kid that wasn't related to me was when I saw a little girl chewing on a deflated balloon and I took it away from her because she could have choked, and even doing that much was pretty dangerous for me, really. The fact that I actually had a debate in my head over whether or not to let the kid potentially choke to death so as to avoid me being hassled by the parents and cops is a really bad indication.

                Here's some links explaining what I'm talking about:

                http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/c..._treating_all/ (a Reddit thread referencing the article I linked)

                Just reading that Reddit thread with all of peoples personal stories in it is enough to make you want to leave this country forever. Seriously. This attitude seems to be spreading around the Anglophone world quite a bit. If you go to teach English in China, Japan, or Korea, you'll have a pile of kids hanging all over you while you try to walk down the hallway, and that huge buffer distance you have to keep between yourself and kids in the US is really, really weird to them.
                "Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others."
                -Thomas Jefferson

                Let a man never stir on his road a step
                without his weapons of war;
                for unsure is the knowing when the need shall arise
                of a spear on the way without.
                -

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                  #9
                  Re: Parenting Paranoia: Historical Reality Check

                  In 79 I was 6. I remember riding my bike to the store, 1/2 a mile a way to buy a snicker's bar for a dime.

                  Great thanks now I feel old.

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                    #10
                    Re: Parenting Paranoia: Historical Reality Check

                    Well I'll give it a try....
                    1. Will your child be six years, six months or older when he begins first grade and starts receiving reading instruction? Some of my children were MUCH younger than this. I think one was just turned four.

                    2. Does your child have two to five permanent or second teeth? Except for the ones that were knocked out when playing Swallows and Amazons.

                    3. Can you child tell, in such a way that his speech is understood by a school crossing guard or policeman, where he lives? Yes.

                    4. Can he draw and color and stay within the lines of the design being colored? Yes. Early practice with colouring books and dot-to-dot and even jigsaws in our house.

                    5. Can he stand on one foot with eyes closed for five to ten seconds? Probably but none of mine would have seen the point of it and would probably have argued about it.

                    6. Can he ride a small two-wheeled bicycle without helper wheels? Some of mine could. Some weren't really interested in bikes.

                    7. Can he tell left hand from right? Oh yes. They were all left handers. They KNEW they were different

                    8. Can he travel alone in the neighborhood (four to eight blocks) to store, school, playground, or to a friend's home? Some wanted to, some didn't. One would take off for miles and miles when he was about seven.

                    9. Can he be away from you all day without being upset?
                    Some didn't mind, others did.

                    10. Can he repeat an eight- to ten-word sentence, if you say it once, as "The boy ran all the way home from the store"?

                    Oh yes. And more. Including poetry.

                    11. Can he count eight to ten pennies correctly? Yes. And get into a fight about missing pennies too.


                    12. Does your child try to write or copy letters or numbers?All the time. Occasionally over walls and tables. And the youngest would copy letters in Greek. (Don't even ask....)

                    I think most of the children who live in my area nowadays could probably do all these things too. Perhaps the most telling thing was that years ago children tended to go around in groups, which were seen as safe. Now they would be regarded as a problem...
                    www.thewolfenhowlepress.com


                    Phantom Turnips never die.... they just get stewed occasionally....

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                      #11
                      Re: Parenting Paranoia: Historical Reality Check

                      Wow, You can really tell how different things are now! My kids play outside on our dead end street by themselves but I always have the door open and can hear them.

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                        #12
                        Re: Parenting Paranoia: Historical Reality Check

                        My childhood freedoms decreased as I grew up in direct proportion to the downfall of our neighborhood. When I was 11 , we moved to a "typical" suburban area and I was allowed to ride my bike or walk pretty much wherever I wanted. It was a little hard to get used to! The rule there was, if kids lived less than 2 miles from school, we walked.
                        sigpic
                        Can you hear me, Major Tom? I think I love you.

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                          #13
                          Re: Parenting Paranoia: Historical Reality Check

                          Well, my growing up years weren't that long ago. Hell, I'd argue I'm still growing up at 21. But during my childhood, I lived in the country until I was ten and often walked/rode my bike half a mile or more to my nearest neighbors. The distance seems different every time I go back to visit so I'm not exactly sure. I remember being 7 or so and being embarrased cause I couldn't ride my bike. Once we moved into town in Iowa, my parents prefered I not cross any major roads on my own cause I was a little reckless, but I know I went several block on my own and walked to school on my own. And they even let me go on biking trips up to ten miles away (to the next town over) with friends. Adults accompanied us but they were comfortable enough to let us get far enough ahead to be out of sight.

                          As an adult female, I've also noticed a tendency for parents to give you odd looks if you're around their children. I love kids, especially babies, but I would never dare approach someone with kids now. Even when I take the children I babysit to the park it can be kind of awkward sometimes.
                          We are what we are. Nothing more, nothing less. There is good and evil among every kind of people. It's the evil among us who rule now. -Anne Bishop, Daughter of the Blood

                          I wondered if he could ever understand that it was a blessing, not a sin, to be graced with more than one love.
                          It could be complicated; of course it could be complicated. And it opened one up to the possibility of more pain and loss.
                          Still, it was a blessing I would never relinquish. Love, genuine love, was always a cause for joy.
                          -Jacqueline Carey, Naamah's Curse

                          Service to your fellows is the root of peace.

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                            #14
                            Re: Parenting Paranoia: Historical Reality Check

                            I lived in the same neighborhood my entire life...and had a several block roaming radius that increased each year until by 10 I could go anywhere that didn't involve crossing the highway...which pretty much restricted me to downtown--where the library was.
                            Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of HistoryPagan Devotionals, because the wind and the rain is our Bible
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