Free-range parenting

[brymble]

http://www.time.com/time/nation/arti...0.html?cnn=yes

"Helicopter" parents really aren't doing their kids any good. Let kids be kids, and let them grow!

[DreamSpell333]

Originally Posted by brymble

http://www.time.com/time/nation/arti...0.html?cnn=yes

"Helicopter" parents really aren't doing their kids any good. Let kids be kids, and let them grow!

Things have definitely changed. I remember in the summer my mom letting me at 7! Ride my bike all over our town and said come back before it gets dark! Cant do that nowaday's ..

[Amethyst Rose]

Yeah, my mom let me walk the three blocks to the park, by myself, when I was 4!! She looks back now and wonders what she was thinking, she'd never do that with her grandkids.

Edit: This grabbed me the most and sums up the whole article for me -

But too many parents, says Skenazy, have the math all wrong. Refusing to vaccinate your children, as millions now threaten to do in the case of the swine flu, is statistically reckless; on the other hand, there are no reports of a child ever being poisoned by a stranger handing out tainted Halloween candy, and the odds of being kidnapped and killed by a stranger are about 1 in 1.5 million.

[Mama J]

Wow! Yeah the stuff I did at the age of 4 or 5 craziness I think, looking back on it. I can't believe I was allowed to do the stuff I did. I'd never in a million (even in a small town) dream of letting my daughter do any of that stuff. I don't think I'll be a hovering parent, but she is also not walking to school or the park 3 blocks away alone until she's at least 6 or 7 just cause. Time will tell on that.

I agree with AR this totally sums it up for me as well.

"But too many parents, says Skenazy, have the math all wrong. Refusing to vaccinate your children, as millions now threaten to do in the case of the swine flu, is statistically reckless; on the other hand, there are no reports of a child ever being poisoned by a stranger handing out tainted Halloween candy, and the odds of being kidnapped and killed by a stranger are about 1 in 1.5 million."

[Cindlady2]

Well, that was quite the article.
I have felt for a long time that parents were becoming over protective and overbearing. Not that I'm saying let them run wild, but don't try to protect them from everything Many school playgrounds have disappeared because "kids may fall and get hurt". Even tag is band in many places. Many of us had our first lessons in inertia and gravity on a playground! LOL We lived!

Learning how to walk to school and to friends houses not only taught us the neighborhood, the town and how to watch for traffic, but taught us independence. I know many kids if they got "lost" a block or more from their house could not find their way home.
Witch brings me to another point. Too many parents are "thinking FOR their kids instead of teaching them TO think! So many parents stress good grades and how much the kid KNOWS rather than letting them learn and figure things out for themselves. Many kids can read before kindergarten but many can't figure out HOW to do something on their own. We are loosing "problem solvers"!

What boredom does is take away the noise ... and leave them with space to think deeply, invent their own game, create their own distraction. It's a useful trampoline for children to learn how to get by.

When a kid is bored they will find something to do. Let them do it!(Within reason of course.) So they want to build a tree house. Instead of dad (or mom) building their idea of a "safe" tree-house, let them build it. Give them guidance, talk about what might work and what will not. Encourage their input but don't shoot down all their ideas. Let them do most of the work. Let them make a few mistakes. They will learn so much more from doing things themselves rather than having it done for them. Just keep an eye on them.

We're infantilizing our kids into incompetence.

Kids learn a lot from their mistakes. As long as the parents keep the risks within reason, let the kids try things and take some chances. Sure they might get hurt a bit. But every scrape, bruise, and broken bone will be a lesson. Give them GUIDANCE don't try to run their lives. They have to learn to make their own choices. They have to learn to live with those choices, good or bad.

I hope I made sense, I'm not real proficient at writing.:

[Lunacie]

We lived in a teeny-tiny town when I was raising my daughter. We literally knew everyone, well at the least we knew their names and where they lived. I let my daughter go and visit her friends all the time. I always had to know where she was going to be and when she'd be home though. I didn't even worry that much about her crossing the blacktop where the speed limit was supposed to be 30 mph but people often ignored that.

I've been helping raise my grandkids for over 10 years and don't know whether it's a different time now, or whether it's been because we've lived in bigger towns, but I've been much slower to encourage that kind of independence. The oldest has been begging to walk to school ever since 3rd grade. It's a little less than half a mile from our house to the front door of the school, but knowing what a scatterbrain she is (she has ADHD just like me) I was more afraid of her being late than of getting kidnapped.

This year she started middle school, she's 11 now, and made a new friend who lives about a mile and half from the school, and her parents let her walk there, and all over town. So we began by letting my granddaughter walk with her friend, and now we let her walk to the library on her own, which is beyond the middle school. I do remind her that she knows some TaeKwanDo and if someone tries something funny she should be able to run and scream - at least I hope so.

The younger one doesn't get quite so much freedom, although usually an older sibling paves the way for the younger one. But the younger one may have Autism so we're not quite ready to trust her to find her way and make good choices just yet. She'll be 8 this week.