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I have met parents here that live on base that will not let their elementary school aged kids out to play without them, so I completely believe you that she does that.
If bad people live on base, they are committing crimes off base. Base life is very peaceful. It's a bubble. It has it's good and bad qualities.
When my xstepdaughter lived with us. It was dusk. I said, look outside and call Craig in. She said, no ms childfree I may get snatched. I laughed and said, okay. Baby, you're alright. I looked at my xhubs and said, that's a city baby right there.
Waiting with the children at the bus stop. Why. Nothing is/will happen.
As you said, about Walsh. Now, you have to think twice about sending Johnny to the corner store for bread and milk. Those easy days are long gone. It's a huge difference between a careful parent and a hovering parent. HUGE!
I'm still not getting what the problem is. If your friend doesn't want her daughter to wear her costume to the grocery store then fine. But as long as someone's child is behaving well and it doesn't bother the mom who cares?
And yep...I see lots of kids wearing shorts and cowboy boots. Again so what? If they are at the park in cowboy boots who is it hurting? Are their feet protected? Yes.
Really not getting why this is an issue.
Yeah, you're right.
I remember playing with my little girlfriend and she's in full cinderella costume.
Ok, I didn't read the whole post so maybe we've really gone off the main topic by now but anyway...
I consider myself a free-range parent. I believe in car seats and bike helmets. I also believe my 6yr old can safely walk to school down the street by herself and my 4yr old can play in the backyard without me. I believe that people are mostly good and teaching "stranger danger" can be more harmful than teaching your kids good street sense. I think kids should learn how to read a map, cross a city street, cook a meal and pitch a tent by the time they hit middle school. I think screwing up once in a while is fine.
I think keeping over-scheduling, too much screen time and gps trackers for kids are silly.
Whenever I panic about letting my kids do something by themselves I try to remind myself that I am raising an adult, one that will need to face her own battles and be brave enough to figure out the subway all by herself.
I think the fact that people (you, psychiatrists, therapists, pharmaceutical companies, parenting organizations) label styles of parenting, is more indicative of a serious societal problem, than the style itself. That IS my comment. The fact that there are different "official" organizations for these different styles..is indicative of a serious societal problem. When adults choose to focus more on "what does my style of parenting present to the world and how will they label it" than actually BEING parents to their children, it's a problem.
As such, I'm opposed to free range parenting. I'm opposed to co-sleeping. I'm opposed to attachment parenting. I'm opposed to hovermoms. I'm opposed to soccervans, and soccermoms, and hockey-dads. I'm opposed to anything that exists to create a rift between parent and child, and families and their communities.
I'm opposed to the labels themselves, and the fact that there are threads that exist asking people to further define the categories for which the labels were created.
I agree. All these labels ever seem to do is make people say what they're not. Oh, I'm not one of those helicopter moms. I'm a free range mom, but not once of those crazy undisciplined hands-off moms. That's not what free range means, you see. I'm a good free range mom. Helicopter moms are bad moms, all of them, and I'm not like THAT.
Have you ever noticed that nobody ever fits the "bad" definition of these categories? I don't think parents are all that different--they just like to argue about the labels they slap on one another.
I agree with the OP....however, one parent's definition of helicopter parenting is going to differ greatly from another parents definition. Children do need to develop a sense of independence, creativeness, and security. However, there can be an argument made against some of these "free-range" parenting techniques. Some parents are unable to "walk a line without crossing over it". It's all a matter of perspective here, right? There are "free-range" parents out there who neglect and endanger their children, because they have been convinced they're being overprotective. On the other hand, you have overprotective parents who germaphobes, who are killing their kids with their overprotectiveness!
You see, sometimes, we just need to stand back and not judge folks. The link above gave an example of a mother who would allow her 9 year old to walk 2 blocks alone....vs the mother who wouldn't allow the visiting neighbor's child walk that 2 blocks alone. How do we know the cautious mother doesn't have memories of something happening to a child (even herself), who was allowed to walk a couple of blocks alone? Some parents have no reason to believe that something terrible can happen to their children when they're unattended (although with the news broadcasts, I don't see how that happens). Some parent's, via personal experience, KNOW that terrible things can happen to unprotected children. I try not to judge too harshly. I try to keep my kids safe. I'd rather be a bit overprotective, than have to explain to my child how I THOUGHT I was doing the right thing, AFTER my neglect allowed something awful to happen to them.
I've witnessed an extreme example of this, and it is creepy and sad. A friend of mine confided in me that she was molested as a child by a family friend. She's now in her forties, and has never said anything to anyone because her parents are still friends with her molester and she doesn't want to stir anything up. Her husband doesn't know this happened to her. Even worse, a childhood friend of hers was raped and murdered (the murderer is still in prison). I watched as, when her own daughter turned the same age as she was when these things happened, she began to fatten her kid up in what to me is an obvious attempt to build a wall around her daughter so the same thing doesn't happen to her. She just kept shoveling food at the girl, huge plates of french fries between meals, etc., and accompanied her daughter everywhere, never let her do anything for herself, etc. The daughter is now an obese, lazy high school dropout who wouldn't be able to boil water for herself if you put a gun to her head, and her mother makes excuses for her. It is sad.
Predators go after the kid who is off to the side and doesn't seem to have anyone watching over them, but overprotection doesn't prepare the kid to face life, either. From my own perspective, my daughter was ten when I narrowly escaped a meeting with Mr. Death one day. The children of some of my coworkers were not so lucky. This geared me up to wonder whether if I DID die while she was still a child, did I teach her enough to survive and keep living if I was no longer there? There has to be a balance.
If bad people live on base, they are committing crimes off base. Base life is very peaceful. It's a bubble. It has it's good and bad qualities.
When my xstepdaughter lived with us. It was dusk. I said, look outside and call Craig in. She said, no ms childfree I may get snatched. I laughed and said, okay. Baby, you're alright. I looked at my xhubs and said, that's a city baby right there.
Waiting with the children at the bus stop. Why. Nothing is/will happen.
As you said, about Walsh. Now, you have to think twice about sending Johnny to the corner store for bread and milk. Those easy days are long gone. It's a huge difference between a careful parent and a hovering parent. HUGE!
I hate to say it, but not long ago I read Journey Into Darkness, a book about the minds of murderers by a retired FBI profiler. One of the main stories in his book is about a young woman, herself a Marine, who was abducted while jogging on the base by the husband of another Marine, taken to a park off the base, raped, tortured and murdered by forcing a long stick up inside her so far that it punctured a number of her internal organs.
Not to scare you, but the military base is only as safe as the people inside of it. There are no guarantees.
I remember playing with my little girlfriend and she's in full cinderella costume.
My friend's little son used to love to come over and play with my daughter because he could dress up in all her frilly party dresses and fancy shoes. My daughter came running to me once with all of her dresses tucked under her arm and asked me to hide them because she was tired of playing Cinderella and "house" and having to either be the prince or the father because "Mikey" always wanted to be Cinderella or the mother.
I considered taking him to the store dressed that way just to **** off the kid's father, but I refrained.
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Childhood is fleeting. Dressing up is harmless, little kids LOVE it and it doesn't cost anything. One of life's simple pleasures.
