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People are stupid, at least in general. They are poor decision makers. They tend to overestimate their abilities and underestimate others. They tend to overestimate their kids (for example).
Most kids don't have the depth perception skills, due to brain development, to judge when an oncoming car would allow you to safely cross the street. They don't develop this until age 10 or so.. and we are talking about 8 year olds here.
Now i'm sure Somebodynew kids are 8 going on 24 (when the brain finishes development) are some bastian of light in a somehow underdeveloped society.
Oh brother. No. But their year age has little to do with their responsibility. And THAT is the guiding arbiter of their freedom AFAIC, not some random age. Their ability to demonstrate responsibility is proof of the requisite brain development as well as skill.
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Yet you belong to . . a society. And the society has laws and rules for behavior within that society based on the average, and issues that have resulted in the past. Different states have different rules.
12 or 13 is a very common law/requirement in the united states. Now not every 12 year old or 13 year old can be home alone. Some are impulsive, and you can be more conservative than your state's law/regulation.
I'm sorry, but you don't have full rights, power, and control over your kids. You must treat these kids within the societal compact (or move to Afghanistan where you can beat your wife and daughters to death on a whim, if you want full control).
If you don't respect the compact, that society can (and have) take your kids away.
I agree. "I would have to tell them you cannot walk despite your clear responsibility to be able to do that because of this stupid law."
12 or 13 is a very common law/requirement in the united states. Now not every 12 year old or 13 year old can be home alone. Some are impulsive, and you can be more conservative than your state's law/regulation.
If you don't respect the compact, that society can (and have) take your kids away.
Actually very few states have laws about staying home alone (which btw isn't what this case is about) and only one is higher than 10...your state naturally.
Funny you should use breast vs bottle as an example. I've heard (from reliable sources, personally) that their doctor threatened to call CPS if they didn't supplement with formula. And it couldn't be just any formula, it had to be xyz formula.
I personally had a bit of a struggle when a doctor took a look at my healthy one year old and said, "Oh, she's low on the growth charts. Failure to thrive. If you don't supplement and get her weight up, I'll refer her for [invasive] testing in the hospital [two hours away]." I said I hardly thought that was necessary, given the fact that she had the identical growth pattern as my older daughter, was obviously meeting milestones and not a day sick in her life. She said if I refused the testing, she would "have to call someone". I went home, really upset, and did some research. Lo and behold - the doctor was using the wrong growth chart. There's a different growth pattern for exclusively breastfed children vs. children who are supplemented with formula. My daughter was indeed not on the charts for the formula fed one, but her growth (and my older daughter's, also EBF) mirrored the breastfed baby chart perfectly, and she was like 25% on that one, which is smallish but perfectly fine. I took the chart (from the CDC) back to the doctor. She said, "huh, I'll look into this." Turns out, at the next visit there was no more "failure to thrive" on my daughter's chart anymore. No need for invasive testing, no need to "call someone" on me.
But this was a DOCTOR. A mandated reporter. Can you imagine what sort of damage that might have done to our family? Yes, I guess I could have just gone along with the various invasive testing done at the hospital. BTW from what I read, usually if a child is referred for FTT to a regional facility, they automatically start doing parental observations, sometimes separating the child from the parents just to make sure the parents aren't interfering with the studies, etc. - assuming that in an otherwise healthy child, the parent must be sabotaging the feeding in some way if the child isn't growing. And had they started supplementing with formula, the weight probably WOULD have shot up - which would then "prove" parental "guilt". Just makes me sick. I had the access to research, I knew HOW to do proper research, etc. etc. so I was able to ward that confrontation off. But if I had no knowledge of statistics or healthy feeding practices or even that there were different growth rates, etc., I could have been screwed.
Your story is scary and I agree it could have been much worse!
You know what bothers me the most? The amount of people who are so willing to take whatever happens in the name of keeping the peace and not making a ruckus. Screw that.
children under a certain age must be accompanied by a 13 year or older
OMG the end of the world. My rights have been destroyed by common sense!!
Yes it is an erosion of parental rights because I do not have the RIGHT to determine what I believe is best for MY children based on THEIR individual needs and personalities.
It is NOT common sense. Its a blanket rule designed by people who think they know better than parents as to how individual children should be raised.
I'll refer you to my previous post about a parenting belief YOU hold dear and see how ready you are to give up your right to do what you see fit for your own children.
I've heard from sources, that your sources are fictional and in your head.
The only reason a doctor would have to make that threat is if your STARVING the bady
I don't think parents should be allowed to starve babies
call me a liberal, if you must
Dude, I'm as progressive as they come and I've been called a Socialist for some of my beliefs and I think you are straight up wrong.
People like you scare me. You are SO willing, SO ready to believe what someone in authority tells you. You won't even use that bump three feet above your ass to think for yourself and realize that just maybe a doctor could be wrong.
This sense may be "common", but it is not one I share. I have never limited my children based on the number of years that they have been alive. They are only limited by what their OWN responsibility can handle. If I lived in a place that had a law like that, and I may for all I know, I would have to tell them you cannot walk despite your clear responsibility to be able to do that because of this stupid law.
Exactly.
I let my older child help me cook when he was 3 years old because he listened, he was calm and mature, even at that age. My younger son still doesn't help me in the kitchen much because he doesn't follow the rules.
GOOD parents judge their children's abilities, responsibilities and privileges by the individual child and NOT by some arbitrary thing like age.
People are stupid, at least in general. They are poor decision makers. They tend to overestimate their abilities and underestimate others. They tend to overestimate their kids (for example).
Most kids don't have the depth perception skills, due to brain development, to judge when an oncoming car would allow you to safely cross the street. They don't develop this until age 10 or so.. and we are talking about 8 year olds here.
Now i'm sure Somebodynew kids are 8 going on 24 (when the brain finishes development) are some bastian of light in a somehow underdeveloped society.
Yet you belong to . . a society. And the society has laws and rules for behavior within that society based on the average, and issues that have resulted in the past. Different states have different rules.
12 or 13 is a very common law/requirement in the united states. Now not every 12 year old or 13 year old can be home alone. Some are impulsive, and you can be more conservative than your state's law/regulation.
I'm sorry, but you don't have full rights, power, and control over your kids. You must treat these kids within the societal compact (or move to Afghanistan where you can beat your wife and daughters to death on a whim, if you want full control).
If you don't respect the compact, that society can (and have) take your kids away.
When did children lose the ability to know how to cross a street? Watch traffic patterns? Pay attention to stop lights?
It isn't until the millenial generation that we've seen this smothering, hovering, helicopter attitude towards raising children.
Plus not every kid walking around the block is crossing busy streets. In our dead-end neighborhood, there is a central park where most kids don't even have to cross the street to get to. The worst is driveways, having to watch out for cars backing up. And even if you were to cross the street, you can see a car coming from alllll the way down the road, like six blocks in either direction, and the speed limit is around 20-25. We don't have an issue with speeders, either. This isn't a situation where you're crossing a four lane main road with cars whizzing by at 45 mph. But if the law says you can't walk around by yourself until you're 12-13, because the lawmakers are thinking of the worst case scenario neighborhoods, then that also means that kids in neighborhoods like ours can't go out alone either, legally.
So what? Bad things only happen in places that have homes under 500K?
If you look at the actual post I was responding to a poster who implied that DC was a crime ridden gangland that he was afraid of walking around in as an adult. Silver Spring MD is a safe suburb. Somehow I doubt the police would have ever been called had this been inner city DC.
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