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Kids 6 and 10 need constant supervision, and can't be unsupervised? Unbelievable. When I was a kid, at this age, I walked to school all the time, and it was a good mile from home. I walked in first and second grade to school over a mile away from my home. No big deal. We went to the park all the time and played for hours unsupervised. How crazy are these people?
Times have changed. As ocnjgirl posted the other day (in the thread about the girls planning to poison the teacher), I'm so glad I grew up when I did, and not these days.
I either rode my bike or walked to school and back home nearly every day from 1st grade, sometimes alone and sometimes with a friend or two. Sometimes in the hot, the cold, or the rain. Google maps tells me it was 1.1 miles. Let's see, I turned 18 in September 1992 which was 12th grade... So I must have been 6 years old turning 7 years old early in the school year in 1st grade (1981). We would ride our bikes all around the neighborhoods and dirt trails, spend hours down at the creek, and generally be outside almost all day on the weekends or on days off.
I'm 40 years old. I think you'll find the majority of people my age did most of the above in some form or another. It's something completely foreign to the parents who live in my neighborhood. The grade school is maybe a quarter mile away. The kids would never be made to walk it.
Kids 6 and 10 need constant supervision, and can't be unsupervised? Unbelievable. When I was a kid, at this age, I walked to school all the time, and it was a good mile from home. I walked in first and second grade to school over a mile away from my home. No big deal. We went to the park all the time and played for hours unsupervised. How crazy are these people?
It's Montgomery County MD. That's how they do things there. Roving minors are a problem and they've decided to deal with it as they see fit. Florida has one way of dealing with them, Montgomery County MD has another... Lots of rich people living in that area want to maintain law and order. If you don't like it, you're free not to live there.
Kids 6 and 10 need constant supervision, and can't be unsupervised? Unbelievable. When I was a kid, at this age, I walked to school all the time, and it was a good mile from home. I walked in first and second grade to school over a mile away from my home. No big deal. We went to the park all the time and played for hours unsupervised. How crazy are these people?
I did the same when I was a kid because we never woried about loony people walking the streets, they were all in mental institutions. A few years back in a move to save taxpayers some money our president decided to close all the gov't funded mental health institutions. That's why people are fearfull of alowing their kids to be alone at those young ages.
Location: Somewhere gray and damp, close to the West Coast
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I used to walk a half-mile to school and even *gasp* got flashed on my way home one day! (I was in the fifth grade, so 10 years old) My friend and I just giggled and ran home. No trauma. No PTSD. No psychotropic drugs. I don't think I even told my mom about it. I survived.
One of my favorite things to do, as a child, was to wander around the neighborhood at twilight on a summer day, enjoying the lovely ambient sounds of the neighborhood as it settled down for the evening. As long as I was home by the time it got dark, no big deal.
I've said this before, and will probably say this again, on various threads on this topic. (Funny how stories like this keep popping up with ever-increasing frequency, no?) I think parents often get the blame for "not giving their precious snowflakes enough freedom" and "coddling their children" - etc. I think many parents would LOVE to give their kids more responsibility. Sure, there might be some over-protective parents out there, but the majority opinion seems to be that "the good old days are gone, they should come back, etc." But who can blame parents for falling into line when authorities come and threaten to remove their kids? I'd rather drive my perfectly capable child to school while shaking my head at the nonsense all the way, or drag him into a store when I feel he would be perfectly fine in the car for the two minutes it took for me to pick up milk... but it's risk assessment. What's a bigger hassle, driving him to school in the morning, or possibly having to mount a legal battle to retain custody? =/
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