I’m exaggerating slightly to be funny. That said, I’m the type of parent that sends my kids out to play unsupervised, and that’s really not as common as it was when I was a kid. I’ve dealt with:
When my daughter was 6, she did a loop around our block alone. About a quarter of a mile, most of it visible from the front or back yard. A neighbor came to tell me she saw my daughter walking alone, and I told her I knew. She insisted that my daughter was too young, and it was too cold for her to be out alone (I think around 40 degrees? My daughter was wearing a coat, anyway). I said she’d be fine. This lady then went and convinced my daughter to walk home with her. She brought her up to the door and I was completely blown away that this woman basically took it upon herself to decide what my kid can and cannot do.
A different neighbor posted a picture of my son on Facebook, at 8 years old, asking where the parents were because he was too old to be out playing alone.
One of my daughter’s friends isn’t allowed out of the house without a parent (now 9 years old) so my daughter always goes to her house. It’s weird.
That’s not a lot. It’s not even that serious. But it’s fucking weird that we’ve arrived here, as a society.
Some commenter mentioned people on Lemmy being scared of everything. Yeah, I combine my experiences with those stories of people being arrested for neglect or abuse because they let their kid out of their sight for a minute and it terrifies me. This is a nation of nosy busybodies, convinced by around-the-clock news that there’s a pedophile kidnapper lurking in every neighborhood waiting for the chance to strike.
How unfortunate. My friends and I basically roamed the streets until the street lights came on when I was that age. I still see little kids walking down to the park a block from my house, or riding their bikes around the neighborhood. But I’m not in a big metro city any more. It’s probably much different in the hearts of major metropolitan cities.
I’m exaggerating slightly to be funny. That said, I’m the type of parent that sends my kids out to play unsupervised, and that’s really not as common as it was when I was a kid. I’ve dealt with:
When my daughter was 6, she did a loop around our block alone. About a quarter of a mile, most of it visible from the front or back yard. A neighbor came to tell me she saw my daughter walking alone, and I told her I knew. She insisted that my daughter was too young, and it was too cold for her to be out alone (I think around 40 degrees? My daughter was wearing a coat, anyway). I said she’d be fine. This lady then went and convinced my daughter to walk home with her. She brought her up to the door and I was completely blown away that this woman basically took it upon herself to decide what my kid can and cannot do.
A different neighbor posted a picture of my son on Facebook, at 8 years old, asking where the parents were because he was too old to be out playing alone.
One of my daughter’s friends isn’t allowed out of the house without a parent (now 9 years old) so my daughter always goes to her house. It’s weird.
That’s not a lot. It’s not even that serious. But it’s fucking weird that we’ve arrived here, as a society.
Some commenter mentioned people on Lemmy being scared of everything. Yeah, I combine my experiences with those stories of people being arrested for neglect or abuse because they let their kid out of their sight for a minute and it terrifies me. This is a nation of nosy busybodies, convinced by around-the-clock news that there’s a pedophile kidnapper lurking in every neighborhood waiting for the chance to strike.
How unfortunate. My friends and I basically roamed the streets until the street lights came on when I was that age. I still see little kids walking down to the park a block from my house, or riding their bikes around the neighborhood. But I’m not in a big metro city any more. It’s probably much different in the hearts of major metropolitan cities.
That’s freaking crazy, wowser.