April 14, 2008

• It's rather more of a dangerous planet than it was when we were kids.
• Letting Go related article from 2000 in NY Times On the one hand, I applaud this approach very much. And on the other, I deal with the NYC subway everyday and understand that it can sometimes be akin to playing Russian Roulette. I've had to deal with situations on the subway that were hard enough for a 35 year-old to deal with, let alone a nine year-old. My father used a similar approach with me when I was the same age - but it was riding the bus alone in Minneapolis. Looking back, I did enjoy being given the freedom and "responsibility" of riding the bus into the city, but there were several occasions when I was downright scared and felt threatened. Perhaps this better prepared me for what lay ahead in life? Whatever the case, I'm not so sure that I will have the guts to allow my children to ride the subway alone when they are nine years-old. Then again, my subway line just sucks in general!
• We coddle our kids these days and I'm pretty sure it's not good for them. We treat 12 year olds like babies, and teenagers like primary kids. It wasn't that long ago that you were expected to be a fully functioning adult at 16. Nowadays I know 25 year olds that don't have a clue how to do anything significant without help from mom or dad.
• I think there's a happy medium between being a hyper-protective parent and letting your kid ride the NYS subway alone at age 9. The author of the article seems to believe that it's an all-or-nothing proposition, which it isn't.
• We coddle our kids these days and I'm pretty sure it's not good for them. We treat 12 year olds like babies, and teenagers like primary kids. And on the other hand... we (and them) get showered all the time by the media and advertising's increasingly sexualized image of teens. And kids want boob jobs as graduation presents and moms take them for waxing. Weird. Coming from another generation that wasn't much sheltered and got to use public transport early on, and got to deal with problems like interrupted service, closed stations, drunks and nasty people on board, all I can say is that teaching them danger avoidance and readyness skills can be much more useful than driving them everywhere. Them again, as I've seen it with childbearing friends, it's a lot different when one's own kids are involved. Recall acquaintances flaunting they'd let their kids be free, no constraints or unjust bounds, and now they worry when they don't answer their cellphone at the third ring...
• rocket, that sounds like a rather broad generalization. I would argue that children today aren't coddled as much as they were in the past (perhaps it's how one defines coddle?). In my case, I surely don't "coddle" my soon-to-be 4 year-old. For example, I've never put a "strangle hold" on him when walking through NYC - - I've let him run ahead on sidewalks (for which I've been scolded many times). And yet, I don't think five years from now I would be comfortable giving him "free range" on the NYC subways. While a nine year-old may be up to the task, they may not be developmentally prepared to make the right decisions in situations that demand a mature response in such a chaotic environment. As TUM put it, I think there is a happy medium somewhere inbetween. I aim to get both of my children there.
• it's a lot different when one's own kids are involved. Yes yes yes. I'm theoretically completely in favor of letting kids have the run of their neighborhoods -- I remember the rule at our neighborhood swimming pool when I was growing up was that you could come by yourself when you were 10, which from the vantage point of 36 seems absurdly young but at the time felt ridiculously constraining -- but knowing how fast a kid can disappear forever, and how irrevocably OVER my life would be if that happened to Jack... I don't know that I'll ever feel completely comfortable letting him just wander off.
• This put me in mind of Colin Ward's The Child in the City and The Child in the Country books but damned if I can find much about them online. A recommended read at any rate.
• Hank: By what measure is it a more dangerous world? In the case of new york particularly: less crime, cleaner city, etc. The only thing that's increased is our awareness of outlier events.
• putting a nine year old on the subway in New York is not a good thing, no matter how you justify it... There are a lot of ways to empower your child, but putting him/her at risk of being kidnapped, molested, or terrorized isn't the way to do it.
• Whether or not it actually is a more dangerous world than it was, or we just better know now how dangerous a world it was all along, seems kind of an academic question to me.
• I think it's entirely dependent on the maturity of the child and how they've been trained to respond. ANYONE can be preyed on by someone determined to be aggressive. It wasn't that long ago that you were expected to be a fully functioning adult at 16. And many adult responsibilities came even younger to my grandparents generation. I have a dear friend, age 90, that can tell the most wonderful cowboy stories. His folks lived in a lava rock house 15 miles from the nearest neighbor, and 100 miles from any town. When he was EIGHT, he would take a horse and ride the "outside circle" gathering cows--alone. This would mean a ride of 40 to 50 miles into rattlesnake infested lava rock ravines and over slick shale rock hillsides. This could take 5-8 days, depending on how easy it was to find and drive the cows. He did it alone, with only a horse, a bedroll, and some beans and coffee. When he was TEN, he was riding with his dad in the late afternoon, and they found a cowhand that had been killed being bucked off a raunchy horse. Chet stayed with the body to keep the wild animals off, and his dad rode to the nearest ranch to notify them and get help to bring in the body. Chet said he built up a fire and sat until they came--around 3am. This was in cougar country, without a gun, but he knew a fire would be enough, as long as he kept himself, and the body, close to it. He also helped dig the grave in the rain, and was there helping on the ropes when they lowered the body, wrapped in a blanket, into the muddy hole. He and his three brothers, ages 8-14 took 250 head of cattle the one hundred miles from Tindell, Idaho to Mountain City, Nevada by themselves. He told me if they had lost one cow, their dad would have skinned them alive, not to mention that they knew their mother would not be able to afford the small luxuries that made their lives more bearable. The second was the punishment that would have hurt the most. They made it with all 250 head. Chet said his dad always told him if you're paying attention and thinking, you won't get into a tight situation, and if you do, then you better start thinking harder. I think we often underestimate what young people can do if they're introduced to things and taught to THINK!!
• putting a nine year old on the subway in New York is not a good thing, no matter how you justify it... There are a lot of ways to empower your child, but putting him/her at risk of being kidnapped, molested, or terrorized isn't the way to do it. And what exactly is that risk? Probably somewhat less than when you send them to school, camp, sports, etc.
• In Prague, we'd see eight or even seven year old kids walking through the busy city streets and riding the trams and buses on their way to and from school all the time. Most crime statistics indicate that our world is generally safer. I don't know about specific crime against children, but my gut tells me that the clamor of scare-television isn't the best bellwether. I think we as a society are tending more toward a paranoid fear of our fellow man than is warranted by reality. There's something disturbingly misanthropic about that. I think it's a tendency to be actively discouraged, especially as my new son gets older. I don't want him to live in a world where he's afraid for no good reason. I also don't think I'd be willing to let him ride the NYC subway (which seems like a shorthand for "pretty scary") without doing more research, but I wouldn't consider it out of the question.
• Also, The Thudguard. Thudguard is a revolutionary new product, an infant safety hat, designed to help absorb and reduce the impact of head injuries due to a fall or collision. It is suitable for babies and toddlers aged 7 months to 2+ years.
• Well I don't have kids yet, so you should probably just ignore what I'm saying, but I'm at least intellectually with the free-rangers here. Yes, it's true that children can be abducted and terrorised and the like, but such situations are vanishingly rare. Meanwhile, these risks have to be weighed against the very much more substantial risks of not allowing your kid a certain degree of freedom. 1) When children are allowed freedom to roam their neighbourhoods and go play with other kids, this gets them exercise. I have absolutely no data to back this up, but I would be extraordinarily surprised if it were not the case that deaths due to obesity caused by a sedentary lifestyle in childhood greatly outnumber deaths by misadventure in childhood. This effect will almost certainly be even greater if you limit 'misadventure' to being kidnapped or molested. Or put in other words, what's the point in subjecting your kid to an x+y% chance of dying in middle age in order to save them from an x% chance of getting kidnapped, where x is a very, very small number and y is a much, much larger number? It's a judgment call, sure, but I know which side I would bet on. 2) Freedom, for kids, is needed for proper psychological and social development. I contend that allowing kids limited freedom teaches them to identify and avoid danger when they grow older and have to face even more difficult dangers. By facing slightly dangerous situations, and by occasionally getting hurt, kids learn where the line of safety is and how to respond when danger comes knocking. I actually have an, admittedly anecdotal, but I think very telling, illustration of this: when I was a teenager I was involved in a well-known youth group for kids from twelve up. The group stressed leadership, and so it happened that, after a short time, I was put in charge of some of the younger kids as we went on trips and engaged in activities, etc. Most of my underlings came from a hard-scrabble immigrant neighbourhood in a poor area of Toronto. By and large they were a hard-headed, good natured lot. But we had one kid who was very different. He was very enthusiastic, deeply intelligent, all around a nice guy, but he had trouble relating properly to the other kids because, quite literally, he had never been out of earshot of his parents. Home schooled from infancy, he had never had the chance to spend time unsupervised outside the home, never had the chance to play freely with children his age... he was behind the curve in all sorts of ways. But by far the most disturbing thing about this particular individual was his absolutely incredible lack of fear. While his social skills rapidly developed, and he learned to use his natural intelligence to win friends, he simply had no idea what constituted a dangerous situation. On one, particularly memorable, occasion I discovered that he had been climbing down a very slippery metal ladder between the side of a ship and a harbour wall, over a sheet of fractured ice and with nobody watching. He wanted to collect sea shells he had seen below the tide line. Naturally, after this, we made sure he was watched like a hawk, but he frightened me very badly that day. Admittedly, this kid was an extreme case, but I still remember him every time I see young teenagers doing stupidly dangerous things. How many of them spent their childhoods shut inside, unable to learn, metaphorically speaking, that ships move and grips fail and cold water kills?
• Kids can avoid *natural* dangers. I grew up walking around barefoot avoiding poisonous spiders, snakes, etc. That's one thing kids can deal with. But it is a more dangerous world in the cities by dint of the fact that there is a greater population density. There are more crazies per acre now. The likelihood of getting fucked up is higher. I would never let a 9 yr old kid ride around on the NY subway unattended. I would have second thoughts about even letting a 9 yr old ride the Sydney, Australia, transit system, which is a relatively benign locale. When I was a kid we could sleep out on the lawn on a hot night, or leave the door unlocked with just the screen closed. You could leave your car unlocked. That is not possible now. Is it a factor of crime reportage vs occurrence? I'm not sure. I believe it is a population density issue. Example: there weren't any crackheads around when I was a kid, because crack hadn't been discovered yet, at least not by the mainstream. Methamphetamine abuse was rare, now it is a scourge. Try and argue that this is a factor of reportage, rather than societal change. But I am of the opinion that social danger varies, it goes in cycles. We live in a stressed, depressed, oppressed society at this time, with unemployment, wars, ill health and general malaise. In a time of better vibes & socioeconomic prosperity, people in general are happier, disturbed people are dealt with in a more positive way or don't occur as much, etc; there is more social awareness and altruism. In dark times, people become dark. That's the way it goes. In evil times, you get the Kitty Genovese effect, because people are worried about their own shit. In good times, when people are not oppressed in their minds, they look out more for other people. Happiness breeds altruism. But with higher population, there is a higher % of fuckers out there ready to do you, screw you, stab you. I don't think anyone can argue that we don't have a massively increased population over that of the period when most of us were kids. And in high density population zones, human beings become stressed & aggressive. This is the nature of our species, we need space.
• I read a very interesting article last year, possibly in the Guardian, about the decreasing range of movement kids have had over several generations. The piece described a grandparent, a parent, and a child, each of whom grew up in the same general urban area in Britain. The grandparent, as a youngster, would walk 11 or 12 kilometres to go fishing, for example. The parent's orbit was smaller, perhaps six km at most, and the child's range of movement was about 150 to 200 metres around his home. Haven't been able to find it online - I think I read it in print.
• roryk - it was posted on MetaFilter -- http://www.metafilter.com/62103/The-Incredible-Shrinking-World
• Hank, I'd have to attribute your views to increased reporting of crime and danger, rather than actual increases. I was nine in 1974, which was hardly a time of sunshine and roses, and I had vastly more freedom and range than most kids today. I walked a mile after school to my swimming lessons at that age, and home again in the dark. On weekends I'd go with friends exploring nearby (3 miles?) cliffs and waterfalls, taking a pack of matches so we could cook hot dogs over a fire. Even I can't imagine letting my own 11 year old do stuff like that.
• OMG, I was reading the Daily Mail! Thanks, karmakaze, that looks right, though I got lots of the details wrong.
• I know that cities are larger now, but crimes are also down substantially in the last few decades. The world really isn't more dangerous; we are more paranoid.
• (sorry - that last was from jb, who forgot to log Dreadnought out.)
• *delurks* I’m not done my vision quest yet, but I would just like to interrupt that for a moment, if I may. Much of this is culture-based. Would I send my kids alone on the New York subway? No, but that would only be because the subway isn’t within their normal range of experience. Would I do it if I lived in New York? Would I send them on the city bus where I live? Sure. They would have a cultural familiarity with it to know how it works, and know how to use it. By that token (heh) I’m sure that there are a good many kids nine or less in New York who are latchkey kids, kids with a single parent, etc., who take the subway in regular course, and aren’t getting the attention that this case is attracting. Second, it was the kid who asked. The mom wasn’t forcing the kid into anything he didn’t feel he was ready for. I think this is a key point – he felt that he had the skills to get home by himself, and so did the mother. The mother knew her kid well enough, and trusted both him and his judgement to ask for help when he needed it to let him do this. Thus, it wasn’t so much a demand made of the kid as it was an affirmation of where he was already. Third, I don’t think the danger is as great as may be supposed. The thing about New York is – there are plenty of people around. While it’s certainly possible that somebody may try to do something to the kid (as can happen anywhere), chances are that even if that happened, somebody’s gonna notice. The kid’s skill set likely includes knowing not to go with strangers, and who to go to for help. By nine, he knows to make a stink should somebody try something funny. And in New York, where there are ordinary people around all the time, and plenty of cops or subway personnel – the chances of somebody actually getting to do something is greatly reduced. In that, the kid may be more safe through numbers alone than walking down the street in a small town, where if somebody did try something, you might not find out for a while. Fourth, the kid is familiar with the subway. Ride the trains for any length of time, and it’s perfectly obvious who the crazies are. And the thing about the crazies are – as long as you leave them alone, they’re fairly harmless. Being a New Yorker means, in no small part, being completely blase about the nutters, as they’re just part of the landscape. Assuming that riding the train is nothing new to the kid, he likely knows enough how to deal with them, in not dealing with them at all. Fifth, New York City, for all of its reputation, is an awfully friendly place. Should the kid get into trouble, I would have every faith in your average stranger to help the kid out, insofar as getting him to someone who is in a position to help the kid (cops, MTA workers, etc.). In conclusion, then, confirmation of the kid’s abilities, not a forced-lesson, New York is safer than commonly supposed, I would do the same as the mom were I her. *goes back into sweat-lodge* *relurks*
• Okay...who left the door unlocked?
• And what exactly is that risk? Probably somewhat less than when you send them to school, camp, sports, etc. The risks encountered on the NYC subway are far more common and dangerous than those found in a school, camp, or gymnasium. Do you ride the NYC subway on a daily basis? I do, and I can tell you that it is not so straightforward and carrying the same, or less, risk as any other place that a nine year-old child might frequent. There's a plethora of variables to deal with. Hank brings up excellent points -- kids being able to avoid natural dangers for example. I can tell you that the NYC subyway sytemt is not a "natural" environment. Death is a matter of feet away at all times; tonnes of steel whizzing by, high voltage rails, gaps between platforms and doorways, and the ever-present "crazies". The ridership for the NYC subway is constantly rising, and as such, trains are becoming increasingly crowded - which leads to increased tension and "subway rage". I've been caught in fistfights, I've had to deal with a naked guy peeing on people (not only that, but a guy at the 14th Street station who started pissing all over the platform, laughing wildly!), I've had to deal with a gang holding up people on a car with razor blades, I've had to deal with a puddle of diarrhea from a homeless person that caused a lady to slip and crack her head on the seat!! I watched a man fall onto the tracks once in an over-crowded station. And just two weeks ago I watched a young girl get blocked inside a train by a man who wouldn't let her mother onboard; people started screaming at the conductor to open the doors, but their calls fell on deaf ears. I saw the train leave the station with a girl inside screaming with fear, while the mother was left standing on the platform screaming, "MOTHER FUCKER!!! YOU LEFT WITH MY DAUGHTER!!" My point being - - there's a lot more of the unexpected to be had on the NYC subways, and I'm not sold on the idea that a nine year-old is well-equipped to handle such unknowns on-the-fly. I'm sure some probably are (the boy in this case, for example, seems to have a mature head about himself), but in general I would think that it's not such a good idea. I completely agree with the logic, and think it's not a bad idea in well-planned moderation. But to go as far as to give a nine year-old "free range" on the subways seems to be taking it too far.
• Maybe the diarrhea incident has made me biased. *hangs head in defeat*
• It must have been worse for children during Dark Ages... Although I WAS a twelve-year-old whose bike got hit a glancing blow by a dump truck, even while being harried by a farm dog, and all the while trying to carry a precious trilobite fossil on the handle bars of an old Schwinn bicycle. Seven miles from home on a gravel road in what today would be a restricted area. Thank God I was mature enough at the time not to tell about it! The truck driver straighted the frame on my bike, so I thought I was lucky – except for the horrible fearful bad dreams. Bah! That could be minor league. The possibilities are more nearly endless for the kid on the train today, who might, or might not be living in some dark fantasy world co-habited by anime characters, for example.
• The thing is, it's all well and good to talk about. But I can't help but imagine that deep in the back of the mind of every parent is the thought "statistically, it's less likely than a meteor falling on my kid, but if my kid is killed, it'll be because I wasn't there".
• I'll tell you what, if that kid ever gets lost in the City, he'll be able to find his way home.
• I have a 15-month-old, and my views on this might change when she gets older, but right now I'm less worried about "stranger danger" episodes where a kid is molested or kidnapped. Most kids are kidnapped, molested, or murdered by someone they know: a family member or family friend -- and how do you keep your eyes open for that? I'll teach my daughter how to avoid scary strangers, or what to do if someone she doesn't know threatens her, but how do you teach a kid what to do if someone she knows and trusts hurts her?
• Which is all to say, I have sympathy with the idea of free range kids.
• I know that cities are larger now, but crimes are also down substantially in the last few decades. The world really isn't more dangerous; we are more paranoid. I'm not a sociologist nor criminologist, so this is only idle speculation, but is it possible that it's a chicken-and-egg situation where we don't know whether A. the crime rate is down so we shouldn't be so paranoid, or B. the crime rate is down because we're more paranoid?
• See, it's working! :) As a parent of two, I can testify to the disconnect between "Yes, in my rational mind I think that we coddle kids too much and we should encourage them to be independent and explore and trust themselves and learn to handle real-world situations," and the emotional trump card, "If anything happens to them because of your progressive/retro ideas of childrearing, IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT." That disconnect should not be overstated. I was perfectly all right browsing the toy aisles unsupervised for hours at Wal-Mart while my mom shopped when I was a kid, but the chasm between that knowledge and letting my kids do it is currently un-leapable. So wait, did I just say my mom didn't really care about me? That can't be what I meant...
• s/b "disconnect should not be UNDERstated" Oy.
• I hope my comment didn't come off as too harsh. I didn't mean it in a "wag my finger at others" way, but in a "holding my head wondering what should be done" way.
• yes it did and now everyone hates you.
• There were other reasons, of course, but the main reason that the 1998 remake of Psycho didn't work for me is that I couldn't stretch my credulity enough to accept that an intelligent, modern woman would put her trust in, and make herself vulnerable to, someone as obviously creepy as Bates, even if her mother might have done so in 1960. Of course, it was films like the original Psycho that shaped the mind of the intelligent, modern woman in such a way that she wouldn't do that in 1998. I don't think my mother's generation has has a peaceful, relaxing shower in 48 years.
• Aw... Hankey... *ruffles hair*
• School Tells Deaf Boy, “Hunter,” to Change His Name — It’s Too Violent
• Crap, such stupidity. Why couldn't they just have him spell it out in sign?