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Posted
Wednesday, March 18, 2009 11:40 AM
| By
Rachael Larimore
In today's installment of "Wow, I feel like a geezer" ... I'm feeling like the stereotypical old man who grouses to his grandkids that when he was a kid, "We had to walk five miles to school, uphill each way, in three feet of snow."
BoingBoing picked up this post from a blog called Free-Range Kids. Turns out a mom let her 10-year-old walk one-third of a mile to soccer practice ... wait for it ... by himself. Kind of. He had a cell phone, and anyhow Mom had to be at the soccer field a few minutes after he got there, so she would find out quickly if he arrived safely. Alas, the poor kid got only three blocks before a cop stopped him. When the cop found the mom at the soccer field, he explained that they'd received "hundreds" of calls to 911 and said she could be charged with child endangerment. (I somehow doubt that this small town in Mississippi has the population density to lead to "hundreds of calls.")
I know that my generation (X, if you must know) likes to joke about how it's amazing we survived childhood, without five-point-harness car seats and cribs that had lead paint and parents who let us sleep on our tummies. Of course we can joke about it, because we survived. There's no doubt that improved safety guidelines for children's products and better advice from pediatricians have indeed made us safer. But when I was a kid, I walked to kindergarten by myself. Sure, there were other kids in the neighborhood and we'd walk together when we saw one another, but I knew where I was going and how to stop at the stop signs and look for cars and not talk to strangers. At the pool we swam at every summer, every kid looked forward to turning 10 because that's when you could start going without your parents. (Yes, there were lifeguards.)
I don't know if neighborhoods are safer or more dangerous today than when I was growing up. As with most things, it probably depends on where you live. And no doubt, people are influenced by a 24-hour news cycle filled with accounts of missing Caylees and Elizabeths. But parents need to be able to take reasonable steps to foster independence in their children, free from the meddling of nosy neighbors.
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