Is this good or bad parenting?

I agree. The first mother was letting the kid develop on their own, learn that you can fall down and that you get back up. I think it's actually a good lesson. In the case of the second mother, some of it obviously will depend on jsut what the neighbourhood was like, etc. If I personally had kids, I wouldn't let them do that at that age.

Well, when Ms T was 5 yrs old she wanted to go buy candy at noon hour after her morning kindergarten class and I said no, not now, fed her a sandwich and sent her upstairs to play.  The blond guy and I sat out on the back deck while we discussed some business stuff when the doorbell rang.  There was a scruffy looking man at the door who asked if I had a little girl named Ms T -- who happened to be at the corner and wouldn't come home.

 She'd gone upstairs, dressed up like a princess, taken her own money and trotted off to the corner store, crossing a busy intersection and a parking lot to get there, chosen some candy and paid for it herself.  When the clerk asked her where her mother was, it became clear that Ms T was unsupervised, so she walked her home -- until it dawned on Ms T that when she arrived with candy she was going to be in trouble.  At that point, she balked and the clerk asked a passerby to knock on our door.

I wouldn't send a small child to the store alone, but I also have a lot of faith in the people around here.  Even knowing that in this neighborhood you have people looking out for other peoples' kids, it wouldn't feel right.

 I have been sending Ms B on errands since she was 10.  The grocery store is about 2 blocks away and she manages that fine, but she's also savvy about crossing the street and counting her change there and at the post office.  It gives her a sense of independence and accomplishment and it makes my life easier.  It's a win-win. 

It's hard to decide when they're ready to do something on their own.  I tend to the overprotective and I'll admit that the first time she went, I watched Ms B all the way down the block and checked the window about every 30 seconds until she got back.  When she did, I was considering putting on my shoes and going to look for her.  Still, I also knew she could handle it and that this was part of growing up.

So, long drawn out answer, no, I think 6 is too young.  Nine or 10 makes more sense, depending on the kid -- but most kids walk to school on their own at that age anyway.

 The first mom, however, was fine.  She was there if kidlet fell and was probably keeping an ear out and looking up periodically.  I know the glares from the "involved" parents, since I have been the one with a book while the others hover.  I'm also regarded with a certain coolness by the other music lesson parents in my daughter's group lesson because I show up with a book or laptop and work or read during the less rather than follow every stroke of my wee violinist's bow.  Frankly, after Ms B's cello Suzuki program and in the 3rd year of Ms T's...  This is year 6 of the same songs for me.  Frankly, I'm bored spitless with it and if I pay too much attention she acts up.  But some of the other parents think I'm definitely a poor and inattentive parent.  Which makes me smile when Ms T outplays the coddled ones. 

When my kids were that age I used to get glares from the safety patrol parents because I was actually playing with my kids at such things.  Now it usually meant we had driven or biked into town so it was kind of a special treat for all, but I had no problem with being the troll trying to get the billy goat as my kids went screaming across the bridge structure, but apparently that was bad.  Here at home I built a large fort and other play apparatus for them to play on they were left to it.  On the other hand they were and are definite off-limits spaces though - like parts of the barn, the drive shed and around any equipment.  Very, very supervised around that stuff.

On the other issue we just gave our kids the truck keys and sent them on their way.  Okay maybe not, but if we lived in town and the road situation was safe, no problem in my mind.  

I love these parlour-game double binds: "If the woman floats, she's a witch and should be put to death.  If she sinks, she was a good Christian after all..." (Malleus Maleficorum)

Mothers are always wrong in the eyes of others. Eriksson said fifty years ago that you can't be a good mother, you can only be good enough. Good enough for some, but that won't silence the others. Fathers rarely get that kind of lip. Indeed, when some do things much worse, such as forgetting an infant in a locked car for a full day in the sun, everyone sympathizes with poor dad and any charges are dropped, if ever laid. (Happened in Montreal a few years back.)

Other interesting gender issues about how the "problem" is framed for us to chime in: the children involved are girls. Some of you have made the point that boys get plenty more leeway - I certainly did in the ho-hum fifties - the stories I could tell...

Also, in the second story, the girl is sent on an errand, making the mother doubly responsible to start with, "instrumentalizing" the child... What if s/he is just out to play in the front yard, on the street? That would be mere "negligence", right?

Even day-care centers are now being rabidly denounced by a right-wing doctor media darling (Hopital Sainte-Justine's Dr. Chicoine) as contrary to the "natural law of parenting". Hard rain's gonna fall.

One who hovers.

Here's an explanation of helicopter parents.  You'll recognize them when you see them!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_parents

Interesting to note, the only time my child got hurt on the playground was when I was playing with her. No other kids were at the playground at that time, so I filled in as playmate. She was also riding her bike to school on her own by Grade 2. It was a quiet suburb and all the kids rode in a pack to school on a designated bike path.

Also, my daughter at 6 was very advanced, and had a lot more freedoms than what her daughter at 6 had, who was not so much. In fact,  I came home from work one day, when my daughter was 6 or 7, her father was a stay at home dad at the time. She had what I first had thought was a lemonade stand and selling of junk stand right in front of our house, something that she did regularily. When I had a closer look, at what was being sold, I saw she was selling my clothes amongst the junk. My good clothes as a matter of fact, as I , in her words, hardly ever wore them. She got 50 cents for a pair a dress heels I had paid over 100 bucks for on sale, just a week prior, for a wedding we were going to in a couple of weeks.  Thank god I came home before the silk dress I was wearing to the wedding, went too. Now my granddaughter would never have thought of doing such a thing, amongst many other things my daughter had gotten up to when she was a child.

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"watching the tide roll away"

LOL, no.

Though I was furious about the selling of my stuff, I never stopped her from continuing to have her junk stand, as she was very clever about selling junk. We would go to yard sales and she would buy something for a nickle, or as cheap as she could get it, and then when she collected enough stuff she would have her own sale and sell it for marked up prices. I have no idea where she got that inclination to re-market things from. But I just let her carry on, it kept her busy and interested, as well as actively learning about public conduct, money and responsibility. Also, she was not interested in other outside of school cultural activites, except for karate.

When she was old enough to decide she wanted to baby sit, she actually developed a rate scale. Premium time meant premium dollars, and she got it, the kids loved her as they were her single focus and the house was just as the parents left it, or better. Her highest one evening sitting take was 364.00, for 1 child.

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"watching the tide roll away"

na, no rich neighbours, strictly working class neighbourhood.  It was an unusual circumstance, as a out of town friend wanted a sitter on a Sunday night so he could play poker. She demanded a 10% take on what he won, instead of a flat rate. He won 3,640 dollars.

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"watching the tide roll away"

Now that is a life lesson I can get behind!  Very funny!

Came across this over the weekend:

http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/

I'd heard about Lenore Skenazy's experiment with her 9 year old son (she gave him $20, a cel phone and a map and let him find his way home on the subway) and there was quite a kerfuffle about it.  She started the blog as a result and makes the case for more independent experience for kids.

"But that world is gone in Ontario, even there where I grew up..."

Why is that, do you think? Less children so more pressure on them and on mothers, more psych/CAS policing, apparently more assaulters on the prowl, more tolerance for 'transgression' (male violence), less open spaces, more speeding cars...?

I don't know, but I agree with triciamarie - we've gone to ridiculous, overprotective lengths with kids now.  The only thing that really worries me about kids is water - I don't think kids should be let near water without supervision.  But otherwise, yeah.  I did the same thing as a kid. 

At the age of 5, I was allowed to ride my tricycle around the corner to my friend's house in the same subdivision (on the sidewalk, of course) by myself.  I walked to and from school with friends the same age to a couple of years older when I was in kindergarten and grade one.  When I moved in grade one to a new community, I was allowed (at 6 years old) to ride my bike to the corner store, and walk to and from the school bus stop (which was out of view of my house) by myself.

From the age of 7, I was allowed to wander through the mall by myself while my parents went grocery shopping (since that's boring).  And we moved that year (when I was 7, and in grade 2) to a new town where it was a 10 or 15 minute walk to school.  I walked to and from school either by myself or with friends my age, and all the other kids walked to school there too, from kindergarten.  I had a babysitter after school since I was too young to look after myself for a couple of hours at home alone, but we walked to and from the babysitter (who lived near us) ourselves.  It was in this town (Trenton, Ontario) that I used to go to the store all the time to run errands, or to just get treats for myself or with friends, and we did have to cross a street to do it.  I used to go out to a park a couple of streets away and spend a few hours there at a time, or go to friends' houses in the neighbourhood (out of view of my parents' place) by myself.  The rule was that I had to tell my parents where I was going, and that's about it.

When we moved to a new place when I was 9, I was pretty much allowed to go anywhere and do anything as long as I let my parents know (generally) where I was going and as long as I was home when they told me to be home.  Walked to and from school (which was a 10-15 minute walk for a kid), and from grade 5 on (started grade 5 when I was 9), I was a "latch-key kid" after school.

We played in the woodsy areas of the community, went to parks, went for long walks with friends, walked to the strip mall in the community, etc.  We hardly ever got rides anywhere unless it was after dark, or it was REALLY too far to walk (e.g. the next community over).  We had "curfews" which was the time we had to be home, and as long as we got home and our parents had a general idea of where we were or who we were with, they didn't care where we went or what we did.

I sometimes wonder about our kids, the next generation.  Will they be capable adults?  Will they learn independence when they're so babied and coddled and protected by us?  I don't know.  When I was a kid, we all learned our addresses and phone numbers from kindergarten if not earlier.  We learned a lot of basic safety rules, and how to do things for ourselves.  My son and his friends, on the other hand, didn't generally know the basic information about where they live and their phone numbers even in grade 2.  (He didn't live with me during the week then, or else I'd have drilled it into him from an early age.) 

Maybe this is just one of those things that changes from generation to generation and it's not that big a deal.  But I can't help but think that there must be something missing from the childhood of the next generation when they can't do anything for themselves, and they can't have any freedom or independence, or playtimes that aren't completely structured by "joining" stuff.

Michelle wrote:

But I can't help but think that there must be something missing from the childhood of the next generation when they can't do anything for themselves, and they can't have any freedom or independence, or playtimes that aren't completely structured by "joining" stuff.

You know, I don't think kids are that much different than kids were when I was young (or than kids from 100 years ago, for that matter). But, that I do think is different is that parents are so fucked up and overprotective and want little ms. and mr. perfect for kids.  Jesus, even colleges are now having parent liasons because parents want to be so intimately involved in their kids' lives (Christ, when I turned 18, I was out on my own and my parents had no clue what I was up to.  My college grades?  Hell, they didn't know if I was getting A's or F's).

The end result today?  Snot bags for kids who think the world should revolve around them.  And, I sure as hell don't blame the kids.

This all started with the self-centered baby boomers, who look at their kids as inseparable extensions of themselves.

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[b]Eleutherophobics of the World...Unite!!![/b]

Banjo, that's interesting.  My father remembers taking the Ottawa buses when he was 8 or 9 by himself, and my mother remembers taking the TTC in Toronto when she was 9 or 10 by herself.  I can't even imagine my son doing that - he doesn't go anywhere by himself in Toronto, although that's because he is only with me on weekends, and so since he doesn't go to school in my neighbourhood, he doesn't know the neighbours, hasn't had the opportunity to "build up" the independence by walking to school, etc.

But honestly?  He's old enough to walk to the store by himself.  He's old enough to walk to the school down the street and play there in the playground.  He's probably even old enough to take the bus by himself (I see a kid around his age on the bus on weekday mornings on my way to work, by himself). 

But does he do that stuff by himself?  No.  Maybe if he lived with me full-time it would be different and I would look for ways to let him do appropriate independent things.  But while I believe we as a society are overprotective, I also find myself conforming to it, even though I know it's silly to do so.  Toronto's really no more dangerous than anywhere else - if anything, there are way more people who would notice if someone was messing with a kid on the street, and if your kid knows basic safety rules (scream or yell for help if a stranger bothers them, look both ways before crossing the street, etc.) then they will be fine.

Sven is speaking from the arrogance of having no children, and being the penultimate of selfish and centered.

His bashing of boomers is pure right wing screed that he is spewing, they would have us believe the problems of the world are boomers fault, idiots that the right are.

We have a lot of "Why are things so different now?" comments and the consensus seems to be that it's the media or that we get nervous because we hear more about these things, but I don't think that's it at all. I think it's the loss of community that western society has undergone in the last fifty years. North America doesn't know itself anymore and you always fear what you don't know.

When I was a kid we wandered all over the place with no supervision, playing in construction sites, trespassing on people's property, stealing crabapples from our neighbours. But we knew everyone who lived in the area, and so did all our parents. They might not have known where we were or what we were doing, but they trusted that whatever happened, any adult that was around to see it would deal with the problem. It's not true that we were less aware of pedophiles or predators. On the contrary, the "high risk" individuals in our immediate area were well known to everyone, and we were instructed to avoid them. Whether they were actually predators or just maligned weirdos is an open question, but the point is that everyone was aware.

Now nobody knows their neighbours, nobody knows their neighbourhood. A killer could be living downstairs from you, a pedophile on the next corner, and not only wouldn't you be aware of this, you might never have seen them before. You wouldn't recognise them if they passed you on the street. This is the real problem. We're a social species but all the society has been drained out of our culture and replaced with people who are modular units in a capitalist machine. Now we look around the places we live and in the absence of any real knowledge all we see is a wealth of potential threats.

On the Gulf Islands where my mother lives, the kids still run around wild (though not like they did thirty years ago, probably). I expect you would find this anywhere that real communities still exist.

Jacob, I think a big reason why there is "no community" anymore is BECAUSE people drive their kids two blocks to and from school and none of the kids play outside anymore in the neighbourhood unless it's properly supervised drives to the park with their parents, who hover over them on the playground and mediate their every interaction with every play structure (which are mind-numbingly boring these days) and every other child there.

In my neighbourhood, which is a pretty, tree-lined street with lots of kids, the place is a ghost-town every weekend.  None of the kids play in their front yards (maybe they're all playing in their fenced-in back yards) and there is no park nearby except for the school grounds at the nearby elementary school, which I think is off-limits after school hours.

As a result, I've lived there for almost two years, but my son knows no children in my neighbourhood because you never, ever see kids outside anywhere.  There's no way for him to meet them because he doesn't go to school here, so he can't make "play dates" with kids he meets at school.  The only kid he knows in Toronto is a kid he met at summer camp at my workplace, and this kid lives about as far east in Toronto as you can go without being in Pickering.  (I live in the west end of the old city.)  

I take him to the local library around the corner, but there isn't much in the way of programs there for kids his age, and the other kids have been so freaked out about "stranger danger" by their hovering parents that none of them really socialize with each other there - they're all doing all their socializing with their parents (who, god forbid, can't be more than 2 feet away from them the whole time they're in the library). 

I sign him up for swimming lessons, but the kids are all driven there, their parents are there the whole time watching everything like a hawk, and rush them out of the change rooms as soon as they're done changing.  No real time to socialize or exchange phone numbers.  If you want your kids to play with any of the kids you meet there, you as the parent have to approach the other parents instead of the kids talking to each other.  But you don't know which kid belongs to which parent, or where the parents of the kid your kid seems to be having fun with in the pool is. 

I remember one woman was so worried about letting her son change in the boy's/men's change room by himself (her son was 7, like my son at the time) that he actually changed IN THE HALL while she held a towel up around him.  Talk about humiliating.  He seemed to accept it - or maybe he was so accustomed to being overprotected that he was scared to change in there, I don't know.

 Interesting thread.  I and my siblings were definately free range kids as were most in my neighborhood.  We pretty much just went outside, joined up with the other kids and did stuff.  The best were these epic games based on movies and shows like Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica with the game board taking place over a broad area in the yards of various peoples houses. We'd build forts for the bases and then game on. I climbed trees, fences and whatever. There was a park at the end of the street that we were allowed to go to but if there were big kids there (teenagers) then we weren't supposed to stay.  I think thats because there was a group that would hang out and smoke or something.  Our friends who lived across the street were called for lunch or whatever by their mother who would stand on her porch and ring an old school bell that you could hear for blocks.   We walked to school starting in grade 1 which was about 1.5 kms.   We even walked home for lunch pretty much everyday.   I remember it being a big huge deal when I was allowed to go by myself.  I wasn't like those little kindergarteners anymore.  :)   

 I really started to notice a difference in kids and some mothers when I became a Guide leader at around age 19.  My thing was camping and outdoors stuff, something I'd done for as long as I could remember and was pretty much recruited because I actually knew it and had years of experience.   Every year there would be a backyard camp where girls would go to learn basic skills.  The main rule was that the house was only be used as a bathroom.  I remembered them as being pretty much that we were on our own with the leaders being just around to supervise and give basic directions.

     The first problem came when we started to do the cooking part.  We had gone over the basic use of camp stoves in a regular meeting but at the camp went over it again.  It was then when one of the other leaders just freaked out when she realized that the girls would be actually lighting and looking after their own stoves. This was pre-propane canister era so this meant filling them with gas and pumping.  What was really bad was that she freaked out in front of the girls and when the time came to do the lighting most were so scared that they couldn't do it so she went around and did it.    I was so mad and also confused because this leader made me feel like I was doing something horribly wrong by daring to teach them that they could indeed do it themselves,   yet I was sure that remembered that back in my day we were perfectly capable of working with stoves, safely, at around age seven.  It was one of the great things about camping.  

 Then it came to the actual cooking part.  Since most were new to camp cooking their was a lot of direction on my part which was fine but even then I soon discovered that what I thought was basic had to be even more basic.  I couldn't just say, okay we need to chop some carrots get a knife and a cutting board.  For one more then half barely knew what a cutting board was and most didn't know how to use a knife to chop veggies if their life depended on it.  A good many just didn't know but were actually really terrified to even hold a paring knife.  I was told that knives were really, really dangerous and they weren't allowed near them at home.  A couple even flatly refused to do it at all because they were afraid they'd get into trouble.   So the whole thing wasn't just about teaching the most basics of knife safety but about getting past the fear of even working with the thing. 

 The whole weekend was really about overcoming fear, fear of getting hurt or fear of doing something wrong or the wrong way and getting into trouble.   Now one or two wouldn't  have been an issue. I remembered that there were always a few like this. It was the number that got me. In general they were not capable of doing anything without the most minute, one step after the other directions and having me the adult just basically being a robot director.  They *wanted* to have an adult there all of the time.   I had a lot of trouble getting my mind around because in my memories of backyard camp we hated having the adults hovering around and it was *gasp* horrible if the leaders wouldn't let us do something ourselves.   I remember my leaders spending most of their time sitting on lawn chairs and us bringing them food.  :)  

 I went home after that weekend, totally exhausted and wondering if my memories were just wrong and that we weren't really as independent  and capable as I recalled.  I talked to Mom about it who had been a leader when I was younger and continued on for about 15 years.  She said that no I wasn't crazy as within a ten year period she noticed a real difference not just in the girls but in some of the leaders as well.  It's not a PC way of saying it but she said that it was like the kids just became dumber and lost a lot of what in my early time was a general common sense and the basic ability to act independently and grow in that independence through learning various skills.   One of the reasons she eventually quit was because she couldn't deal with what she called the 'fear of danger' factor that undermined what she felt really was the point of the program.  Camping and even basic outdoors skills became dangerous and there were some people that didn't even want them to be taught anymore because it was to durn risky for the kids to learn these things.    She  got frustrated with having to constantly deal with what I guess now would be called helicopter parents and worse helicopter leaders.  

   I could relate because the next year in my group there were a couple of kids who simply weren't allowed to do anything related to camping and weren't allowed to go on the yearly campout because it was too dangerous. They were eleven and simply weren't allowed to even touch a match.   I felt really bad for the kids because they sure wanted to but there wasn't much I could do. One of the mothers insisted that she be allowed to sit on the sidelines at every meeting to make sure her kid was okay.  It became a real pain in the ass because she'd constantly jump up to help her kid with the simplest of things and like Michelle commented on interfere and mediate dissagreements.    The worst though was that all of the other leaders except one didn't  have a problem with it.  It was just the new normal I guess.  I only lasted one year after that because doing what I was most interested in and skilled at (outdoor stuff) became more pain to try to do then was worth it and couldn't handle the amount of fear about the whole realm floating around it.  

  Oh and then there was the hugging thing. Sometime in that ten to fifteen year period some sort of policy came down that we weren't allowed to ever hug or touch any of the kids.   I get where that came from but frankly it was one of saddest things that the this overriding fear of abuse outweighed basic human interaction.  It became a liability issue and just too risky a thing to do because you might get in trouble for it if someone decided to take it the wrong way and freak out.  

Jacob Two-Two wrote:

Now nobody knows their neighbours, nobody knows their neighbourhood. A killer could be living downstairs from you, a pedophile on the next corner, and not only wouldn't you be aware of this, you might never have seen them before. You wouldn't recognise them if they passed you on the street. This is the real problem. We're a social species but all the society has been drained out of our culture and replaced with people who are modular units in a capitalist machine. Now we look around the places we live and in the absence of any real knowledge all we see is a wealth of potential threats.

On the Gulf Islands where my mother lives, the kids still run around wild (though not like they did thirty years ago, probably). I expect you would find this anywhere that real communities still exist.

We've lived on the same street for 10 years. Our granddaughter, 6, lives three blocks away. If it wasn't for traffic, she could walk between the two homes already. Maybe when she's 8.

When she's 7, her mother plans to let her walk a couple of blocks from the elementary school to the high school after school, even though that means crossing a main road, because there's a crossing guard and lots of other kids making that walk.

In short, even in "real communities" we still don't trust the car drivers.

But by the time the kids here are 11 they are biking all over town on their own.

Meanwhile we have a local playground three blocks away, very well used all summer, dozens of kids there. Making friends, even.

Here in our small comunity, kids alone are often seen riding their bikes to town on their own, they wander the streets freely all the time and even go fishing by themselves.

I think my much older sister than I, was part of the first "helicopter" parents back in the early to mid eighties. Her sons, my nephews,  never walked the 4 blocks to school, even when teenagers. And this was a small town too. When my one nephew, came to the Island to go to university, at 18, and choose to live with us, my sister was beside herself, we free spirits, after all could be a corrupting influence on him and encourage him to do what he pleased educationally and socially. ;)

First long week end we were awoken to the door being pounded on in the early morning hours. There stood my sister and brother in law, with my BIL looking sheepish and we are talking a 14 hr trip to try and catch us "corrupting" her son.

However, I learned from her and determined my daughter was going to walk to school, ride her bike, or take the public transit and that she was going to be allowed to freely interact with people and make her own work and career choices. And that she was also going to have a job when a teenager to provide her with her recreational spending money.

Frankly, people who are into building more rules and societal controls allegedly for our own "good" as if they know, when indeed they do not,  are only consumed and driven by their own fear. IMV if they want fear permiating their lives, to be their reality, they can have it, however IMV others should be rejecting it, wherever it raises its head, and not just going along.

remind wrote:

Sven is speaking from the arrogance of having no children, and being the penultimate of selfish and centered.

His bashing of boomers is pure right wing screed that he is spewing, they would have us believe the problems of the world are boomers fault, idiots that the right are.

Remind, I'd like to kindly "remind" you of [url=http://rabble.ca/comment/993648/Okay-Sven-and-remind-both][color=blue][u... post[/u][/color][/url] by Michelle from earlier this month.

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[b]Eleutherophobics of the World...Unite!!![/b]