A friend of mine posted a link on Facebook to a story about how some things you do with your kid these days will get you arrested. The short version is that letting your kid do anything on his own is pretty much going to be considered neglect. The woman who let her 9-year-old ride the subway alone, and wrote about it, has even made it a cause to let your kids be more "free range."
As we think about Simon going into Kindergarten, I think about doing the same when I was 5. I walked the three blocks to school on my own, and walked home. I had a key on a string around my neck, and came home to an empty house when both parents had to work. The bus stop I had for 2nd and 3rd grades was even further away, but I went to it myself every day, and walked home myself. This was inner-city Cleveland circa 1980. I wouldn't describe it as particularly "safe" or awesome. By grade six, I would routinely ride my bike 20 blocks in any direction.
If my parents were me, today, even out here in the suburbs, I would undoubtedly find myself in foster care and they would be in jail. Why? What the hell happened? I'm at the point now where I wonder, gosh, my kid's school, when it opens in two years, is about six blocks away. Will he even be able to leave it on his own accord at the end of the day and walk home? If not, I'm going to be super pissed.
I just don't understand how we got to a point where paranoia and fear started ruling everything about our culture. If this is how things were for the people entering the workforce now and taking their mom to interviews, no wonder they're so screwed up.
We walk a fine line trying to understand when to let Simon fall and make mistakes, and when to help him out of genuine need. It angers me to think that this kind of stupidity is going to require pacifying kids for the most fundamental things that they can handle on their own.
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