sounds like we were neighbors in different statesSo GLAD I grew up when and where I did. Granted, we lived in Milwaukeestan, but unless we were in school, all of us neighborhood kids would run out the door after breakfast and wouldn't be home until dark.
Of course, EVERY Mom and Dad on the block was allowed to discipline you as needed. I guess it DOES take a 'village' but not the way Hillary! and her locksetp Socialist ilk desire! ;)
This is where the gov’t needs to be told to MYBO. If it wasn’t necessary to do twenty years ago, then it isn’t necessary for them to be bothered with now.
If the parents treat their kids lives and safety so carelessly, I guess they can move to Utah. It will be blood and guilt on their hands should something happen to their kids. Kids are not “free range” animals. If you have kids, be responsible for them.
I think we all know that society has changed, for the worse, in some ways over the decades. I don’t know if there are more child molesters and others doing harm to children nowadays, but, there certainly seems to be more publicity and discussion. So then, many parents are afraid to let their kids out of their sight.
And then social norms have changed, so that cops on a beat see school age children alone, and immediately assume this a case of parental neglect.
we wandered about in Annapolis MD as young kids running all over the place, by ourselves, while visiting grandparents, who lived one block from the State Capitol on a red brick street...we had a blast...
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>> “all of us neighborhood kids would run out the door after breakfast and wouldn’t be home until dark.” <<
Yep, and we learned all kinds of things in places that would have given our parents a heart attack had they known we were there!
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Precisely.
Ponder the idea that what the state grants it can remove
The busy bodies who started reporting parents to police because they didn’t like children being children ought to check themselves
Yeah... I grew up in the hills of Appalachia during the 50's... In the summer time from the age of 6 years on we could be found in the streams and woods many miles from home.. As long as we made it home for supper that's all that counts... :)
Nowadays if you tried that in say Chicago, you'd probably find your kid down on the corner on somebodies spit....
A governmental order is necessary to allow children to be children. Sad.
Free range.
In the 60’s we never gave it a thought. Bikes gave us massive mobility all over the east side of the valley.
Interesting responses to my comment by a number of folks. I don’t watch my kids 24x7 and they can do things, are responsible, etc. But the extremes—the idiot parents that send a 6 year old to a park supervised by a 10 year old is ludicrous. Skip the BS about what we did or were allowed to do as kids ourselves decades ago. WOULD YOU ALLOW THIS OF YOUR KIDS TODAY? Or your grand- or great-grand kids. I see no one touching that. Nice to muse on what we did or didn’t do as kids decades ago, but today is not the same place.
When I was growing up, we put people who threatened little kids in INSTITUTIONS - now we’ve closed those places let them openly ‘marry’. Like it or not, they wore us down, and when we needed to fight, we said (collectively) “why bother”. So now if there are 5 kids at a school bus stop, there are also 4 parents there. If one of those parents decides to ‘free-range’ her kids, they become a mark for the ‘de-institutionalized’ types...whether we like it or not.
Bottom line: If you want to ‘free-range’ your kids, move to Japan, or a handful of other countries (mostly in Asia), where it is actually still safe for little guys to be out among adults at any time of day.
One other difference back then: There was no SECTION 8 (of the ‘Housing Code’), so people who could not afford to live in a ‘civilized’ neighborhood, simply did not live there. Instead they lived in the now-blasted-away public housing projects. In addition - Illegals were not coddled by EITHER POLITICAL PARTY - the relatively few who caused trouble back then were simply sent home - rather than being called ‘Dreamers’ and put on some kind of public pedestal.
Obviously we no longer live in that world.
sounds like we were neighbors in different statesThat such a law is necessary is a shame. I grew up in the ‘burbs, not in the country. I was on my bike and away from the house all day every day during the summer months, in the days before cell phones. I usually had a little change in my pocket so I could have called from a pay phone if necessary, but there were no pay phones on the ballfields and playgrounds where I was. Only time I ran into trouble was once when my bike tire went flat and I was miles from home. A friendly tow truck driver saw me walking my bike and took me and my bike home.