Cultivating street smarts

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Spoiler alert: your kids will not be street smart.

lol

[Anonymous]

I can empathize with the OP. I grew up poor, on welfare in the deep south in a trailer park.

I am very well off now and find I have to manufacture hardship in order to install some for of resilience in my kids now. That also goes for "Street Smarts." I have to go out of my way to put them in an environment where my overly taken care of kids have to come face to face with how more poverty stricken folks interact....which is not how things are in my current neighborhood or surrounding neighborhoods.

I like to take them down to sketchy parts of DC from time to time and go to some shady 7-Elevens. Also, we go to local grocery stores when on vacation in the caribbean.

Then, we like to watch old Mr. T PSA videos on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jo1hUo7C6Ow

I'm being half-serious here, but you do have do be a parent and try to bring attention to things like this. Talk to them about:
1.) Being Attentive and Observant
2.) Stranger Encounters
3.) Seeking Help and Safety

[Anonymous]

I hope this entire thread is a joke.

You don't learn 'street smarts', the same way you pick up a casual hobby. It's lifelong lived experience, and not something that can be taught from the comfort of a gated community.

Be honest with yourself, your kids neither should, nor really needs to learn 'street smarts'.

-Signed, someone that grew up in a desperately poor, drug saturated, high-crime area, that knows that they're talking about

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"street smarts" to me is about trusting your gut and avoiding potentially unsafe situations and conflict. It's about walking down a sidewalk where a mentally ill person might be ranting, but it's also about navigating creeps on the playground or a potential sexual predator who they know. It's about being confident, knowing boundaries, and also knowing how to navigate slight penetrations of boundaries without shutting down or panicking.

OP you have clearly built a life that attempts to scrub all signs of discomfort from your kid's life, but at least make sure you're teaching them out to speak up for themselves, how to say no and walk away, etc.

I agree with this. This is what street smarts are. Having a black coach doesn’t really have anything to do with street smarts. My kids have black teachers, friends, coaches, doctors, and their dentist. That is just what color they are, we didn’t pick them based on their skin and wouldn’t continue in a sport for that reason. Even if you live in a suburb , you probably travel. My kids have been yelled at when we were getting on the subway in nyc , people who’ve appeared unhoused and mentally ill yelling at us outside of parking garages when we’ve gone to a museum, people who knock on our car windows asking for money when we’re stopped in traffic. Or people asking/yelling for money just sitting on the sidewalk. I think going to any major city is a lesson in street smarts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How old is your kid? It is pretty urban where we live so these topics come up naturally, and my kids can connect why we say the things we do. They are in elementary school. I don't think I could teach them these things in the abstract at this age.

Almost 8. Right, my area is fully suburban and white with a few Jewish people, Asians, hispanics, and no black people. I have him continually signed up to a sport he doesn't love (tennis) because the coach happens to be black and I want him to have a positive role model / leader who is black and because he has no other male teacher and I think that is important too. Am I being ridiculous?

Why are you talking about your son’s exposure to Black people, and Black men in particular, as part of talking about “street smarts?”

Precisely

- a black woman

Nobody cares you black. Why even say it.