Parenting limits different now than in the 90s?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This might be specific to where you live. In DC, tons of kids, starting in middle school, ride public buses and Metro to school, often making a transfer or walking a mile or so. Think kids on Capitol Hill commuting to upper NW. They navigate around to get to their after school activities on their own. My kids walk a mile or more to visit friends or go to a specific store, or they might ride bikes or take a bus.

They have so much more freedom than I did as a middle schooler growing up in suburbia.

We drive so little that it's going to be a challenge to get hours behind the wheel to get a license.

I think this is right. Doesn't even have to be DC. We live in Arlington and most kids here by middle school (6th grade for us) are trending way more independent. Walking home from school, walking and biking to friends houses, meeting up to do things independently, taking a bus to get places (which is free for them).

I think this is something to think about very intentionally as a parent and there are parents doing developmentally normal letting the strings go gradually.

+1 my kids were fortunately walking distance to both middle and high school in Arlington (although a pretty long walk since we're right on the edge of the walk zone) and most of the neighborhood walked so they had plenty of company. That spilled over into doing things independently after school. I would occasionally give a lift half-way to school (it was on my way to work) when the weather was bad, but other than that they were walkers.

People buying homes when they are just starting a family/have little kids, often focus on elementary school proximity but IMO that's really irrellevant. ES kids are generally bussed or driven. Proximity to middle and high school so that kids can be walkers/bikers over reasonably safe routes is golden.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm personally afraid of someone calling CPS on us.

I had to fight the school to let my 9.5 year old 4th grader walk home alone. There's a crossing guard and we live 1/5 mile from school (we can see the school from our front door!). This is a quiet neighborhood with sidewalks. Even still, one day last month, the school called me and said my kid was in their office and needed picked up. They hadn't let her walk home and prevented her from doing so. It's insane. I'm still so angry at the administrator for that.

Something that worries me is all the parents who are constantly tracking their kids on their iphones or watches. I think it's mental illness on the parent's part. Half the time that they're checking, kids are in school. Do they think they're abducted from school in the middle of the day?

This same thing happened to me a few years ago. I had given my 9 y/o permission to walk home one block from school. Signed all the forms and waivers etc. And then one afternoon I got a call because the security guard wouldn’t let her leave despite having permission. When I got there to get her, the security guard said in front of my DD that a girl should not be walking around alone when it is getting dark. It was December and it was 4:45 pm.

I have also had to fight to get permission to even sign dismissal waivers for my kids when my kids were a little under the age cutoff. One activity literally wouldn’t let me leave to go to the grocery store down the street while my 10 year old was doing the activity. I had to sign a waiver for that.

People worry about CPS. Schools and activities worry about liability. It’s so overblown. Often times I feel like the question of whether the kid can handle doing X is not even discussed or considered. It’s the appearance of things. It’s safety theater. And our kids suffer as a result.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm personally afraid of someone calling CPS on us.

I had to fight the school to let my 9.5 year old 4th grader walk home alone. There's a crossing guard and we live 1/5 mile from school (we can see the school from our front door!). This is a quiet neighborhood with sidewalks. Even still, one day last month, the school called me and said my kid was in their office and needed picked up. They hadn't let her walk home and prevented her from doing so. It's insane. I'm still so angry at the administrator for that.

Something that worries me is all the parents who are constantly tracking their kids on their iphones or watches. I think it's mental illness on the parent's part. Half the time that they're checking, kids are in school. Do they think they're abducted from school in the middle of the day?

This same thing happened to me a few years ago. I had given my 9 y/o permission to walk home one block from school. Signed all the forms and waivers etc. And then one afternoon I got a call because the security guard wouldn’t let her leave despite having permission. When I got there to get her, the security guard said in front of my DD that a girl should not be walking around alone when it is getting dark. It was December and it was 4:45 pm.

I have also had to fight to get permission to even sign dismissal waivers for my kids when my kids were a little under the age cutoff. One activity literally wouldn’t let me leave to go to the grocery store down the street while my 10 year old was doing the activity. I had to sign a waiver for that.

People worry about CPS. Schools and activities worry about liability. It’s so overblown. Often times I feel like the question of whether the kid can handle doing X is not even discussed or considered. It’s the appearance of things. It’s safety theater. And our kids suffer as a result.

That’s ridiculous and I’m so sorry! My kids public ES releases grades 2-5 out the front door without needing them to have anyone there to get them. So starting at age 7. They only require an adult there for K and 1st who exit out a different door. And even those kids can be picked up by an older grade sibling to walk home if the parents sign a form.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm personally afraid of someone calling CPS on us.

I had to fight the school to let my 9.5 year old 4th grader walk home alone. There's a crossing guard and we live 1/5 mile from school (we can see the school from our front door!). This is a quiet neighborhood with sidewalks. Even still, one day last month, the school called me and said my kid was in their office and needed picked up. They hadn't let her walk home and prevented her from doing so. It's insane. I'm still so angry at the administrator for that.

Something that worries me is all the parents who are constantly tracking their kids on their iphones or watches. I think it's mental illness on the parent's part. Half the time that they're checking, kids are in school. Do they think they're abducted from school in the middle of the day?

This same thing happened to me a few years ago. I had given my 9 y/o permission to walk home one block from school. Signed all the forms and waivers etc. And then one afternoon I got a call because the security guard wouldn’t let her leave despite having permission. When I got there to get her, the security guard said in front of my DD that a girl should not be walking around alone when it is getting dark. It was December and it was 4:45 pm.

I have also had to fight to get permission to even sign dismissal waivers for my kids when my kids were a little under the age cutoff. One activity literally wouldn’t let me leave to go to the grocery store down the street while my 10 year old was doing the activity. I had to sign a waiver for that.

People worry about CPS. Schools and activities worry about liability. It’s so overblown. Often times I feel like the question of whether the kid can handle doing X is not even discussed or considered. It’s the appearance of things. It’s safety theater. And our kids suffer as a result.

That’s ridiculous and I’m so sorry! My kids public ES releases grades 2-5 out the front door without needing them to have anyone there to get them. So starting at age 7. They only require an adult there for K and 1st who exit out a different door. And even those kids can be picked up by an older grade sibling to walk home if the parents sign a form.

+1
This is my experience as well!

How would the school even know how kids get home?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Read some of Lenore Skenazy’s writing on this. That and Jonathan Chait’s book, The Anxious Generation, have motivated me to push against this trend and to give my kids a lot of autonomy and independence in the real world. This is to build confidence but also make the real world more interesting than the virtual one. My 11 y/o gets off the bus in the afternoon and goes to the park with friends. She often walks around our very walkable DC neighborhood by herself or with friends and goes to stores by herself, including to pick up milk etc for us. This summer I’m going to let her start riding the metro or DC bus by herself. To each their own but I am already seeing so much confidence in my kid and it has helped massively with her anxiety. She feels competent and happy. Eliminating all risk is impossible and attempting to do so just creates other risks, like getting sucked into online worlds, IMHO.

You’re going to let an 11 year old girl ride alone on the Metro? Where shootings and stabbing take place and weird men are? Wow. You’re nuts.

Ah I see the judgy anxious person has joined us, commenting on my post and another one. So yes, she will be either riding the metro or bus home from a camp with her younger brother. They have been riding transit with us for years here and I let them navigate whenever we have the time. I am fully confident in their ability to handle this and they are excited for the challenge. To each their own. To me, the “weird men” on the internet are a much more serious concern than a random homeless person talking to themselves on the metro.

Stay blessed that nothing bad has happened.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm personally afraid of someone calling CPS on us.

I had to fight the school to let my 9.5 year old 4th grader walk home alone. There's a crossing guard and we live 1/5 mile from school (we can see the school from our front door!). This is a quiet neighborhood with sidewalks. Even still, one day last month, the school called me and said my kid was in their office and needed picked up. They hadn't let her walk home and prevented her from doing so. It's insane. I'm still so angry at the administrator for that.

Something that worries me is all the parents who are constantly tracking their kids on their iphones or watches. I think it's mental illness on the parent's part. Half the time that they're checking, kids are in school. Do they think they're abducted from school in the middle of the day?

I unfortunately have to track my high schooler to make sure he doesn’t skip school!

This same thing happened to me a few years ago. I had given my 9 y/o permission to walk home one block from school. Signed all the forms and waivers etc. And then one afternoon I got a call because the security guard wouldn’t let her leave despite having permission. When I got there to get her, the security guard said in front of my DD that a girl should not be walking around alone when it is getting dark. It was December and it was 4:45 pm.

I have also had to fight to get permission to even sign dismissal waivers for my kids when my kids were a little under the age cutoff. One activity literally wouldn’t let me leave to go to the grocery store down the street while my 10 year old was doing the activity. I had to sign a waiver for that.

People worry about CPS. Schools and activities worry about liability. It’s so overblown. Often times I feel like the question of whether the kid can handle doing X is not even discussed or considered. It’s the appearance of things. It’s safety theater. And our kids suffer as a result.

That’s ridiculous and I’m so sorry! My kids public ES releases grades 2-5 out the front door without needing them to have anyone there to get them. So starting at age 7. They only require an adult there for K and 1st who exit out a different door. And even those kids can be picked up by an older grade sibling to walk home if the parents sign a form.

+1
This is my experience as well!

How would the school even know how kids get home?

[Anonymous]

The elementary school comments are shocking to me. Our neighborhood doesn’t have sidewalks so I tried to get my kids a bus since there is literally a bus stop 3 houses down from us but we were denied. So my kids had to walk to school despite the unsafe road. After K, kids are released to walk home themselves. Many parents meet them at school anyway but I was surprised to hear some schools not allowing children to walk home when they can literally see the house.

[Anonymous]

my 17 year old dd drives in DC, and with us on longer roadtrips, but she’s still new and i find the beltway challenging so discourage her from going on highways on her own. i admit that i still pray self driving cars become more commonplace just for this reason, though i don’t mind driving.

i let her go out with friends to parties where they drink, but not much. i’ll always pick her up. she knows i strongly disapprove of drugs and i believe she has not touched them. my brother had a drug problem, and she’s seen how that affected him and my family.

she’s hooked up with boys and is not a virgin and i’m fine with it. she has made some mistakes in that department with regard to her feelings (getting physical way too soon) but i think she’ll be wiser in college (but also not prudish).

my kids know how to cook and like to do that. they’re not great at cleaning. i mostly do that for them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My oldest is 11, so I'm barely entering the tween zone with him. Maybe my question will come off the same way questions from parents of babies come off to me, when they're like "I'll never let my child go to bed past 8pm" and "just offer them a rainbow of foods and they'll eat what their body requires, it's not that hard for me to do this with my 8 month old, you're just lazy!"

My question is basically, why are teens not allowed the same freedoms and responsibilities that we had when we were younger? I see on this board, and in some cases with the teenagers in our neighborhood, that they aren't allowed to drive more than a few hours away, aren't allowed to babysit past 10pm even on weekends, have parents stay at their sports practices, have their parents coordinating their college apps for them, etc. Obviously this stuff is a few years off for me, but what's changed? I let my 11 year old walk the half a mile to school alone with a friend, on a residential 25mph road with sidewalks and a crossing guard present at the 4 way road intersection he needs to cross to get to the school. Even if it's cold, or rainy, they walk. But barely anyone else does this even on gorgeous days. Kids get driven the half a mile by their parents. On rainy or cold days, the line to drop off in the morning is blocking traffic because it stretches down the 4 lane road that the school is on. Next year they'll be at middle school and the middle school is a mile away as opposed to a half mile away, but also completely on residential roads with one street crossing at a traffic light and his friend's mom has said she won't allow her kid to walk to middle school because of that street crossing. It's disappointing to me but am I in the minority here that I think that walk would be safe and fine, with a friend, at age 12?

You are conflating many different issues. My kids are 16-18.

Walking/biking to school: my kids did this staring spring of 2nd grade. But I almost always dropped them off via car in middle school because the middle school start time in FCPS is so very early that we needed every extra minute of getting ready time. They took the bus in high school until old enough to drive themselves.

Driving more than a few hours: only my 18 year old in college has done that. I wouldn’t let my 16 year old who has only had a license for two months drive alone for hours. They are very new to driving and still learning. I’m not sure why that is over protective.

Babysitting past 10pm: mine do and have done this. But they have had events like sports tournaments where they had activities the next day where they needed a good night sleep and turned down babysitting late for that reason. But also, there is one family in our neighborhood whose kids are terrible and none of the teenagers want to babysit for them. A bunch of teenage girls were at my house when one got a text asking if she could babysit on Saturday. She responded I can’t because it’s too late. Then the next got a ping of a text, she copied the excuse, then the next. Four of them all turned them down with the same excuse while talking about how terrible the kids were to babysit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My oldest is 11, so I'm barely entering the tween zone with him. Maybe my question will come off the same way questions from parents of babies come off to me, when they're like "I'll never let my child go to bed past 8pm" and "just offer them a rainbow of foods and they'll eat what their body requires, it's not that hard for me to do this with my 8 month old, you're just lazy!"

My question is basically, why are teens not allowed the same freedoms and responsibilities that we had when we were younger? I see on this board, and in some cases with the teenagers in our neighborhood, that they aren't allowed to drive more than a few hours away, aren't allowed to babysit past 10pm even on weekends, have parents stay at their sports practices, have their parents coordinating their college apps for them, etc. Obviously this stuff is a few years off for me, but what's changed? I let my 11 year old walk the half a mile to school alone with a friend, on a residential 25mph road with sidewalks and a crossing guard present at the 4 way road intersection he needs to cross to get to the school. Even if it's cold, or rainy, they walk. But barely anyone else does this even on gorgeous days. Kids get driven the half a mile by their parents. On rainy or cold days, the line to drop off in the morning is blocking traffic because it stretches down the 4 lane road that the school is on. Next year they'll be at middle school and the middle school is a mile away as opposed to a half mile away, but also completely on residential roads with one street crossing at a traffic light and his friend's mom has said she won't allow her kid to walk to middle school because of that street crossing. It's disappointing to me but am I in the minority here that I think that walk would be safe and fine, with a friend, at age 12?

I have teens but I’m puzzled by the limit you mention of “they aren’t allowed to drive more than a few hours away.” What kind of road tripping were you expecting teens should be able to do? Since you will have a teen soon: they usually don’t get their license until late 16/early 17, and even then they can’t legally drive other teens for 6 more months.

[Anonymous]

You are going to find a wide range of things teens are allowed to do when yours are that age and different parenting, just like the baby years. Some of it will be parenting styles. Some of it will be the individual kid.

For example, my newly graduated kid has taken his car by himself to see relatives 7 hours away more than once. We are comfortable with this. He’s a great driver. Our next kid has the permit and no little interest in practicing. They are very different kids.

As for driving to the bus stop, I was confused by that and then HS came and the backpacks are so heavy and they each brought a sports bag to school too for practice. I would have driven them to school if it was on my way to work.

[Anonymous]

Lots of MS kids walking and biking around our neighborhood. Starting walking to friends’ houses without an adult around 4th grade. I’ve taught my middle schooler to take their driving test bus to the mall. Sometimes a parent will drive them all rather than agree to the bus plan, and a couple other parents were nervous the first time, but it’s been fine. I took their driving test public bus starting in 7th grade. My HS kid takes bus and metro. They do their own laundry and make their own school lunches.

The state laws make some decisions for you for driving restrictions. And while cars have gotten safer for those inside them, they’ve gotten more dangerous for those outside them - pedestrians, bicyclists, etc. I make a huge deal about crossing at lights/crosswalks and not jaywalking though I certainly did it in HS myself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's a symptom of a bigger issue in current parenting trends:

Kids need experience failures in order to learn how to grow. Yet American parents are increasingly willing and able to step in and prevent their kids from failing.

This is a cheap "blame the parents" strategy that doesn't go deep enough. WHY are parents stepping in to do for their kids what previous generations might've let kids struggle through? Because there's far less time to deal with the consequences of these struggles. When homemaker mom was home to deal with skinned knees and errant sports equipment and running the occasional forgotten lunch to school, it made sense to let kids tinker and try. Now, with most families having two parents working outside the home, life is managed to the details to make sure schedules stay on track and things get done in the limited amount of "free" time parents might have.

It isn't necessarily a choice or a failing on the part of the parent(s).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's a symptom of a bigger issue in current parenting trends:

Kids need experience failures in order to learn how to grow. Yet American parents are increasingly willing and able to step in and prevent their kids from failing.

This is a cheap "blame the parents" strategy that doesn't go deep enough. WHY are parents stepping in to do for their kids what previous generations might've let kids struggle through? Because there's far less time to deal with the consequences of these struggles. When homemaker mom was home to deal with skinned knees and errant sports equipment and running the occasional forgotten lunch to school, it made sense to let kids tinker and try. Now, with most families having two parents working outside the home, life is managed to the details to make sure schedules stay on track and things get done in the limited amount of "free" time parents might have.

It isn't necessarily a choice or a failing on the part of the parent(s).

I think this has merit. My friends who stay at home are able to have less structure afterschool and during the summer, so they can let their younger kids experiment more. Mine needed to be in full time camps all day and aftercare. They can pick up their older kids who linger after school to get snacks, or hang out with friends at a park. Their kids can be dropped and picked up at the pool during the summer, walking to and from their tennis lessons or grabbing pizza at a nearby restaurant. Their kids have built more independence because they have the luxury of having a parent available as needed. We let our kids as much as possible have these freedoms, but until they drive, we are just stuck with what is possible with two working parents with limited availability on weekdays year round.

[Anonymous]

I am pretty surprised about the nonchalance to riding the metro and metro buses in middle school. Yes you as a middle age woman can likely do that just fine but I remember being repeatedly sexually harassed (groped multiple times in addition to comments and a man trying to get my ID) riding on the metro when I was younger- a teenager and young adult. Aside from one workplace incident at a summer job I have not experienced that kind of sexual harassment anywhere else. I am aware my daughter will very likely have to deal with this as well but if I can keep it from happening at 11 I will.