Reply to How old does a child have to be to wait for a school bus alone?

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Reply to "How old does a child have to be to wait for a school bus alone?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

It was a 1-mile walk, involving Georgia Avenue, on a Saturday (lower traffic than weekdays). They had practiced the walk before with their parents, and had done shorter walks on their own successfully. This hardly seems like bad parenting to me.[/quote]

[b]I think it was crazy parenting. [/b] Forget being hit by a car or being nabbed by a weirdo.  If one of those kids had gotten injured at the playground or on the walk home, how would they have handled it? They were a freakin' mile from home with no trusted adult anywhere nearby.  I guess these folks were just trusting that "the village" would step in if that happened?  Well, the village has indeed stepped in...[/quote]

40 years ago it would have been crazy parenting to think that a six-year-old and ten-year-old are too young to walk a mile home from the playground by themselves.[/quote]

40 years ago kids played outside in their own yards and on their own streets.  They didn't walk miles and miles away to play. They just didn't.

[/quote]

Really? In elementary school I would regularly walk a mile to a friend's house. I told my parents I was going and called when I got there. By the time I was in middle school I was allowed to walk the ~4 miles to town on my own. I ran on the XC team in high school and ran all around our town (5, 8, 10 mile runs) at all hours of the day/night. My 16 year old self was much more confident on those long runs since I'd been allowed to walk "miles and miles" to play when I was younger. [/quote]

Yeah, me too.  But we're talking about 6 year olds (kindergartners).  I doubt that you were doing 8 mile runs as a kinder or walking miles alone to your friends' houses.  [/quote]

I was responding to the PP who said that 40 years ago kids didn't walk miles and miles to friend's houses, and I was indicating that as a "kid" (elementary school age) I did walk that far, and that learning to do so was important when I got older. But yes--no "miles and miles" of walking alone as a kindergartner!

The OP's six year old isn't walking miles and miles, though, or even a mile. He's walking half a block. I was pointing that these little experiences of independence build upon each other to foster independence in the older years. [/quote]

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