Reply to Parenting limits different now than in the 90s?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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?[/quote]

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. [/quote]

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