Years ago I had a very close friend who used to entertain me with stories of his neurotically over-protective mother. His childhood had been supervised and controlled by his mother to a comical extent. The beauty of the stories, which was not lost on either of us, was that he told them through a thick haze of weed. His poor, ridiculous mother. Having safely reached adulthood under her ‘hysterical’ charter he was now revelling in fuck-you quantities of freedom.
But he was a stable enough boy and nothing terribly serious ever came of his rebellion. He got a great job, some legal hobbies, eventually a family, and as far as I know, an enduring love of ‘breakfast bongs’. How did his mother get to be so over-protective? One of her children died as a young boy. Yeah, that’d do it. Though I still cringe at her parenting I’m a lot gentler in my assessment of this woman today.
Penguin Unearthed has posted her response to a bunch of thought-provoking questions originally from AmericanFamily about changing parenting norms and the inevitable trade-off between child safety and freedom. Below are the questions and I’m tempted to answer ‘never’ to all of them, even though the whole ‘slow parenting’ and ‘tinkering parenting’ movements theoretically really appeal to me and I believe today’s (first world) children are pretty much safer than any generation before them (like, remember when your parents let you play in flood-swollen creeks and treasure-hunt at the town dump?). But then again my child is only 3 and pretty much never wants to be out of my sight so I’m not exactly exploring the reality of this topic yet. And at this point I’m probably doing more to prepare her for managing her own safety than dreaming of her freedoms – like teaching her how to free herself from a locked car and how to make an emergency call. (Although these have been influenced by particular circumstances in our family).
1) At what age is a child old enough to be left alone in a car while you are out of sight for between 5-10 minutes ? ( for example to run into a store or pick up another child).
2) At what age would you feel comfortable leaving a child home alone for up to 30 minutes?
3) At what age would you let your child go play alone (no adults) outside in your yard?
4) What age would you let them walk 1-2 blocks to play alone in a park?
5) At what age would you let your child have a sleepover with a friend from school if you had only met that child’s parent a few times in passing?
I don’t know… when?
I’m an auntie, not a parent, but I think all of these questions are heavily influenced by location and the personality of the child. In my family, there was a 7 year gap between the eldest (me, a girl) and the youngest (a boy), and I had a lot more responsibility and independence than my youngest brother did. The middle brother was very, very shy (and I was very bossy!) and he had the least independence of us all. I was walking to school alone (1km on quiet rural streets with several roads to cross) at the age of 5 and a half; I don’t think my brothers got to go alone until they were 10 or so and had done Bike Ed.
My nephew is 5 and starting school – but he lives in suburban Melbourne, and is a shy and dreamy kid with no road sense at all. The idea of letting him go anywhere alone is terrifying.
1) not yet. mine are 7, 4, 1, and 5 months.
2) not yet.
3) My 7 & 4 year old have for a year or so. We live in a secluded are well off the road. I don’t think I would allow them to play alone if we lived in the city. Here the main dangers are bee stings and scraped knees.
4) In their young teens maybe? I’m paranoid.
5) I wouldn’t.
Wow. These are questions I haven’t really thought much about since Eleanor is only 26 months. It’s scary thinking about how different things are since we were little and we’d run amuk for hours on end out of site in the woods or neighborhood. The only thing my parents were really strict on was no swimming when an adult wasn’t home – I think when they were they kept their eyes on us? Can’t remember.
If I had to guess my answers would be:
1. Ten
2. Ten
3. This is so hard! Maybe 7.
4. Jeesh, my mom and dad let me walk a mile to school to elementary school and I was under 9 – urban area. Again almost ten – magic number.
5. I don’t know. My mind rolls to whether they have guns in their house, other children, other adults…..
And I might have different answers where we live. Back in the US I’d ironically be much more strict and protective than in the UAE where we live now. I feel very safe here. Don’t worry about people talking to my child or perverts. Obviously I still safeguard her to the same extent but the worry isn’t as strong feeling.
I’m very curious what other parents who have older children will answer. Here we have supervised play areas at our local mall. Once children are two, you can leave them there with staff. The women who work there are wonderful. We’ll drop Eleanor off for an hour and do some shopping or have a coffee. I wonder if people think that’s crazy. Seems perfectly safe to me though.
I responded to this one over at Penguin Unearthed. Reading the answers here, I’m feeling like I’m missing something about number (3) – or is it just that we’re living in completely different types of accommodation/environments? I have no qualms about my six year old playing alone or with other children in our backyard (including in the treehouse), and he’s been doing it for years, since he was about three. We don’t have a pool, the fences are too tall for him to have scarpered when he was a wee kid and prone to such things, and the yard is within earshot in case of injury-related screaming.
I agree location and context are key here. Some of these weren’t really issues for us because we lived in a city where driving was unnecessary and there was no such thing as a yard. However most of my answers would be the age of 10. Ten is what I would say for being left alone in a car for a few minutes as well as leaving home alone for 30 minutes. Depending on the safety of my neighborhood and the park 10 is also when I would let him walk a block or two by himself. Ten was when we let him go to the grocery store across the street by himself. Leaving alone outside in the yard seems like something I’d do around 7, but again context of neighborhood and yard makes the difference here. Likewise I think I’d be fine with the sleepover at around 7.
Needless to say I was raised quite differently and at 10 took an hour and a half subway ride in NYC that required 3 train changes by myself.
I live in Texas, in an older suburb of Dallas–so almost urban by now.
1. When they are old enough not to freeze if carjacked–say 13 or so? It’s the 5-10 minutes that ramps that age up for me. 30 seconds, while I run in to pay for gas? That might be a bit younger but only after scoping out the area and looking for anything hinky.
2. Same thing here. Home for 30 minutes? That’s gonna be about 10-12. 10 minutes while I run to the corner store is younger. 30 minutes is long enough to burn the house down.
3. In my yard, well, I let both my kids play outside while I cleaned inside with the door open, behind a fence, when they were as young as 2 or 3. By 4 or 5, they had friends in the neighborhood and could go to their houses but I’ve been blessed by living in neighborhoods where *all* the adults watched *all* the kids like hawks, doesn’t matter to whom they belonged. So we have packs of kids wandering around in a designated area being watched by multiple adults from the ages of 5 to 10.
4. The Girl has just been allowed to do this for the last 4 years or so. She’s 17. So, I guess my age for this is 13 or 14.
5. At my house, age 5 or 6. At someone else’s house? Never. My kids can’t sleep over at someone else’s house until I know the parents pretty well.
Well, my two year old plays in the (secure) backyard now without me. I can hear his monologue. If the monologue stops we go out to look. I didn’t do this at the old house because there was nowhere to lock away tools and so on. It’s not really any different to having him play in another room.
As for the others, I suppose I’d let him do them when seemed able to cope with them, when he knew what to do if things weren’t working out. So I’d let him sit in the car for ten minutes if I knew he was able to think “gosh, getting a bit hot in here” and undo his seatbelt and get out. I don’t really drive much, so it’s not a big issue. I’d let him walk to the park to meet a friend, or walk to school in a group when he knew the way. My partner and I were both inclined as children to go for walks alone as part of our way of dealing with the world. I feel pretty strongly about teaching the kid to be safe exploring or walking off his frustrations. Obviously one’s capacity to teach that depends on where you live, driveby shootings aren’t exactly a problem around here.
I grew up in the city, and while I see danger all over the place, I don’t think it scares me as much as it does some other parents. Having a kid who gets to 15 or 16 and is unable to safely get themselves home terrifies me. Having a kid who leaves home or goes off to uni unable to negotiate unfamiliar places alone scares me. I suppose I have the same fears as other parents, but I deal with them by getting him out there amongst it rather than keeping him inside. Eventually I’m not going to be able to protect him and I want to make sure he knows how to protect himself.
Apart from the backyard, the answer to which is ‘as soon as we can buy a frickin house with a nice backyard as this is precisely the reason I’m so obsessed with the quest’, my answer to the others is
35, 35, 35 and 35.
I don’t know, it’s very hard. All very well for people to harp on about the good old days but I bet none of those doing the harping lost a child.
I imagine a black hole that never fills.
1. don’t have a car. But have found that most kids prefer to come along with you until they are sulky teenagers who don’t want to be seen with you (about 13). a friend of mine left sulking teenager in car while she and her husband had dinner in a restaurant because he had got annoyed with them on the drive over, and thought he would refuse to get out of car, and they would beg and plead with him. They went and had dinner instead. (they did buy him take away spring rolls as they were leaving.)
Mind you, can backfire if sulky kid decides to steal car or run off.
2. totally depends on child, and/or combination of children. 10 year old home alone was fine. Ten year old left with 8 year old was invitation to homicide. Fifteen year old and 4year old has been fine.
3.its a big yard, but feel okay with 4 year old out there on her own. two kids are better together, lots of ‘telling’. once had 7 and 5 year old happily find paint and paint a lot of stuff before i realised. middle child could not be left anywhere for extended length of time without some supervision up till age 12. at ten he devised a way of tipping trampoline sideways and running at it to bounce off. (injury). at 11 he was bailing up the neighbourhood throwing projectiles from treehouse.
4. parks round here are very pretty but tend to host large gangs of feral children picking on strangers. Children choose not to go there. let teens go and kick a football at the oval. let my twelve year old catch train to shops (an hour away.) with friends. all have mobile phones.
5. have had some disasters in this area. Used to try and invite other kids here, but we have had a couple of kids that steal from us, and one kid who set my daughter’s carpet on fire. once discovered someone i thought was a very nice lady was using heroin when my kid was in her house. Have had huge battles with pre-teen who wants to stay over with friends whose parents have no boundaries (one mother was encouraging girls to make prank calls,. police got involved when these were interpreted a threatening.) and had to try and explain why i was saying no, plus help my kid deal with the fact her school friend was seriously offended.
have got much more judgemental and blunt in my old age.
Eyes are wide open with bogglement at the issues people face. Have never thought of car jacking or heroin use as problems with child rearing. Much more concerned with things like overheating in the car, hand brake release (husband did this as a preschooler in his mum’s car) and oh I don’t know, giving children too much coca cola.
Sheltered much?
I am hyper protective of my son, though, because of his health issues so my kneejerk answers to 1, 2, 4, and 5 is ‘never’. But I suppose it’ll really be around 11 or 12 or so. It would be earlier for going to the park or local shop if he had a friend who lived around here for him to go with. Alone I am not so happy with. He plays happily in our backyard (7) and goes into the front yard if he needs to get a ball or whatever, but he doesn’t usually choose to play out there by himself. He couldn’t play by himself outside when he was younger because he was too unstable on his feet.
I’m going to pretend these questions don’t exist until I’m actually faced with answering them. However, I imagine I will let my child do these things at a slightly younger age than other parents. I may not want to trust the world with my child, but I’m trying really hard to do so. It’s taking a risk, but I think it’ll be worth it in the end.
Wow, the yard thing must be incredibly circumstantial – my answer is way different!
1. Depends massively on the weather and the location, but I would leave the 6 year old for up to 5 minutes in safe locations, but not longer. Another year or 2, I would imagine. So 7 or 8?
2. Again, the 6 year old can be left for 10-15 minutes comfortably. 30 minutes? Another year I reckon, but I have the world’s most responsible 6 year old – if he becomes less so that estimation may change. Essentially as soon as he can use the phone to call me or his father on a mobile if need be.
3. I have literally left a 4 month old out the front yard on his/her own (ok, I could see them through the window). Elissa plays out the front on her own now at 15 months. The back yard is a bit fraught with concrete steps and things, so that tends to be about 3 years before they can go out there completely unsupervised.
4. Not yet (at 6), and I just don’t know yet. I hope soon. I’d like him to be able to do it by 8 or 9. I certainly was doing that sort of thing by 7 or 8.
5. Hmmm. Don’t know. At our school, everyone has met everyone pretty much. Certainly I would never have had a sleep over if my mother had had such a policy. In theory, 6 or 7 would be my answer – once they are old enough to tell me things about the kid in question before they go and that sort of thing. In general, I would already know the kids pretty well, since there would have been afternoon visits and so on. I guess that’s it. As long as they are young enough for it to be an issue, I would almost necessarily have had contact with the parents for the kids to get to the point that they want a sleep over…
Although reading some other people’s comments – I can see that it is likely I might not allow sleep overs once I *did* know a parent well enough… I am lucky enough not to have come across any parents that I couldn’t tolerate my child being around for the odd night.
Wow. Yes, it all depends on location, specific conditions, and — frankly — the particular child. Thinking about my oldest, now 5 and a half, I think I’d say . . .
1) I’ve actually just started doing this, but only in a *very* specific situation: she’s in the car in the (quiet) driveway of her sister’s preschool, which is basically in a house. I can’t imagine doing it anywhere else for years. Until she’s ten or 12.
2) 10 or 12. Probably 12. That’s actually the law in New Jersey.
3) Well, our yard is fenced, and you can see it from many windows in the house. So I let my older daughter play out there pretty much as much as she wants. The younger one (2.5), we’ll let stay out on her own for a few minutes at a time — and generally I’m in the kitchen where I can see her.
4) 10 or 12 again, I think.
5) I just don’t know. Eight, maybe, if I had a good feeling about them from those few meetings.
I’m going to answer this and then read the responses. Caveat, considering recent news, is that none of these apply in high fire danger weather. Fred is almost 6, Una is 3:
1) At what age is a child old enough to be left alone in a car while you are out of sight for between 5-10 minutes ? ( for example to run into a store or pick up another child).
Well, I’ve already done this with Fred who is 5, probably for no more than 5 minutes, when I ran into our local PO/general store, but it’s quite a small town and I think it’s pretty safe. More commonly Fred goes into the shop on her own to pick up the mail. And I’ve left Una, 3, asleep in the car in winter in the kindy carpark. You’d have to be very very unlucky to come across an opportunistic car-jacker at our small town kindy.
2) At what age would you feel comfortable leaving a child home alone for up to 30 minutes?
When Fred feels comfortable, I’d leave her now if she thought she was up to it. But she doesn’t want me to. I tried to leave her in the apartment in Paris for 5 minutes while I sprinted up the road for croissants but she wasn’t having a bar of it (shame because taking her meant it was a 20 minute, 2 tantrum exercise)
3) At what age would you let your child go play alone (no adults) outside in your yard?
Fred played outside in the front garden (which was unfenced) when she was 1. She knew not to leave the garden and she never did. I was inside with the door open but not watching her. Una and Fred play outside in our very wild garden now without supervision and have done since Una was 2. Isn’t that kind of the point of a backyard?
4) What age would you let them walk 1-2 blocks to play alone in a park?
I am open to Fred doing this when she decides she’s ready, though I’d be more likely to let her if she was with a friend. I’d be encouraging her to try it out by the time she was 8 if it hadn’t come up before then, perhaps not to the park, which is a way away and not very exciting, but certainly the bush reserve.
5) At what age would you let your child have a sleepover with a friend from school if you had only met that child’s parent a few times in passing?
Um, probably now, if I’d met both parents and they seemed okay and Fred was comfortable with them. I mean most parents you meet in passing unless you’re friends with them yourself, right? It may sound naive but I trust my instincts on this. Having said that our school is very very small, I’ve no doubt I’d hear rumours if someone was suss.
I have to say it’s BLOODY hard work being a writer for children in this day and age, when kids are supervised within an inch of their lives. No one goes off to stay with batty neglectful aunts to convalesce for three months or goes camping on their bicycles with their cousins in their school holidays or even walks home from school without parents anymore! I’m with Kate, kids need to be street smart and taught the value of independence. Walking is great for the soul, and a fantastic way of encouraging ownership over your environment which I think in turn gives you a sense of ownership over your body. I don’t want my gals feeling like they’re in enemy territory every time they step out of our property’s bounds.
Ohh, The answers to these questions make me feel like I’m waaaaay to permissive, and I thought I was a strict mum. I really relate to Pen’s comments
“Eyes are wide open with bogglement at the issues people face. Have never thought of car jacking or heroin use as problems with child rearing. Much more concerned with things like overheating in the car, hand brake release ….and oh I don’t know, giving children too much coca cola.
Sheltered much?”
I do think though there is no hard and fast answers here, as others have said it does depend on the child and the circumstances in which you live.
1 From the time that they were babies I’ve always left the kids in the car under circumstances where I can see the car at all times and I’m going to be “quick, quick, quick” (so my two year old tells me). I’m talking about stuff like paying for petrol and dropping videos off. The two year boy can’t undo the seat belt and the five year girl doesn’t realise that she could if she tried so I know that (for now) they’ll stay put. Miss five doesn’t want to stay in the car when I drop Mr Two off at daycare, but when the novelty of gloating to the pre-schoolers that she’s off to bigschool wears off, I’ll let her stay in the car while I do the drop off. But when the boy is that age I’ll have to gauge how likely it is that he’ll attempt to drive the car, so I’ll just have to wait and see.
2 Not sure, maybe close to 9 or 10. Alone is the operative word, I wouldn’t trust the two of them home together unsupervised for quite awhile.
3 I have a very small fenced yard so the kids have been playing out there without me since they were babies, that being said, the younger they were the more frequently I checked on them, and I’m generally in earshot.
4 The letting the child walk alone I’d have no problems with in a year or two (7 or 8) – say to a friend’s house, but the parks around here attract older bored kids so I’d be more worried about putting her in a social situation she couldn’t handle then the responsible of walking a block or two, so yeah, maybe when she’s ten.
5 I’ll wait a couple more years before I let her sleep over at someone’s house that I don’t know real well, and I’ll make sure I have a coded safety word/procedure worked out with her beforehand, in the event that she’s not comfortable I can come and pick her up on a pretense that makes it look as though she is leaving reluctantly. (Same for my son obviously, but as he’s two its going to be probably four or five years before we face this one with him).
I have no children, but know of this article from a while back and thought it might be relevant here – scroll down to the cool map comparing scope of autonomy in different generations.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-462091/How-children-lost-right-roam-generations.html
I found this helpful reminder on the way to the above article:
Enjoy, discuss, what not… 🙂
I should probably expand on my response a little. Earliest sleepovers were with parents who were my friends, because your little kids socialise with your friend’s kids, and everyone gets to know each other.
When my eldest was five, my marriage broke down, and we moved into a cheaper area, with a broader social spectrum. I’ve met great people, and not so great people.
Primary school sleepovers weren’t such a big deal, because up until about age 10, my kids were friends with the children whose parents i knew well and got on well with. Around that age ,the kids started to want to make their own friends, and find their own places in the school pecking order, and it was a struggle to negotiate who i thought was ok, expecially as i had known some of these people a long time and some of them i had doubts about. I’ll also add, in a small town, you quite often get people dropping by, and for a while there were times when i felt crippled by the need to be polite… or sometimes my compassion led me to make decisions that didnt turn out well (like letting the kids with really terrible home lives take refuge here. It seemed like the right thing to do, but it turned out to be a LOT of trouble.)
When we got to thirteen, my eldest was actively choosing the last people on earth i wanted her to be friends with, and it was extremely difficult. she eventually made friends with a girl from the year below, who was quite presentable ,as was her mother. (well spoken, well read, employed) That mother turned out to be a junkie.
older teens…. mmm. Yes, they have to learn how to lookafter themselves. But then again ,they are easily impressed by parents who can’t impress other adults. Arrggh. who buy them alcohol and say they can come over if they want to wag school!
sorry! big posts! which is why i usually lurk instead of posting! but i guess that a big part of me is still reeling at the way the world crashed into my peaceful domestic sphere where toddler tantrums were the biggest things i had to negotiate.
on the upside, my 18 year old has survived and did very well in her final exams. ..
Actually these questions are really confronting, because I realise how much my parents must have trusted me and that I really need to get my head around trusting Lily as she grows up.
1) I’m sure that I was quite young when I was first left alone in a car, but I am quite paranoid about cars – handbrakes, car jakes, overheating etc. and am more likely to insist that children accompany me – or play nearby.
2) I used to bus home from school and stay home with my brother until my parents (individually – depending on whose house I was at) came home from work (about 1.5 hours). I was around 7 and my brother was 9. I guess I had better keep that in mind as Lily gets older.
3) I have no problem with letting Lily play alone in a secure backyard now – so long as she is in ear-shot.
4) I used to walk to the park by myself when I was pretty young. Definitely by 7, since I used to bus or ride to and from school at that age (and bus myself to violin lessons around the same age). Umm, hopefully Lily can do this when she is about 5. Canberra is pretty safe.
5) I know that I did this at age 5 – my parents didn’t have much of an opportunity to get to know the parents involved. I think that I would aim for 5 too, but make a really effort to get to know the parents involved – even if I could only meet them a few times.
I was raised in the bush, surrounded by snakes, crocodiles, buffalo etc. Fires, even fires, we had them on an annual basis, they would sweep through near the house. We had it all under control; surrounded by park rangers and members of the gagadju and bunitj, there were answers for most problems on hand.
By 8 or 9 I’d go off on my own, into the bush, or cycle around with friends.
My kids will never experience this level of safety and freedom, and it’s kinda sad.
PS in Melba we’ve had more than one recent case of a car theft where kids were still inside, it’s not just paranoia…
I’ve found it interesting in these discussions how some people say they let their kids do things earlier in a small town or quiet street (ie. where there are very few other people likely to see the kid) than in a busy city. I feel much more at risk in an empty spot than I do in a crowd. I’d prefer my kid to explore on his own by walking down the street, crossing at the lights, and meeting a friend at the park than wandering down a country road without a footpath and the occasional speeding truck (my Nan’s rural house was close to a cheese factory, the milk trucks were dangerous, we had far less freedom there than we did at home in the city). I guess I’d prefer that if he fell off his bike he was in a spot where someone would see him and help him home or ring me.
Armangy, I guess my experience of loss (not of a child, but of my much younger sister at 19) is that no matter what you do, no matter how well you feed and educate and exercise a kid, terrible things can happen for no reason at all. Which is awful. Unspeakably awful. I can’t guarantee my kid will live to a ripe old age. I try to focus on the things I can do to improve the odds without costing us anything much (sunscreen and seatbelts don’t “cost” much, never letting the kid explore on his own costs a lot). In the face of random death by very rare cancer, I concluded only that you have to get on with enjoying life while you’ve got it.
It’s all a cost:benefit analysis isn’t it? I’m not keen on leaving small kids in cars because it’s always possible they’ll try to drive it, or it’ll heat up, or the car will get stolen, which are big problems compared to the fairly minor inconvenience of taking a kid inside with you or staying in the car til they wake up (I keep my knitting or a book in the car for those times). Letting a kid go places by themselves or stay home by themselves for short times that you slowly build up, seems to me to have a fairly significant benefit as well as a risk.
Thanks for picking this up, bluemilk. The responses have been fascinating. Interestingly, I’m coming to the conclusion that I really should let my seven year old walk to the shops by himself right now, from reading the responses.
And probably play in the park two houses away with his five year old brother (providing we’re home, and they can come and get us if they have any problems).
The comments about letting them experience small amounts of risk and independence early, and building up from there are very persuasive.
But I do need to have the stranger danger talk with them again before I do that.
I have never had the stranger danger talk. I suppose I should, but I have this knee jerk reaction to the hysteria that surrounds it. I have always encouraged my kids to smile and speak back to people. I know there is a small threat in strangers, because the threat has been stable for a hundred years. But because the media (and some parents I have had contact with) beats it all out of proportion, I feel I need to combat it.
Having said that, I was told not to take gifts from strangers without an adult’s consent, and to never get in a car with a stranger. I’d better slate that conversation for soon.
theres some really great stuff in these responses. I find kate and penni for me encapsulate my opinions most about my own behaviours in regard to my children. My kids played alone in the yard, with my ears humming, from about 1, with me knowing exactly what was in the garden. responsible parenting for me is about managing the risk boundaries for your children but allowing them the space to learn in relative safety. Nothing in life is guaranteed, but if you never let children live and learn then i think we end up with overprotected children who either are too scared to take risks at all or make poor judgement in their risk taking through lack of experience. there is a wonderful new book on risk taking and over protected children and teens, cant think of the author, but the findings from the studies suggest that denying risk taking from an early age leads to problems one wanted to avoid.
Ariane – that talk is the stranger danger talk I meant – about having sensible boundaries, not refusing to talk to anyone ever.
The talk I really should have had properly by now (from reading the real risks, not the newspaper ones) is the one about your body being your own property and no-one else touching it. We’ve discussed it, but not in a threatening or particularly serious way. By far the highest risk for young children is from non strangers. And while I can’t imagine any of our acquaintances being risky, that’s true of many parents of children assaulted by acquaintances.
But that’s a topic for another thread – sorry to get off topic.
God it can become so apparent why people with families might want their ‘quarter acre block’; if you can’t let them out of your sight anywhere else it’s the only way for the kids to have a run.
*runs realestate docomo search on Rosanna, Viewbank, Macleod*
[…] Questions on children, safety and freedom: freaking me the hell … By blue milk Penguin Unearthed has posted her response to a bunch of thought-provoking questions originally from AmericanFamily about changing parenting norms and the inevitable trade-off between child safety and freedom. Below are the questions and … blue milk – https://bluemilk.wordpress.com/ […]
This is extremely thought-provoking… and connects with current issues we are facing at the moment. My partner and I share many, many values but we were brought up very differently: my parents were very over-protective, hers were the opposite, very relaxed in approach. I wonder, blue milk, what is the parenting style of your over-protected friend? Because what we are finding is that despite rebelling in our (earlier) lives against the parenting styles we experienced, we are now both slipping into those respective styles in our own parenting: ie I am being over-protective and she is much more free with our boy (he’s just turned one). Although a recent accident with a door might have changed that somewhat… an example is she encourages/allows him to try physical things that are beyond his ability level in the playground, for example, which I view as dangerous, like helping him climb stairs/equipment etc. We’re continually negotiating the minefield of bringing up baby.
Anyhow, my responses to your 1-5 really would be ‘never’ at the moment (re. #3 we have a veeeery steep, unsafe yard, as my id may suggest); but perhaps that could be up for review as he gets older! I think the recent accident has really sharpened my protectivity… I just can’t help myself thinking “what if…?”.
Addendum,
funnily enough our child is very independent, social and not at all clingy, keeps pushing (my) boundaries!
These were such interesting responses.
gully_girl – good question, but I don’t know how my friend is parenting, we lost touch unfortunately when he married someone who doesn’t like us.
I have a dear friend whose husband was raised very much like your friend, and unfortunately, it is reflected in both his parenting style AND his relationship with his spouse. It is currently a major source of conflict for them, as his wife is beginning to feel quite confined by the constraints his fear creates for the entire family.
Those questions made my jaw drop, because as the mother of a toddler and newborn, I’ve never given them a moment’s consideration. I’m going to live in denial for just a bit longer, because I think so much of childrearing is about who your child is, rather than how old they are. But from a feminist standpoint, it occurred to me to wonder how many people answer those questions differently for their girl children versus their boy children (and hope that I’m able to avoid that trap myself).
Well, I’m 19 and still live at home, and I’ve always had a positive, happy, healthy and honest relationship with my parents, and if I were to ever adopt a child, I’d say:
1. Ask THEM how comfortable they are with it, sometimes they might like to come, sometimes they might like to stay. It depends really, but I’d say at about 9 or so.
2. My parents would leave me home by myself for brief periods of time from the age 11 upwards, and depending how long they’d be gone, they’d have a neighbour they trusted or my grandfather/aunt ring in/come and check up on me if they could.
3. I lived in a quiet cul de sac from age eight upwards, so that’s when I was allowed to play out the front. But I had a boundary and my parents would check on me every fifteen minutes (just a quick head out the door) and then come out and interact with me in some way (ask what I was up to etc) every hour or so. I wasn’t allowed to after it got dark tho.
4. For me it was about thirteen – we have a park a couple of streets away and I would sit there and read. However, they’d make me take one of their phones with them, or would let me chillax there while they were taking the dog for a walk.
5. That one for me was probably around 15-16, also because I was bullied pretty mercilessly in early high school (black, short hair and a penchant for black clothes = goth lesbian apparently), but they wouldn’t let me go to anyone’s house unless they’d met the parents at least ONCE, and they’d always want a home phone number, a mobile for the friend I was staying with and an address. This continued until I was about 17.
Hope this is helpfully. I plan on living a child-free life, but I really love your blog 🙂
This means that they may take a few weeks off and barely touch their food and hide away.
They also like to hide and it makes them feel safe when
there is a place to craw into or under. It is very exciting the first time your pets breed, but don’t let your heart rule your head.
If you want to change your relationship with your husband so you start feeling closer to him again, you can make that happen.
And as you do so notice, just notice how that real love (true
unconditional love) has the power to heal all wounds,
bind people together and perhaps most importantly create the kind of empowering relationships
that go far beyond your present capacity to experience.
I explained why it was important for him to show Ena, Paul and those who cared for him that he could stand up for
himself and “handle” Ena.