To think 8/9 year olds shouldn’t be doing this

We live in london, actually in a nicr pocket of london but in the last year 2 kids have been killed by getting stabbed on buses, multiple stabbings in parks on streets near us. Our park is full of broken glass every morning, kids getting their bikes nicked, my nephew has his face pucnhed in for looking at someone on a bus a few weeks ago. He went to the high street and got his phone robbed. Every week some kid gets their jacket robbed from them. Sorry, but if you think your kids are ok just walking about in this day and age you are very much mistaken. Just yesterday there was another jacket robbing posted on the chat, boys jumped the kid and punched him down to the ground. There was another post about some young year 7 boys robbing some girls in the park for their bags and phones this week while they were all in their school uniforms. I am very sad that my child can't roam alone but I would rather be dropping them places than them ending up another victim.

In the northern part of my country it's dark for weeks on end, of course children will play in the park when it's dark. You can't exactly say "I trust you to go to the park at 2pm on a Saturday in June but not 2pm on a Saturday in December", that would be ridiculous.

People have always, and will always, parent in their own way. I just don’t have any common ground on this topic with someone who considers it acceptable for 8 year olds to play out on parks after dark.

Children play out after dark where I live, the dark is not a limit here (couldn't be, daylight hours are too short. They have to walk to school in the dark for a good chunk of winter)

Not every area has good options for sports clubs and not all families can afford them even if there are. Playing out is free and has benefits far beyond exercise, which is not the same for organised activities (they have their own benefits of course, but they are different)

I really think it comes down to your own child, what sort of road and what sort of park. Parks in major cities with a drunk man on a bench and 10 vaping teenagers all over the swings is a very different prospect to some of the things described here. Village and country life does seem to encourage kids to roam around but there are other considerations if the other people in the actual park are the concern.

if my son walked to the park 10 minutes down the road and something happened he wouldn’t have any option but to walk the 10 minutes home - it’s not the lovely setup some people are describing of the village shop phoning me or lovely neighbours looking out for the kids. He’d be on his own. So that’s a different situation altogether.

My kids are super active and outdoorsy with lots of clubs, lots of hillwalking, lots of time at the beach, camping (with my husband, I hate camping!) and plenty of time with friends. They aren’t missing out on anything by not being allowed to roam around a city in the dark as a small child (we are in Scotland so right now it’s dark not long after school lets out).

Well, it’s January… so they either are not playing for “hours” after school at the park OR they are playing out in the dark. Organised clubs don’t need to be every day but they do play their part and they are also on all year, come rain or darkness. We have lots of options around here and the clubs are in big sports halls so lots safer. Apart from that, walking ten minutes up the road to collect your child after “hours” playing free with friends doesn’t sound like a big stress. I’m sure you can do that around cooking dinner. Personally I would prioritise safely walking my child home over labouring over a dinner that takes ages to cook. Priorities.

Jest all you want but there are studies on this.
And I always know its summer when I start seeing the children on my street gathering, then heading off somewhere on their bikes, perhaps with their fishing rods to go fish at the lake, or with footballs, heading to the football pitch for a kickabout. Kids somewhere between 8 and 10 years old, judging by the look of them.

Organised clubs aren't generally every day, for several hours, and working parents generally don't have time to go to the park for hours every day (I don't have time to go at out at all during the week, but I can send DS outside to play while I cook dinner or let him walk to his friend's house to play with his friend), but if you let children out to play they can easily spend hours being active playing every day.

The child would not be crossing the road, just walking beside it.

OP my son is 9 and i have been working up to him being able to go to the park this spring/summer which is 4 houses away. There is no way I would let him walk 10 mins to meet friends and children this age don’t all have phones x

My DS is the same age (so age 8 in Y4, late July birthday) and for me it would be too young as he's quite a "young" 8. Where I live we have problems with gangs of teenagers using the local park, smoking weed, being mean to younger kids and we also have a massive problem with County Lines gangs. My 14 year old DS has been attacked when in town with his girlfriend. We're desperate to move as I grew up in a village and was out in the park from a young age with my older brother! As a teen I was never home as was always out on my bike/climbing trees - a real child of the 90's 😂

The hill is surely neither here nor there, I’m not sure how that plays into things. For me the crux of whether it’s ok would be if there is a pavement on the road or not? A 10 minute walk is only 1/2 a mile or less if they are walking slowly so I don’t think it’s too far. If it was just on a busy A road, then it’s obviously not safe, but if there’s a pavement then it sounds fine. My boys have roamed all over our farm on foot since they were about 6, and out on the lanes on their bikes (together) from about 7 or 8. They go much further away than 1/2 mile but it is very very quiet country lanes and they stick together (sometimes cycle to a friend on a neighbouring farm a few miles away, sometimes just down to the woods to build dens etc). My youngest also loves playing with his friends down at the village playground and football field - I drive him down there and then drive the 10 minutes home until an agreed time to go back and get him. He doesn’t have a mobile phone yet (he’s now 11 in year 6, but has been playing in the village since he was year 4). If there’s a problem he knows he can go to a friends house or the village shop and one of the parents or the shopkeeper will phone me, but there has never been an issue. He’s sensible on the roads, and I think it’s good to build their independence. My boys play outside (on our land) a lot, but they also spend a fair bit of time in the car being driven to school and to sports training so any opportunity for them to get out by themselves on foot or on bikes is great in my book.

There are ways of teaching children independence in a tapered, soft way. Not just sending them out into the street to roam up the road aged 8. Up until their 6th birthday, I literally had to get onto the trampoline equipment at JumpHeaven for example and be “around”. They’re 6 and 7 now and Hugo on independently, often with friends to roam and I wait in the cafe. By age 8/9, perhaps I’ll drop them and go / collect. It’ll be a build up to them feeling independence. They will obviously have independence as teens, but not total and for me personally, 8 year olds on busy roads unaccompanied is an unacceptable risk to mine.

Children need to be doing things like this more. In Germany there is a saying 'children who aren't allowed to, become adults that can't'.They allow their children much more freedom and independence than we do and I think that's a big part of the reason they are (statistically, on average) happier.

Organised play full of clubs and play dates just isn't comparable.

A lot of it depends on the area and what other people let their kids do. If a lot of normal kids do the same, its ok. In some areas normal kids are kept indoors and it's just the chavvy ones who roam about outside unsupervised.

Also, I really don’t see why the choice is letting your child walk 10 minute away up a busy road OR a sedentary, lazy upbringing in front of screens. Any 8 year olds enjoy organised clubs? Play dates in each others gardens? Football at the park and walk home after with mum? He’s 8???

I wholeheartedly agree OP. Just because they can cope, doesn’t mean they should.

Hallelujah! Another sane person. My DS has always been old for his age and I have always allowed him to play out with minimal supervision. We moved house about 2 years ago and he stopped going anywhere for a while then when we moved to the house we’re in now, he started playing on the street again. Based on where we live and where his school is, I have been happy to allow him to walk on his own to and from school. His DF (my EXH), however, has zero faith in DSs capabilities. Approx 14 months ago, I was visiting a friend in the town we used to live and DS was at dad’s. I asked dad to tell DS where I would be and walk with him on his way to work. Despite my DS having been to this friend’s house countless times and it being a straight road and no more than 400yds, his dad insisted I go out to meet him so he could stand at the corner of the road with the main high street and watch until he reached me.
My DS has just turned 10 but I know I can leave him to walk to/from school, my place of work or his friend's house and I know I can leave him home when I go out safe in the knowledge of his capabilities and that if he gets stuck, he will call me.

He’s too young , you’re right to have all those worries OP , I’d be the same …
It’s better to be safe than sorry, 💯 applies here …

This has been a fun debate, enjoyed it and good points made on both sides. Not sure either is convinced by the flip argument though, too much depends on our own parenting styles and experiences.

To those who are happy letting their sprogglets loose please consider an AirTag or something in case they are not back when expected, I don’t think most would have phones with the ages we’re discussing for a locate me setting to apply.

To those that chose to accompany their kids out I don’t think it’s wrong or weird. Doing it in luminous onesies and matching hair styles, that’s wrong and weird. But then who am I to say? Maybe keeping kids too safe is actually spoiling the fun of people who enjoy hurting them or playing kiddie skittles with an SUV on pedestrian crossings is a terribly misunderstood national pastime. It does take all sorts 🙃

Sounds like a very healthy way for kids to gain experience of the outside world, rather than be cocooned in cotton wool by neurotic parents. An 8 or 9 year old should be capable of negotiating roads and traffic.

My main worry would be crossing a road

The walk is fine
Playing football fine

It's highly unlikely a child abuser will grab him and his mates kicking and screaming in broad daylight and abduct them. Really! Its pretty unheard of isnt it?

Wow you’re a late starter ZestyJoey, I’d retired by 6 and had 3 kids 2 grandkids by then

Ah yes, the famous nomad child tribes of Hertfordshire. A breathtaking sight to see them roaming majestically across England’s green and pleasant land. Muscular wee things, from their dawn to dusk nomadic sweeping across the plains with nerry a Pom bear packet in sight.