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Original poster

to not want my 8 yr old DS to go to the park alone with his 5 yr old cousin?

58 replies

MrsFC · 20/08/2010 07:07

Good morning all,

I was having a discussion with my SIL last night and she was saying that she would be happy to let her DS go to her local park with no adults if my DS was with her. Her park is in the middle of the country and there are no raods to cross to get there and apparently it's only a little bit further than the end of the garden, but cannot be seen from the house.

I said quite DEFINITELY NOT. I would be worried about strangers and also who would be there if one of them fell off a piece of apparatus and hurt themselves. I am also uncomfortable with my 8 yr old having the responsibility of being in charge.

She said I WBU, and didn't I want my child to have the freedom I had when I was young. Now I live in London & she lives in the countryside, so have I forgotten what is the norm & developed an unreasonable fear or am I right to not let them go?

Looking forward with interst to your thoughts...

OP posts:
sethstarkaddersmum · 20/08/2010 10:39

Where do you get the figure of 1 in 5 thousand from, MrsFC?

There are around 12 million children in England and only a few stranger murders each year so the figure is probably nearer 1 in 5 million, isn't it?

verytellytubby · 20/08/2010 10:40

My 8 year old wouldn't go to the park on her own. Plus my 5 year old twins are chaos and there's no way I could inflict the responsibility of them on her.

Nothing to do with stranger danger, I think they are just too young.

Glitterandglue · 20/08/2010 10:45

PosieParker, risk is absolutely everywhere in life. You're not meant to ignore it, you're meant to assess it. So you look at it, work out how you can reduce it if at all, then work out whether the outcome would be better if you took that risk or if you didn't. In this case people are saying that if you never give a child freedom to do risky things, you still run a further risk of never allowing them to self-manage risk and so learn how to cope in the big scary world. There is a risk whatever you choose to do, you have to balance them up and decide which is a better outcome for your child/ren.

lody There has not, to my knowledge, been a paedophile population explosion. There has definitely been an explosion in the number of stories in the media about paedophiles, but that's a different matter. "Today's world", with regards to paedophiles, is no more dangerous than it was fifty, a hundred, whatever years ago.

Also, paedophiles aren't necessarily a problem, as it means people who are sexually attracted to children. It's sexual abusers that are dangerous.

WRT to this particular situation, totally depends on the kids. When I was seven I was sent off to the campsite play area in France, totally out of sight of the tents, with my three year old and [immature] six year old cousin. We were fine, except for when the six year old decided to ignore instructions and wander off to find the toilets. When I realised he'd gone we had to go find our parents and start a search - he'd got lost on the way back. But we were all fine, and it's exactly the sort of thing he would have done were we there with parents... We went back the next day in the same way and this time he stayed in the play area!

Morloth · 20/08/2010 11:06

IMO 8 year old is fine, but not with responsibility of 5 year old out and about. I think 12 is the youngest I would let DS be in charge of a smaller child.

PosieParker · 20/08/2010 11:09

I think sending them to a park down the road is not a risk I would take.

ItsAllGoingToBeFine · 20/08/2010 11:24

Apparently 43% of uk adults think children should not be allowed out unsupervised until the age of 14...

expatinscotland · 20/08/2010 11:42

I think a lot of 'it's giving them their freedom' is a means to dress up parental laziness.

I'm nearly 40. And guess what? The world has moved on since the 1970s.

Imagine that?

There's more traffic on the roads, more stuff going on - kids filming other kids doing all sorts of stuff, etc.

We don't live in the same world anymore, so I'm not going to pretend that we do and then cloak my laziness and lack of responsibility as teaching my child about risk by turning them loose when they're too young.

PosieParker · 20/08/2010 12:35

expat... I like your style and completely agree. FWIW, I wasn't allowed to go to the park without a parent until my sister was eleven and then that was wioth other older relatives.

spiritmum · 20/08/2010 12:50

I've been thinking about this over lunch (which is probably a bit sad) but anyway...

A few weeks ago some boys in our village aged between 9 and 11 went to play cricket on the rec, and a group of teenagers came up from the next village (sorry, sounding very Little Britain) and beat them up - the worse was a boy who simply can't defend himself. They went home and told their dads who went over and the teenagers just laughed at them and told then to eff off or they'd be next. It's known who the boys are, one has an ASBO, one is the chair of the pre-school's son. Confused

I also know one of the mums of the boys, she sometimes gets him to 'supervise' her 6 yr old daughter til 8 or 9 at night. Last time I saw the little girl at a party she was lifting her top up to show everyone her 'boobs'. Not sure I'd trust a 10 yr old boy to 'supervise' any situations that could come out of that.

As I say, other kids worry me far more than adults do. And Expat is right, they now film all this stuff for fun, which in turn means the boundaries get pushed further and further. There's no doubt that the concept of what is cruel and what is 'funny' has shifted, too.

twopeople · 20/08/2010 13:29

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serenity · 20/08/2010 13:33

I used to take my sister to the park around the corner when I was 8 and she was 3. I used to take her and my 18 month brother (in his buggy obviously) down the road to buy bread and milk. I was very independent, very mature and grew up very fast. I don't actually want that for my DCs. I want them to have a longer childhood than I ended up having (which isn't to say that they are sheltered or irresponsible, I just think Secondary school is maybe the time to start spreading their wings)

lowrib · 20/08/2010 13:50

twopeople in the 70s it was the norm for many (if not most) kids to play outside on their own, unsupervised at a much younger age than would be considered reasonable now. That's why people bring it up. It wasn't so long ago, yet people who were brought up in the 1970s now bring their children up very differently from their own childhoods.

Also, I find it hard not to rise to people going on about "today's world" and how it's not safe these days. It's a load of bollocks! It was never safe. Life is much less risky now than before in many ways, and there is no evidence that stranger danger is on the rise. It just really annoys me when people say they're keeping they're children in, because of a threat which is perceived as being much greater than it is basically because of the media. The same people take their kids on car journeys without a second thought, but that's the much greater risk. Cars are really bloody dangerous, but you don't find people getting all hysterical about it and keeping their children in because they might get hit by one.

Sorry I'm ranting, I can't help it!

PlanetEarth · 20/08/2010 14:11

I agree totally with Spiritmum, I'm more worried about other kids (especially slightly older ones) than adults. My DD and a friend went to a park a while ago (aged 9-10), where they found a bunch of teenagers drinking. Teenagers then threatened to hit them. (Charming.)

Not sure how new this is either - my neighbour's son (who is now in his 20's) was beaten up in a local park at the age of about 10 by older boys who took his ball.

giveitago · 20/08/2010 14:22

Nature of danger has changed (or expanded). I'd be more worried about other unsupervised kids (ie the older ones).

serenity · 20/08/2010 14:50

I can't remember the last time I saw a flasher, but I used to see them all the time when I was growing up. Maybe I'm just too old for them to risk it now, but it definitely wasn't flowers and rainbows when I was growing up. Off the top of my head I remember me and my friends (and sister!) being chased by a kid with a penknife when I was 7ish. Around the same time I remember one of the older kids bringing a gay porn magazine out for us all to look at. I was beaten up as a teen for dressing differently. Some greasy old git shoved his penis in my hand at a concert when I was 15 (I dug my nails in and twisted). Things weren't better then, and things aren't necessarily worse now. We're just more aware, thanks to things like the internet where we have more access to pieces of news that would never have made the newspapers or TV news before. We put up with things, and now we've realised we don't have to.

Wow, that was a bit longer than I intended. Sorry!

sethstarkaddersmum · 20/08/2010 15:03

I think it depends a lot on where you are. We are in a village and have a small play area 2 doors away which is overlooked on 3 sides by neighbours we know, and can be seen from upstairs in our house. If someone living where I live said they wouldn't let a normal 8 year old and 5 year old go together without an adult I would think they were loopy vastly over-protective. But most people are not in this position.
My mum said when dd was born 'When she's 3 she'll be able to go to the play area by herself!' which seemed a bit extreme but the other day I was sitting there while dd (now 5) and ds1 (3) played and I started to think 'this is daft, they're hardly any less safe here than in the garden at home'. I did not leave them, but am not far from considering it. Certainly once ds1 has started school too and has that bit more independence it will be fine (and by that time dd will probably be playing on the village green with gangs of friends anyway.)
We're lucky here that there is a lot of the village that can be reached without crossing roads, and people here tend to know each other and have a more old-fashioned attitude towards kids than in many places (eg they would help/tell off someone else's child, rather than running away lest they get accused of paedophilia for speaking to them).

haggisaggis · 20/08/2010 15:17

My 2 have been going to the play park at the end of our road without an adult since they were about 6 - they are now 8 and 10. It is a very rural area and most kids are out playing there without an adult from about aged 4 or 5. I think it's great. ds now plays hide and seek with a group of friends using most of the village. (really just a housing estate and school). There are no busy roads to cross and they have a lot of fun,

expatinscotland · 20/08/2010 15:18

I never saw a flasher until I was in my 30s. A work colleague and I were walking, quite drunkenly, in Broughton Street in Edinburgh around 2AM on Saturday morning when a fella flashed us.

My mate didn't miss a beat. She quipped, 'Is that all you've got?' and started laughing.

PosieParker · 20/08/2010 18:04

Perhaps not living on an estate has something to do with it too, my friends who lived in a cul de sac played out, I did not as I lived on a Victorian long road.

Headbanger · 20/08/2010 18:38

Crikey. YANBU, I would have thought: I despise the modern hysteria over stranger-danger, and don't think children should be molly-coddled - but he's eight. Eight!. Too young to be in charge of a 5 year old for any length of time at all IMO, and certainly away from the house in a London park...

mumeeee · 20/08/2010 18:40

YANBU. An 8 year old going with a friend of the sameage would probably be okay,but even then I would be ary, But defimetly not going with a 5 year old and habing to be responsible fot that child.

twopeople · 20/08/2010 19:11

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seeker · 20/08/2010 19:19

"cat, I agree that there are no more serial killers than 30 years ago, just that they are more publicised maybe. But even so, they still exist, and even the chance of one in five thousand is enough to make me nervous."

It's more like one in a million.

lowrib · 20/08/2010 19:36

sethstarkaddersmum that sounds lovely. One day I will live somewhere like that. Grin

Not quite sure how ...

lowrib · 20/08/2010 19:37

twopeople lets agree to, um, agree then Smile