to send a nearly 9 year old 100 yards down the road to the chip shop

[workshy]

having left over roast beef and chips for tea but had no frozen chips in yes I know I'm a slattern but it is sunday so sent DD, who will be 9 next month down to the chippy which is on my road, to fetch a bag of chips

she was 'escorted' home by a woman who had happened to be in the chippy and though I was totally unreasonable to let her go to the chip shop by herself at that time of night (it was ten to six when she went)

have I totally lost it in my ability to make reasonable decisions about my child's safety or is she a nut job?

i agree seeker...children need independence but assuring that there is no risk to their safety...i cant see 100yds down the road being a problem unless he had to cross it and it was busy....ppl need to start letting go a bit

Well that is your perspective and your choice for your children. Why are you saying that othe people should follow that lead though? They have their own choice don't they? No one should be told that what they choose is silly just because it doesn't necessarily meet with approval from the masses

The problem is that the perception that our children are at risk of abduction and murder is the perception of "the masses". it's a rare few who actually loom at the figures and behave accordingly.

i agree with seeker, we have a very scewed risk perception when it comes to our children, we regularly take them in the car for short journeys where we could walk which would be safer, but we dont let them do things that are statistically safer because we are scared of things like abduction.

But why does it bother you? Let your children do what you choose and let everyone else choose their way

I still don't really understand why people have the right to choose what other people should be doing with their children... I guess that's mumsnet though

i dont care what other people do, but i do care when people, (not necessarily on this thread) get hysterical and say you are a neglectful parents or a bad parents for letting your children have more freedom etc)

and actually i think being an over protective parent isnt particularly healthy for parents or children and it certainly doesnt help equip them with the life skills they will need as they grow up. :)

Because we are talking about the society we are creating together, and it's not good for us to be making a society where people are isolating themselves from other people through fear. Or a society where just don't know how to assess risk.

Well, I have 3 dds. One is 20 one is 18 and one is 7. I will still not let my youngest out alone until she is secondary school age and Im pretty certain that my elder two do not view the world as a horrible place in general and they don't seem to have been psychologically harmed from us keeping them in until they were 11.
It is very difficult to get a balance of what is the right amount of freedom to give a child, it's not right to scare them senseless but not is it correct, in my view, to disregard the very real dangers out there. Even if statistically its 1 in a 1000 - who wants to be that 1???

but its not even a 1 in 1000 chance thats the point and yet i bet you do things that have far higher risks and think its fine, when your children have their own children i wonder if they will not let them out alone until at high school, or maybe they will remember how much they wanted to go out and let their children have a bit more freedom? or maybe they will take the view that they need to protect their children when in actual fact i dont think its protecting them at all, they are simply being stopped from having a bit of age appropriate freedom and responsibility.

really what is so magical about them going to high school that suddenly that is a safe age to go out on their own?

What are the very real dangers you are talking about?

I still don't really understand why people have the right to choose what other people should be doing with their children... I guess that's mumsnet though

And that gets us neatly back to the OP. The woman had no right to try to tell the OP what she should be doing with her child.

And actually - you are far more likely to be judged by others for letting your child play out (despite the minuscule risk) than for "playing safe" and keeping your children indoors.

Well - I just wonder why people get so stressed about someone saying they wouldn't let their child out until a certain age. Even then my dc were very rarely out alone - they would be with a group of friends, some with older siblings.
To me real dangers are road accidents ( not always down to child error), physically bullying, being injured somehow whilst away from home ( falling off a bike etc), sexual assault etc etc
If for you those dangers don't exist then great, but don't tell people that they should be sending their children out or they are depriving them or damaging them.

I completely agree about road accidents - I think that is by far the most worrying possibility for a child playing out alone.

The only thing the woman did wrong was to knock on the OP's door. I completely agree with BalloonSlayer on this; I'm another discreet watcher/follower who also isn't afraid to ask a child if they're OK. I'd be grateful to anyone showing ds the same kindness.

The road (not busy but fast, and tricky to cross thanks to parked cars) is the reason ds has only been allowed to the shop alone in the past year or so. He's been playing out, calling for friends etc for years however.

Everything depends on what the environment is like where you live.

Road dangers are one of the reasons i wont let my children out, a lot of motorists round my way rarely stop at a zebra crossing so i prefer to know where my kids are and not only that not long ago a child nearly got took by someone in a car-a known peadophile had been going around in a red car trying to snatch children-the police had warned all the school children to go out alone-so yes kids can be abducted!! The only reason the lad got away was because he was strong willed to do so not all kids are.
Everyone has the right to their own decisions , mine is to keep my kids indoors unless supervised till atleast 11y or with an older child chaperone

To not go out alone -silly me

Can I ask a question to those people who keep their children in til age 11, as in they never go out unsupervised?

When they get to 11, they go off to secondary school, if they have never been allowed to go out anywhere on their own, what do you do if for example their school requires a bus journey, or a long walk?
Or when they make friends and they want to go out at the weekend?

I'm not trying to tell anyone how to raise their DCs because what I do is completely different to other people but it works for me, I'm just curious.

There's been a few threads from people who have realises their DCs have a journey to secondary school and are worried because they have never been anywhere on their own, so I was a bit curious how other people feel about that?

I'd love to be able to let my kids out to play, but we live in town on a busy road. TBH, I worry a lot more about traffic than abduction, that is one thing that has changed hugely.

Well mine did not have a bus journey. We already knew the walk to school and my dds arranged to walk with other people. In the summer holidays before secondary school we allowed them to venture to the local shops/ park but my dh still often stood at the front door to watch them cross the road etc. he would then tell them later if they had done it safely or not

what bibbity said, unless tinker was being sarcastic

For me I don't think it's skewed risk perception.

I think I am realistic about risks. I know we're talking about actual stranger abductions barely reaching double figures each year - I know this. However there is something about this horrific crime that trumps even road accidents in terms of fear of, even though they, not abduction, are one of the leading causes of death for 12-16 year olds.

We all know what cautious parents are really afraid of. Abduction has the potential to go beyond even the grief of the death of a child. The life time of hell of the parents who never know what happened to their missing child, the constant 'if onlys' and guilt over their own motivations for putting their child at 'avoidable' risk, ( was it about their own convenience? Was it really to prepare the child for the world of responsibilities?etc).

My perception of the risk is not skewed but the reality of the consequences, if I was unfortunate enough to be part of this tiny minority of parents, would be so unbearable, that for me, it is worth being extra cautious especially while they are small and particularly vulnerable, ( I have teenagers now and they seem pretty capable at age appropriate activities even though they started a bit later than some.)

This does not mean I am condemning more relaxed parenting, but when the relaxed parent asks 'what are you afraid of?' I suspect I am not alone in this being the biggest fear for the above reasons.

The op is well within her rights to send her child off to the very close by chip shop, but I think the 'concerned' woman well might have only wanted to ensure that the op's family was never in the nightmare scenario I've outlined above.

Emphatic - you have voiced what I mean perfectly