To be surprised by this level of overprotectiveness!

[IrishTwin]

My colleague at work just told me she doesn't allow her 9 1/2 year old son out alone in their back garden!! I actually didn't know what to say! Her son hasn't got any additional needs or problems,is Nt ( Neuro-typical) and goes to a mainstream school Im actually pretty shocked at this! Am I wrong to this this is is beyond overprotection!

www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/08/where-are-children-happiest/

@bratsy - possibly because we start school earlier giving an additional 2/3 years for it to occur?

My experience is with Swedish children. I think the main difference is in a sense of usefulness.

Even at nursery they are trained to prepare their own lunch; by mid-primary school it would be a normal expectation for a child to be able to bake a cake on their own and an 11yo to cook supper. My nephew could do a mean stir-fry by the time he was 6 or 7.

They are taught DIY from an early age: my nephews were using hammer and nails aged 4. So by the time they get to their pre-teens they can actually be useful around the house, and parents do tend to involve them.

Crafts lessons at school tend to result in things that they can take home and actually use: candlesticks, stools you can sit on, clothes they can wear. I have never seen my dc here in the UK come home from school with anything remotely useful.

They are trained up in outdoors skills very early (life-saving, recognising signs of hypothermia, basic navigational and map-reading skills), and are taught that they are responsible for their own safety from an early age. So by age 11 or 12, no one bats an eyelid if they take the dinghy out on their own or go to the beach with their mates (beaches admittedly safer there, as no tides).

Teenagers do experiment with drink and sex (less so, I think, with weed). But there is less incentive to take risks around these things, because there are so many other ways of feeling independent.

Basically, there was nothing the Famous Five did that my nieces and nephews wouldn't have been able to do, with the exception of having unlimited soft drinks and being able to chase strangers of their island.

The Independent Newspaper Article: which country has the happiest children:

Jonathan Bradshaw, professor of social policy at the University of York, who co-edited the report, acknowledged the lack of relationship between a healthy body-image and possessions.

He told The Guardian: “There is something going on in the UK and it seems to be focused on self-esteem and confidence.

“It’s very difficult to prescribe what to do about it, but I think one thing that we certainly ought to do is make more effort to manage bullying.”

Ie. our kids are the unhappiest. But no one knows what to do about it.

I actually think ds1 is unappreciative of how good he has it. I, myself don't know what to do about this.

Is quite a serious question, I fear.

We may not be thinking of the same survey, Gentle. Besides, bullying is in itself a sign of people having low self esteem.

Moose no, a lot of articles focused on that but it was a much wider survey than that.

The findings, which are outlined in the Children’s Society’s annual Good Childhood report, carried out in collaboration with the University of York, paint an alarming picture of children’s experiences at school in England, and their wider sense of wellbeing.

It also looked at children's feelings about their bodies and looks and their broader lives.

"It’s very difficult to prescribe what to do about it, "

I'd be curious to know what the gate led onto.

Perhaps they live next to the lion enclosure at Longleat.

MissDallas

By 9 my DC had graduated from the garden to local playgrounds, taking themselves to school and clubs, running errands, ringing for friends etc.

But I wouldn't have considered putting them on a plane alone at that age. Not quite sure why - completely illogical!

Thanks for the corrections - please can you share the links? I'd be interested to read what they say. Going to read the Good Child one.

Slightly off topic but this thread has got me thinking now that we need to do something about our gates. Is it possible to have gates that have high locks and can only be accessed by house owners? Would they have to be electronic or can you get normal gates and a solution? I don't want random people on streets being able to open from outside...

Perhaps they live next to the lion enclosure at Longleat

We used to have a very small back garden. It was fully enclosed by a high wall, and was surrounded by other gardens, no access from the street - so very very safe. The kitchen overlooked the garden. My 5 year old would be in the garden on her own for short periods of time. Our neighbours reported us to Social Services. They could see our garden from the first floor of their house and one time saw my 5 year old in the garden on her own. That was literally the whole complaint, which they made anonymously, but it was obviously by them. Just to make people aware that these in my view warped people can actually make trouble for the rest of us.
NB my DD, aged 12, flew for the first time recently, and was on her own (deemed an adult by the airline, not accompanied). She relished the adventure, really wanted her first experience of flying to be something she managed alone. She was flying abroad to do an exchange stay with a French family she had met only via Skype. Loved the adventure. She and the same age French girl went to school together on the metro. At home, I think that I am probably a bit overprotective, but she does cook full family meals unsupervised, eg she will do a roast chicken with full veg. She can walk around the small town unsupervised, etc.
My 14 year old often has to travel on her own, by train or plane. She has often done 12 hour train journeys alone, including travelling between train stations on the tube in London.
Ime one of the most dangerous things is actually hot water bottles! I had a very nasty incident with one of those recently.

I feel that overprotective parents attract much more criticism than negligent ones. On here, at least. It's like neglect 'parenting fails' are almost celebrated.

Dd plays in the garden at age 6, and has done since she was 2. It is enclosed by a 6ft fence and the gate has a bolt at the top.

She is desperate to be allowed to go to the park opposite our house and play, but I have resisted so far, even though I can see it form the kitchen window, which seems daft really when I consider that by the time I was seven I was coming home from school to an empty house with a massive pond in the garden.

I win this! DD was always allowed out in the garden alone- as a baby then toddler. It was tiny, secure and safe with flat access from the kitchen.
I later turned into a neurotic basket case prone to appearing hysterically when they were out of sight, including at school, but I'm ok now

That's actually a bit abusive ... children are autonomous beings. I bet she is a control freak.

It's always a bit depressing to see how wrapped up kids often end up now. I grew up in a rural village and me and my best friend (who has learning difficulties - was in a special needs school) would roam all over the place. We would do a circuit of all the fields with horses in them! We'd be out for hours - outside of the village, away from houses. And we did this at 9 years old and younger. We had a blast. We came home to eat and that was about it!

Talking of neglect - where do you draw that line? The people we know who live in continental Europe are far far less protective than is usual here. Parents who behave in a similar way towards their children here are at high risk of social services intervention and even prosecution.

And what about our parents? That generation was far less protective. Were we neglected?

If we are talking about neglected children in terms of leaving them unattended then I would judge a 10 year old out with a friend or on their own at 10pm an issue (except in school holidays outside their own house in the summer).

Free roaming children who have no parental controls and parents that really do not care less where their kids are as long as they aren't annoying them is neglect. I saw plenty of this when I lived in Glasgow. My DD1 who was 14 at the time but looked massively younger was walking home from an activity at 10pm and the police actually stopped her and asked her where she was going. They thought she was 10! They still told her to go straight home though (which she did).

Letting your dc out to play in the street, local park, garden is completely different to just throwing them out in the evening and not even knowing who they are with, what they are doing or where they are going. Never mind when they will be back.

As a child we disappeared all day and just came home for dinner. We would be up in the woods building a den or out on bikes, going from house to house picking up various friends. We were all in a group and probably completely safe but our parents had no idea where we were. We are about 9 or 10 at the time. Mind you this was in the 70's where parenting seemed to go out of the window completely.

My 11 year old isn't allowed in the garden without being in my sight but his sn means he can't be left alone. Worrying about a child that age escaping is odd unless they have sn.

DS's friend is 11..5 and lives literally straight across the street from school. His mother will not allow him to even cross the (quiet) road on his own to get to and from school - there's a lollipop lady crossing too! She walks him right up to the door at school and collects him at the end of the day. She allows him to attend birthday parties, but only if they aren't in any way 'dangerous' - so a trampolining party and a soft play party weren't allowed - and she stays with him throughout the party, even if it's in someone's home! Whenever I've invited him round for tea, she has come along with him and I've had to spend hours making excruciating small talk with her - I've told her she can leave him and I'll take good care of him but she he insists on coming along. I don't invite him over often as a result.

He's off to secondary school at the other side of town in September. She told me no way is he getting the school bu there with all the other, bigger kids, so she'll walk him to the door there too. He's mortified by it, poor kid.

My cousin is very overprotective of her 12yo DD, but not at all of her DS. Her DD had meningitis as a small baby which I think is the root of it all - but she takes it way too far IMO. No NT almost 13 year old needs their food cutting up by their mother, or their sanitary towels changing by their DM (my cousin was absolutely hysterical when her DD started her periods and made it into such a dramatic terrible trauma that her DD now can't deal with it at all)! I know she wanted more children but her DP didn't, so she has reacted by trying to keep her youngest child like for as long as she possibly can. I don't think it's healthy at all.

I've seen more and more of this kind of thing lately. I have a friend whose 9 year old isn't allowed to walk along the pavement without holding her mothers hand. I don't think it's doing her any favours to be honest.

Changing a 13yo's sanitary towel now that one is abusive in my opinion. That is a very unhealthy level of interest in your child, surely? What does she do when the child is at school?

MissDallas Thu 11-May-17 11:46:33
"I feel that overprotective parents attract much more criticism than negligent ones. On here, at least. It's like neglect 'parenting fails' are almost celebrated."

Not unless what you define as neglect 'parenting fails' is what most people would define as a healthy level of independence. I don't seem to remember a single thread that celebrates actual neglect and I have been on MN for a long time.

My MIL has five kids aged 12-3 all cooped up in home and doesn't allow any of them out into the garden ever, even under supervision and even on the hottest days (and she has the heating on full blast all year round). She's once said it was because of 'kiddy fiddlers' and once because she doesn't want the kids making too much noise. I think it's horrible and hate being cooped up in the house with them all