To think that children are babied too much these days

[BlueMirror]

I think it's really sad that many children aren't allowed the independence I had when I was younger. We live on a very quiet road and while some primary age children are allowed to play outside and climb the trees in the field opposite many aren't.
I also know of 18/19 yr olds who live at home and are basically treated like young teens with their parents calling them by the minutes to check on them, restricting where they can go/who they can see. They are adults!
Aibu to think that if you aren't even allowed out of the door by yourself until you're 11 then you're not going to be fully independent by age 18 and that adolescence now seems to extend into the 20's for many young people?
Supervised 'play dates' for 10+ year olds now seem to be a thing going by threads on here! What happened to going and knocking on your friends doors and seeing who could come out?
For comparison it was normal when I was younger to walk yourself to school age 7 and children played outside from much younger. By the time you hit your teens you were expected to be responsible and behave as an adult with all the freedoms that go with that. Aibu to think that kids are generally overprotected these days?

Cauliflower that's horrible.

I've never before thought how lucky I am to have a DH who used to be a decorator. Any tradesman we have round is one of his mates. Even if they were like that, they wouldn't dare.

I had a friend who was "wild" with very little parental input and actually sadly died before he was 16. As a direct result of the lack of parental supervision.

My point is that there is a spectrum. Giving your children freedom to make mistakes does not equate to either neglect or letting them run wild.

It’s peer pressure from other parents, it was hard for me to resist peer pressure from other parents who did these things - still do, as I have a 19 year old

I let mine play outside in the street, walk to school from year 3 alone. Walk to school, get bus etc at 11.Cycle on country roads at 13

The hardest for me was other parents attitude towards this and sometimes my dd would question it as friends were babied

I had lots of freedom and behaved sensibly as a young adult.
I suspect maybe that whether young people go wild and take lots of drugs, unless they come from a chaotic druggy family, has as much to do with personality as anything else.

But I do think building resilience is crucial for adults. We all experience setbacks and horrible things happening. Having the resilience to deal with these is crucial.

And sadly some of the adults I know that were way over protected as kids, are now anxious adults unable to deal with setbacks. That is why learning to deal with age appropriate negative stuff matters.

It was suggested upthread that having no freedom as a teen makes uni students go mad for MDMA and sex.

My own experience is much the same as Saska.

We have so much “fear” pushed on us by the media about the what if’s that many parents are far too scared to let their children have any independence

Having no boundaries and letting your kids have total free range, is neglect. Nobody is suggesting that.

I know what you mean, just one of them situations you have to adapt with the times. I used to go out to play by myself & (friends) aged 8, it was on an estate so everyone knew everyone. As I got older we went beyond the borders. When I started high school I would literally come home get changed and went out till the street lights came on. From the age of 13 I was allowed out past dark. I was barely at home. I had scouts, after school clubs, went to the pub to watch footie and spent a lot of weekend nights there, friends sleepovers. Many times I went out with friends when I was 15 and wouldn’t come home till 2/3 am, as long as let my mum know where I was, she was okay. I grew up in some rough parts of london and was pretty street wise. My DS 10 didn’t like to go on his own anywhere. The last couple of weeks he’s gone to school from halfway by himself, comes home halfway by himself. Goes to the shop by himself. He’s becoming more independent. I worry a bit because of his autism but he’s perfectly capable. I love that my parents gave me independence and I never betrayed her trust. She wasn’t neglectful but wasn’t suffocating either. I know some people who’s parents were completeley suffocating in high school, when they went to uni they went off the rails. I believe that there is the same level of danger as years ago it’s just that back then we didn’t have a lot of media to hype it up, now it’s made aware everywhere and we cannot escape it, so people are more concerned. But you can’t al2ays live your life in a bubble, and your children need to make their own mistakes otherwise they will never learn.

I was pretty much left to my own devices and never took drugs or smoked a cigarette. —I have had sex though—

About the men in a van thing. The police have to take any report seriously-which is why you get letters from the police and sometimes even police in school. I have been involved with schools for 18 years and have dealt with loads of these reports. In every single one the police have come back to tell us that it was a misunderstanding or a fabrication. It is almost always a white van-sometimes blue with two men, often of Asian appearance. Of course it worries people-who wouldn't be worried? But the big problem is that it artificially raises people's level of concern. And because the police are involved of course people think it's real.

I was given total freedom (well, with a curfew) and the worst thing I did was go to gatherings by the river and drink one bottle of WKD.

That was it.

Still not done any drugs, smoked a whole cigarette or had unprotected sex.

The level of freedom depends on how sensible and mature the kid is - I was pretty responsible and well behaved. I'd go shopping for the day or to the odd tame house party, but that was it. Mostly I sat on Runescape...

I attended a school seminar on online safety recently. It included a talk from a prison worker who works with paedophiles. She said it is no longer the case that most victims are abused by people they are close to. Apparently most abuse now comes from people who have used the web or apps to abuse victims online and either meet them
via grooming or by using technology to work out where they live / go to school / hang out.

the area i live in has a massive problem with children being completely left to their own devices and basically terrorising shops and people in the town. they're generally aged from 7-15. they ride their bikes at oncoming vehicles, they ride at
pedestrians including mothers with prams not swerving until the lasy second. they go in the shops just to throw things around and then leave. they racially abuse shopkeepers. they steal and destroy. do you actually know what your kids are doing while you're leaving them to their own devices? i'd much rather spend the day with my child, not on any kind of screen thank you very much, but exploring and playing and with her generally being a nice child rather than her hanging around with the kids who are unsupervised -ignored-- the majority of the time.

freshstart is your point then that they should, or shouldn't be given some independence?

Why are posters insisting on conflating things which just aren't the same?

Kids marauding around a shopping precinct obviously isn't acceptable! Does that even need to be pointed out?!

I will not let my DD ever just play out in the street. The world is a different place now with acid attacks, kids going missing and more. It just isn't the safest things to do anymore. I happily take her and friends to places but never just roam the street mindlessly

The thing is, that I am not worried about some random one in a million thing happening. Where I live, most boys will be mugged, stabbed, threatened, and the girls catcalled or grabbed at. This is not the media telling me this. It’s my experience on the street and that of my friends, even when we were young. And it is the evidence on the crime map and in MET statistics.

If you live in a nice quiet area without that danger, fine. You’ll think I’m overprotective. But I’d challenge you to come from that safety, walk down Seven Sisters high street and feel safe. If you have a teenager in London, you’ll think I’m sensible and have my eyes open.

Bert

It did happen as the Police were telling parents at this and other schools to be vigilant. They did get the fella in the end and there wasn't an innocent explanation.
However, I do agree with you as I have experienced some reports being little more than a parent telling a stroppy kid to get in the car.

You're quite right MyMy. I do not live in that area.

I am afraid parents can't win. Supervise closely and they are suffocating their snowflakes, but if anything ever happens to a child the first question is always "where were the parents"

I don't think the world is less safe for children than it was but there is a far greater awareness of risks and a far stronger culture of blame.

It is a vicious cycle too. Fewer kids play out so those who do are no longer surrounded by other kids so they are more vulnerable.

Stranger danger is now beginning to be if not already accepted as actually having done children a DISservice because it's taking the focus away from where the danger of sexual abuse/harassment DOES usually come from - those they DO know, that their parents trust (and even the parents themselves).

"I don't think a child having never peeled vegetables before at 11 or so is a particularly good example." If that's a referral to my post - she was 14!

Have to say I too have heard and read of numerous reports of a child supposedly "almost dragged into a van" - Unfortunately got a few Facebook friends (old school friends) who repeatedly post such nonsense without verifying first. Also pops up frequently on local Facebook community pages.

not one has turned out to be true

Notmy - were those incidents confirmed? (I doubt it) OR the school/police had "reports" and while unconfirmed were erring on the side of caution as much to cover their own arses as much as anything else?

Freshstart - sorry I'm sure you posted in good faith but I don't believe that's true. They simply don't have nor can EASILY get the access to most children to abuse them. Even the images of child abuse that are online have mostly been CREATED by abusers that are family or well known to the family.

Spot on @Situp

Considering the number of posts on the lines of "Should I call Social Services about....?" Or replies on the lines call "Call Social Services immediately!", parents are inevitably going to be cautious. In our day, Social Services wouldn't give a toss if a junior school aged child went out to play for a couple of hours without contacting the parents in between. These days people would think that you were negligent and be all 😵

I have a 16 year old who's allowed to come and go as he pleases as long as he's quiet when he gets home and does his schoolwork. I've been told both that it's good that I can trust him/he's very independent and it's outrageous that I don't know where he is after dark Can't win!

I agree with your point about some kids being too mollycoddled but think of the kids of our generation who were pushed into being independent too soon,

I have kids at 2 different schools and I get letters from school or see social media posts by the police about suspicious strangers about once or twice a year. Of course, it's possible that some of these incidents have innocent explanations but I have heard of children being followed by people in cars. (I know the actual kids or their parents so not an urban myth)

I was allowed to go out when I was a teenager. As long as my mum knew roughly where I was going. When I was an adult I could go out and there was no restrictions on what time I came home.
I was never allowed to play outside as a child because my mum doesn't like it at all, now I'm a parent neither do I. I'd never let my child hang round the streets, certainly not now.

But I’d challenge you to come from that safety, walk down Seven Sisters high street and feel safe

Fair play - I used to live up there and even as an adult, alone the crazy traffic and all the drug dealers who walk up and down West Green Road were enough to make me feel unsafe.

Also probably someone has already said this, but harking back to our childhoods doesn't work because when we (I'm 40 odd) were kids, everyone played out, so if you were playing out on the street or you walking to school or whatever, you had tons of friends and colleagues around. The kids make each other safe. We live in rural Germany now and the kids walk to school from 6 but they all go in a little crowd. It's a different level of danger.