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?

I have to say though, that high profile cases like James Bulger, Madeleine McCann and April Jones make me really nervous about the day when dd does start playing out without one of her parents there

When my DD started playing out, I literally never moved from the window for the first few weeks ok months, she was never out of sight. As time goes on and they get older it does become easier. I check often and she is still always in sight and other parents are checking on them too.If she is going into a friends house, she knows to come and ask first.

Well obviously if you live in an unsafe area that changes things. But while everyone doesn't live in my idyllic surroundings bog standard northern semi nor do most people live in no-go areas. I feel for people who live in the kind of areas described where you would feel unsafe as an adult or a child and obviously you would be much more cautious about your children playing outside.
Supervised play doesn't have the same benefits as unsupervised play though. Even if parents don't hover children will develop much better problem solving skills if they don't have the option of shouting mum to sort things out for them.

But their adult children need to learn basic skills such as dealing with a workman in your home.
You can not protect your children from all negative experiences and uncomfortable feelings and expect them to have the skills to deal with these as young adults.

I loved the freedom of the school holidays as a child, I lived in a leafy suburb and spent most of my time running about in the woods, by the river, on the green, not really doing anything at all but just having loads of fun with the other village kids. You'd only go home for tea. The best memories and I am really sad my future kids won't get to experience that.

I think people are mentioning skills like cooking etc as there seems, to me at least, to be a general trend where children are treated as much less capable than they would be given the opportunity.

You see it on here sometimes where someone says - no way would a child x age be capable of doing y, when actually children of that age are capable of doing that, but they have to be taught.
This is why there are worries about some children not having resilience. It is because they are suddenly being expected as adults to deal with adulthood, without having been gradually taught how to do this. So learning how to deal with things going wrong for example.

there are also thread about grown-up woman who are not comfortable having a plumber in their home, so I can imagine they would be just as "protective" towards their children.

No point passing on your anxieties to your children.

My eldest is 7 and is able to make a simple dinner for himself, understands the washing machine and can work the central heating remote better than I can. He baked me a cake on Saturday. But will I let him play outside wth drug pushers, gang leaders barely out of their teens and children with knives? Absolutely not. I don’t see how this is depriving him of anything. Hes in self defence classes already.

No point passing on your anxieties to your children.

I don't disagree with that, just pointing out that some adults are not able to function in the real world, so these are not the best role-models for their kids.

I totally agree. I was allowed to town/the park alone and cycled to school age 9. In secondary I got public transport to school and could go wherever I wanted as long as i said when I would be back. My parents never "checked up" on me or each other.

Never got assaulted or died, but I am very independent.

I 100% will give the same freedom to my kids.

I have a friend who wasn't allowed anywhere alone and was only given lifts, and she's now unbearably dependent and needy.

My kids might not be allowed outside on their own, and the teenagers have strict rules too. They however know how to book a plane ticket online, find their way in an airport on their own or take the Eurostar without an adult. The youngest ones know how to find their way in the tube, even if they don't take it alone, obviously.

Different times, different skills, I am hoping my kids will be fine, and I don't believe that not allowing them to be left all day unsupervised is doing them any harm.

YANBU generally.

My DC have a lot of independence compared to their friends. I quite often won't know where they are for half an hour or so at a time. I know the general area though (primary age)

Mymy at my DC's school in London they can walk to school on their own from yr6. I think schools make their own rules on this.

The amount of traffic is a big problem. Cars have made it unsafe and also destroyed communities, meaning people are rushing about all the time and don't know their neighbours.

In terms of gangs and abusers - that is probably no worse than it ever was. You just hear more about them and people are less able to deal with it. Also there are no 'nice' people on the street to dilute the horrid ones because all the nice ones are being driven to playdates.

People value children a lot more highly now - in days gone by people worked so hard and had so little money, there wasn't a comfortable warm house with tv and lots of toys and books, there was probably often a bare room with a harrassed shouting mother who just wanted the kids out of the way for a bit. Now people have fewer children later in life and have more time and money to enjoy their children.

I think the lack of unsupervised play will ruin childhoods and cause big problems in the future. But it's difficult to criticise parents for wanting their children to be safe.

Not teaching children to be self sufficient with housework is a different matter - I think they just can't be bothered to make their kids do it!

Now you don't even know what kind of people are living on your street.

That was always the case.You dont really know people.

And to be fair the world is the same its just people are more savvy about things.Kids are given warnings like we werent.Kids now have it drummed in to them about dangers.Much more than we where.Everything was brushed under the carpet.

I think you can keep your kids in,ferry them everywhere but when they hit 18 they wont have a clue.Because everthing has been done for them.

And I'm not criticising parents. The media attempts to terrify us on a daily basis about the man in the bushes even though that man is much more likely to be a friend's uncle on a play date.
There is the pressure from social media that children need to know 2 languages, play sport at competition level and at least one instrument.
Kids to is available 24/7 pumping kids full of adverts for X-box games, films and other screen based activities. It seems safer for kids to spend their leisure time on these.
Kids aren't allowed to play certain games in the playground at school because schools fear litigation.
It's not surprising that parents/teachers are anxious but I think that adult anxiety is a bigger risk to kids development than any of the scare stories in the media.
Our kids are more protected than ever before yet they are less physically and mentally healthy than ever before. Why is that?

So a friend who is a reception teacher in a middle class area, says there has been an increase in the number of kids who can not put on their own coat. She teaches them how to do this. She thinks that parents are so busy they tend to just do things for their kids as it is easier, rather than giving them the chance to do it for themselves and learn how to do it.

SaskaTchewan, that is such a good point about the tube. My DS can get anywhere on LU, he knows the lines so well. Understands how to read a bus timetable, the right stops for the museums, gave travel advice to a tourist the other day - he isn’t at all babyish or shy. My friends son comes to visit us from the north and despite being 5 years older, cried when he found out he couldn’t drive the bus I agree, different areas give you different skills.

I grew up in a cul de sac in the 90's & 2000's. me and my brother would play out on the street from about 5yo. Before that we'd play out in the front garden with the gates shut and talk to the older kids who had freedom! There was a lot of kids our age to play with, bikes, scooters, ramps and skateboards, bulldogs charge, cricket, rounders & dens made out of my mums tobacco umbrellas when it rained. There was an abandoned metal works behind us that we'd break into and climb over the machinery and fibre glass tubes, we'd set fires in the wasteland and climb the machinery as high as we could. There was also a valley close by that had an underground railway, it was just under a mile long and we'd walk through that to scare ourselves senseless!

Now I live on a very busy crescent with a school at the top, it's also a shortcut to get to the centre of town so I'd never let my son play out here. It's constantly busy with cars and the other neighbours don't let their kids play out, they always seem to be getting in the car to go to activities etc so my son will never have the opportunity to watch them playing and ask to join in. I do want to move when he's school age to try and give him chance of a similar childhood but I don't know if it exists anymore. My old street has completely changed, the metal works has had 3 new build estates on it and the next generation of kids don't seem to play out on the street.

There are also thread about grown-up woman who are not comfortable having a plumber in their home,

In the last 3 years, I have had:
A hoover repairman ask if I'm going to invite him upstairs
A carpet fitter send me text messages after he left telling me he wants to 'fuk me so hard ur so hot I'll lay you any time' - and he just wouldn't stop
A handyman who would NOT stop going on about how seductive and sensual I am
A dog trainer who was really menacing actually and kept turning up uninvited with gifts

Last week, a plumber hugged me and told me I'm 'dangerous'.

I've never met any of these people before in my life, nor do I answer the door in 70s porn style wearing nothing but a smile. I'm not dangerous or seductive or sensual either. I'm grumpy and plump.

My heart sinks whenever I have to invite someone round to do a job. My friends laugh that it is my superpower - being hit on by tradesmen.

I don't blame people for being nervous in the house on their own.

FWIW, I don't wrap my son in cotton wool. As I said before, my mum let us roam ferally, and she disapproves heartily of the fact that my 9-year old goes to the park and the shop on his own - and I used to get the bus home from infant school on my own at 4.

But threads like this really piss me off. You can't possibly know all of the risks in every area of the UK to make a sweeping judgement that 'parents baby their children'. It's not for you to judge how each family manages those risks and helps their kids negotiate them at the right pace.

I think YANBU. My children had a very independant upbringing (and are not feral!) in that we lived in the countryside and they were often off from age 6 or 7 in the fields and woods on their bikes, with friends or just together. Having picnics, climbing trees, exploring. We have since moved to a town area and I have to say i'm reluctant to let them have that freedom where we currently live.

However, they have gained so many life skills and their friends of the same age here don't appear to have any. Its almost as though their parents think they are incapable of doing anything on their own which I do think is sad for the children.

So alot of it really does depend where you live. I am so grateful we lived where we did when some of my children were young. I am very sad though for the younger ones I have who will never know that real freedom in the same way.

I do try to make them as independant as possible. Theres none of that blaming anyone else crap if someone messesd up that I see most of their friends do.

Alot of their friends here also are very babyfied, if that makes sense. I think alot are scared to do things because their parents have projected their own fears onto them. One of my dds had a sleepover at age 11 and I was shocked that out of the 5 girls invited 4 of them were afraid of the dark, one went home because she was scared to sleep at someone elses house and 2 more were crying in the night because it was a strange house and they were scared of a burgler coming in. I was totally shocked.

Where we lived before they would all have been begging to stay in a tent in the garden and having a whale of a time. I don't want my dc's to grown up scared. I have obviosuly explained risk to them and stranger danger and hope I have instilled enough common sense that they can, as they get older, judge any risk for themselves.

This thread reminds me of that "Arkangel" episode of Black Mirror

sweetmoon I would have been shocked too.