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?

Well I have to say, I think it's bonkers that parents think they can still have 'control' over their DC when they're in their late teens! They're adults. I was married at 18

My DS won't be allowed to roam free though, not as a child. It's too dangerous, and as someone else has said, it isn't my child I don't trust. It's other people

Sad but true

And kidnapping sadly did happen many a year ago. But people forget not everything was published

Kidnapping by strangers has always been incredibly rare.

But there are weirdos who are a risk to adults as well. I could stay indoors because I fear getting blown up by Isis, being hit by a joyrider or stabbed by a violent and unstable person. But I don't restrict myself to the house. I take sensible precautions and live my life. Why don't we have the same attitude towards children? Teach them about stranger danger and non stranger danger teach them to cross roads safely and let them have age appropriate freedom and fun!

"We had a spattering of incidents locally with men trying to coax young children into vans,"

Yes, so have we. They have, without exception, turned out to be false alarms.

I can't think of any of my cyclist friends who hasn't been in an accident, going from bad scratches to hospital stay with multiple surgery. I am not talking about crazily zooming delivery guys on speed you see in town, just normal middle-age parents.

No way will I allow my kids to cycle on the roads around here, it's not safe. You can tell me that cyclists in Amsterdam do it everyday, it doesn't make my own area any safer.

But there are weirdos who are a risk to adults as well. I could stay indoors because I fear getting blown up by Isis, being hit by a joyrider or stabbed by a violent and unstable person. But I don't restrict myself to the house. I take sensible precautions and live my life. Why don't we have the same attitude towards children? Teach them about stranger danger and non stranger danger teach them to cross roads safely and let them have age appropriate freedom and fun!

Statistically, I will make an educated guess that you're more likely to be lead away by a stranger/be wronged by one than you are to come into contact with ISIS

Furthermore, it's not just kidnapping that's a worry. Grown adults taking pictures of children, thinking about children in unnatural ways. I could go on. The child doesn't have to be snapped up immediately for their to be negative impact

I think kids including many adult kids are pampered to the extreme now. It has certainly changed a lot over the last 30-40 years.

When I was younger I had a time to be in for my tea and a time to be home at night. That was it. The rest of the time my parents didn’t have a clue what I was doing.

So the number of child murders has fallen to the lowest level since records began. Only 4 of those were by someone the child did not know. Sadly children are most likely to be killed by their parents. And remember children killed by strangers are nearly always teenagers involved in gangs or other criminal behaviour.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/02/09/number-child-murders-falls-lowest-figure-since-records-began/

I always cycled on the pavement as a kid...I cycled from Windsor to Slough age 11. Still alive.

Do people think that these small risks disappear at secondary age? I think most people accept that at secondary age you don't need to keep your child in sight at all times. Do paedophiles and kidnappers cease to exist then? In what way does society become safer in the 6 weeks between yr 6 and yr 7?

I remember being able to knock on my friends’ doors around the age of 4 and play in the street,building bogies (cars made out of scrap) and in other children’s gardens.The street was quite close knit with few cars (going back to the late 70s early 80s) and no one thought twice about it, I used to go to the paper shop for sweets with friends aged 6.

I think there’s just too much traffic and other issues to allow children the freedom we once had.My dd is gregarious and would happily play in the street but it’s not safe unaccompanied by an adult because delivery vans go way too fast (and few drivers these days seem to anticipate children playing out!).

So I don’t think we baby kids too much, if someone’s pushing their very able 18 year old round in a buggy then yes you’ve got a point! Sadly times have changed and parents are trying to find a happy balance between being protective and awarding freedom.

I think that it may be a cultural thing. I wasn't allowed to play on the street-it's dangerous for children and inconsiderate of the general public- neither were most people I grew up with. I moved to a different country at 18 and got married shortly after. Most people who I grew up with moved out at 18, many of them moved cities/countries. Not allowing children isn't babying them, it just good manners. One's neighbours don't want to deal with screaming children on the street and all the abandoned bicycles in foot paths, near miss car accidents with children running across the road etc.

"Supervised play doesn't have the same benefits as unsupervised play"

I take my child to the park with other parents, and they are totally free to play. We just chat and they run around in the huge park. We don't hover around. They are allowed to go into the wood area, and make a fort or climb the trees if they wanted to. I don't see any difference. Just that we are there, just in case.

My DD (now 21) never 'played out' until she was a mid teen and that 'playing' involved booze and fags down the park. She didn't need to and I saw no reason for her to wander the streets unless there was an actual destination involved.

Amazingly she is a functioning member of society and manages to work and commute to Uni 30 miles away, as well as travel abroad independently. She'll be working abroad in a few months.

Let's face it most of the 'playing out' in my day involved being told to get out and not come back til dinnertime so my mother didn't have to deal with us and have us in the house. It was essentially neglect. I don't understand the romanticism of it.

It’s definitely become a thing. Round here and from my perspective as a mum of young children it becomes a spiral. Less ‘normal’ kids are allowed to play out so then it becomes less safe and so less normal children play out. Also a lot less parents around. In my childhood my mum and all my friend’s mums would be keeping a subtle eye on us all (collectively) and we had boundaries about which roads were allowed or not. If your kids are at after school club all week them gradual independence (playing in the garden alone, next door, in the close etc) is a much slower process.

Each parent does what they think is right, for every one that doesn't care there'll be one that's overprotective.
And as to why some are babied, probably the media make us more aware of dangers these days!

"No way will I allow my kids to cycle on the roads around here"

I am a shockingly lax parent by Mumsnet standards and neither will I. And we live very rurally-the roads are terrifying. Fortunately we have footpaths you can cycle on so they can get to the shop and the station. Ds takes his bike on the train to the nearest town where it's safe to cycle!

OP I think a lot also depends on the personality of your child too.Some children will be more mature aged 10 than others, the neighbourhood is significant too.

www.police.uk

You can check the crime in your loca area here and filter it down to drugs/weapon possession/violence and sexual crimes. I personally find it useful because often people just have a general impression of something, ie there’s hardly any crime here etc and the truth is usually somewhat different.

I am late 30’s wish that I had more supervision as child and view some of “my freedom” as neglect.

I live in a quiet culdesac but thanks to the media I know that the guy that lives in the culdesac is a convicted paedophile, in and out of prison. Various characters from my childhood, (including teachers) have since been outed as similar since.

It is said that the brain doesn't actually mature until the age of 25. Maybe we are just more responsible with our DC than our parents were?

My kids don't scream in the street or behave in an antisocial way. I know this because they are either on my close or playing with their friends a few closes away whose parents would let me know if my kids were causing a nuisance. Playing outside doesn't have to equal being a pest to neighbours though I know sometimes it can. I refuse to believe that these parents don't know about it because they're not hovering over them though - in fact I've known people complain about the behaviour of some of the local children to their parents and they know but don't care.

Yes agree that playing out actually meant some parents and older children were keeping an eye out. We had strict boundaries about where we could go.
But I think it wider than that. It is not all parents, it is simply that there are more parents being over protective.

Cauliflower Bloody hell, that's awful. I hope you reported those arseholes.

I think I agree with you to an extent. When I was younger I was allowed out on my own when I was around 7. There was a park a few minutes down the road, I'd walk down the street and call in for my friends and we'd go to the park. We'd take our bikes behind the estate on to a cycle path and go way too far away and back again. My mum would hang out the window and shout my name when it was time to come in for tea! It was the norm for us then but I don't think it is anymore. With social media especially everyone is all too aware as soon as something bad has happened and it, understandably, puts fear in people. I'd love to treat my kids with the same independence I had but realistically I know that I won't.