Aibu to find lack of freedom in modern childhood so depressing

[Writerandreader]

I feel I have to micromanage life for my nearly 8 Yr old - children have no way to see friends unless adults manage every step of it. I find it frustrating because I make plans and then adults cancel or it doesn't suit them. All my kid wants is friends to play with I wish so much children played outside in groups like they used to. So often I wish I could open the door and he could step out to find a friend. It makes me ratty having to organise it and worry about him having friends to play with and it makes something so natural a total palaver.. I also think it's bad for kids over the age of about 8 to have to rely on adults for everything.

We’re in a village in the Midlands; from the age of 8 both of mine have congregated at the local park or fields with their friends. They either call for each other or arrange it through WhatsApp groups or over the X box. Most weekends we don’t see them for most of the day. The great thing nowadays is that you can easily contact them to come home or just check that all is well. The only time I arrange things through parents is for sleepovers or inviting other children for dinner or outings

You can't move in our local playground and park at the weekends for groups of 8yo+ playing out by themselves. They just yell for each other as they run down the street to the park. My toddler likes to knock the window at them as they run past!

DC have been let loose on their own since they've been 7 going on 8.
However at that age they've always been in a group of friends & had a very basic mobile phone (to keep in touch with me/emergencies)
However we've always lived in villages where everyone knows everyone & everything & so feels/is pretty safe.
You have to take a calculated risk approach & I realise we are lucky where we live.
However I am also aware that nowhere is 100% guaranteed safe & at an early age DC had it drummed into them not to get into anyone's car without my say so, basic self defence & the type of safe adult to approach in an emergency (i.e a mum/dad/grandparent person with pram/pushchair/other children if no police around)

Plenty of lovely villages have been the scenes of horrendous crimes.

Me too! I’m often lamenting the lack of skill-building opportunities for my children. Not home skills, we get them to help with cooking/tidying/DIY, but those skills you learn from having to sort yourself out. Making arrangements with friends, paying attention to the time, resolution of differences etc etc. I had my own house key by 8-9 and had to rather come in for dinner or before it was dark, one or the other.

Oh sorry I should have added, I've tried to join my kids up with other kids to perhaps branch out, I’ve made suggestions of one of mine and a friend perhaps going to the shop together or something. Nobody else is letting their kids out so I feel like I’m the odd one out in thinking it’s desperately needed for them.

@Palmtreedreams but don't you see? What you're saying here is that basically nowhere is safe for unsupervised children, be it a small village or an inner city sink estate.
Sadly, everywhere and anywhere can pose a risk, but it's a risk that sometimes you have to take.
You can't wrap kids up in cotton wool, however much we would like to.

*Today 16:11 ShakeItUp

Mine were always playing out on the street or in the woods and fields nearby.
They used to knock on their nearby friends doors to ask if they were coming out, and their friends used to knock on mine, just the same as me and my siblings did as kids.
My grandchildren do the same.
Imagination knows no bounds for a child if they are allowed freedom.
I can't imagine it any other way*

🎖 here’s your prize for the most smug post ever. You did nothing to carry the conversation forward, make a point or observation .. nothing Just “oh you should do what I do.”
Yawn.

But you need to be sensible. Eight year olds alone is not sensible.

Horrendous crimes happen everywhere, as I said nowhere is 100% safe.....unfortunately not even your own front or back garden
You base your risk assessment on your surroundings.
I think we think that things are more dangerous now than they used to be, because we are more aware of crime (through seeing/reading about it on tv/print media/websites/social media)
Even as least as 30 years ago crime wasn't as widely reported/read or heard about.
Nowdays due to technology I can find out/read about nearly any crime committed anywhere.

Meh. This old chestnut and rose-tinted glasses. Oh, modern is so bad! We were free! I'm nearly 50, if I had a quid for how many of us were badly bullied by older kids, friends who were sexually assaulted or raped (by older kids, as we were all so free range), got hurt, started smoking or drinking or both (and now we have County Lines) really early I'd be rich. And I didn't grow up in a 'bad' neighbourhood, either.

The gool ol' days weren't all good and this is now. We don't live in the past. Deal with it.

Children are far more likely to be killed or abused by family than strangers and that’s alway been the case.
The risk of injury from traffic is higher these days but the risk of abduction is tiny as it always has been.

As eminencegrise says, plenty of bad things happened in the past, we just weren't aware of it.

The good ol' days, we're now finding out just how pervasive almost systemic child abuse was back when kids were just left to it and parents were more 'hands off'. The whole point being that until you're a certain age neurologically, you're simply not capable of exercising good sense or making mature decisions, hence, you are vulnerable and open to grooming and manipulation without proper supervision. Now we have people asking, 'How could this have happened?!' when yet more news breaks of wide-scale grooming and sexual abuse in the 70s and 80s whilst at the same time bemoaning how restrictive 'modern parenting' is.

I’m with you eminencegrise

There were a worrying amount of (to me) cases of child sexual abuse by strangers prevalent once.

Rarely, they ended in murder. Awful.

Such men and they are almost almost men are opportunistic.

When you see the other thread about parents inspecting each other's homes before they'll let their kids go and play there, you can see exactly what's wrong these days! It's not even helicopter parenting, it's even more intense than that.

Imagination is of no help if you’re abducted, run over, killed on a railway line or electrocuted

Well the latter two can be avoided by not playing on railway lines!

My DS1 is 11 (Year 6) & since the summer has been going out with his friends on their bikes. There can be between 2-7 of them, which just knock for each other & either the boys can come out to play or they can't. We parents are all aware they do this, give them boundaries & curfews & they take their phones. They also check in when they go past our houses (just a quick shout or wave). This is mostly after school until it gets dark (4.15pm atm), sometimes weekends/holidays.

When I was growing up, there were public information films that used to appear, like

If you go to 1:09 it actually says ‘sensible children’ - that was the theme throughout all of them; silly children get killed on railways, electricity pylons, abducted or run over, or drowning.

I disagree with that premise, strongly.

Well it is apart from abduction (definitely not one's fault) it is pretty silly to play on a railway line, climb an electricity pylon, jump in a lake on a hot day, climb inside an empty fridge or run across the road without looking.

They should bring back those Public Information Films. Frightened the life out of me as a child but stopped me from doing the above.

I live in a village and always see loads of kids playing out and walking to school without adults. I think it makes a difference that the roads are quiet. I moved here when DD was 10 and she was able to go to the youth club, park, library after school with her friends. Where we lived before she didn't have any freedom.

There was a thread here recently where people were freaking out at the thought of a child walking 100m to the shop, there were no roads to cross.

Abductions did happen, but to be honest, I don’t agree. It’s pretty awful to blame a child for their own death or serious injury because of lazy parenting.

Oh hush @Popupshopper there's nothing smug about it at all.
Yawns right back.
Aren't yawning contests jolly good fun. 😴

I don't know, there was a thread similar to this a while back where older mners were bursting everyone else's rose-tinted bubble by talking about some of the negative aspects to freedom at a young age.

Sadly, i think with the internet and the growing social acceptability of paedophilia and violent porn, children are even more at risk now than they were when I was a child in the 80s (and wasn't allowed to play out either).

For me, I take them out somewhere spacious like a large common and just let them run wild. My only caveat is that i can still see them. I don't see that it's that different from them playing outside the house (where i would probably watching them from the window anyway) and there are proven health benefits for being out in nature as opposed to the built environment.