Ok question for you regarding shy 7yo who has found friends in the street

[singyswife]

How late do you let them out???? She is 7 and has zero confidence with other children she has discovered that there are several children in the street her age but they are more street wise than her, how late do I let her stay out. PFB question?????

I agree with kidcrazylady.
I wouldn't let my dc play in the street.We have a back garden and they play out there.Dd's are 8 and 7 ds is 3.They have got toys outside to play with and are happy to be out there

It's the same world. And children aren't at risk. Except from cars. And from never being allowed to play out of sight of adults.

Agree with seeker.

Americans seem to be kept in a constant state of fear by their sensationalist news media.

Dd is 7, we live in a cul de sac, and she can play out until it gets dark, which in the summer is about 9, atm about 7.30.

Barely any cars here though, aside from those that belong to the people on the street.
I would worry about cars if the road was busy, and restrict her to the garden.

Not worried about the 'sickos' that are apparently everywhere, though

I think it all depends on where you live and what you perceive the risk to be.

My 9 yr old DD is out playing now, we live in a quiet but kid filled street in the middle of a new housing estate and there are kids everywhere. I won't let her stay out once it's dark but encourage them to play together in someone's house after that if they want. Mine has an 8 o'clock bed time and half an hour earlier is normally the curfew. She started going out when she was around 4 and that seems to be the age most are allowed out but we can see them all of the time. As she's got older the boundary line has moved further but she knows the rules and what happens if she breaks them. TBH I'm the strictest and am struggling a bit at the moment with peer pressure from her friends whose parents let theirs out later / further than mine but I talk to my DD about safety all the time.

Seeker, how can you say children aren't at risk? I'd like to see what a mother who has had her child abducted has to say about that. But, despite fbf's view that my children are in danger from ME because I won't let them play where I can't see them , just last week about 10 miles from us a 14 year old girl barely escaped being abducted after getting off the bus as she was walking home. I had been letting my kids walk home off the bus even though I can't see them, but I'm not now. I just walk up to meet them and there happy to see me . We have about 4 families in our development with kids and none of them are any different than us. If their kiddos want to play, they just come play in our yard or ours go and play in theirs. We always leave our door unlocked, too. I don't really care about our posessions. Those things can be replaced- my children can't.

kidcrazylady - the chance of my children being abducted is so vanishingly small that if I lived my life taking precautions against it I would be very nearly as mad as the people who take precautions against being hit by a meteorite. And the damage caused to my children by being brought up fearful and suspicious and being watched all the time would be huge and inevitable.

Yes it is appalling that the occasional child is abducted - and I cannot begin to imagine the hell their parents must be living in. But.....it is not going to happen to my child. Or yours.

Hi, oh there seems to be a heated debate on now, what have I started (I am the OP). We live in a relatively quite street with LOADS of people who know me and my kids so I feel safe letting her out in that respect. She knows where her bounaries are and she knows if she3 is playing with someone older than her and they go outwith her boundaries that she is not to go. I ended up bringing her in about 730pm last night as it got too dark and she didnt complain she just went with it. I personally think each to their own in terms of what rules you have but I just wanted a general opinion so I could see if I was being too hard/soft/ Thanks all.

I'm with seeker.
I think some of this generation when they grow up are going to ask why they weren't allowed any freedom when their parents had virtually limitless freedom as children.

I never said your dcs were in danger from you, kidcrazylady

But surely you see that of all the risks your children are exposed to on a daily basis, like travelling in a car or walking to school, statisically the risk of them being abducted is almost nil.

Do you want to remove those kinds of risks from their lives too?

Agree with seeker about a fearful and suspicious society- and I think the States has become one to a much greater degree than Britain.

singys, I think you've got it about right - I let ds play out with the neighbours' kids until around 6 but he's two years younger than your dd.

On the general point, I saw a very poignant stat somewhere about how much the average child's world has shrunk since many of us on MN were little. The generation who were young in the 70s had a range of about a mile or so for playing out, IIRC. While many of today's children aren't allowed beyond their own front door without adult supervision.

Will leave them really vulnerable when they finally do go out into the cold hard world as teenagers, IMO. Much more likely to get into trouble - they just won't have the same experience or knowledge of how to handle tricky situations.