I'm determined to foster in ds the same sense of independence that I was given as a child. I feel very strongly that it is our perception of danger that has changed and not the reality. The only are where I would accept that there is an increased danger is from traffic - and ironically, part of that is because of people using cars on the school run becasue of thier fear of the traffic (and abductions etc) - so a vicious circle is created.
We are killing them gently with our "kindness" children need to be able to explore without adults in attendance all the time. They need to learn to cope in the wide world. We need to give them the skills to cope with the big wide world - and not shield them from it. Scary, yes. But that is one of our repsosbilities as parents.
I have seen stats (can't remember where, sorry) which say that one of the reasons for the jump in traffic accidents for 12 year olds is that they are duddenly allowed to start going to school on thier onw - without ever having been able to leart any traffic sense for themselves.
At 8, I was taking a train into Glasgow, walking up a narrow lane (in winter, in the dark) and going to a ballet class. I was "trained" to do so by my mother and I plan to do similar for ds when he gets to that age.
Already, at 4,5, we are teaching ds basic road safety, getting him to tell us if it is safe to cross. I have no intention of letting him go out on his own, yet, but by starting young, we can gradually build his skills - and also get a feel for oursleves as to when he has learnt to do things like judge car speed.
He starts school in August and I would hope that by Primary 3 we would be happy to let him go to school on his own. The only busy road has a Lollipop Man.
But it is also horses for courses: ds is a very level headed wee boy who actually does what he's told. He stands by the front gate (no actual gate there) and taklks acorss the street to the wee boy who lives across the road - but will wait for me to take him across the road.
But it's a bit chicken and egg. Is one of the reasons that he is (or appears to be) good independently already because we have allowed hom a degree of independence? We allow him to play in our (large) garden on his own - and, horror of horrors, can't always see him from the house. We do sometimes come unstuck - like the time that he and his wee frined had spent the time playing in his bedroom squritng out the contents of his paint bittle and then doing "Jackson Polloks" all around the room. Although they started on paper - it still got everywhere the rug, the bsthroom door and bathroom itelf (where they had tried to celan up), the soles of thier shoes.... - and took over an hour to clean up (and the rug will need to be replaced). But two chastened wee boys won't be doing that again!
And is it a concidence that the report we've jsut had from the nurdsery comments about how good he is at playing independently - but also how good he is at interacting with both the other children and with the adults, and that his happy confident nature ill set up up with a great foundation to go through life?