What has happened to our ability to assess risk?

[flashingnose]

There have been a few threads on here that have got me thinking about how I assess risk, especially in relation to my children. I always thought I was easy going but certainly not neglectful, but I'm wondering whether I'm being ridiculously lax in some of the things I do (or don't do).

How real a threat is child abduction? Is it any more prevalent than when I was a child in the Seventies?

There are many instances where I take my eyes off my 4 and 6 year olds (not the 2 year old, she's far too random ) - is this really not the done thing any more?

Should I actively discourage my kids from being friendly to people?

I'm asking this mainly because I had my kids abroad (where things are much more relaxed - sigh) so I want to get up to speed with how people are thinking here and crucially whether they can back up any fears with facts, and also just to see what everyone else thinks....

I think one influencing factor of our ability to assess risk these days is that parenting today is a totally different ball game to how it was when I was growing up (in the 70s.) Or is that my role is now that of parent and not child so I see it through different eyes?

We're more aware of the risks nowadays. Maybe if parents had been as aware of the risks 30 years ago they would have been just as reluctant as we tend to be nowadays to let their under 10s go out on their own.

My experiences (almost 30 years ago) are pretty much like Aloha's. For instance, I was 5yo (1973), & out with only a 7yo friend. A man (in canyon next to a park) coaxed me on his lap & was trying to pull my trousers down when my friend pulled me away suddenly & up the path. My dog was around & probably would have bit this guy if he "hurt" me, but I'll never know how bad things could have been.

I told my mother who banned me from going to that canyon again, but she didn't ban me from going out without her/other adults (I was, however, required to take the dog with me, a Doberman). That would be unthinkable today, maybe it should have been then, too.

suedonim & Caligula I think you've both hit the nail on the head. I also had a lot of freedom in the 60s & 70s. We played in a wooded area bordered by a moat/creek and a railway line & had to cross the rugby club and the railway line to get to it.. I also went to ballet on my own (2 buses) from the age of 6 & walked to school alone. BUT there was more of a global responsibility. People knew their neighbours- we had any number of "aunties" in our street whose houses we could wander into looking for our mothers. If I was up to no good (not that I was- I was a timid little mouse) you can bet that before I got home Mrs so-n-so would have beaten me to it & told my mother all about it.

Our children are out there on their own. Nobody dares to say anything to strange children for fear of reprisals. My children didn't get to walk to school because it was over 3 miles away with no pavements. Ballet is 17 miles away. We don't have the same community set-up. Life is totally different from how it was when we were young. (We also had a convicted paedophile next door when I was 4- my parents moved house because of it).

I do constantly ponder on how it is that there are no threads starting 'I am planning to take DS on a 3 hour drive up the motorway - is it safe?', but there are many asking'DS 7 wants to walk to cubs' etc etc, given the huge discrepancy between the shocking and frightening number of people killed on the roads each day (about 300?), and the number of child abductions.

Have we absorbed the risk of road travel as an inconvenience or a sort of occupational hazard? Or do we think that is is more in our control, (because we are careful drivers ourselves and will magically avoid that maniac lorry driver) so are not so freaked by it?

When I was 35 I decided that I was coming to London for the day on my own (I live In Wigan) and you really can't begin to understand the reaction from my Mum. She begged me not to go, "cos it's not safe", we had tears "oh please don't do this to us, you're all we've got", and eventually blackmail "If you go, we will do nothing but worry all day and it will make your dad ill"

I went anyway but I'm sure you can understand the amount of freedom I had as a child in the sixties! Over protective doesn't even enter into it. I allow my children much more freedom, I was always told "don't do that you'll fall" whether I was on a bike, climbing a tree or on roller skates, so I usually did as I was so anxious. Mine have all been encouraged to tackle things, when I sent dd on an adventure type holiday at age 11 I'm surprised my mum survived.

I probably go a bit too far the other way sometimes - according to Mum I certainly do!

I think if you want your kids to develop responsibility you have to bite the bullet and let them out. Last weekend we were at a resturant which we often go to with a playground outside and we let our DS1 (6) and DS2 (4) play outside on their own whilst waiting for their meals. There were plenty of adults and children around and we would check on them from afar every couple of minutes. We also let them play in the street (at the end of a cul de sac) when we are at my mothers house. They see this as a real treat and are only allowed to do this if they get off their bikes if a car occasionally comes down to turn round. With the exception of traffic, I dont belive the world is really less safe than it was when I was a kid but judging by this thread I am in a minority

Interesting debate at just the right time. My dd nearly 3 wants to go to the city tomorrow with her friend, prob is that we move around every few years so where as other children get to know a town or city really well mine don't.

She has never been out on her own like this before and don't know if i should let her go, she is very level headed. and she is going with slightly older friends.

I don't think that wierdo's are any more prelevant today than they were years ago. But 8 months or so back my friends daughter aged 11 was raped on the way home from school, she got off the bus early as she needed the loo and the most horrific things were done to her.

This has made my children very wary, they refuse to stay in the car while i nip into supermarket, but are quite happy to go out and play on their own.

I have recently started letting dd11 take youngest two 2 & 1 around the block in the pushchair.

As for eldest going to city dont know what i gonna do?

Sorry i've waffled.

Nearly 3 seems a bit young,even by my standards??!!

sorry that should read nearly 13 before u all have heart failure and ring social services

Kath
let her go, make sure she knows she has to stick with the others. She will gain a lot of confidence and you will have a worrying day. Better for you to worry than her to be nervous.

But the old park-keepers - maybe we should campaign to bring them back?

That's interesting about the park keepers, caligula. Now I think back to the 70s you're right, there were far more 'parkies' around. Perhaps bringing them back is a solution. Where I live, there is just so much green space, woods, commons, none of it regularly attended, lots of it vandalised.

I've asked my cricket and football mad 11 year old ds if he's feel safe going off to one of our nearby green spaces. I asked him how he'd feel about joining impromptu games,(rather than mummy driving him 20 minutes to the nearest cricket nets) and he said 'no way'. Interesting as he has played out since he was 5 years old.

I was in hospital yesterday and saw a worrying poster. Six out of ten 11 - 16 year olds have been involved in a traffic accident either suffering an injury or having a near miss. Traffic accidents are the biggest killer amongst this age group.

I worry about the combination of walking around minus adults, hormones, and attention focussed on ipods or mobile phones. I know the latter are often banned at secondary school, but as school blazers now feature a mobile phone pocket in the lining, I assume it's common for them to get smuggled in.

I think this portable technology combined with teenagers walking around alone must raise the risk of traffic accidents. It's a lethal mix. I really don't know what to do about giving my son a mobile phone when I know he will be out walking, knowing how engrossed he gets in it.

Tigermoth, I think you raise a really important point. the big problem where we live is traffic. We live on an unmade road with no footpaths and whilst it is not bvery busy we do get cars using it as a cut through travelling far to fast (usually mums doing the school run!). It is the traffic that prevents me letting the kids play out the front.

I think the park keepers is a great idea, if we knew certain parks were monitored we would fell much happier letting out kids go there to play. Interestingly our local skate park which is in the middle of a large park is now monitored by the local police station on CCTV.

I'm nodding in agreement with Talullah. There was much more social responsibility back then. I think many factors have brought us to the present predicament, all of which could be discussed on separate threads - blame culture, lack of respect, political correctness, cheap consumerism, etc. I too was allowed to go to the local shop for errands, into the local town on the bus with pal by the age of 10. I remember reading the bus timetable and taking notes and had such a sense of responsibility and independence.

My parents also had a caravan at Pitlochry in the Highlands. By the age of 7 I was away 'out' for most of the day with 3 pals aged 8 and 10. We roamed for miles near the river, up over the dam and fishladder and in those days the fences were easily climbed or crawled through. We came to no harm. I noticed from a recent visit that all fences and gates around the dam have been modified making it impossible to get through without wire cutters or SAS tactics. I don't recall any accidents so I do think we are over protected thus we have forgotten our natural instincts and how to teach them to our children.

Wow, lots of thoughts, thank you. Off to read them now...

Sorry I don't have time to read the whole thread, but the subject is something i have a rather large bee in my bonnet about.

The only things that have changed as far as I can see since the sevemties are:

1. more traffic
2. more child abduction paranoia stories in the press (there was one the other day about a woman whose son had been "abducted" for about 10 mins and then found - I ask you)

child abduction is less prevalent than it was years ago (it's been 6-8 per year for about 100 years, but the population has more than doubled in that time).

drives me mad.

PS don't know about parkies. there weren't any inour town anyway.

not read all comments so may be repeating some!!
I think children need to be watched but not smothered! I find it hard to let go but know I have to trust them.My older children are teenagers. I have tried to teach them right from wrong always been open and always let them watch the news so they know what goes on out there.
I also believe things havnt got any worse than the 60's/70's but we just know more about it.Apparantly more children are harmed by people they know than dont know so are they safer with strangers!!!!

Senora I don't think that's quite true that those 2 things are the only things that have changed.

IMO the most important major change is that there is less sense of community and adult authority. It is such a nebulous concept that it is difficult to pin it down, but it was the status of adults - all adults, not just the ones you knew - as authority figures. If we were messing about in a park any old random adult out walking their dog could demand to know what we were doing and to stop it if it was naughty and we had to answer to them, simply because they had adult authority. And also, because they might know our parents. (Life was always full of these tiresome strangers who turned out to be on speaking terms with parents.)

I simply don't have the kind of authority over a bunch of 7/ 11/ 13 year olds now, which an adult of the 1970's possessed. Adults are now afraid to challenge children's bad behaviour in case they are perceived as being wierdo's, potential child-abductors, or in the case of 11 year olds and upwards, in case the kids are carrying knives!

I'm not surprised to read 6 out of 10 11 -16 yo have been involved in a traffic accident. We live close to a school and the boys particularly put their lives at risk daily, swerving in and out of traffic on a busy road on their bikes, nipping across between cars (bikes again) causing drivers to brake suddenly. Pupils on foot ignore the lollipop lady (not cool I suppose to cross with her) and cross about 10 foot away from her.

About 100m up the road, they leave them bus en masse and cross immediately even though there is no official crossing at that point - but there is the lollipop lady right outside school if they just stayed on the same side of the road for a couple of minutes' walk.

Frequently they are just following the crowd, not looking before they cross, or busy texting. The local road safety officer is a frequent visitor and he despairs of it all. They have tried going into school but it's all to no avail.

I wonder how many of those 11-16 year olds are in the younger age group, who haven't been allowed out by themselves before the age of 11, and so haven't learnt how to cross the road safely?

Scary statistic, that.

Agree that having people like 'Parkies' would be a great idea. However you are going to have to make sure that they don't get horribly abused by some of the kids that they are trying to protect. I doubt that you will get people lining up to take what would be a low paid job if they have yobs telling them to F off if they try to curb the kids behaviour.

they could also be at risk of false allegation of abuse by some of the little charmers, and the work envioronment, lonley no other adults present , would be difficult to prove their innocence.

Socoety has changed so much since we were kids. If the Parkie told us off, we would run away from him. Try that now with some teenagers and you'd be lucky is you only got a mouthful of abuse!

Interesting debate.

Question: is one of the reasons for the loss of the sense of community, the lack of feeling of resposibuliuty for other kids because we now all live in our own wee cocoons and don't trust others? Which came first? I'm not sure - but I certainly feel that our lack of trust is feeding that decline in the sense of society and communal responsiblity?

And how can our children learn about a caring society if we teach them - or give them the sense that - that they shouldn't trust other people?

Like the idea of the Parkies - may be we should start a Mumsnet campaign! Could tie it in the with the Governement initiatives to get children out and playing more!

My local park ( BIG one) has been restored and improved (their words not mine! but that's a different story)
One thing I'm pleased to see is that it is patrolled by - I think they are called special constables (?) on bikes.
This came at just the right time for me as I was about to stop using the park altogether as my son and I had too many incidents of harrassment from teenagers. There was also in increasing number of serious incidents - attacks, muggings, rape....

I doubt we would ever get Parkies back, for the reasons stated here. To patrol an area where there are kids a person needs to be vetted, insured, needs a partner as witness (kids know their rights these days and know how to sue)
In the old days, i believe a parky had no more than a whistle. Now he would need two way communication so that armed back up could be with him asap.

With regard to road safety, although we can teach our children from the start, the safe way to cross a road a child doesn't understand the concept of being hurt or killed by a vehicle until the age of about 7 or 8. A policeman who's job it is to teach road safety in schools told me this. Up until that age, if you tell them that a car will hit them - it means nothing. What they do understand is their Mum being cross with them. So the best way to teach when young is to say, if you cross that road I will be very cross with you (or whatever words you prefer to use)
If children are allowed to cross roads alone or with friends at too young an age they will simply have no awareness of the dangers.

I once spoke to a man who travelled low budget through South America regularly, and he had an interesting approach about who to trust and who not in those potentially dangerous countries. In general he would be wary of people that came up to him and offered help (ie people that picked him out) but would trust his own instincts when he chose somebody to ask for help. Not very fair for those honest people with good intentions offering help, but I can see where he comes from. It would be a very big coincidence if he chose the one criminal/corrupt/up-to-no-good person amongst all the people around at the time, iyswim. This as a thought about what DS/DD do when no shopkeepers/policemen around for example?