Which fight to fight? July 19, 2007
Posted by spacemom in : Life...otherwise, Kids , trackbackI have been reading and listening. There are 2 arguments going on right now that I am interested in. The two issues are hand-in-hand.
The first, I saw up on "Uterine Wars". Sopher comments about her neighbor’s child, left unsupervised outside.
The second, is a lack of children being outdoors.
On the first issue, I am guilty. Sometime over the winter, I took a nap and Jay let Soleil play outside. Alone. I flipped. He and I discussed the concerns I had. Fear of an accident…fear of a kidnapping…fear of an injury… To be honest, he was able to convince me that all of these were low risks. The bigger risks were her not following ground rules. We set some (stay in the yard, play on the driveway, but not past the line we draw with chalk, no going in the street) and she followed them.
The next step was to let her go out for longer periods of time. Finally we allowed her sister to go out as well. Luna is NOT allowed outside without someone else. When they are outside, I listen, I check every few minutes, I go to the bathroom ALONE.
If it were up to me, the kids would play outside all day! And on Mondays, they often do!
The second issue is caused by many factors. First, the video game. Ah yes, I remember pong. Do you? The lovely game from Atari. Glip…Glip… My favorite. And don’t forget the Internet.. and the rise of computers. But the real factor is parental fear. We can’t let a child out to explore because they might get kidnapped. We can’t let them bike out of our sight. We can’t blah blah blah.
So we over schedule our kids in programs they don’t need and keep them indoors and never let them just be kids.
Then there is the shock that kids are not outside more.
As parents, we need to do some real risk assessment. What are the dangers in our yards? What are the dangers of letting our kids out? What do our kids NEED to know?
We have spoken to both girls. Luna is still too young to do too much in the yard alone. Soleil can. They can both play outside together. They know the general rules, don’t go in the street, don’t go in the woods, don’t go with a stranger or someone mom hasn’t approved (there’s about 7 people they know they can go with).
When Jay was 5, he walked to Kindergarten. Alone. For 3/4 of a mile. I wasn’t allowed because I would have walked along Route 20 where there were no sidewalks (School policy). Crazy H walked 1/2 mile to school. Alone.
But if you mention allowing your 5 year old today to go down the street alone? You are a bad parent.
But are you? To let them explore their freedom in a slow controlled manner?
Food for thought.
Comments»
I am having a huge debate(in my head!) about the kids being outdoors enough…Our neighborhood is so hilly and it is so foggy and windy that we rarely ever go outside to play. I try and take them to the park or the pool as often as I can, and they do play outside at school,but after work and school, I am just so tired that we end up spending a lot of afternoons inside…Not like when I grew up at all….But we lived on a cul-de-sac(SP?) in sunny sourthern ca. We lived outdoors. We always do something outdoors on the weekend(hikes, bike riding…) But I do feel it isn’t enough. Then there is the other sied, when we went to Mexico we were literally outside 8 hours a day and Cameron got heat exhaustion…I guess you have to balance it…As for letting them play outsied alone, I guess it would depend on your kids temperment, your neighborhood, etc…I can’t do it with mine yet.
Playing outside alone is something Lily cant do at this age as we live in an apartment and there is nowhere appropriate to play in this building. Having just moved, we try and get out twice a day to the parks and playgrounds but it will be interesting to see how much outdoor time the kids will get in winter. Its not how I grew up either - as a farm kid, I was left to my own devices from a young age.
yeah, I’ve worried endlessly, though we don’t have our child yet, of the internet concerns. We’ve decided a computer for her in an open and ‘visible’ area is the best way to handle the oversight.
The outdoors issues, that’s pretty big, the balance between fear of the potential bad things vs needing them to be kids, there’s got to be a way right?
Best wishes.
Wow, it never even occured to me not to let my kids play outdoors unsupervised (if I had a yard, but I live in apartment and can only dream of one), but then of course I would fence off said yard, make sure it is kid-proof, and bobs-yer-uncle I’d be in the kitchen baking muffins. I spent all my free time wandering our neighbourhood with the other kids who lived around us. School-aged kids (mostly) have common sense, and those who don’t well, mama prob’ly knows that.
Honestly, kidnapping? From one’s own backyard? Find the statistics on the probability of that happening, compare them to the probability of your child dying in a car accident, and ask yourself why any mother in their right mind drives a vehicle. Why? Risk assessment: the downsides of not being able to get into a vehicle far outweigh the risks of fatal accident. And yet when it comes to playing outside, we’d rather our kids stay stuck indoors? Says alot about our culture’s priorities, doesn’t it?
As we gear up to flee for the suburbs, obviously this is a topic that is on my mind a lot. Nothing pleases me more than knowing my kids will get to spend a LOT of time outdoors, running around and exploring.
We will be living in a private neighborhood, on a dead end cul-de-sac street. I do think that when my boys are a bit older, we will let them play outside alone with similar rules you have stated. At first, it will be small increments of time, building up as we have established their ability to adhere to the rules.
Recently, I saw an ad for a kid-size stationary bike-activated video game. It disgusted me….what a sad commentary on society that a) kids don’t get enough exercise in their general “running around and being kids” and b) that to intice them to run around and be kids, we have to hook it up to a video game (a la Dance, Dance Revolution or this stationary bike thingie). I hope my boys are never ever like that.
I have a friend whose son is turning 15 this summer. Last year was the FIRST TIME she allowed him to ride his bike down their (very suburban) street by himself. She also made him bring a cell phone. Her son is obese, nonsocial, and absorbed in video games. Chicken, egg? Who knows….but I know that she worries like crazy, and certainly has never encouraged him to “run around outside and be a kid”.