Children
The Associated Press

They're safe with each other -- but on a subway?

Featured Topic | Posted 31 weeks 4 days ago

Would you let your child wander New York alone?

Would you let your fourth-grader ride public transportation without an adult? Probably not. Still, when Lenore Skenazy, a columnist for the New York Sun, wrote about letting her son take the subway alone to get back to her Manhattan home from a department store on the Upper East Side, she didn't expect to get hit with a tsunami of criticism from readers.

"Long story short: My son got home, ecstatic with independence," Skenazy wrote on April 4 in the New York Sun. "Long story longer: Half the people I've told this episode to now want to turn me in for child abuse."

Do modern parents keep too close an eye on their children? Or is it unsafe to let kids have too much independence?

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Ben likes: My free-range kids

Sugar Says

My own experience as mother started out in the overprotective mode. Fine when they are tiny tots and need to be watched, but thankfully by the time they were young adolescents, I had calmed. Living in one of the most populated parts of a large city, was an opportunity for each to develop independence and for me to develop trust.

Starting with being allowed to go to the bus stop alone around age 7 and go down to the little store in the next building to buy a snack or last minute grocery need, then going to the park or further adventures on foot or by bus. They both started to develop a sense of their place. They new which neighbors would always have an eye for them, which were a little off their kilter and which to avoid as much as possible. They developed playground friendships with whoever might be playing in the park (almost always under their own parents watchful eyes.)

I am sure there were parents that thought, my poor kids must be terribly neglected when their mother or father wasn't at the park with them most days. Safe simply must be balanced with freedom.

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Joel likes: Free range kids

Dana Goldstein/TAPPED

Hovercraft parenting knows no geographical boundaries. A dad in Park Slope, Brooklyn won't let his 9-year old cross the street to go to the playground. An Atlanta mother doesn't allow her daughter to walk alone from the front door to the mailbox. A suburban lawyer makes his 11-year old call home immediately after walking one block from her own home to a friend's house.

All this despite the fact that we now know "stranger danger" pales in comparison to the violence and sexual and emotional abuse too many children suffer at the hands of adult family members or acquaintances. And that the number of child abductions has been falling steadily for years. I'm only 23 and my own childhood was quite different. My friends and I wandered our safe (but unfortunately sidewalk-less) neighborhood after school until dusk. We walked to the local Carvel ice cream shop. We rode our bikes to the library, where I once went wearing mismatched sneakers. We played in the woods. A good time was had by all.

There is simply no way for us to protect our loved ones from every tragedy that might befall them. Many of us learn this lesson in the most difficult way. But it's sad to think that American childhood has become a time of anxiety, instead of a period of exploration.

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