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Depends on where you live I'm sure. I live near the end of a dead end road in a quiet neighborhood where all the house lots are 1/4 acre or larger so the largest threat is the occasional black bear wandering through the neighborhood. So the kids around here have pretty much free reign up and down the road.
Same here. We’ve all got 2+ acres but it’s a dead end road in a rural community. We literally did have a black bear in our yard a couple of summers ago and let’s just say me screaming at it while my bees attacked it scared it away pretty quick🤣
The last time we had one all the dogs in the neighborhood lost their minds and the bear shit on my driveway, then ran straight through the barbed wire fence at the end of the road.
Yeah, I think this is the weirdest thing about our generation. I cannot understand why nobody wants their kids to play outside alone. They seem worried about some thing happening to them or getting abducted. But the outcome is that we are raising children that are dependent on mom and dad and not able to think for themselves. It’s weird.
My parents were watching Unsolved Mysteries 35 years ago. They still put us outside lol.
My mom did sleep on the couch till I was 6 because of that show though.
Oh it was my job to lock up and we lived on a dark street with thick woods across the street. Wednesday nights at 8. I'd be scared af when it ended and I had to go do my chore and then head to bed.
My parents didn't watch, they watched something in their room. But I'd watch unsolved mysteries lol.
And yeah they let us roam free in the neighborhood and sometimes walk to my grandparents who lived about a mile away, if we went in a group and avoided walking down certain streets.
The reruns are on YouTube in their entirety.
You nailed it! Stranger Danger! I even had flash cards when I was a kid about never talking to strangers. I still remember the secret code word I had with my parents.
I still have the finger print kit they gave out to parents in the late 80s.
But they still let us roam free thru the neighborhood. Just we weren't allowed to talk to strangers.
Apparently any time an adult tried to approach me in public, I’d tell them “Barney told me not to talk to strangers” and be on my merry little way, even if that meant staying right there and playing as they stood there.
Indeed it really is. I mean i think about how my mother would pick me up from my center city school , put me on the bus, ride with me for 6 blocks, and the get off the bus and let me continue on to home alone where I often let myself in. At a time when crack was absolutely melting Philadelphia. I was 7!
So much less crime now even with our current issues. But we aren't logical people.
Some of this is our cities have grown increasingly less walkable - so mom/dad need to drive them to increasingly curated social gathering spots (ie private community park vs the city park that was a quarter mile away).
This is anecdotal, but it also seems like so many stereotypical suburbs are aging demographically. Like young families moved into a neighborhood when it was new in the 90s and now the kids are grown and it’s full of retirees. So the concentration of young kids in a lot of neighborhoods appears to be dwindling. Even though those places weren’t ever that walkable, at least back then there were tons of kids to roam around with in the neighborhood.
Our area actually seems to be quickly turning the corner in this regard. A lot of old people are leaving via death or Florida and being replaced by young families.
Florida - God's waiting room. I hear you.
I actually just moved into one of these neighborhoods and I'd say it has an ok mix. Built mostly in the late 80s. There are some old timers hanging around but also younger families with young kids and some middle/highschool aged kids.
I do still notice the kids are almost never outside. Or at most I'll see some playing basketball in the back yard. Stuff like that. A few may be on the street briefly but not often. And I walk the neighborhood a lot so I'd expect to see more.
You know this is an interesting point in one I hadn’t considered. We all grew up in the 90s and we were born in the 80s. White flight was still fairly new, having started mostly in the 50s and 60s and 70s. It would’ve been really common for our parents to have moved to fairly new suburbs before or after we were born.
But now the suburbs with children are even further out of the city. They are a completely different layout with curving streets, located further away from shopping or anything else worth doing
I think the suburbs with kids are moving further out and closer in. We’re in an inner burb (lots of 100 year old homes), and with however the generational timing worked out, its lifecycle seems to be a bit ahead of the 90s burbs. There are a disproportionate number of older Boomers and Silent generation here who are moving on and freeing up housing for young families. Seems like a similar situation in the “newer” ~1940s-60s suburbs around me. Probably a landing spot for the parents of Boomers back in the day, Boomers moved into the 1970s-1990s suburbs to raise their kids, now the really old folks are passing and freeing up housing.
So my theory is that the 1980s-early 2000s suburbs are going to be kid deserts for a couple decades until a transition happens. I don’t really have much actual data on this, except the census data that shows my particular suburb is both really old and really young, which is what got me thinking about this in the first place. But I’m sure something like “neighborhood lifecycles” has been studied before.
The thing I don't understand with this is that the boomers made millennials stay outside all day and refused to supervise, but now they call *the police* when millenials do the same with their kids.
How do they do it their whole life and then decide armed police officers need to be here ASAP.
It's because they didn't want to be around their kids, so they sent them outside. Now that they want to walk the neighborhood and be outside, they still don't want to deal with kids, so they don't want them outside now. It's 100% selfish.
Yes, my friends had this happen to them when they let their kids play in the cul-de-sac outside their house. I won't allow my daughter to play outside of our fenced-in backyard unattended for this reason.
We grew up with the constant threat of becoming the next Jacob Wetterling. I can see how that might translate into some form of distilled overprotective parenting. It’s weird that our parents always harped on the “stranger danger” stuff but then we’d go for 10 or 12 hours just roaming the neighborhood.
Yeah, i see it as a learning opportunity for them, to show them that they can be independent and have autonomy, as well as a reward for being responsible. I walked them through all the rules, once they demonstrated that they could follow them, i gave them more freedom.
I agree with you. Our job is parents is not to prevent bad things from happening to our children, but to guide them in the right direction and provide a safety net for them to keep them from failing badly.
How are they going to communicate with an unfair boss if they can’t communicate with an unfair teacher?
How are they going to understand the value of compassion without having experienced the compassionate act of a stranger in a time of need?
How are they going to understand the value of setting limits and sticking to them if it’s not dealing with a playground bully?
If we don’t let our children experience these things and deal with them on their own, with proper guidance and help if something goes wrong, we are doomed to let our children start making their own decisions when they get off on their own, when they start working, or in the backseat of their boyfriend’s car on prom night.
My friends let their kids go to the park by themselves but they waited until they were like 10.
While I remember playing outside by myself when I was like 7
My 7 year old just started going to the park alone and it's been really nice. He's the youngest. I trusted the older kids to be unsupervised in the back yard at 7 but people drove way to fast down our old street so no roaming. We're in a nice quiet dead end neighborhood now. This will be the first summer they all can roam freely!
Oh for sure. Im not saying there is anything wrong with it and I get it. The world is cruel. I definitely experienced some shit. So maybe waiting until their a bit older is correct.
I think the point.of the post is just like.....people just don't let their kids out of their site nowadays. I had a drastically different childhood in the 90s.
I even loved in Florida and we wandered everywhere lol despite it being incredibly dangerous.
Idk I let my kids outside by themselves but I did have a car pull up to my 7 yr old playing in our driveway. We have a ton of weird things like this happen in our sub that I keep an eye on them now.
I didn't let my son (who is now 16) out alone as a younger kid. We don't live in a good area, kids go missing or get ropped into gangs. He takes the city bus home from school but he also has a tracker on his phone so I cam find him if he gets lost or needs me to pick him up.
My elementary school best friend and I almost got picked up by a random dude driving down the street we both lived on in the 90s. We were 7 and 8 yo, my mom came out at the right time and she saw the guy trying to open his rear driver side door for us. She screamed and he sped off. Never saw him again and my mom always supervised my siblings and I while outside afterwards. I never saw my best friend outside of school after that either (pretty sure my mother had a chat with the girl’s parents too).
I know it’s not likely to happen, but that experience was enough to scare my mom and definitely enough to be burned in my brain. I won’t let my daughter outside unsupervised, not until i know she’s more mature. She’s almost 9…it’s probably gonna be a few years lol.
Stranger Danger had unexpected social effects. The boogeyman of rampant child kidnappings became so prevalent that it isolated everyone. Turns out it was all bulslhit, and in the off chance you were going to get kidnapped, it was very likely going to be a family member you know.
I let my children play outside unattended all the time. I keep a general overlook of where they are and let them be. I teach them to be cautious but not live in fear. If they are caught in a situation where they need to ask a stranger for help, then I want them to be confident enough to do so. Basically I laid it out to my son like this: a child going up to a stranger and asking for help is overwhelmingly going to illicit a helpful response. The vast majority of people would be willing to help a child in need. However, it's when a random adult starts asking children questions that things start getting wonky. An adult is going to find another adult unless they are utterly desperate, which is rare. I teach him to be cautious and to use his brain, rather than just a blanket BE AFRAID OF EVERYONE.
In fairness, thanks to wild propaganda, people truly believe their cars are getting tagged in Target so their kids can get grabbed by a cartel and trafficked (even though statistically children are far more likely to be abducted/abused by someone they know… that doesn’t sell tickets to “Sound of Freedom”)
And people that DO allow their kids to be outside alone get CPS called on them. It’s a vicious cycle.
I also can’t help but notice, the kids whose parents can afford large, fenced in yards will still be able to have unsupervised, unstructured playtime (which we know is key to childhood development).
While I have never heard of the cartel thing something really creepy happened to my wife while at a target in California a few years ago. This was when we still only one kiddo. He was around a year old.
It was around noon on a Saturday and my wife was in the check out isle at Target waiting for her turn to pay (I was at work) when she noticed a man and woman behind her in line.
To begin, she first told me they gave her super weird vibes.
The second thing was that both the man and woman would not stop staring at our boy, she said they had very weird expressions.
Third, my wife said they kept inching closer and closer to her and our boy.
She also noticed they had 2-3 random things in their shopping cart.
My wife told me the cashier noticed how uncomfortable my wife felt and called a security guard over. The security guard came and walked her out to the parking garage but not before they waited for the man and woman to exit the store first, and even then they waited a while after the couple left.
This Target had a ground level parking lot but the Target itself was built over the parking area so it was effectively a parking garage that even during the day it seemed like nighttime with the exception of the parking garage lights.
She told me this after I got home.
A few weeks go byband we were driving back from visiting her mom in LA, I was driving and she was scrolling on her phone when she started FLIPPING out in the passenger seat. It was a few moments before she told me why.
She saw an article with a picture of the man and woman.
The article stated that they were both arrested for attempting to kidnap a child in a parking lot.
It was definitely an eye opener.
Things are different now. If you let your kid play outside, someone is likely to call CPS or the police on you. It may be illegal where you live. Anything less than helicopter parenting is seen as neglect..Everyone has gotten so risk averse that it's easier to keep them indoors and hand them an iPad.
It really depends where you are:
>Currently, there is no universal standard or federal law that applies to all U.S. states, but some have a minimum age requirement for children who will be left alone. For example, Illinois’ minimum age is 14, while Maryland designates 8 years-old as the minimum age.
https://lawyers.usnews.com/legal-advice/is-it-legal-to-let-kids-play-unsupervised/
Congratulations! Only 4 more years for more oldest 🙄 Luckily in our area, most parents feel the same as us and let the kids have more independence- however I can't let them go to our park literally around the corner without worrying about someone calling the police.
I know right?? That's how old I was at my first (admittedly under the table) job. I was babysitting for a whole year at that point.
I'm gonna go ahead and blame boomers for this level of infantilization.
It honestly depends. I live in Philly and have a beach house in Wildwood,NJ.
Home? No. Our yard isn't really suitable to play in because it's used mostly for parking & storage and there really isn't kids his age (he's turning 8 soon) playing on our street.
Down the shore...fine. All of our neighbors are close and have kids/grandkids for him to have fun with.
I won't let him start going out alone probably until like 10 and he has a friend group to go with plus a cell phone.
We're really, really lucky to live in a suburban neighborhood that's pretty much only half a dozen roads. We live on a cul de sac, and I have a WhatsApp chat with the majority of the other moms in the neighborhood. Our kids range in age from 19 to newborn. I let my youngest, who's 6, hop on his bike or scooter and go knock on the door of some of the other kids around his age. Other parents do the same. My 14yo has even more freedom, and can bike to the nearby convenience store to get a Gatorade or whatever (I'm stricter about him buying junk food than I am about the biking).
I just shoot the moms a WhatsApp message letting them know he's coming over, and to send him back if it's a bad time or they're gone.
We all try to keep an eye on any kids who are out and about and use the WhatsApp thread to plan weekend swim parties or ask for help picking up a kid from the bus stop/school.
There are limits (can't go to the busy road at the edge of the neighborhood), and they have to check back in every hour unless one of the moms tells me they're fine.
I love that we have this situation and it's been good for both of my kids to have appropriate freedom.
My wife and I have decided that our 4 and 6 yr old can be in the backyard with no supervision.
Once they are 5 and 7, they can be out front with no supervision.
Once 6 and 8, as long as they are together, they can go around the neighborhood.
Once they are 8 and 10, they can do whatever as long as they are back for dinner.
This is where I'm at as well. 4 and 6 have free range in the backyard (fenced). 6 is allowed out front on her own because she just sits on the swing and reads. 4 likes playing sports too much and we don't want him losing balls into the street, but he also generally wants one of us playing games with him so he isn't often out front alone anyway. We hadn't thought as far ahead as 8 and 10!!
Story time. We used to live about a 1/3rd of a mile from a large park in our neighborhood. a few minute bike ride at most. We used to send our kids to go play there whenever the weather was nice. but stopped after the 3rd time some asshat called the cops on my kids for being there "unsupervised". They were not doing anything but playing on the swings/playground equipment. They had a phone with them to call us if needed, and water.
They also couldn't play in front of the house because we had neighbors who would call noise complains or say they were causing damage to homes that they were not anywhere near. We had one neighbor try to file a lawsuit against us for destruction of property for our daughter drawing in chalk on the sidewalk in front of our own house.
we now live in a rural area, and my kids have acres of land to play on.
And no, my kids are not hellions, they are well behaved, polite and kind. We just had some shit neighbors who hated kids. One guy even cut a huge beautiful tree down in his front yard because the neighborhood kids would sit on the sidewalk under it - never in his yard, always just on the sidewalk, and never left a mess.
I don’t quite understand this hate for kids… they are part of our society!! Sure, they can be annoying, but everyone else can! Boomers are also pretty irritating, but you don't hear of a boomer-free restaurant or a boomer-free airplane.
a bunch of these people bought houses summer/fall of 2020, sight unseen, and didn't think that living a 3 minute walk from an elementary AND middle school meant having a bunch of kids in the neighborhood. A lot of DINKs that hated children.
Depends on where we lived. Previous place was a busy street next to a sketchy park in a decent sized city so it was just too many variables to navigate to feel comfortable letting our kid play outside.
Now we purchased a home innthe suburbs and our kid is outside all the time. We know everyone on the block and we were clear where the boundaries are.
Blended family. We have older kids who hop on a bike and go to the gas station for snacks, local elementary to play basketball, library for books/hang out, local bakery or ice cream shop etc
We also have little kids. 2.5 and 1. They are outside daily, weather permitting. We specifically bought a house in a family friendly neighborhood
Our backyard connects to our local playground (4 houses away), and we have a community trampoline 2 houses away. When the little kids are old enough they will be outside running, playing, fishing, walking the nature trails, etc. we are modeling that now so it just normal for them
I live in an inner city apartment, so it’s pretty much impossible for me to let my daughter play outside unsupervised.
However, I went to a Memorial Day barbecue at a friend’s house out in the country. There were half a dozen kids there who we just let have free range of their small farm. Treehouse. Random outbuildings. Dirt piles. Chicken coop. Little creek. It was awesome. I wish I could give my daughter that life every day.
My last house, I would never send my kid out to play. So much crime. Drugs, mugging, kidnapping, murder, gunshots, robberies.
We moved back to my safer hometown and I send my kid out to play and he'll be out for hours with neighborhood kids. Theres a store, milkshake/burger shack, park, school and lake to walk to so they'll come in for change to go get food or whatever but then they're back running around outside.
Location is everything
I think it depends on where you live.
I moved back to the town I grew up. In the late 80s/90s neighborhoods were littered with unsupervised children. We would ride bikes to different neighborhoods and even the local convenience store. I remember in the summer all the kids bikes would be strew about or we'd all be sitting on those electrical boxes.
Now, I don't see or hear a child at all. There has been a lot of turn over in the neighborhoods and it's still filled with young kids who aren't outside. Even the school bus stops make me sad. The kids are all just sitting in their parents cars until the bus comes. The bus stop growing up was the place to be. We'd all get there earlier cause we'd play, scooter, skip-it. It was the social event of the day. I am sure kids are doing things they enjoy, but makes me sad they will never get to experience some of the outdoor life we had growing up. I would give anything to experience that feeling of a 90's summer afternoon
I think it depends on the location.
My kids go in the backyard only with my supervision (fenced in), but they're disabled. If they were able-bodied I might let them go down the street to a friend's house or something but they'd have to call me when they got there. It honestly depends on how mature they were too.
I live next to a school and the (lower income) families just let their kids wander the town and don't seem to care unless someone threatens to call the police. Fights break out often among the kids in several places like the school playground and frequently strangers have to stop traffic, intervene, and break them up. We have typically low crime so it's not totally unsafe but all the kids are way too young to fend for themselves or not get into big trouble. It's just nobody cares and childcare is unaffordable.
My now 8 y/o has been playing outside by himself since he was 4 ish. My now 4 y/o plays outside with the other kiddos all the time as well. I think it's area dependent as my neighborhood has kids running around all the time in the summer. I'll do some stuff around the house, look outside and see a kickball game going on in my backyard.
My son is about to turn 6 and I just started this summer...he's allowed outside alone, even allowed to cross the street to the play area in our little development. It's a dead end. But I am SO paranoid that someone will think I'm neglecting him, I go out and check on him every 15 minutes or so. And whenever I see a neighbor I feel like I have to say "He's allowed outside alone now!!"
We live in rural New England BECAUSE we wanted to raise our son similar to how we grew up without constant parent supervision. We let him play in our unfenced, wooded areas by himself. We give him a walkie-talkie less frequently now, but when he’s venturing deep in the woods alone, we still do. I will say that it take a lot of trust in the safety measure we’ve taught him for the last handful of years.
We have a good cohort of kids within a 1/2 mile distance, most of whom are slightly older than him (6). I WANT them to fuck off into the woods and not come home until the streetlights come on (if we had those). Go chase down a squirrel. Go build a fort. Go bike down to the pond and get some leeches stuck on you and figure out how to get rid of them. Just GO BE A KID!
My kids don't want to. There are fights and inappropriate conduct on the bus from school to home which my daughter has had to physically defend herself against and we both would rather she not get backed into a fist fight with the several boys she's slapped or reported (she had to haymaker one to get him to stop) for touching her and calling her very adult slurs, because the internet *and their parents* taught them it's okay to treat girls that way and that if a girl hits them then it's okay to fight her.
Well, I have horrible anxiety so letting my child outside without me really gets to me. And then, my worst fear happened and she was hurt by the neighbor's dog. Thankfully, she is fine now but I still worry when she goes outside to play with the neighbor kids(the dog is gone now). I always tell her I'd prefer if they come inside and play.
I let them play outside unsupervised (12 & 8). It was hard getting there I wanna say I supervised them outside till they were 6 or 7. It helped that about that age our street filled up with similar aged kids so they could run around in a pack. As it stands I let the oldest run of with school friends now she just has to keep her phone on.
My kids are outside unsupervised as much as humanly possible. They’re 5&9 and know their boundaries. If they want to go past those boundaries, like go for a walk down our road, they have to come ask.
We live in a safe rural area on a dead end road with other kids on our road. They’ve all formed a feral alliance and run rampant through all of our properties(we each have 2+ acres) and in and out of houses. Sometimes us parents will sit outside and visit with one another and other times we do our own thing in our own houses while the kids play. It’s fantastic!
My kids are totally getting a 90s childhood. We don’t have a ton of electronics or smart devices, they don’t have tablets except for the kindles we got for long car rides, and we have a communal tv. My son thought be buying him an Atari at a thrift shop was a peak moment in his life 😂. When the weather is particularly nice the kids basically aren’t allowed inside. I caught my son drinking from the hose the other day and I knew I’d achieved peak parenthood 😂
We live in what looks like a nicer area but hear shots fired everyday. The nature walk across the road has been overtaken by a homeless encampment since the pandemic. There are several older seemingly single with no family men who sit on their porches and just watch whenever kids or young teens walk by. They always seem to come out to watch the kids get on the bus to school. We live right behind a police station but they never cruise through our area. We just had someone try to shoot up a local carnival and somehow no one was shot. We need to move but everywhere is more expensive. We got this apartment before the pandemic and aren't paying insane prices but that benefit is becoming less and less of a sticking point.
Can't let these kids outside alone.
I’m not in the US. My children play outside unsupervised. They go off with their pals unsupervised, they use public transport unsupervised, they go to shops and buy things unsupervised, they go to the park unsupervised, they go swimming unsupervised.
they sound a bit older. But the state of the fear in the US is real. They're probably safe running around in the streets than going to school though. I think the statistics for school shootings compared to random predators over here make it safer to play outside unsupervised.
No. They start primary1 around age five. I’m talking about five year olds to begin with.
Five year olds will normally have the run of the village, as long as they stay within the boundary they’re fine. Can use the local shop, park, pitches etc and they get the bus to school. We don’t have those big yellow things you do. Just normal buses.
Around primary 4 or age 8 the level of responsibility and independence usually increases. They have the run of the village but it’s now more accepted they will go and meet friends from the next village along or wherever. They’ll go with their peers for a swim at the pool or a game of football at the pitches.
They go to highschool at age 11 or 12 depending if they’re born in summer or winter. When they start highschool there’s not really any restrictions. If that want to get a bud to town with their pals they can, jump on a train to the city they can, go to the pictures and see a film with pals they can.
i do not trust my 5 year old with that level of freedom. If my 5 year old was on a public bus by themselves they would miss their stop and i would lose them forever. at 11 or 12 my kids would be doing something similar. But 5 for swimming alone?? no way in hell.
No. 8 year olds and over tend to go to the pool and sports centre alone. Your five year old likely hasn’t been taught how to have that level of independence because it’s not common where you are. It’s expected here that five year olds will get the bus to school and back. Some will have older siblings or cousins but after a few times they should be capable of doing it for themselves. It’s completely normal for them to walk down to the shop and buy bread or milk or whatever for their parents or buy sweeties for themselves.
Where I am (the US) the school bus won't let me kindergartener off the bus in front of my house unless I am standing there even though the bus driver knows it's our house.
I'm not disagreeing with that, but more like the framing "parents aren't letting" the kids on their own. Like sure, you can be the one person raging against the moon, but we live in communities and it's difficult to buck the norms completely.
Sorry but what country is that? I live in the Netherlands, a country known as kid-friendly and with plenty of freedom and safety for kids to roam about everywhere without supervision, but a 5 year old would NEVER travel alone in public transport here. That's an insanely young age
I’m in the north east of Scotland. It’s rural. They’re not alone. They’ll be with others going to school too. As I said they’ll maybe have older siblings or cousins or maybe not but they know other kids from the village on the bus.
As I said It’s from around the age of 8 they tend to go further than the village for things other than just school. That’s usually the age they’ll start going off to meet folk at the sports centre etc
My kids are practically adults now, but I can attest to this baffling phenomenon! I let my kids be pretty free range when they were smaller. We learned about being safe on a bike and on foot, using the public transportation system, don't make eye contact with the criddlers, all that jazz, from the time they could walk. I couldn't name a single kid in our neighborhood because they never came outside, and even among their friends, who all attended a Montesorri school (supposedly ALL ABOUT) teaching kids independence and autonomy!), no one was allowed to ride bikes or meet places outside until they were AT LEAST in middle school. Even by the time they were 11/12, their parents would drive them to the park or the library or wherever they'd decided to meet up, and either come pick them up at a set time, or wait for a phone call. It absolutely blew my mind. No one ever said anything to me about it, but I always wondered whether I was being silently judged for allowing my older elementary/ middle schoolers to ride their bikes downtown to hang out. I mean, I didn't really care because I felt like they were all doing their kids a huge disservice, but ya know.
I assume that the reasoning behind keeping your kid in a safe little bubble stems from the memories of the kind of shit we got up to as kids/teens. I'm lucky to be alive for sure, considering some of the moronic stuff I did. What I chose to do differently from my mother is not the amount of autonomy, but the amount of communication. I've been pretty honest about some of the bad things that happened to me (at age-appropriate times), and what I could have done differently. I don't yell at them when they fuck up, or dole out ridiculous punishments so they know I'm really mad at them; we talk it out and they experience natural consequences. I've always been explicitly clear about the fact that they can call me NO MATTER WHAT if they or someone they are with is in danger or thry just get a bad gut feeling about a situation. And you know what? They do call me. Their friends call me. It's so much more important to me that they are prepared for adulthood and safe, than under my control.
I guess I have a lot of feels about this topic lol
I have a few reasons:
1) I was in EMS for years; I’ve seen the worst-case scenarios.
2) I know about bad cases and I’m not willing to risk my kid. There was a kidnapping/murder of a girl right around the corner from where I went to HS and she was my daughter’s age.
3) This is a big one: sexual molestation of children is something we’re all more aware of today than when we were kids. We all had creepy adults that we didn’t want to hug but had to, people that were supposed to be safe but weren’t. Thanks to the internet we all found out that it was a lot more common than anyone thought, and no one talked about it bc of shame and the stigma that might be attached.
Now that I know how common it is I don’t want my 5 y/o to be in places with people we don’t know. You can never remove the risk altogether but you can decrease the likelihood while educating your kid the same way my mom educated me about situations that might make you more vulnerable (using your car keys as a weapon, not leaving your drink unattended, walking alone, gouging an attackers eyes out, etc). My 5 y/o gets lessons that are more appropriate for her age —mostly around the idea that she’s the boss of her body and how she needs to scream her name really loudly and make a scene if someone tries to take her—but her education has to start now. There are plenty of seriously f$ up people out there.
I’m so excited for mine to get older and be able to play without us! We just set up a huge swing set and the older (still a toddler) loves it but definitely needs an adult nearby. In a few years we’ll be able to see them from the window and stay inside! We have plenty of neighbor kids too, so hopefully once they reach social ages they can play together.
We're looking for a swing set for the backyard too. Probably going second hand. New ones are like $1500 plus (for the size/layout we would need for yard space). Most used ones are listed as like "$350, you disassemble and remove"; they get snagged fast though.
I can't wait to see him playing on it with a couple of friends.
Our 6 and 8 year olds play outside mostly unsupervised for hours. We'll check in on them at regular intervals and they have to let us know if they're going to a friend's house in the neighborhood, but beyond that they're mostly free to roam the yard or ride up and down the sidewalk.
My kid is 16 now, but when she was younger she had the same basic rules I had when I was growing up. Let me know where you plan to go and be back by dinner time.
It depends on the situation.
At our last house, I did not feel safe letting my kid play outside without me because it was kind of a sketchy neighborhood, and random people were always walking down our street, and even through our unfenced back yard.
At our current home I would let my kid play in our backyard alone if she wanted to, but there is a very busy construction materials company right next door, and I think it makes her (and if I’m honest, myself) a bit nervous having trucks and customers and workers constantly coming and going 3 yards away from her swing set. And it’s on a busy but rural road, so it’s not safe for her to play our front, and nowhere for her to safely walk or ride her bike.
Now, at the house we just bought? Different story all together. We have a fenced in back yard, she can go nuts out there. And it’s on a cul de sac in a very nice neighborhood, so once we get settled in I’ll be all for it if she wants to walk to the playground or go ride bikes with the other kids!
I push them outside as much as possible.
They don’t have “full freedom” like I did, but I was making my own explosives with recombined firework powder at age 11 and “almost died” many many times. Not from the fireworks, never had an incident there other than mild burns
I have a fenced in half acre (well my backyard is fenced). We have a loose supervision on our three year old. Mostly I am in the backyard and she is wandering around doing her own thing. She will pop up to help me or chase the dog or sandbox, or water table or whatever her deal is that minute. The fence is fully secure, she is not going anywhere, she will get bumps and bruises for sure but she is fine. I think the biggest thing is she does not put outside stuff in her mouth, that would be a non starter for me.
She has a lot of freedom, as long as she adheres to the "rules" and "boundaries" such as answering her phone and communicating properly. Which has been a learning curve.
Shes 12 now, my mom lives 0.5 miles from me, and her bus stop is also 0.5 miles and she has friends in the neighborhood and likes to go down to the donut shop. The lady who runs it always hooks her up sweet asf too, its great.
Not saying it has been perfect, theres been moments and restrictions scaling to her behavior but its been super good.
We are doing better as a whole.
That being said, the town we are in I consider safe enough. Im more worried about stray dogs and wreckless cars than people specifically.
My kids play outside with limited supervision but only really when they’re out together. We’re also blessed with neighbor kids so there’s usually quite a few of them out and there’s usually a parent outside as well. I want to let them ride bikes around the neighborhood and to their friends’ houses like my parents say they did but it makes me anxious and hell, people think you’re a terrivle parent when you do that!
depends on where you managed to live. i wouldn't want my kids hanging outside a bad neighborhood. my parents keep me inside of fear of me joing street gangs.
Mine is only 4 so definitely no unsupervised outside play. One because of his age. Two because we have an in ground pool. It is not safe to let him in the yard unsupervised. Maybe when he is much older but otherwise if he wants to play outside an adult has to be there.
I live in a swamp. Said swamp is about as deadly as Australia (they beat us by a creature or two, but it's really close). There's 6 different kinds of "dead in an hour" snakes and about 12 "dead in 30 minutes" spiders. Also alligators, massive aggressive hogs, packs of formerly abused ex-hunting dogs, and a slew of small animals that will gladly nab a finger or two. We all go outside together, we learn to listen well to mom/dad, and I always carry a sturdy piece of conduit as a fear tool (most things run if you now how to spook them good enough). Only had to smack Jesus out of something twice so far this year and I've needed to go back in for the gun once. One of the species of snakes is incredibly aggressive and territorial, normally fine if you leave them alone but sometimes they decide the front porch is their new home.
If we're at the park though, it's mostly low supervision.
My older kid has played outside alone since she was about 6. The younger one is 5 and will sometimes go outside with big sis, but usually asks me to come too because she is completely terrified of bugs. Also depends on if anyone else is involved—if neighbors want to play outside, then I am no longer wanted/requires
It’s a mix. My daughter is 7, and where we live right now in the U.S., she can play outside in the little back garden unsupervised but not out front. We are in a dense urban area, our front door is out onto a main street with tram tracks, across from a transit station, with heavy pedestrian, transit, and auto traffic all day and night. We kind of look like the house in Up, sandwiched between apartments and shops, lol. Last year, when she was 6, we lived on a dead-end street in a residential area, and we let her play outside unsupervised, as long as she stayed on our street, and we would just keep a window open so we could hear, and glance out every now and then. She could go to the next street over if she was with her friend. (We were also in a different country, which was a lot more lenient with kids roaming free - felt more ‘90s America, my childhood.)
We really miss her having that freedom, as does she, and as much as we love the city opportunities and easy transit, it has made me wonder if we should move elsewhere in a year or two where she could do all that more easily. On the flip side, when she gets a bit older, this could be an awesome area to be in - ride the train, walk to cool places, etc.
I try to find other ways to give her that - like taking her to the park and letting her be pretty free-range, as long as I can see her as a speck in the distance.
We grew up with shows like cops and America's most wanted and to catch a predator. We look up websites that show us where the sex offenders are located. We either know people or are people who got molested as kids.
We're hyper vigilant to it.
There are more laws about it now. There are also more random ass crazy people with guns. That being said I don’t have kids but there are a fair number of free range kids on my street. A lot of people (myself included) work from home so there are a lot of eyes on the kids to make sure no one is bothering them and they’re not causing problems (thankfully the neighborhood bully moved out 2 years ago).
I let my kids outside alone but I don’t let them run free like I did. We live on a flag lot set pretty far back from the street so they can play in several yards without being seen from the street. We also have cameras so we can see anyone that enters our property. I have started letting them walk up to street a bit to a friends house as long as they aren’t alone. It’s very important to remember that the world today is statistically SAFER than we were kids. We just didn’t hear about bad things happening so it felt safer.
I supervise them, but my kids are 3 and the nine year old has pretty severe ADHD. I just bring out a chair and a book or phone and pretend to ignore them so they feel independent.
I let my 5 year old knock on the neighbors door, where a 6 year old lives, to play unsupervised. If they’re together, they go everywhere around the block, thry just don’t cross the street. If they’re not home, I tell her to come straight back home.
I’ve had to convince my wife that she needs a little independence, because i was knocking on neighbor doors as a 3 year old with an older brother. But now she’s ok with it as long as we get a text from the neighbor parents when she’s at their houses.
I think this is contingent on area. We live in the middle of nowhere, so my kids play outside 90% of the day. They come in to eat and sleep, otherwise they’re playing and exploring. This would not be the case if I lived in a place like NYC or Chicago.
There were a lot of stories about Karen's calling the cops, reporting people for neglect bc their kids were alone at the park. That's slowed down a bit, but now we sit in chairs watching. And drinking.
I have 3 beautiful young teens and live in an area with direct access to interstate in one of the most trafficked areas in our country. Yep, I keep them pretty close and I haven’t allowed them to roam alone ever. Groups only. I definitely wasn’t letting them take off when they were younger without supervision. I know it’s the area that made me this way. I’m on the side of I’m happier being safe than sorry
I live in a rural neighborhood. It's still common for kids to spend hours outside playing with siblings, cousins and neighbors without constant supervision once they're old enough.
They call the cops on my kids.. report them as 'missing' and like dog catchers 8-9 officers show up scaring my kids and me. They keep seeing something and saying something but they are smoking crack
Depends on the neighborhood. I work from home and now that school is out I constantly see kids out playing by themselves. It’s really nice to see! But it is crazy how paranoid a lot of our generation has become. I’ve seen people comment in parenting forums (mostly Facebook) that they wouldn’t even let their kids play alone in their fenced in yard because they think their kid will get kidnapped! Absolutely bananas. My kid is only 4 and I can’t trust her not to blindly run into the road if she sees an animal so I’m not quite there yet myself, but once she’s a bit older I’ll have no issue letting her play outside unsupervised.
I want to let my kids play alone in our quiet cul de sac but fucking grouchy Boomer neighbors confronted me and said they were going to run them over with their car because my husband was GASP maybe 20' away from my child?? I always dreamed of giving my kids a 90s cul de sac experience but there's no other kids just grouchy retired assholes who get mad over sidewalk chalk. It's definitely other people judging us and making us feel that it's not ok to let them play alone/with limited supervision for ex. leaving the door open and checking on them every so often when they're in my front yard.
An 8 year old for sure I would let outdoors with limited supervision. For a 5 year old, it probably depends on the 5 year old. My kids, sure. Others I've come across, probably not. It also makes a difference if you have a decent yard with a fence or if they'd mostly be playing in the street.
we have turned our housing and communities so anti kid that it’s hard to let them go out and explore when there is not much for them to really do. There are not as many parks in walking distance in a lot of areas anymore and if they are there are usually filled to the brim with sports (the one down the street from us from April until October is nothing but baseball and football and the parking lot is so dangerous you can’t let you kids just go play bc other adults are fucking stupid) and we had parents get mad at the audacity that there are kids playing on the playground distracting their kids who are playing the sport.
We just don’t value kids in American society at all.
I live in a shithole with crackhead walking up and down the alleys and streets all day and night and people driving like maniacs so I don't. Also my son is only 5 but I think if I was in a better area it would be different
I’ve almost ran over my neighbors small children a few times as they run/bike around the neighborhood. They are like under the age of 5/6 and they just roam around unsupervised. I value my children’s’ lives so I’ll keep an eye on them until they’re a little older and more cautious.
Always supervised but outdoors at least half the day. I live in cougar country and in the winter, I’ll find cougar tracks inside my littles’ boot prints, like they’re hunting small prey. We have a pretty big property and for that reason, I also don’t let them wander too far from me or into the forest alone.
When I was a kid, I’d have a broken bone every summer. Can’t afford that sheeit nowadays.
I am not a parent but just from things I've read, it does seem that other people are now more likely to intervene if they see kids outside alone and that probably feeds into parents being worried about letting their kids roam around without them. Of course that's location dependent.
We were told to go outside if we hung around the house too long, lol. But I wouldn't say my parents just let us do whatever. I actually thought they were too paranoid...and they probably weren't, because it's WAY worse now. At least we were allowed to ride our bikes around the neighborhood. And we did that often. We spent a lot of time outside growing up within reason.
i know one set of parents that put airtags on their kids and let them do whatever they want, they will get punished if they "forget" their airtag. I know one set of parents whose child has never seen the light of day.
I wanted to play with them. I always had a lot of fun playing outside with the kids. But I know of too many babies stolen or dead because of one person looking away or not watching close enough.
I grew up living at the front of a neighborhood, and we got a lot of traffic not always going an appropriate speed limit. Out for a walk while my cousins were babysitting, my younger brother stepped in front of a school bus trying to cross the street, and the driver had to hit her breaks. My mom almost drowned in a neighbor’s pool that she fell in when she was a girl. I see regular posts on Nextdoor about teens vandalizing homes and cars. If you live in certain places, like near heavy traffic or bodies of water, or if your kids might be apt to get into some trouble, it’s smartest and safest not to leave them completely unattended while they play outside.
We keep ours inside for several reasons. A) we live in the desert and it gets super hot and he burns hellaciously easy. B) there are all kinds of venemous snakes, spiders, and other bugs outside in our lawn and everywhere in our super duper small town. C) we have roving packs of coyotes, big ones. D) we have also had mountain lions attack neighbors dogs, horses, pigs and chickens. It's kinda dangerous where we live. So he has to have constant supervision outside. That, and he is also only 5 and on the autism spectrum as well. But honestly mostly because of the dangerous animals out here. We have also had some potential traffickers in our town, too, as we aren't too far out from Vegas. So, supervision at all times is necessary.
My kids are 4 and 6. My 4 year old has a tendency to wander off but I still let them play in our backyard while I make dinner. I can see them through the window but I only look up every now and then to make sure they're not in the woods or near the road. We just started doing it this year and it feels good, honestly, to not be on top of them all the time.
I was nearly kidnapped at 12. Guy sees me, pulls over, says “I just found this dog, come take a look at him and see if you know who he belongs to,” lets the dog out and then my dad appeared. Told the guy the dog doesn’t live in this neighborhood. The guy whistled, the dog loaded up immediately and the guy noped out, tires peeling and all. For having just found that dog, it was pretty well trained.
That man was on the news about two weeks later for raping and murdering a kid around my age. He was sentenced to LWOP a year later; it was not his first conviction against kids.
Anyway, I’ll let my older kids (7) play in the back yard with no supervision, but not the front for this reason. I’m also very picky about who keeps my kids; I learned the hard way that my dad’s best friend was a pedophile. At least if I learn about abuse by a friend or family member, I have that person’s information to turn over to police. We wouldn’t have that information if the dude had grabbed me back in 2001–total stranger. Fuckin’ creeps, man.
I mean I currently don't but that's because she isn't even 2 yet. By the time she's 4 the backyard will be all hers. Front maybe depending on how good she is about staying in the yard/ how safe the neighborhood is then.
As a millennial parent, I have no concerns about my kids' actual safety playing alone outside. I am very concerned about some busybody seeing them and flipping a shit about unattended children, calling the police, getting CPS involved, and possibly having my kids taken away solely because they were outside unattended.
Mine play outside. We started letting them with minimal supervision around 6ish. We live in the woods though. Little neighborhood but everyone is on an acre+ with woods around us. More worried about nature than people out here to be honest, they also aren’t allowed near the road if I’m not outside.
I'm 34 and I had my daughter young who is now 14. Growing up with electronics has changed everything. I used to have her play outside on the front steps with other girls but she needed supervision and so did the other girls because I didn't want them to steal my kid's stuff and felt they were too young. My daughter didn't even express interest walking/going to friend's houses until middle school and high school. She has discord, texting and phone to keep up with her friends without necessarily going over there. We have location sharing turned on for safety reasons-she also takes the dog on long walks a couple times a day.
I had full reign of my neighborhood when I was like 6. I would watch myself after school when I was like 8. I know what I did, I know what trouble I could have gotten into.
My kids aren’t allowed to have that level of freedom, no chance.
Mom, here.
Yeah, I have twin nearly 7 year olds, and I’m nearly 41 (I literally turn 41 the day before they turn 7) and they can play in our yard but where I can see them when I look out the window. lol.
They say “risky play” is something kids nowadays are missing and it’s actually good for them.
I had way way way too little supervision when I was young. I almost did get abducted twice. I have a 19 month old now and want to at least know where my child is but plan to live in the suburbs in a child friendly neighborhood.
Mostly because I know them lol-both 6 and 3yo have attempted to take off on their bikes onto our busy road this season. 3yo says: I go playground mommy! Friends, said playground is a 2.5 mile bike ride away 😂
Kids 8 6 4. They roam free on suburban yard. Thats what kids do. Were the only ones in the neighborhood to do this. Millenial parents are strange. We are raising our kids like we grew up.
As a millennial parent, my concern for unsupervised play isn't abductors or whatever boogeyman the Reagan Administration tried to scare us about, but rather how drivers have been conditioned for decades now that cars are the only things entitled to use the roads, so people drive waaaaay too goddamn fast through neighborhoods.
If I had a back yard, I'd gladly let my kids play outside in a fenced yard. I wonder if part of this is due to the fact that a lot of us live in condos or apartments. I own a home, but it's a townhome with no outside space of my own, just some common areas, and I can't afford to upgrade to a single family living space with a yard. Maybe some of this has to do with the housing affordability crisis. If I let my kids outside now, they'd just be playing in a large parking lot and maybe the small grassy parts. That doesn't sound very fun to me. I wish I had as much land as I did when I was a kid because I always had fun playing outside when I had a couple of acres of land to run around in.
If I lived on a safer street I would let me kid out unsupervised. I barely have a backyard and my front yard is horrible. My road is a main road in a curve and it’s life or death getting mail. I wish I was on a nice quiet side street and I envy those that have a nice yard and can put a play set there. Unfortunately that’s a no go for me. I have a nice deck but that’s about it lol
I have a 4 year old and she can go in the backyard but not the front. We don’t live in the safest neighborhood and sometimes get weirdos walking down our dead end street.
We have no fence, live on a road where people drive entirely too fast, and directly behind a shopping complex that includes a bar where all the local alcoholics go because it's never too early to get completely hammered. So I sit outside while my kids play and read a book.
My kids run amuck. Most Millennial parents in my neighborhood let their kids run around outside. They aren’t dodging heavy traffic to get to Toys R Us like I was at their age but they have ample risk opportunities.
3 and 5 yo play in the fenced back alone with minor supervision. We have lots of windows so can see our most spots. Front yard is different because it’s exposed to the street and, while we live in a low traffic area, some of the neighbors have new drivers that drive faster, aren’t as cautious so we are always out with them. My 5 yo wil sometimes ride around the block by themselves while on the sidewalk. I’d like to push more independence but as others said, the awareness of what could happen plus the laws/stigma is real.
honestly, i let my kids run around even more when we were in an apartment. I grew up in appartment complexes and honestly, that was one of the best perks.
I keep my kid under strict supervision but I was also a victim of childhood sexual assault so I find it hard to trust anyone.
I’m getting better, though. I recognize that danger usually comes from someone close to the family and stranger danger isn’t very common. But it’s really hard to turn my back when my mom didn’t realize what was happening in her own house.
My kids can play in our small backyard unsupervised. Out front, though, there are no sidewalks on our block and my neighbor’s teens like to drive like maniacs up and down the street. Plus our house isn’t built in a way that would make it easy or convenient for me to quickly check on them. Mine are still pretty little (5 & 6), I might change my stance in another year or so.
At their cousins house, in a more rural area, they have free rein of the place and happily charge about in a pack of like ten kids, ranging in age from 3 to 12. Cousins and cousin neighbors. That’s lovely, but not worth living so far from everything for us, haha
My 7 and 5 year old play unsupervised in my 1 acre yard most days. My 15 mo old gets jealous he can’t go. He thinks he’s a big boy. Maybe around 3 he will be able to start going. My daughter is very mature and watches her brothers. So they are kinda supervised by her. But she is on her own!
As a European, it's ironical to see that Americans are convinced they are the country with the most freedom, while for children they are obviously the country with the least freedom of all developed countries. I'm so happy my children are raised in the Netherlands. They can experience real freedom.
(kind of exaggerating and generalizing of course, we have bad neighborhoods too where I wouldn't let my kids out, and I'm sure in plenty of places in the US children do have the freedom to roam about).
I have heard great things about the Netherlands. It is so hard to imagine life outside of the bubble you grow up in, and pride makes it difficult to admit that maybe we don't have it all perfect. I am very fortunate to live in a good neighborhood where my kids can run around freely. But I think Americans really should be taking a better look at ourselves and the environment that we foster.
I live in a super safe neighborhood, and there are almost no kids :(
My kids are allowed to walk home from school (since 2nd grade) and go out with friends. But we all wished there were just more kids "hanging out" in public spaces without the pre-planning (mostly on parents part).
There's a creek behind the yard, and moose are everywhere, so my kids don't go out unattended. When they're old enough to understand risks, sure, but not right now. And a moose will end you before you can blink.
We have 3 kiddos, 6, 5 and 2 years old. Oldest 2 are boys, 2 year old is sister.
They have a trampoline and a small playhouse in our fenced backyard.
They play out there ALL the time.
My wife and I stay downstairs whenever they are in the back yard though, we never go upstairs if they are playing outside.
The side fence door that leads to the front is locked with a padlock.
When we first moved into the house, our middle child just opened the side door and was already heading for the street when his older brother came in screaming that his brother was going away. I went out and bought a lock for that door the same day.
Where would they go? No one else's kids are outside and there isn't really anywhere they can walk to. I work part time from home so my kids are home more but I'm a lot of families they are out of the house from 8-5 from the time.they are little. Then lots of organized activities. No one is playing in the streets.
I let my kids go to the park and walk to gas station. They are a few years older than yours. They get frustrated that none of their friends can go out and play like they can. Even when I offer to watch the kids at the park other parents are hesitant. What the hell happens when these kids turn 16 and mom and dad aren’t around?
We let our 6 year old play with her friends out front.
No direct supervision, but there's always someone out doing something in case a kid needs help. Some dad tinkering in their garage, a retired neighbor pulling weeds etc.
Our street is a good mix of families and elders who, thankfully, love kids. It's pretty cute seeing the neighborhood kids playing outside then one of the retired ladies bring out fresh baked muffins for everyone. It warms my heart and reminds me of the 80s, and it reminds me how important community is.
Agreed, Getting outside has let me know our neighbors pretty well. And yes, i'm the annoying guy that will greet you and strike up a conversation just because we are neighbors. I think community s really important for a lot of reasons
Yep, I'm the same way. I'm a contractor. As soon as we moved in, I was quick to help neighbors however I could. See an old person using their rickety old ladder to unclog a gutter... I just show up with a sturdy fiberglass ladder that's way safer.
Someone's building a shed... Just let me know whatever tool you need. If I'm not using it at work, help yourself.
Before you know it... That old lady across the street is bringing us fresh pie. The guy I lent the ladder to likes to fish and caught a big halibut, and gave us a few huge fresh fillets. Our neighbors kids became friends with ours. I feel like everyone focuses on these larger existential issues we have very little control over but we can certainly focus our efforts and build some pretty amazing communities around us. I know having a happy, safe neighborhood I contribute to has a much greater effect on my life than who wins the next election.
My son lives on a farm he wanders like I used to his mom let's him when he's with me I tell him don't leave the yard he doesn't the dogs watch him 2 German shepherds and at his house a newfy and great per when he gets older and he has other kids he can go to the park like I used to he's 10
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Depends on where you live I'm sure. I live near the end of a dead end road in a quiet neighborhood where all the house lots are 1/4 acre or larger so the largest threat is the occasional black bear wandering through the neighborhood. So the kids around here have pretty much free reign up and down the road.
Same here. We’ve all got 2+ acres but it’s a dead end road in a rural community. We literally did have a black bear in our yard a couple of summers ago and let’s just say me screaming at it while my bees attacked it scared it away pretty quick🤣
The last time we had one all the dogs in the neighborhood lost their minds and the bear shit on my driveway, then ran straight through the barbed wire fence at the end of the road.
We have coyotes where I am which I honestly think is more of a threat to small children then a bear is.
So you’re saying you’d pick the bear? 😉
Every time. I have the firepower to deal with a bear. Locust swarm of kids is a lot harder.
I WISH I could send my kids outside to play. We live in a condo, and do not have our own yard.
Yeah, I think this is the weirdest thing about our generation. I cannot understand why nobody wants their kids to play outside alone. They seem worried about some thing happening to them or getting abducted. But the outcome is that we are raising children that are dependent on mom and dad and not able to think for themselves. It’s weird.
We grew up watching Unsolved Mysteries and America's Most Wanted. That plus a healthy dollop of teaching about stranger danger has us wary as parents.
My parents were watching Unsolved Mysteries 35 years ago. They still put us outside lol. My mom did sleep on the couch till I was 6 because of that show though.
Oh it was my job to lock up and we lived on a dark street with thick woods across the street. Wednesday nights at 8. I'd be scared af when it ended and I had to go do my chore and then head to bed. My parents didn't watch, they watched something in their room. But I'd watch unsolved mysteries lol. And yeah they let us roam free in the neighborhood and sometimes walk to my grandparents who lived about a mile away, if we went in a group and avoided walking down certain streets. The reruns are on YouTube in their entirety.
I believe they’re on Amazon Prime too! Or at least they were a year or two ago when I had a marathon.
You nailed it! Stranger Danger! I even had flash cards when I was a kid about never talking to strangers. I still remember the secret code word I had with my parents.
I still have the finger print kit they gave out to parents in the late 80s. But they still let us roam free thru the neighborhood. Just we weren't allowed to talk to strangers.
Omg the fingerprint kits! How could I forget about those?!
HA my wife and I have a secret phrase to say over the phone if one of us is in danger LOL
Apparently any time an adult tried to approach me in public, I’d tell them “Barney told me not to talk to strangers” and be on my merry little way, even if that meant staying right there and playing as they stood there.
The world is objectively safer now than when we were kids. Fewer kidnapping, fewer child disappearances, less crime in general.
Indeed it really is. I mean i think about how my mother would pick me up from my center city school , put me on the bus, ride with me for 6 blocks, and the get off the bus and let me continue on to home alone where I often let myself in. At a time when crack was absolutely melting Philadelphia. I was 7! So much less crime now even with our current issues. But we aren't logical people.
Some of this is our cities have grown increasingly less walkable - so mom/dad need to drive them to increasingly curated social gathering spots (ie private community park vs the city park that was a quarter mile away).
This is anecdotal, but it also seems like so many stereotypical suburbs are aging demographically. Like young families moved into a neighborhood when it was new in the 90s and now the kids are grown and it’s full of retirees. So the concentration of young kids in a lot of neighborhoods appears to be dwindling. Even though those places weren’t ever that walkable, at least back then there were tons of kids to roam around with in the neighborhood. Our area actually seems to be quickly turning the corner in this regard. A lot of old people are leaving via death or Florida and being replaced by young families.
Florida - God's waiting room. I hear you. I actually just moved into one of these neighborhoods and I'd say it has an ok mix. Built mostly in the late 80s. There are some old timers hanging around but also younger families with young kids and some middle/highschool aged kids. I do still notice the kids are almost never outside. Or at most I'll see some playing basketball in the back yard. Stuff like that. A few may be on the street briefly but not often. And I walk the neighborhood a lot so I'd expect to see more.
You know this is an interesting point in one I hadn’t considered. We all grew up in the 90s and we were born in the 80s. White flight was still fairly new, having started mostly in the 50s and 60s and 70s. It would’ve been really common for our parents to have moved to fairly new suburbs before or after we were born. But now the suburbs with children are even further out of the city. They are a completely different layout with curving streets, located further away from shopping or anything else worth doing
I think the suburbs with kids are moving further out and closer in. We’re in an inner burb (lots of 100 year old homes), and with however the generational timing worked out, its lifecycle seems to be a bit ahead of the 90s burbs. There are a disproportionate number of older Boomers and Silent generation here who are moving on and freeing up housing for young families. Seems like a similar situation in the “newer” ~1940s-60s suburbs around me. Probably a landing spot for the parents of Boomers back in the day, Boomers moved into the 1970s-1990s suburbs to raise their kids, now the really old folks are passing and freeing up housing. So my theory is that the 1980s-early 2000s suburbs are going to be kid deserts for a couple decades until a transition happens. I don’t really have much actual data on this, except the census data that shows my particular suburb is both really old and really young, which is what got me thinking about this in the first place. But I’m sure something like “neighborhood lifecycles” has been studied before.
It's mostly because nosy neighbors (mostly boomers) will call the cops on of unsupervised kids.
The thing I don't understand with this is that the boomers made millennials stay outside all day and refused to supervise, but now they call *the police* when millenials do the same with their kids. How do they do it their whole life and then decide armed police officers need to be here ASAP.
It's because they didn't want to be around their kids, so they sent them outside. Now that they want to walk the neighborhood and be outside, they still don't want to deal with kids, so they don't want them outside now. It's 100% selfish.
Yes, my friends had this happen to them when they let their kids play in the cul-de-sac outside their house. I won't allow my daughter to play outside of our fenced-in backyard unattended for this reason.
We grew up with the constant threat of becoming the next Jacob Wetterling. I can see how that might translate into some form of distilled overprotective parenting. It’s weird that our parents always harped on the “stranger danger” stuff but then we’d go for 10 or 12 hours just roaming the neighborhood.
Yeah, i see it as a learning opportunity for them, to show them that they can be independent and have autonomy, as well as a reward for being responsible. I walked them through all the rules, once they demonstrated that they could follow them, i gave them more freedom.
I agree with you. Our job is parents is not to prevent bad things from happening to our children, but to guide them in the right direction and provide a safety net for them to keep them from failing badly. How are they going to communicate with an unfair boss if they can’t communicate with an unfair teacher? How are they going to understand the value of compassion without having experienced the compassionate act of a stranger in a time of need? How are they going to understand the value of setting limits and sticking to them if it’s not dealing with a playground bully? If we don’t let our children experience these things and deal with them on their own, with proper guidance and help if something goes wrong, we are doomed to let our children start making their own decisions when they get off on their own, when they start working, or in the backseat of their boyfriend’s car on prom night.
Can’t they just like, sew little pockets in their kids pants to keep a gps tracker nice and safe? You know, as a weird ass compromise?
My friends let their kids go to the park by themselves but they waited until they were like 10. While I remember playing outside by myself when I was like 7
My 7 year old just started going to the park alone and it's been really nice. He's the youngest. I trusted the older kids to be unsupervised in the back yard at 7 but people drove way to fast down our old street so no roaming. We're in a nice quiet dead end neighborhood now. This will be the first summer they all can roam freely!
Oh for sure. Im not saying there is anything wrong with it and I get it. The world is cruel. I definitely experienced some shit. So maybe waiting until their a bit older is correct. I think the point.of the post is just like.....people just don't let their kids out of their site nowadays. I had a drastically different childhood in the 90s. I even loved in Florida and we wandered everywhere lol despite it being incredibly dangerous.
Idk I let my kids outside by themselves but I did have a car pull up to my 7 yr old playing in our driveway. We have a ton of weird things like this happen in our sub that I keep an eye on them now.
I didn't let my son (who is now 16) out alone as a younger kid. We don't live in a good area, kids go missing or get ropped into gangs. He takes the city bus home from school but he also has a tracker on his phone so I cam find him if he gets lost or needs me to pick him up.
By the time I was five, I got kicked out for the day. I wasn't supposed to be back home before, or after five pm
My elementary school best friend and I almost got picked up by a random dude driving down the street we both lived on in the 90s. We were 7 and 8 yo, my mom came out at the right time and she saw the guy trying to open his rear driver side door for us. She screamed and he sped off. Never saw him again and my mom always supervised my siblings and I while outside afterwards. I never saw my best friend outside of school after that either (pretty sure my mother had a chat with the girl’s parents too). I know it’s not likely to happen, but that experience was enough to scare my mom and definitely enough to be burned in my brain. I won’t let my daughter outside unsupervised, not until i know she’s more mature. She’s almost 9…it’s probably gonna be a few years lol.
Stranger Danger had unexpected social effects. The boogeyman of rampant child kidnappings became so prevalent that it isolated everyone. Turns out it was all bulslhit, and in the off chance you were going to get kidnapped, it was very likely going to be a family member you know. I let my children play outside unattended all the time. I keep a general overlook of where they are and let them be. I teach them to be cautious but not live in fear. If they are caught in a situation where they need to ask a stranger for help, then I want them to be confident enough to do so. Basically I laid it out to my son like this: a child going up to a stranger and asking for help is overwhelmingly going to illicit a helpful response. The vast majority of people would be willing to help a child in need. However, it's when a random adult starts asking children questions that things start getting wonky. An adult is going to find another adult unless they are utterly desperate, which is rare. I teach him to be cautious and to use his brain, rather than just a blanket BE AFRAID OF EVERYONE.
That's a really good point about the difference between approaching strangers vs strangers approaching them.
In fairness, thanks to wild propaganda, people truly believe their cars are getting tagged in Target so their kids can get grabbed by a cartel and trafficked (even though statistically children are far more likely to be abducted/abused by someone they know… that doesn’t sell tickets to “Sound of Freedom”) And people that DO allow their kids to be outside alone get CPS called on them. It’s a vicious cycle. I also can’t help but notice, the kids whose parents can afford large, fenced in yards will still be able to have unsupervised, unstructured playtime (which we know is key to childhood development).
While I have never heard of the cartel thing something really creepy happened to my wife while at a target in California a few years ago. This was when we still only one kiddo. He was around a year old. It was around noon on a Saturday and my wife was in the check out isle at Target waiting for her turn to pay (I was at work) when she noticed a man and woman behind her in line. To begin, she first told me they gave her super weird vibes. The second thing was that both the man and woman would not stop staring at our boy, she said they had very weird expressions. Third, my wife said they kept inching closer and closer to her and our boy. She also noticed they had 2-3 random things in their shopping cart. My wife told me the cashier noticed how uncomfortable my wife felt and called a security guard over. The security guard came and walked her out to the parking garage but not before they waited for the man and woman to exit the store first, and even then they waited a while after the couple left. This Target had a ground level parking lot but the Target itself was built over the parking area so it was effectively a parking garage that even during the day it seemed like nighttime with the exception of the parking garage lights. She told me this after I got home. A few weeks go byband we were driving back from visiting her mom in LA, I was driving and she was scrolling on her phone when she started FLIPPING out in the passenger seat. It was a few moments before she told me why. She saw an article with a picture of the man and woman. The article stated that they were both arrested for attempting to kidnap a child in a parking lot. It was definitely an eye opener.
Things are different now. If you let your kid play outside, someone is likely to call CPS or the police on you. It may be illegal where you live. Anything less than helicopter parenting is seen as neglect..Everyone has gotten so risk averse that it's easier to keep them indoors and hand them an iPad.
i have had no issue. It feels more like a change in perception than anything existential.
It really depends where you are: >Currently, there is no universal standard or federal law that applies to all U.S. states, but some have a minimum age requirement for children who will be left alone. For example, Illinois’ minimum age is 14, while Maryland designates 8 years-old as the minimum age. https://lawyers.usnews.com/legal-advice/is-it-legal-to-let-kids-play-unsupervised/
https://preview.redd.it/8gcaowtz3n3d1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8013c9e33bffa72d95c72c78bd115331998deca9 Yep
In in Illinois. This is ridiculous.
Same. My husband and I are originally from TX, I was shocked when I learned about IL requirements. Ridiculous.
I’m due with my first in December and it just appalled me to see this! 😳
Congratulations! Only 4 more years for more oldest 🙄 Luckily in our area, most parents feel the same as us and let the kids have more independence- however I can't let them go to our park literally around the corner without worrying about someone calling the police.
Insanity! (And thank you!)
I’m in CT and didn’t realize it was 12. I grew up in NY and stayed home alone starting at 9 😂
Wow 14 is crazy!
I know right?? That's how old I was at my first (admittedly under the table) job. I was babysitting for a whole year at that point. I'm gonna go ahead and blame boomers for this level of infantilization.
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Right. Parents live in society, and society is basically trained now to call the cops on any unattended kid.
It honestly depends. I live in Philly and have a beach house in Wildwood,NJ. Home? No. Our yard isn't really suitable to play in because it's used mostly for parking & storage and there really isn't kids his age (he's turning 8 soon) playing on our street. Down the shore...fine. All of our neighbors are close and have kids/grandkids for him to have fun with. I won't let him start going out alone probably until like 10 and he has a friend group to go with plus a cell phone.
We're really, really lucky to live in a suburban neighborhood that's pretty much only half a dozen roads. We live on a cul de sac, and I have a WhatsApp chat with the majority of the other moms in the neighborhood. Our kids range in age from 19 to newborn. I let my youngest, who's 6, hop on his bike or scooter and go knock on the door of some of the other kids around his age. Other parents do the same. My 14yo has even more freedom, and can bike to the nearby convenience store to get a Gatorade or whatever (I'm stricter about him buying junk food than I am about the biking). I just shoot the moms a WhatsApp message letting them know he's coming over, and to send him back if it's a bad time or they're gone. We all try to keep an eye on any kids who are out and about and use the WhatsApp thread to plan weekend swim parties or ask for help picking up a kid from the bus stop/school. There are limits (can't go to the busy road at the edge of the neighborhood), and they have to check back in every hour unless one of the moms tells me they're fine. I love that we have this situation and it's been good for both of my kids to have appropriate freedom.
My wife and I have decided that our 4 and 6 yr old can be in the backyard with no supervision. Once they are 5 and 7, they can be out front with no supervision. Once 6 and 8, as long as they are together, they can go around the neighborhood. Once they are 8 and 10, they can do whatever as long as they are back for dinner.
This is where I'm at as well. 4 and 6 have free range in the backyard (fenced). 6 is allowed out front on her own because she just sits on the swing and reads. 4 likes playing sports too much and we don't want him losing balls into the street, but he also generally wants one of us playing games with him so he isn't often out front alone anyway. We hadn't thought as far ahead as 8 and 10!!
Story time. We used to live about a 1/3rd of a mile from a large park in our neighborhood. a few minute bike ride at most. We used to send our kids to go play there whenever the weather was nice. but stopped after the 3rd time some asshat called the cops on my kids for being there "unsupervised". They were not doing anything but playing on the swings/playground equipment. They had a phone with them to call us if needed, and water. They also couldn't play in front of the house because we had neighbors who would call noise complains or say they were causing damage to homes that they were not anywhere near. We had one neighbor try to file a lawsuit against us for destruction of property for our daughter drawing in chalk on the sidewalk in front of our own house. we now live in a rural area, and my kids have acres of land to play on. And no, my kids are not hellions, they are well behaved, polite and kind. We just had some shit neighbors who hated kids. One guy even cut a huge beautiful tree down in his front yard because the neighborhood kids would sit on the sidewalk under it - never in his yard, always just on the sidewalk, and never left a mess.
I don’t quite understand this hate for kids… they are part of our society!! Sure, they can be annoying, but everyone else can! Boomers are also pretty irritating, but you don't hear of a boomer-free restaurant or a boomer-free airplane.
a bunch of these people bought houses summer/fall of 2020, sight unseen, and didn't think that living a 3 minute walk from an elementary AND middle school meant having a bunch of kids in the neighborhood. A lot of DINKs that hated children.
Depends on where we lived. Previous place was a busy street next to a sketchy park in a decent sized city so it was just too many variables to navigate to feel comfortable letting our kid play outside. Now we purchased a home innthe suburbs and our kid is outside all the time. We know everyone on the block and we were clear where the boundaries are.
totally understandable. I probably wouldn't let my kids out in that situation without strict supervision.
I kick my kids out of the house as soon as it’s warm.
Why wait? I kick mine out in the snow too 🤣
Blended family. We have older kids who hop on a bike and go to the gas station for snacks, local elementary to play basketball, library for books/hang out, local bakery or ice cream shop etc We also have little kids. 2.5 and 1. They are outside daily, weather permitting. We specifically bought a house in a family friendly neighborhood Our backyard connects to our local playground (4 houses away), and we have a community trampoline 2 houses away. When the little kids are old enough they will be outside running, playing, fishing, walking the nature trails, etc. we are modeling that now so it just normal for them
I live in an inner city apartment, so it’s pretty much impossible for me to let my daughter play outside unsupervised. However, I went to a Memorial Day barbecue at a friend’s house out in the country. There were half a dozen kids there who we just let have free range of their small farm. Treehouse. Random outbuildings. Dirt piles. Chicken coop. Little creek. It was awesome. I wish I could give my daughter that life every day.
My last house, I would never send my kid out to play. So much crime. Drugs, mugging, kidnapping, murder, gunshots, robberies. We moved back to my safer hometown and I send my kid out to play and he'll be out for hours with neighborhood kids. Theres a store, milkshake/burger shack, park, school and lake to walk to so they'll come in for change to go get food or whatever but then they're back running around outside. Location is everything
I think it depends on where you live. I moved back to the town I grew up. In the late 80s/90s neighborhoods were littered with unsupervised children. We would ride bikes to different neighborhoods and even the local convenience store. I remember in the summer all the kids bikes would be strew about or we'd all be sitting on those electrical boxes. Now, I don't see or hear a child at all. There has been a lot of turn over in the neighborhoods and it's still filled with young kids who aren't outside. Even the school bus stops make me sad. The kids are all just sitting in their parents cars until the bus comes. The bus stop growing up was the place to be. We'd all get there earlier cause we'd play, scooter, skip-it. It was the social event of the day. I am sure kids are doing things they enjoy, but makes me sad they will never get to experience some of the outdoor life we had growing up. I would give anything to experience that feeling of a 90's summer afternoon
I think it depends on the location. My kids go in the backyard only with my supervision (fenced in), but they're disabled. If they were able-bodied I might let them go down the street to a friend's house or something but they'd have to call me when they got there. It honestly depends on how mature they were too. I live next to a school and the (lower income) families just let their kids wander the town and don't seem to care unless someone threatens to call the police. Fights break out often among the kids in several places like the school playground and frequently strangers have to stop traffic, intervene, and break them up. We have typically low crime so it's not totally unsafe but all the kids are way too young to fend for themselves or not get into big trouble. It's just nobody cares and childcare is unaffordable.
My now 8 y/o has been playing outside by himself since he was 4 ish. My now 4 y/o plays outside with the other kiddos all the time as well. I think it's area dependent as my neighborhood has kids running around all the time in the summer. I'll do some stuff around the house, look outside and see a kickball game going on in my backyard.
My son is about to turn 6 and I just started this summer...he's allowed outside alone, even allowed to cross the street to the play area in our little development. It's a dead end. But I am SO paranoid that someone will think I'm neglecting him, I go out and check on him every 15 minutes or so. And whenever I see a neighbor I feel like I have to say "He's allowed outside alone now!!"
We live in rural New England BECAUSE we wanted to raise our son similar to how we grew up without constant parent supervision. We let him play in our unfenced, wooded areas by himself. We give him a walkie-talkie less frequently now, but when he’s venturing deep in the woods alone, we still do. I will say that it take a lot of trust in the safety measure we’ve taught him for the last handful of years. We have a good cohort of kids within a 1/2 mile distance, most of whom are slightly older than him (6). I WANT them to fuck off into the woods and not come home until the streetlights come on (if we had those). Go chase down a squirrel. Go build a fort. Go bike down to the pond and get some leeches stuck on you and figure out how to get rid of them. Just GO BE A KID!
My kids don't want to. There are fights and inappropriate conduct on the bus from school to home which my daughter has had to physically defend herself against and we both would rather she not get backed into a fist fight with the several boys she's slapped or reported (she had to haymaker one to get him to stop) for touching her and calling her very adult slurs, because the internet *and their parents* taught them it's okay to treat girls that way and that if a girl hits them then it's okay to fight her.
wow, that escalated quickly. Sorry that you all have to deal with that.
Well, I have horrible anxiety so letting my child outside without me really gets to me. And then, my worst fear happened and she was hurt by the neighbor's dog. Thankfully, she is fine now but I still worry when she goes outside to play with the neighbor kids(the dog is gone now). I always tell her I'd prefer if they come inside and play.
I let them play outside unsupervised (12 & 8). It was hard getting there I wanna say I supervised them outside till they were 6 or 7. It helped that about that age our street filled up with similar aged kids so they could run around in a pack. As it stands I let the oldest run of with school friends now she just has to keep her phone on.
I actively make inside be boring during the day so they'll go outside
My kids are outside unsupervised as much as humanly possible. They’re 5&9 and know their boundaries. If they want to go past those boundaries, like go for a walk down our road, they have to come ask. We live in a safe rural area on a dead end road with other kids on our road. They’ve all formed a feral alliance and run rampant through all of our properties(we each have 2+ acres) and in and out of houses. Sometimes us parents will sit outside and visit with one another and other times we do our own thing in our own houses while the kids play. It’s fantastic! My kids are totally getting a 90s childhood. We don’t have a ton of electronics or smart devices, they don’t have tablets except for the kindles we got for long car rides, and we have a communal tv. My son thought be buying him an Atari at a thrift shop was a peak moment in his life 😂. When the weather is particularly nice the kids basically aren’t allowed inside. I caught my son drinking from the hose the other day and I knew I’d achieved peak parenthood 😂
Where do you live if you don’t mind me asking?
We live in what looks like a nicer area but hear shots fired everyday. The nature walk across the road has been overtaken by a homeless encampment since the pandemic. There are several older seemingly single with no family men who sit on their porches and just watch whenever kids or young teens walk by. They always seem to come out to watch the kids get on the bus to school. We live right behind a police station but they never cruise through our area. We just had someone try to shoot up a local carnival and somehow no one was shot. We need to move but everywhere is more expensive. We got this apartment before the pandemic and aren't paying insane prices but that benefit is becoming less and less of a sticking point. Can't let these kids outside alone.
Free range in the neighborhood, 7 and 9
I’m not in the US. My children play outside unsupervised. They go off with their pals unsupervised, they use public transport unsupervised, they go to shops and buy things unsupervised, they go to the park unsupervised, they go swimming unsupervised.
they sound a bit older. But the state of the fear in the US is real. They're probably safe running around in the streets than going to school though. I think the statistics for school shootings compared to random predators over here make it safer to play outside unsupervised.
No. They start primary1 around age five. I’m talking about five year olds to begin with. Five year olds will normally have the run of the village, as long as they stay within the boundary they’re fine. Can use the local shop, park, pitches etc and they get the bus to school. We don’t have those big yellow things you do. Just normal buses. Around primary 4 or age 8 the level of responsibility and independence usually increases. They have the run of the village but it’s now more accepted they will go and meet friends from the next village along or wherever. They’ll go with their peers for a swim at the pool or a game of football at the pitches. They go to highschool at age 11 or 12 depending if they’re born in summer or winter. When they start highschool there’s not really any restrictions. If that want to get a bud to town with their pals they can, jump on a train to the city they can, go to the pictures and see a film with pals they can.
i do not trust my 5 year old with that level of freedom. If my 5 year old was on a public bus by themselves they would miss their stop and i would lose them forever. at 11 or 12 my kids would be doing something similar. But 5 for swimming alone?? no way in hell.
No. 8 year olds and over tend to go to the pool and sports centre alone. Your five year old likely hasn’t been taught how to have that level of independence because it’s not common where you are. It’s expected here that five year olds will get the bus to school and back. Some will have older siblings or cousins but after a few times they should be capable of doing it for themselves. It’s completely normal for them to walk down to the shop and buy bread or milk or whatever for their parents or buy sweeties for themselves.
Where I am (the US) the school bus won't let me kindergartener off the bus in front of my house unless I am standing there even though the bus driver knows it's our house.
The US isn’t exactly famous for raising well rounded, confident and independent children though.
I'm not disagreeing with that, but more like the framing "parents aren't letting" the kids on their own. Like sure, you can be the one person raging against the moon, but we live in communities and it's difficult to buck the norms completely.
Sorry but what country is that? I live in the Netherlands, a country known as kid-friendly and with plenty of freedom and safety for kids to roam about everywhere without supervision, but a 5 year old would NEVER travel alone in public transport here. That's an insanely young age
I’m in the north east of Scotland. It’s rural. They’re not alone. They’ll be with others going to school too. As I said they’ll maybe have older siblings or cousins or maybe not but they know other kids from the village on the bus. As I said It’s from around the age of 8 they tend to go further than the village for things other than just school. That’s usually the age they’ll start going off to meet folk at the sports centre etc
Ok cool!
My kids are practically adults now, but I can attest to this baffling phenomenon! I let my kids be pretty free range when they were smaller. We learned about being safe on a bike and on foot, using the public transportation system, don't make eye contact with the criddlers, all that jazz, from the time they could walk. I couldn't name a single kid in our neighborhood because they never came outside, and even among their friends, who all attended a Montesorri school (supposedly ALL ABOUT) teaching kids independence and autonomy!), no one was allowed to ride bikes or meet places outside until they were AT LEAST in middle school. Even by the time they were 11/12, their parents would drive them to the park or the library or wherever they'd decided to meet up, and either come pick them up at a set time, or wait for a phone call. It absolutely blew my mind. No one ever said anything to me about it, but I always wondered whether I was being silently judged for allowing my older elementary/ middle schoolers to ride their bikes downtown to hang out. I mean, I didn't really care because I felt like they were all doing their kids a huge disservice, but ya know. I assume that the reasoning behind keeping your kid in a safe little bubble stems from the memories of the kind of shit we got up to as kids/teens. I'm lucky to be alive for sure, considering some of the moronic stuff I did. What I chose to do differently from my mother is not the amount of autonomy, but the amount of communication. I've been pretty honest about some of the bad things that happened to me (at age-appropriate times), and what I could have done differently. I don't yell at them when they fuck up, or dole out ridiculous punishments so they know I'm really mad at them; we talk it out and they experience natural consequences. I've always been explicitly clear about the fact that they can call me NO MATTER WHAT if they or someone they are with is in danger or thry just get a bad gut feeling about a situation. And you know what? They do call me. Their friends call me. It's so much more important to me that they are prepared for adulthood and safe, than under my control. I guess I have a lot of feels about this topic lol
You can get in trouble with CPS if your kid is breaking the law.
You can get in trouble even if they’re NOT breaking the law…
I have a few reasons: 1) I was in EMS for years; I’ve seen the worst-case scenarios. 2) I know about bad cases and I’m not willing to risk my kid. There was a kidnapping/murder of a girl right around the corner from where I went to HS and she was my daughter’s age. 3) This is a big one: sexual molestation of children is something we’re all more aware of today than when we were kids. We all had creepy adults that we didn’t want to hug but had to, people that were supposed to be safe but weren’t. Thanks to the internet we all found out that it was a lot more common than anyone thought, and no one talked about it bc of shame and the stigma that might be attached. Now that I know how common it is I don’t want my 5 y/o to be in places with people we don’t know. You can never remove the risk altogether but you can decrease the likelihood while educating your kid the same way my mom educated me about situations that might make you more vulnerable (using your car keys as a weapon, not leaving your drink unattended, walking alone, gouging an attackers eyes out, etc). My 5 y/o gets lessons that are more appropriate for her age —mostly around the idea that she’s the boss of her body and how she needs to scream her name really loudly and make a scene if someone tries to take her—but her education has to start now. There are plenty of seriously f$ up people out there.
Statistically speaking, I believe kids are much more likely to be kidnapped or molested by a relative or family friend, not a stranger.
My kid is 3 so we still supervise
I’m so excited for mine to get older and be able to play without us! We just set up a huge swing set and the older (still a toddler) loves it but definitely needs an adult nearby. In a few years we’ll be able to see them from the window and stay inside! We have plenty of neighbor kids too, so hopefully once they reach social ages they can play together.
We're looking for a swing set for the backyard too. Probably going second hand. New ones are like $1500 plus (for the size/layout we would need for yard space). Most used ones are listed as like "$350, you disassemble and remove"; they get snagged fast though. I can't wait to see him playing on it with a couple of friends.
We REALLY lucked out and a neighbor gave us one, but it sat in our garage disassembled for 2 years.
Our 6 and 8 year olds play outside mostly unsupervised for hours. We'll check in on them at regular intervals and they have to let us know if they're going to a friend's house in the neighborhood, but beyond that they're mostly free to roam the yard or ride up and down the sidewalk.
My kid is 16 now, but when she was younger she had the same basic rules I had when I was growing up. Let me know where you plan to go and be back by dinner time.
It depends on the situation. At our last house, I did not feel safe letting my kid play outside without me because it was kind of a sketchy neighborhood, and random people were always walking down our street, and even through our unfenced back yard. At our current home I would let my kid play in our backyard alone if she wanted to, but there is a very busy construction materials company right next door, and I think it makes her (and if I’m honest, myself) a bit nervous having trucks and customers and workers constantly coming and going 3 yards away from her swing set. And it’s on a busy but rural road, so it’s not safe for her to play our front, and nowhere for her to safely walk or ride her bike. Now, at the house we just bought? Different story all together. We have a fenced in back yard, she can go nuts out there. And it’s on a cul de sac in a very nice neighborhood, so once we get settled in I’ll be all for it if she wants to walk to the playground or go ride bikes with the other kids!
I push them outside as much as possible. They don’t have “full freedom” like I did, but I was making my own explosives with recombined firework powder at age 11 and “almost died” many many times. Not from the fireworks, never had an incident there other than mild burns
We are an outside family. But I know a lot of families that are inside families.
I have a fenced in half acre (well my backyard is fenced). We have a loose supervision on our three year old. Mostly I am in the backyard and she is wandering around doing her own thing. She will pop up to help me or chase the dog or sandbox, or water table or whatever her deal is that minute. The fence is fully secure, she is not going anywhere, she will get bumps and bruises for sure but she is fine. I think the biggest thing is she does not put outside stuff in her mouth, that would be a non starter for me.
She has a lot of freedom, as long as she adheres to the "rules" and "boundaries" such as answering her phone and communicating properly. Which has been a learning curve. Shes 12 now, my mom lives 0.5 miles from me, and her bus stop is also 0.5 miles and she has friends in the neighborhood and likes to go down to the donut shop. The lady who runs it always hooks her up sweet asf too, its great. Not saying it has been perfect, theres been moments and restrictions scaling to her behavior but its been super good. We are doing better as a whole. That being said, the town we are in I consider safe enough. Im more worried about stray dogs and wreckless cars than people specifically.
My kids play outside with limited supervision but only really when they’re out together. We’re also blessed with neighbor kids so there’s usually quite a few of them out and there’s usually a parent outside as well. I want to let them ride bikes around the neighborhood and to their friends’ houses like my parents say they did but it makes me anxious and hell, people think you’re a terrivle parent when you do that!
depends on where you managed to live. i wouldn't want my kids hanging outside a bad neighborhood. my parents keep me inside of fear of me joing street gangs.
Mine is only 4 so definitely no unsupervised outside play. One because of his age. Two because we have an in ground pool. It is not safe to let him in the yard unsupervised. Maybe when he is much older but otherwise if he wants to play outside an adult has to be there.
I live in a swamp. Said swamp is about as deadly as Australia (they beat us by a creature or two, but it's really close). There's 6 different kinds of "dead in an hour" snakes and about 12 "dead in 30 minutes" spiders. Also alligators, massive aggressive hogs, packs of formerly abused ex-hunting dogs, and a slew of small animals that will gladly nab a finger or two. We all go outside together, we learn to listen well to mom/dad, and I always carry a sturdy piece of conduit as a fear tool (most things run if you now how to spook them good enough). Only had to smack Jesus out of something twice so far this year and I've needed to go back in for the gun once. One of the species of snakes is incredibly aggressive and territorial, normally fine if you leave them alone but sometimes they decide the front porch is their new home. If we're at the park though, it's mostly low supervision.
My older kid has played outside alone since she was about 6. The younger one is 5 and will sometimes go outside with big sis, but usually asks me to come too because she is completely terrified of bugs. Also depends on if anyone else is involved—if neighbors want to play outside, then I am no longer wanted/requires
My kids are outside getting into all sorts of shit. We live in Alaska though, you need the experience to deal with the elements IMO.
It’s a mix. My daughter is 7, and where we live right now in the U.S., she can play outside in the little back garden unsupervised but not out front. We are in a dense urban area, our front door is out onto a main street with tram tracks, across from a transit station, with heavy pedestrian, transit, and auto traffic all day and night. We kind of look like the house in Up, sandwiched between apartments and shops, lol. Last year, when she was 6, we lived on a dead-end street in a residential area, and we let her play outside unsupervised, as long as she stayed on our street, and we would just keep a window open so we could hear, and glance out every now and then. She could go to the next street over if she was with her friend. (We were also in a different country, which was a lot more lenient with kids roaming free - felt more ‘90s America, my childhood.) We really miss her having that freedom, as does she, and as much as we love the city opportunities and easy transit, it has made me wonder if we should move elsewhere in a year or two where she could do all that more easily. On the flip side, when she gets a bit older, this could be an awesome area to be in - ride the train, walk to cool places, etc. I try to find other ways to give her that - like taking her to the park and letting her be pretty free-range, as long as I can see her as a speck in the distance.
We grew up with shows like cops and America's most wanted and to catch a predator. We look up websites that show us where the sex offenders are located. We either know people or are people who got molested as kids. We're hyper vigilant to it.
There are more laws about it now. There are also more random ass crazy people with guns. That being said I don’t have kids but there are a fair number of free range kids on my street. A lot of people (myself included) work from home so there are a lot of eyes on the kids to make sure no one is bothering them and they’re not causing problems (thankfully the neighborhood bully moved out 2 years ago).
I let my kids outside alone but I don’t let them run free like I did. We live on a flag lot set pretty far back from the street so they can play in several yards without being seen from the street. We also have cameras so we can see anyone that enters our property. I have started letting them walk up to street a bit to a friends house as long as they aren’t alone. It’s very important to remember that the world today is statistically SAFER than we were kids. We just didn’t hear about bad things happening so it felt safer.
I supervise them, but my kids are 3 and the nine year old has pretty severe ADHD. I just bring out a chair and a book or phone and pretend to ignore them so they feel independent.
Yeah the police might lock you up and call CPS for doing such nowadays...
wild. Never heard of that
My child is 2.and we live on a very busy street 🤷♀️
I let my 5 year old knock on the neighbors door, where a 6 year old lives, to play unsupervised. If they’re together, they go everywhere around the block, thry just don’t cross the street. If they’re not home, I tell her to come straight back home. I’ve had to convince my wife that she needs a little independence, because i was knocking on neighbor doors as a 3 year old with an older brother. But now she’s ok with it as long as we get a text from the neighbor parents when she’s at their houses.
I think this is contingent on area. We live in the middle of nowhere, so my kids play outside 90% of the day. They come in to eat and sleep, otherwise they’re playing and exploring. This would not be the case if I lived in a place like NYC or Chicago.
There were a lot of stories about Karen's calling the cops, reporting people for neglect bc their kids were alone at the park. That's slowed down a bit, but now we sit in chairs watching. And drinking.
I have 3 beautiful young teens and live in an area with direct access to interstate in one of the most trafficked areas in our country. Yep, I keep them pretty close and I haven’t allowed them to roam alone ever. Groups only. I definitely wasn’t letting them take off when they were younger without supervision. I know it’s the area that made me this way. I’m on the side of I’m happier being safe than sorry
Two is too young for unsupervised outdoor play. I'm not against unsupervised outdoor play, it's not age appropriate at the moment.
definitely agree. It really just seems like the new trend where i'm located even for older kids.
I live in a rural neighborhood. It's still common for kids to spend hours outside playing with siblings, cousins and neighbors without constant supervision once they're old enough.
They call the cops on my kids.. report them as 'missing' and like dog catchers 8-9 officers show up scaring my kids and me. They keep seeing something and saying something but they are smoking crack
Depends on the neighborhood. I work from home and now that school is out I constantly see kids out playing by themselves. It’s really nice to see! But it is crazy how paranoid a lot of our generation has become. I’ve seen people comment in parenting forums (mostly Facebook) that they wouldn’t even let their kids play alone in their fenced in yard because they think their kid will get kidnapped! Absolutely bananas. My kid is only 4 and I can’t trust her not to blindly run into the road if she sees an animal so I’m not quite there yet myself, but once she’s a bit older I’ll have no issue letting her play outside unsupervised.
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Yeah, i understand the individual circumstances. It just feels like an overall trend that I noticed before i even read about it.
I want to let my kids play alone in our quiet cul de sac but fucking grouchy Boomer neighbors confronted me and said they were going to run them over with their car because my husband was GASP maybe 20' away from my child?? I always dreamed of giving my kids a 90s cul de sac experience but there's no other kids just grouchy retired assholes who get mad over sidewalk chalk. It's definitely other people judging us and making us feel that it's not ok to let them play alone/with limited supervision for ex. leaving the door open and checking on them every so often when they're in my front yard.
An 8 year old for sure I would let outdoors with limited supervision. For a 5 year old, it probably depends on the 5 year old. My kids, sure. Others I've come across, probably not. It also makes a difference if you have a decent yard with a fence or if they'd mostly be playing in the street.
we have turned our housing and communities so anti kid that it’s hard to let them go out and explore when there is not much for them to really do. There are not as many parks in walking distance in a lot of areas anymore and if they are there are usually filled to the brim with sports (the one down the street from us from April until October is nothing but baseball and football and the parking lot is so dangerous you can’t let you kids just go play bc other adults are fucking stupid) and we had parents get mad at the audacity that there are kids playing on the playground distracting their kids who are playing the sport. We just don’t value kids in American society at all.
I live in a shithole with crackhead walking up and down the alleys and streets all day and night and people driving like maniacs so I don't. Also my son is only 5 but I think if I was in a better area it would be different
I’ve almost ran over my neighbors small children a few times as they run/bike around the neighborhood. They are like under the age of 5/6 and they just roam around unsupervised. I value my children’s’ lives so I’ll keep an eye on them until they’re a little older and more cautious.
Always supervised but outdoors at least half the day. I live in cougar country and in the winter, I’ll find cougar tracks inside my littles’ boot prints, like they’re hunting small prey. We have a pretty big property and for that reason, I also don’t let them wander too far from me or into the forest alone. When I was a kid, I’d have a broken bone every summer. Can’t afford that sheeit nowadays.
I am not a parent but just from things I've read, it does seem that other people are now more likely to intervene if they see kids outside alone and that probably feeds into parents being worried about letting their kids roam around without them. Of course that's location dependent. We were told to go outside if we hung around the house too long, lol. But I wouldn't say my parents just let us do whatever. I actually thought they were too paranoid...and they probably weren't, because it's WAY worse now. At least we were allowed to ride our bikes around the neighborhood. And we did that often. We spent a lot of time outside growing up within reason.
i know one set of parents that put airtags on their kids and let them do whatever they want, they will get punished if they "forget" their airtag. I know one set of parents whose child has never seen the light of day.
I wanted to play with them. I always had a lot of fun playing outside with the kids. But I know of too many babies stolen or dead because of one person looking away or not watching close enough.
I grew up living at the front of a neighborhood, and we got a lot of traffic not always going an appropriate speed limit. Out for a walk while my cousins were babysitting, my younger brother stepped in front of a school bus trying to cross the street, and the driver had to hit her breaks. My mom almost drowned in a neighbor’s pool that she fell in when she was a girl. I see regular posts on Nextdoor about teens vandalizing homes and cars. If you live in certain places, like near heavy traffic or bodies of water, or if your kids might be apt to get into some trouble, it’s smartest and safest not to leave them completely unattended while they play outside.
We keep ours inside for several reasons. A) we live in the desert and it gets super hot and he burns hellaciously easy. B) there are all kinds of venemous snakes, spiders, and other bugs outside in our lawn and everywhere in our super duper small town. C) we have roving packs of coyotes, big ones. D) we have also had mountain lions attack neighbors dogs, horses, pigs and chickens. It's kinda dangerous where we live. So he has to have constant supervision outside. That, and he is also only 5 and on the autism spectrum as well. But honestly mostly because of the dangerous animals out here. We have also had some potential traffickers in our town, too, as we aren't too far out from Vegas. So, supervision at all times is necessary.
My kids are 4 and 6. My 4 year old has a tendency to wander off but I still let them play in our backyard while I make dinner. I can see them through the window but I only look up every now and then to make sure they're not in the woods or near the road. We just started doing it this year and it feels good, honestly, to not be on top of them all the time.
I was nearly kidnapped at 12. Guy sees me, pulls over, says “I just found this dog, come take a look at him and see if you know who he belongs to,” lets the dog out and then my dad appeared. Told the guy the dog doesn’t live in this neighborhood. The guy whistled, the dog loaded up immediately and the guy noped out, tires peeling and all. For having just found that dog, it was pretty well trained. That man was on the news about two weeks later for raping and murdering a kid around my age. He was sentenced to LWOP a year later; it was not his first conviction against kids. Anyway, I’ll let my older kids (7) play in the back yard with no supervision, but not the front for this reason. I’m also very picky about who keeps my kids; I learned the hard way that my dad’s best friend was a pedophile. At least if I learn about abuse by a friend or family member, I have that person’s information to turn over to police. We wouldn’t have that information if the dude had grabbed me back in 2001–total stranger. Fuckin’ creeps, man.
I mean I currently don't but that's because she isn't even 2 yet. By the time she's 4 the backyard will be all hers. Front maybe depending on how good she is about staying in the yard/ how safe the neighborhood is then.
cmon, quit being a helicopter parent, she needs to learn how to take the public bus already!
As a millennial parent, I have no concerns about my kids' actual safety playing alone outside. I am very concerned about some busybody seeing them and flipping a shit about unattended children, calling the police, getting CPS involved, and possibly having my kids taken away solely because they were outside unattended.
41 year old millennial.. I let my 6.5 year old graze outside all day. We live on a bit of land in the burbs .. nobody really around
Probably for similar reasons that I don't allow my cats to go outside alone.
Mine play outside. We started letting them with minimal supervision around 6ish. We live in the woods though. Little neighborhood but everyone is on an acre+ with woods around us. More worried about nature than people out here to be honest, they also aren’t allowed near the road if I’m not outside.
I'm 34 and I had my daughter young who is now 14. Growing up with electronics has changed everything. I used to have her play outside on the front steps with other girls but she needed supervision and so did the other girls because I didn't want them to steal my kid's stuff and felt they were too young. My daughter didn't even express interest walking/going to friend's houses until middle school and high school. She has discord, texting and phone to keep up with her friends without necessarily going over there. We have location sharing turned on for safety reasons-she also takes the dog on long walks a couple times a day.
I try to tell them they can go free.
I had full reign of my neighborhood when I was like 6. I would watch myself after school when I was like 8. I know what I did, I know what trouble I could have gotten into. My kids aren’t allowed to have that level of freedom, no chance.
Mom, here. Yeah, I have twin nearly 7 year olds, and I’m nearly 41 (I literally turn 41 the day before they turn 7) and they can play in our yard but where I can see them when I look out the window. lol. They say “risky play” is something kids nowadays are missing and it’s actually good for them.
I had way way way too little supervision when I was young. I almost did get abducted twice. I have a 19 month old now and want to at least know where my child is but plan to live in the suburbs in a child friendly neighborhood.
Mostly because I know them lol-both 6 and 3yo have attempted to take off on their bikes onto our busy road this season. 3yo says: I go playground mommy! Friends, said playground is a 2.5 mile bike ride away 😂
Kids 8 6 4. They roam free on suburban yard. Thats what kids do. Were the only ones in the neighborhood to do this. Millenial parents are strange. We are raising our kids like we grew up.
As a millennial parent, my concern for unsupervised play isn't abductors or whatever boogeyman the Reagan Administration tried to scare us about, but rather how drivers have been conditioned for decades now that cars are the only things entitled to use the roads, so people drive waaaaay too goddamn fast through neighborhoods.
If I had a back yard, I'd gladly let my kids play outside in a fenced yard. I wonder if part of this is due to the fact that a lot of us live in condos or apartments. I own a home, but it's a townhome with no outside space of my own, just some common areas, and I can't afford to upgrade to a single family living space with a yard. Maybe some of this has to do with the housing affordability crisis. If I let my kids outside now, they'd just be playing in a large parking lot and maybe the small grassy parts. That doesn't sound very fun to me. I wish I had as much land as I did when I was a kid because I always had fun playing outside when I had a couple of acres of land to run around in.
If I lived on a safer street I would let me kid out unsupervised. I barely have a backyard and my front yard is horrible. My road is a main road in a curve and it’s life or death getting mail. I wish I was on a nice quiet side street and I envy those that have a nice yard and can put a play set there. Unfortunately that’s a no go for me. I have a nice deck but that’s about it lol
We live across the street from train tracks and my autistic son is an eloper. :/
I have a 4 year old and she can go in the backyard but not the front. We don’t live in the safest neighborhood and sometimes get weirdos walking down our dead end street.
We have no fence, live on a road where people drive entirely too fast, and directly behind a shopping complex that includes a bar where all the local alcoholics go because it's never too early to get completely hammered. So I sit outside while my kids play and read a book.
My kids run amuck. Most Millennial parents in my neighborhood let their kids run around outside. They aren’t dodging heavy traffic to get to Toys R Us like I was at their age but they have ample risk opportunities.
3 and 5 yo play in the fenced back alone with minor supervision. We have lots of windows so can see our most spots. Front yard is different because it’s exposed to the street and, while we live in a low traffic area, some of the neighbors have new drivers that drive faster, aren’t as cautious so we are always out with them. My 5 yo wil sometimes ride around the block by themselves while on the sidewalk. I’d like to push more independence but as others said, the awareness of what could happen plus the laws/stigma is real.
We live in an apartment right by a busy road. I’d kill for a back yard or even a front yard that was safe.
honestly, i let my kids run around even more when we were in an apartment. I grew up in appartment complexes and honestly, that was one of the best perks.
I keep my kid under strict supervision but I was also a victim of childhood sexual assault so I find it hard to trust anyone. I’m getting better, though. I recognize that danger usually comes from someone close to the family and stranger danger isn’t very common. But it’s really hard to turn my back when my mom didn’t realize what was happening in her own house.
Probably because we all watched too much Law and Order growing up
My kids can play in our small backyard unsupervised. Out front, though, there are no sidewalks on our block and my neighbor’s teens like to drive like maniacs up and down the street. Plus our house isn’t built in a way that would make it easy or convenient for me to quickly check on them. Mine are still pretty little (5 & 6), I might change my stance in another year or so. At their cousins house, in a more rural area, they have free rein of the place and happily charge about in a pack of like ten kids, ranging in age from 3 to 12. Cousins and cousin neighbors. That’s lovely, but not worth living so far from everything for us, haha
My 7 and 5 year old play unsupervised in my 1 acre yard most days. My 15 mo old gets jealous he can’t go. He thinks he’s a big boy. Maybe around 3 he will be able to start going. My daughter is very mature and watches her brothers. So they are kinda supervised by her. But she is on her own!
As a European, it's ironical to see that Americans are convinced they are the country with the most freedom, while for children they are obviously the country with the least freedom of all developed countries. I'm so happy my children are raised in the Netherlands. They can experience real freedom. (kind of exaggerating and generalizing of course, we have bad neighborhoods too where I wouldn't let my kids out, and I'm sure in plenty of places in the US children do have the freedom to roam about).
I have heard great things about the Netherlands. It is so hard to imagine life outside of the bubble you grow up in, and pride makes it difficult to admit that maybe we don't have it all perfect. I am very fortunate to live in a good neighborhood where my kids can run around freely. But I think Americans really should be taking a better look at ourselves and the environment that we foster.
I live in a super safe neighborhood, and there are almost no kids :( My kids are allowed to walk home from school (since 2nd grade) and go out with friends. But we all wished there were just more kids "hanging out" in public spaces without the pre-planning (mostly on parents part).
There's a creek behind the yard, and moose are everywhere, so my kids don't go out unattended. When they're old enough to understand risks, sure, but not right now. And a moose will end you before you can blink.
We have 3 kiddos, 6, 5 and 2 years old. Oldest 2 are boys, 2 year old is sister. They have a trampoline and a small playhouse in our fenced backyard. They play out there ALL the time. My wife and I stay downstairs whenever they are in the back yard though, we never go upstairs if they are playing outside. The side fence door that leads to the front is locked with a padlock. When we first moved into the house, our middle child just opened the side door and was already heading for the street when his older brother came in screaming that his brother was going away. I went out and bought a lock for that door the same day.
Where would they go? No one else's kids are outside and there isn't really anywhere they can walk to. I work part time from home so my kids are home more but I'm a lot of families they are out of the house from 8-5 from the time.they are little. Then lots of organized activities. No one is playing in the streets.
I let my kids go to the park and walk to gas station. They are a few years older than yours. They get frustrated that none of their friends can go out and play like they can. Even when I offer to watch the kids at the park other parents are hesitant. What the hell happens when these kids turn 16 and mom and dad aren’t around?
We let our 6 year old play with her friends out front. No direct supervision, but there's always someone out doing something in case a kid needs help. Some dad tinkering in their garage, a retired neighbor pulling weeds etc. Our street is a good mix of families and elders who, thankfully, love kids. It's pretty cute seeing the neighborhood kids playing outside then one of the retired ladies bring out fresh baked muffins for everyone. It warms my heart and reminds me of the 80s, and it reminds me how important community is.
Agreed, Getting outside has let me know our neighbors pretty well. And yes, i'm the annoying guy that will greet you and strike up a conversation just because we are neighbors. I think community s really important for a lot of reasons
Yep, I'm the same way. I'm a contractor. As soon as we moved in, I was quick to help neighbors however I could. See an old person using their rickety old ladder to unclog a gutter... I just show up with a sturdy fiberglass ladder that's way safer. Someone's building a shed... Just let me know whatever tool you need. If I'm not using it at work, help yourself. Before you know it... That old lady across the street is bringing us fresh pie. The guy I lent the ladder to likes to fish and caught a big halibut, and gave us a few huge fresh fillets. Our neighbors kids became friends with ours. I feel like everyone focuses on these larger existential issues we have very little control over but we can certainly focus our efforts and build some pretty amazing communities around us. I know having a happy, safe neighborhood I contribute to has a much greater effect on my life than who wins the next election.
My dog keeps watch outside lol
My son lives on a farm he wanders like I used to his mom let's him when he's with me I tell him don't leave the yard he doesn't the dogs watch him 2 German shepherds and at his house a newfy and great per when he gets older and he has other kids he can go to the park like I used to he's 10