I spent 6 hours or so with a friend and her 5 and 2 y.o. daughters last night. I have no idea how you parents do it without going batsh!t insane.
Alcohol. Also, I like playing with my kids (and neighbor kids and even randos sometimes). So much so it annoys other dads because they start to feel inadequate, lol. But I do relate to this sometimes:
Oh I made several trips out to the truck to refill my tumbler of "dark and stormy" They're great kids, no tantrums or anything, it being too hot and dry to get outside and run around was the main problem. They just ran around the living room nonstop
This is the big thing for us. We're not in a subdivision. Not a gated community. Definitely think it would be different if we were. I wasn't in anything like that growing up, but there wasn't many people on our street either (we lived in Texas City and the refineries were buying up the property around the area to create a buffer from the general public...there were like 4 houses left on our block, and it was really ghetto...literally one house had a hole in the roof with people living there. But plenty of "green space".) Out of our friends, we feel like our kids go out more than most...we're just with them most of the time (we rarely watch TV, homeschool the kids, and go camping fairly often. We let them wonder a bit while camping)
The internet happened. For one being entertaining and another revealing how many people out there absolutely ****ing nuts.
Like many things the Internet has fostered alarmism with regard to things like child kidnappings. Most statistics show that crime has dropped since the 70’s and 80’s when many of us were kids. At the same time even then kidnappings were a very rare occurrence. That of course doesn’t mean that there isn’t stranger danger but the amount of fear of it is exaggerated compared to the actual threat. Probably the best thing to do is teach your kids basic stuff like don’t go with strangers. Don’t go too far from home. Get you and your kids to know your neighbors so they can help to keep an eye on them.
Slap an apple tag on him and let him go play. Just kidding. I am an overprotective, worry myself to death mom. Lots of variables... How busy is your street? Do you trust your kid in the street? 1st grade is a little young to be totally free, i'd say 4th grade it's fine. 1st grade, they dont understand danger enough to be safe alone for long periods of itme.
the devils lettuce and unconditional love. they eventually grow out of the running around and sulk in their rooms all day. then they grow up and move out and you miss seeing them raid the pantry daily, but the herb and unconditional love last forever.
Maybe take it step at a time with some ground rules within a certain radius. OP and his wife are both not wrong. Both are right. That's why it's complicated. It's not an either/or situation. You have to think about what you'd do if everything both of you are saying is true. Otherwise you'll get stuck trying to find a "right" answer that doesn't exist.
I just don't see kids playing outside in the neighborhoods anymore, like at all. I think part of is the computer age, and another part of it is kids are extracurriculared out like crazy (which is not necessarily a bad thing). Between school, homework, and activities, they don't have the free time like I did in the early 90's to get home from school and not really have anything to do except go outside and get into whatever exploratory adventure was on tap for me and my friends that day from about 3:30pm to when the street lights came on.
Anyone old enough to remember running behind the mosquito trucks? My and my siblings are probably lucky we're not dead... Maybe we should have been inside.
I don't know if it was just my parents, but the supervision I had back in the 90's feels borderline negligent today. I was like 5-6 years old (and I grew up in the heights not a suburb), as long as I made it known I was leaving they never said anything besides be home before dark.
This is my primary gripe with my neighborhood. You will see kids out and about, but holy **** the tiger moms are out of control. Little Timmy/Sarah has STEM activity at 1, a playdate at 3, music at 5, soccer at 6. JFC... let the kid have some down time. Being bored and exploring the world on your own is a critical part of development.
Seeing these kids arrive at college, I can only nod and agree. (Don't have kids of my own so try not to have strong opinions.) But I now look back and cherish all my times being bored as a kid, pre-internet even, making up games with other neighborhood kids, evil versions of games devised when you don't enough kids to properly play kickball or football... army men in the St. Augustine grass... chasing crawdads in ditches... the works. I don't know how much of childhood was good for me, but that definitely was.
I got a friend that has 2 kids. They begged and begged for bikes for Christmas, he broke down and got them some bikes cause he knew the joy of riding around the neighborhood all day with friends as a child. They rode those bike for 2 days and never touched them again. So now for punishment he'll tell them to go ride up and down the street for punishment. He showed us a video one time of one of them crying a fountain of tears cause he had to ride up and down the street. I never laughed so hard. Its crazy, growing up me and my friends were inseparable with our bikes. If we got in trouble, as punishment we would get our bikes taken away. That was like the end of the world type stuff. Its so different now.
