We recently gave our 9-year old a ‘kid license’ attached to a tile to take around when he runs errands. He’s had not trouble with anything other than one store refusing to sell him cookies on the basis that they didn’t think his mother would approve. He really loves the independence. I’ve given him a cell-phone in a fanny-pack to take when going someplace new, but he doesn’t want to take the cell phone most of the time. Of course we can’t do this with our 6-year old, both because he is clearly not mature enough, and even if he was, I’m pretty sure strangers would object.
I assume you live in the US or Canada. The fact that you feel the need to give the 9-year-old a kid license (the tile is smart!) I think points to societal issues to do with norms and structure that lead to the sort of effects described in the OP.
US and Canadian cities (and much of Europe and the developing world that designed their cities by the West’s example) are generally not designed in a way that is friendly towards kids exploring and existing in the world safely.
I don’t mean ‘safely’ as in ‘they might fall down and scrape their knee or get lost’, I mean ‘safely’ as in ‘they might get struck by a driver going 40mph while staring at their phone as they barrel down a stroad’ or ‘they need to walk 3 miles to get to the nearest convenience store or park’.
It’s easy to find a number of examples of parents being disciplined or even arrested for allowing their children to walk to school, the store, or the park. To allow a child outside without guidance is considered gravely irresponsible by western society at large in a way that really isn’t healthy or helpful for promoting independence, in my opinion.
In Japan there’s a cultural rite of passage (usually in smaller towns, it seems) where children sometimes as young as 3 or 4 are sent on an errand, usually to go to the store and pick up a few things, or visit a family friend and retrieve something. There’s a Netflix series documenting a slightly more staged version of this, called ‘Old Enough!’. It’s very cute.
Here’s another potentially interesting article regarding this, from NPR, about playground safety:
I hope one day we can organize our society in a way in which kids can experience safe amounts of risk and develop into capable human beings. Thanks for doing your part.
It’s easy to find a number of examples of parents being disciplined or even arrested for allowing their children to walk to school, the store, or the park. To allow a child outside without guidance is considered gravely irresponsible by western society at large in a way that really isn’t healthy or helpful for promoting independence, in my opinion.
While I agree that society is too far in the direction of not letting kids do things independently, I think it’s easy to think the status quo is worse than it actually is. I think these examples of Child Protective Services (CPS) making the wrong call are pretty bad, and I agree they’re partly “society considers letting kids be alone outside irresponsible” but also “CPS has a lot of discretion” and “if you make a lot of calls some of them will be wrong”.
Also, in a survey I ran the median age for when my sample thought a typical child in their area could be ready to play at a playground unsupervised was 8.4y. When you say “child outside without guidance” it’s not clear whether you’re thinking 4, 8, or 12.
We recently gave our 9-year old a ‘kid license’ attached to a tile to take around when he runs errands. He’s had not trouble with anything other than one store refusing to sell him cookies on the basis that they didn’t think his mother would approve. He really loves the independence. I’ve given him a cell-phone in a fanny-pack to take when going someplace new, but he doesn’t want to take the cell phone most of the time. Of course we can’t do this with our 6-year old, both because he is clearly not mature enough, and even if he was, I’m pretty sure strangers would object.
I assume you live in the US or Canada. The fact that you feel the need to give the 9-year-old a kid license (the tile is smart!) I think points to societal issues to do with norms and structure that lead to the sort of effects described in the OP.
US and Canadian cities (and much of Europe and the developing world that designed their cities by the West’s example) are generally not designed in a way that is friendly towards kids exploring and existing in the world safely.
I don’t mean ‘safely’ as in ‘they might fall down and scrape their knee or get lost’, I mean ‘safely’ as in ‘they might get struck by a driver going 40mph while staring at their phone as they barrel down a stroad’ or ‘they need to walk 3 miles to get to the nearest convenience store or park’.
It’s easy to find a number of examples of parents being disciplined or even arrested for allowing their children to walk to school, the store, or the park. To allow a child outside without guidance is considered gravely irresponsible by western society at large in a way that really isn’t healthy or helpful for promoting independence, in my opinion.
https://reason.com/2023/01/30/dunkin-donuts-parents-arrested-kids-cops-freedom/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/04/13/parents-investigated-letting-children-walk-alone/25700823/
https://www.cnn.com/2014/07/31/living/florida-mom-arrested-son-park/index.html
In Japan there’s a cultural rite of passage (usually in smaller towns, it seems) where children sometimes as young as 3 or 4 are sent on an errand, usually to go to the store and pick up a few things, or visit a family friend and retrieve something. There’s a Netflix series documenting a slightly more staged version of this, called ‘Old Enough!’. It’s very cute.
Here’s another potentially interesting article regarding this, from NPR, about playground safety:
https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2018/03/15/594017146/is-it-time-to-bring-risk-back-into-our-kids-playgrounds
I hope one day we can organize our society in a way in which kids can experience safe amounts of risk and develop into capable human beings. Thanks for doing your part.
While I agree that society is too far in the direction of not letting kids do things independently, I think it’s easy to think the status quo is worse than it actually is. I think these examples of Child Protective Services (CPS) making the wrong call are pretty bad, and I agree they’re partly “society considers letting kids be alone outside irresponsible” but also “CPS has a lot of discretion” and “if you make a lot of calls some of them will be wrong”.
Also, in a survey I ran the median age for when my sample thought a typical child in their area could be ready to play at a playground unsupervised was 8.4y. When you say “child outside without guidance” it’s not clear whether you’re thinking 4, 8, or 12.