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Wait…isn’t there a family in Florida who had their kids taken away because the 11 year old was unsupervised for 90 minutes? Maybe the authorities can watch this video and remember that kids who are 11 are not babies. In fact, they can SAVE them. Even in Florida!
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Those boys were braver than I’ll ever be!
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Lenore….you beat me to the punch! I just saw this on the Fox News website and was gonna send it to you. I’m surprised Child Protective Services didn’t prosecute the nearest adult for allowing a 10- and 11-year-old boy to go into a burning building, even if it was to save a life!!
That’s a wonderful story!
Awesome boys.
Any word yet on charges against their parents?
Summary for those who can’t watch videos?
And then there’s this:
http://www.aol.com/article/2015/06/17/boy-9-saves-his-classmate-from-abduction/21197441/?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl26%7Csec3_lnk4%26pLid%3D-462281890
This link links to something else (at present, whining about interest rates going up.)
Great story!
I don’t understand how the media uses ages. Is “young boys” appropriate for a 10 and 11 year old? I have a 3 year old son: he is a young boy. I wouldn’t consider my 11 year old a “young boy,” but an “older boy.”
It’s certainly worse with girls and women, with the media referring to 17 year old female teens as “young girls”–making, presumably, my 5 year old daughter an early-stage female embryo.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard the media use “older boy” or “older girl” to describe anybody. You apparently jump straight from being a “young girl” or “young boy” to being a grown adult. It’s very strange. And honestly strikes me as kind of creepy.
Okay. Let me be the cheeky one then.
“I’m a nervous mom”
“I’m afraid of cars”
*Is afraid of 100 feet tall waterslides.*
*Is afraid of the rides on Coney Island.*
“Those boys were braver than I’ll ever be!”
You’re surely setting the bar very high for them, aren’t you? 😀
@anonymous mom,
I’m right there with you. I hate the way the public/media is down grading the capability of children by calling teens “young girls”, middle school kids “little boys/girls” and such. I’ve also even heard a fair number of people calling kindergarteners (and sometimes older) “babies.” I won’t even call a toddler a baby. It’s demeaning and toddlers do notice. I’ve had more than one toddler give me an eager smile when I corrected my daughter for calling them babies saying with a laugh “He/she is definitely not a baby.”
I’m heard women in their early 20s refer to themselves as “young girls.” I’m sorry, but you are a grown-ass woman, my friend. Own it.
I just remember how infuriated it made me, when I was a teenager, to be called a “girl.” I felt it was demeaning and belittling, and I did NOT want anybody referring to me that way (much less a “young girl”!). I was a woman, thank you very much. Maybe a young one, but a woman. Girls were children, and I was not a child.
I may have been a bit too militant about it, but I’d prefer to see a little more of that spirit in teens and young adults today than defining themselves as “young girls” up until they are almost 30.
My impression of today’s youth is that they are really very capable, despite all the coddling and shrink-wrapping the crazy adults try to do to them. I hope that their natural drive to discover things will overcome the coddling, when they get a bit older.
An 11 year-old boy is not a “child” or even so much of a “boy” anymore. By 11, any guy worth a damn is out there annoying the adults with pranks, like making firecrackers or being gross with the humor. We’re talking sixth grade here. As this story shows, however, there is some character buried in the soul of a lot of 11 year-old kids.
Wow. I am so proud of those two kids… who in a *genuine* emergency, acted like sensible adults.
What if they’d just called 911, then went away content with their moral superiority, like so many busybodies have done with not-so-genuine emergencies…
Kids are not only more competent than some adults give ’em credit for, some kids are demonstrably more competent than the adults who can’t see kids’ competence.
Speaking of incompetent adults, without knowing the story, I’m baffled as to why the father would have been gathering water to put out the fire while he had a baby and toddler, as well as two other children, in the house? Get the kids out! Either this was a pretty small fire that wasn’t immediately endangering any lives or the father handled this very poorly.
Come on guys, aren’t you exaggerating a bit? Eleven-years-olds ARE children. Not little children (for me that would only be up to like 5 or so, at most), not young children (the next few years), but still in the middle of the age range 0-18, therefore children. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that.
I don’t disagree that 11 year olds are children. But, I’d say they are older children, since they are almost teens. It’s using “young boys” and “young children” that I think is silly and basically meaningless. If we simply append “young” to “child” every time we use it, what’s the point of using the adjective at all? If “young” is used before “child” it should be used because the child in question is among the younger of those in the larger group of children.
Maybe it’s pedantic, but I think the media purposefully refers to tweens and even older teens as “young children” because it makes the viewer feel both more sympathetic (aww, they are just babies) and more threatened (they are out for our babies!), and that should be resisted. An 11yo is a kid, but not a little kid or a young kid. A 17 year old teen is most certainly not a “young girl.”
Remember the 3 year old girl who ran to the Fire station to save her father, who passed out? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bs-S7n9yUTc
What surprises me about the Fox News report on the two boys, is how surprised the reporter sounded that 2 young boys can be capable of saving the other children. Many adults really don’t give children the credit they deserve. It’s that coddling that makes children weaker, mentally and emotionally.
Personally, I would expect anyone over the age of 8 to know right from wrong, and how to deal with basic emergency situations. Children aren’t invalids. Never have been, never will be. Unless they are taught to be one by their parents and other adults. They are what they learn. What will you teach your children? 😉
@Resident Iconoclast: Children have ALWAYS been capable. Less now than in previous generations. But only because today’s parents, and adults that look after kids, treat them like they aren’t capable. That because they are children, they don’t know anything. When in reality, children are like sponges, they absorb everything done and said around them. Many times parents don’t even realize they are. Ever see parent’s act all surprised when they see their 2 year old kid doing something “out of the ordinary”, but not uncommon? eg. Working the dvd player on their own. Or making a snack on their own. They LEARNED that.
So if they can learn good things, they can also learn the bad things. And parents won’t even realize it. That’s why it’s so dangerous for kids to be coddled and sheltered. They never learn the necessary skills and knowledge to keep themselves safe. They never learn to become confident, and have good self-esteem. They end up learning to be adults, when they become “adults”. Many parents today are setting up their children to fail in their future, and they don’t even realize it.
“A 17 year old teen is most certainly not a ‘young girl.’â€
Depends on who or what you’re comparing her to.
A 17-year-old attending an AARP is a “young girl”. A 17-year-old attending classes at a University probably isn’t, but might be, in some contexts.
The older you get, the more young people there are and the fewer old people.
A 17 year old might be relatively young, but she is not a young girl. A girl is a female child. A person is only a child until either puberty (if we go by nature) or 18 (if we go by the law). So a 17 year old cannot be a “young girl” in any meaningful sense, although she might be a young person when compared to somebody older.
It is both demeaning and creepy to refer to female teens as “young girls.” It sounds porny, and it denies their agency and maturity.
“A 17 year old might be relatively young, but she is not a young girl.”
As noted above, this depends on context.
“A girl is a female child.”
This is one defintion. “Girl” can refer to females, of ages well beyond 18. The trend, increasingly, is to use “girl” as a synonym for “female”. The term “ladies” is increasingly falling out of usage..
“A person is only a child until either puberty (if we go by nature) or 18 (if we go by the law). So a 17 year old cannot be a “young girl†in any meaningful sense, although she might be a young person when compared to somebody older.”
Again, context matters.
“It is both demeaning and creepy to refer to female teens as “young girls.†It sounds porny, and it denies their agency and maturity.”
Your characterization seems overreaching.
As for denying their agency and maturity, it does so only if you assume that “young girls” lack either or both.
“As for denying their agency and maturity, it does so only if you assume that ‘young girls’ lack either or both.”
If somebody has agency and/or maturity in any meaningful sense, I would say it’s wildly inappropriate to refer to them as a “young girl.” But, while I have no problem with contextualizing things, I also believe that words should actually mean things.
I would like to know, if I read a news story that says that a man is approaching “young girls” and offering them rides, if this means that a man is trying to coax 5 year olds like my daughter–objectively, a young girl–into cars with promises of candy and puppies or if he’s some guy chatting up 16 and 17 year olds (who he may very well think are college students) and then leaving them alone when they show no interest. Because that difference matters. But, when “young girl” is used to refer both to a 5 year old and to a 17 year old or even to a 22 year old, then suddenly when I see the term used it’s not actually conveying any useful information. And if words aren’t actually conveying useful information, then they aren’t being used very well.
I see no reason to replace “women” with “girls.” When 30 year old men start referring to themselves as “boys,” perhaps I’d be less put off by 30 year old women referring to themselves as “girls,” but “women” works perfectly well for now.
“And if words aren’t actually conveying useful information, then they aren’t being used very well.”
One of the meanings of “girls” is “unmarried women”. I’m sorry that you don’t like this, but there it is. Are you expecting 500 million English-speakers to adjust their use of language to suit your preference?
“I see no reason to replace “women†with “girls.†When 30 year old men start referring to themselves as “boys,†perhaps I’d be less put off by 30 year old women referring to themselves as “girls,†but “women†works perfectly well for now.”
Your wish is granted retroactively.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQo1HIcSVtg
So you will take no offense, I suppose, if somebody said you were attracted to young girls?
“So you will take no offense, I suppose, if somebody said you were attracted to young girls?”
Context is key (have I mentioned this before?)
I don’t think there’s an intrinsic problems with using most words at most ages. The problem is contextual. When a word starts to ‘creep’ in its common usage, it usually indicates a change in how people are viewed.
For instance, there is a significant difference between a professor who refers to “college students” and one who refers to “college kids” in how they are likely to view their students. When “college kids” becomes more popular – as has been happening – you can expect that this will be accompanied by colleges expanding their “parenting” role. That role used to be very large, than it shrank significantly – now it’s back on the upswing, albeit in a different direction than in the days of curfews and sex-segregated buildings. The popularity of the phrase “kids” didn’t cause that – it’s just an indicator.
@James, I appreciate a contrarian as much as anybody, but I’m struggling to think of a context in which “James is attracted to young girls” is a statement you’d be cool with.
And that’s the issue. Because we all have a certain image of a “young girl,” and it’s a prepubescent child, probably 3-7 or so. So when the news says that a man in a car approached a “young girl” and tried to “coax” her inside, our thought is going to be that there’s a man in a white van driving around trying to lure small children who may not have a great capacity to understand what’s going on into his car, not that some guy might be hitting on teen girls who look like adult women, seeing if they want rides, and then leaving them alone if they don’t. The first situation is quite scary, the second situation is not scary at all. It matters.
When the news tells us that a man has been arrested for “abusing young girls,” our first thought of course is that this is a child molester who assaulted prepubescent children. But, it’s quite possible that he was in a relationship with a willing postpubescent teen a year under age (or even, if you are in my state, an 18 year old woman who happens to be a student at a high school somewhere if he is a high school teacher at a different school in the state). That’s not to say the latter is just fine, but obviously the guy who would molest a prepubescent child poses a very different and more serious type of risk than the guy who would have a relationship with a willing postpubescent teen. Language matters.
If, in your own life, you want to refer to teen and adult women as “young girls,” go ahead. But, the media–which should be in the job of conveying information–should do better, and reserve the terms “young girls” and “young boys” for actual young children.
I’m not appreciating a contrarian that feels a need to derail every thread.
@anonymous mom June 18, 2015 at 4:08 pm
Okay, I agree with you there. Though my age range for ‘young girl’ is a bit older than yours, maybe 6-8 or so. But that could be semantics rather than cultural view of these children.
I don’t object to the use of ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ when young (or even not-so-young) adults refer to themselves/each other, as I’m guilty of that myself! 🙂
Great story! Just wondering why the dad didn’t get them out before he went outside to find water. Weird.