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This raedfdzdhr
is a fascinating Facebook rant by a woman I don’t know but am now hoping will be my FB friend, Sara Mabin. It was posted on June 3, so IGNORE the gorilla references. I think she is so right that society seems bent on glorifying the good old, “Lean on Me” days, even while crucifying any modern parents who don’t monitor their kids’ lives and choices.
However, what I have not heard is today’s parents insisting that their OWN parents knew where they were at all times, which is the jumping off point for her piece:
This is the last thing I’m going to say about it, ok? I promise. I honestly don’t care if the woman threw her kid into the gorilla pit, screamed murder, and laughed maniacally as they pumped enough rounds to down a rhinoceros. It isn’t applicable here.
All of you who keep telling me that *your* mother would never have allowed this, *your* mother knew where you were all the time, *your* mother was always there – I call bullshit.
I call bullshit because I know, without question, that your mother allowed you to leave your house at 6 am in the summer and come home when the street lights came on. Do you know how I know this?
BECAUSE YOU WON’T STOP POSTING MEMES ABOUT IT ON FACEBOOK. YOU CAN’T HAVE IT BOTH WAYS, PEOPLE.
You can’t bitch about people who helicopter parent their kids into becoming useless adults while you insist that people helicopter parent their kids.
You can’t bitch that kids never have an opportunity to play outside – that child obesity is at an all-time high – and insist that children never be allowed outside without a parent holding their hand at all times and never allowing them to climb trees, play in creeks, and get dirty.
You can’t bitch that our spoiled-ass children don’t ever experience consequences when you CRUCIFY us for any mistakes we let them make.
You can’t insist that we shelter them from the world by censoring music, books, and television shows, and then get pissed off that they can’t handle leaving home or entering the workforce in the real world….
You wax poetic about the days where your older brother herded all of you to the zoo by yourselves, while your mother stayed home and cleaned the house and cooked dinner and smoked cigarettes and gossiped on the phone with her friends. The only difference between me being at the park on my smartphone and her being in her kitchen is that no one could see her.
I love that line. Treating parents on their phones at the park as child abusers always seems so wrong. Should they be watching their kid’s every hop?
Anyway, the whole piece is here. Â This rant is like running through the sprinklers on a hot summer day. (With mom inside, smoking Marlboros.) – L..
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You can’t love this meme and hate on the gorilla boy mom (or any other parents who refuse to supervise their kids every second).
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Amen. And also– I’m 34, so I grew up in the late 80s/early 90s. It drives me BANANAS when my friends, whom I grew up alongside, post about how they “spent all their time outdoors barefoot” and isn’t it a shame that today’s kids are on their phones all the time. I was AT your house, and I KNOW that you, like me, spent a LOT of your time playing Super Mario Brothers. And watching Full House. We were not spending thirteen hours a day outside chasing frogs.
Had this conversation just this weekend with a very smart friend who kept saying, “Well, it’s just not like it used to be.” I kept screaming “IT’S SAFER!!!” And even with stats and facts, this person just couldn’t believe it. Banging head on wall.
I see this all the time. People remembering the good old days of their childhood and saying how their kids don’t do of this. You know what? you don’t let them! The kids know no other normal. Be driven all over the place never going outside in their etc they know no alternative it’s not the kids fault. The amazing thing is we live in a very safe semi rural area and many of the parents grew up in high crime urban area but as child their parents have them more freedom
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I was born in the mid ’80s. I spent a LOT of time outside as a child. I also spent a lot of time playing with my toys inside. Until I was probably 12 I didn’t spend much time watching television or playing video/computer games unless I was watching my parents or older cousins play.
My husband and I were raised differently, with me and my siblings following this line, where we just had to be at home at certain times, meals, school, etc. No nagging about doing our homework, let alone fighting with teachers about it. We’d go to this one park in Canada (for the 4th of July) which included lots of woods, playgrounds and beach on the lake. We really only saw our parents when we got there, ate, and when we left. Otherwise, we were left to our own devices. My husband, on the other hand, I think was one of the first of the helicoptered generation. Aside from organized sports, he and his brothers were hardly let outside, and then only in the back with their parents. He wants to give our kids more freedom, but I can tell finds it hard to step back, especially when he and his siblings were so carefully monitored. I may have to remind him that all of them got hurt (on a first-name basis in the ER kind of frequency) in spite of the supervision and I’d rather my kids learn to deal with the hurt and other kids while showing that I trust them. I’ve also noticed that if we’re there when they’re playing with other kids and something happens, the oldest one always runs to us to intervene. Freedom engenders competence and confidence.
“Stop. Crucifying. Us. Stop. Help us find a solution. Don’t make parents the bad guys. We are *exhausted* and we are *terrified* and we are *sick to death* of not being able to parent because no matter what we do, we’re doing it wrong.”
Sadly, this *sick to death* anxiety is contagious and passed on to the children of these parents. We wonder why there is generation of kids dealing with mental problems, when SUICIDE creeps up as a leading cause of death. Anxious parents breed anxious kids.
I fear *the man*, meaning CPS and the parenting police, more than I do the proverbial boogeyman that I need protect my kid from around every corner and magically appearing whenever they’re *alone*. After parenting for over 15 years, I honestly believe its 25% skill, 75% luck. BOY have we been lucky! I learned to trust my gut for situations(and trust my kids too) over any armchair Internet Advice giver, though at the same time, it’s nice to hear from other parents who let their kids play outside today and regain a sense of how NORMAL and HEALTHY it is for all of us to go play outside, irregardless of our ages.
Last week I spent three days visiting a town of 5000 people in Ohio where I lived from 3rd grade to 6th.
At that age I walked and biked the whole town, as well as out of town to a state park, an airstrip, and the county fairgrounds.
I saw some kids around in the evenings, but school was still in session during the days so it was hard to see how much freedom they have these days. From all I could find, it’s still a safe little town.
“Had this conversation just this weekend with a very smart friend who kept saying, “Well, it’s just not like it used to be.†I kept screaming “IT’S SAFER!!!†And even with stats and facts, this person just couldn’t believe it. Banging head on wall.”
I’ve had this conversation too, both with strangers and my MIL, and I’ve concluded that it’s not necessarily the case that they even believe things are more dangerous today. I’ve started suspecting that all they really mean by “It’s not like it used to be” is “Letting your kids play unsupervised is no longer considered culturally acceptable.” Sadly, many people’s ideas of right and wrong are so strongly determined by whatever most people around them currently think and do that they wouldn’t even dream of going against the grain.
Some food for thought.
I have heard from enough parents “I’m not going to force my kids to (insert whatever ) like my parents did.”. And there are many short sighted people out there that are also narcissistic. All they remember is being forced to go outside. They can’t see the benefits they got from it.
With technology today being so ingrained in our culture it becomes even more necessary to kick them in the butt to get out of the house. My kids grew up understanding that texting and social media did not count as spending time with your friends. You get up off your ass and go spend time with them.
And before all you start whining about distance, time and all the other excuses, think back cause back when we had one phone on the kitchen freaking wall we went out to see friends.
Brooks,
Yours or his?
Seriously, a lot of this is driven by the sheer number of mouth-breathing idiots out there who sincerely believe (on no evidence whatsoever) that they were placed on Earth by Divine Providence to tell the rest of us stupid peasants what to do.
Is there any evidence in all of recorded history that The State is at all good at raising children?
I think the mistake being made (by both sides of the argument) is the assumption that there is one right way to raise kids
Free-range is appropriate for children who are self-motivated, responsible, and independent. Not every child is self-motivated, responsible, and independent. Hypervigilance isn’t right for all children, either.
If we’re going to take the position that parents know their children best and do what’s best for them, this means not just when the parents do what we would have done, but when they make different choices than we would have made, as well. Like, say, helicoptering.
I think James makes an excellent point about why we shouldn’t judge too much. Some people might have a seven year old who can be totally trusted to cross the road sensibly, not go off with anyone and go to a local park/shop. Others might have a one who is very impulsive and easily distracted and they wouldn’t let go just anywhere.
But I too get pissed off by the fact that those same people posting memes about the freedom ‘we’ had and aren’t kids now rubbish cotton-wool wrapped wimps with helicopter parents, but oh no, it’s so terrible now.
I haven’t really had any time to engage with any parents I know on it, but I too have heard the ‘But there’s so many lunatics out there’ (NO THERE’S NOT!) The other thing I want to add to that is it’s not ‘lunatics’ you have to watch out for if anything, it’s the ‘nice’ respectable people that you know… and they have a much *harder* time of getting away with it now that a child who has had a horrible experience isn’t (I hope) any longer brushed off with a ‘You can’t say that about X, you’re just imagining things’.
James, I only really care about other parents being helicopters when they try to helicopter MY kids. Or insist that I do. I don’t actually have the time or inclination to even notice what they are doing with their kids, but they make damn sure I know what they think I should be doing with mine.
Also, I love the bit about the phone. Even in the comments here, there’s a lot of judgment about parents paying attention to their phones when at the park with their kids. Pretty damn ironic that we agree it’s ok for the kids to be at the park alone, but not ok for me to take them to a park that’s not in walking distance and then let them play on their own while I do something else that I enjoy.
Michelle
With you on the phone thing. People forget that before the phone generation parents would be on the park bench engrossed in a book or newspaper. How is that any different?
I think the “there are so many crazy people out there” tracks back to the Reagan administration. The way mentally ill people were treated in the warehouses that contained them was… not ideal. The Reagan plan was to close the institutions. This resulted in an upsurge in mentally-ill-homeless people… but not everywhere. Not a lot of services for mentally-ill OR homeless people in truly rural areas, and only marginally more in suburban areas, but deep in the urban core… that’s where they are.
Of course, neither “mentally-ill” nor “homeless” necessarily implies “dangerous”.
I think the headline of this article is incorrect, though… I am nostalgic for the good aspects of my childhood period, that doesn’t mean there were no bad aspects to it. I think, looking back, that I probably had too much independence. I didn’t get free rein because my parents thought it was best for me, I had free rein because daycare expenses weren’t in the budget.
My daughter didn’t have quite as much freedom as I had, although she had about as much as she demonstrated capability and desire for.
@Claudia
” Some people might have a seven year old who can be totally trusted to cross the road sensibly, not go off with anyone and go to a local park/shop. Others might have a one who is very impulsive and easily distracted and they wouldn’t let go just anywhere.”
Referring to my comment above about having the freedom to roam a small town at age 8:
I can remember exactly one family that didn’t give their kids such freedom at that age, and they were reviled as overprotective (which is why I remember them). (Almost) every other kid had the same roaming freedom I did. Nobody waited until they were 13 or 21 or 45 or whatever age is considered appropriate now.
On my visit last week, I stayed in a bed and breakfast across the street from that family’s house.
“I can remember exactly one family that didn’t give their kids such freedom at that age, and they were reviled as overprotective (which is why I remember them). (Almost) every other kid had the same roaming freedom I did. Nobody waited until they were 13 or 21 or 45 or whatever age is considered appropriate now.”
I lived in a somewhat larger “small town” at the edge of suburbia. There was no shortage of families that didn’t give their children free roaming. It was usually girls who were sharply limited. On the other hand, it was an agricultural community, and 12-13 year olds were a major part of the workforce (the junior-high schools closed when the berry crop came in, no matter when the “official” end of the school year was scheduled.)
And this has nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not parents are capable of determining whether their children are ready to roam the world unguarded. It is a fact that some parents will let their kids run loose before those kids are really ready for the responsibility, and this is not a new development. Some parents will be far more protective than the kids actually need. This is also not a new development..
@James Pollock
“And this has nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not parents are capable of determining whether their children are ready to roam the world unguarded.”
This doesn’t just happen automagically at a certain age. Before I could have the run of an entire (if small) town, I could go visit friends down the block by myself, or go to the playground behind the house (shielded from view by the school building).
The tendency today is for children to be closely watched every single minute. They’ll never be ready that way. They end up at college phoning their parents 20 times a day for advice on every little thing. Or else going hog-wild.
I was talking to a woman yesterday who told me that she reluctantly allowed her 14-year-old son to go to the park by himself for the first time recently. He’s on the JV basketball team at school and is six feet tall and weighs 160 pounds. but she fears someone will “take him.”
She said she sees stories on the news about kids being abducted all the time and it terrifies her.
I tried to reason with her, but it didn’t work. She’s convinced that it’s not as safe today as it was in the good old days when she was growing up.
“It’s all these sec offenders,” she said. “They’re everywhere.”
It’s frustrating trying to tell someone like that how the world — or at least her little corner of it — is safer than it’s been in three decades.
I always think I’d like to hear people’s definitions of “all the time”. Once per minute? Once an hour? Day? Week?
“The tendency today is for children to be closely watched every single minute.”
(citation needed)
I agree. The hypocrisy of “we were free to roam and parents were more chill” combined with “where were the parents” whenever there unsupervised moment turns just slightly wrong and “parents just don’t know how to parent” whenever there is unsupervised child is frequent.
Even best children are unruly sometimes or do something wrong. Kids that play outside will be too loud or rude once in a while. Parents should raise them to minimize such behavior, of course. However, if you turn around in outrage with “how come parents did not prevented that” each time, then yes, you want parents to helicopter.
Maybe they conveniently remember themselves as super awesome all the time, conveniently ignoring all the times they did something they should not.
I love the bit about the phone too. For some reason, people dislike when they see parents enjoying themselves.
“I fear *the man*, meaning CPS and the parenting police, more than I do the proverbial boogeyman that I need protect my kid from around every corner and magically appearing whenever they’re *alone*. After parenting for over 15 years, I honestly believe its 25% skill, 75% luck. BOY have we been lucky! I learned to trust my gut for situations(and trust my kids too) over any armchair Internet Advice giver, though at the same time, it’s nice to hear from other parents who let their kids play outside today and regain a sense of how NORMAL and HEALTHY it is for all of us to go play outside, irregardless of our ages.”
Absolutely!
James,
I think you will find, if you look, that de-institutionalizing the mentally ill was an initiative started years before Reagan was elected. I’m tempted to say Carter, but realistically it could have been Nixon, who was Liberal Left domestically on a great deal. When the unintended consequences became obvious, the blame was shoved off on Reagan, who happend to be President and who the dominant intellectual clique loathed.
Oh crap.
I walked the walk way back then, and I still talk the talk now.
Nothing ever really changed…(mostly because I’m still brash enough to speak my mind about what I think is good for kids….and what is bad.)
Kids always did imitate adults.
as in couch potatoes, nervous ninnies, teckie-addicted, tv-addicted…..
and my most favorite pet peeve of them all:
“Let’s move to the suburbs, honey. It will be good for the kids.”
No it won’t. A modern designed ex-urbia is about the lousiest thing you can do for a kid.
Chauffeured everywhere behind tinted glass (only thing that’s missing are the white gloves to wave with.)
They’re not visiting dignitaries. They’re in dire need of independent mobility. (An oxymoron in today’s moronic “family-friendly” sprawl.
Of course, a chauffeured kid is a supervised kid.
A thing they never get rid of until they finally get the keys to the car.
It’s just a great big shrug about what we’ve invested in living spaces, pretending that it is wonderful.
When I was a kid, I would have hated suburbia. I still do (for the above stated reasons.)
I didn’t grow up there – and that’s why I actually had a real childhood (as independent as hell.)
And this current legacy that we hand down to children is garbage.
(as they say in recording studios – garbage in, garbage out.)
And that’s a real big mess to clean up.
When I was a kid, I disengaged from domestic dysfunction by leaving the house, via the back kitchen door.
Today this requires reaching for the nearest digital screen.
Who needs a real world when one can dive into a virtual one?
I shouldn’t say it, but I will anyhow.
Kids didn’t create all this. Adults did.
“I think you will find, if you look, that de-institutionalizing the mentally ill was an initiative started years before Reagan was elected. I’m tempted to say Carter, but realistically it could have been Nixon, who was Liberal Left domestically on a great deal. When the unintended consequences became obvious, the blame was shoved off on Reagan, who happend to be President and who the dominant intellectual clique loathed.”
Also, when people attribute de-institutionalizing to Reagan – usually pejoratively – I think they tend to be thinking of it in terms of big bad Republican cost-cutting, and they tend to forget the role involuntary committal played in that institutionalization. Even if you find the homeless, delusional panhandler you pass on your way to work annoying, it’s quite another thing to say he ought to be imprisoned against his will to save you that annoyance.
“I think you will find, if you look, that de-institutionalizing the mentally ill was an initiative started years before Reagan was elected.”
I think you will find, if you look, that the complaint against St. Ronnie wasn’t that his administration de-institutionalized the mentally ill, but rather that his administration didn’t want to fund any services which might have helped the de-institutionalized mentally ill avoid homelessness. No, we’ll just de-fund the institutions, and call it good. We want those lazy bums to get a job and work for a living, right? St. Ronnie himself famously referred to them as “homeless by choice”.
“Kids always did imitate adults.
as in couch potatoes, nervous ninnies, teckie-addicted, tv-addicted…..
and my most favorite pet peeve of them all:
“Let’s move to the suburbs, honey. It will be good for the kids.â€
Yes!
It’s strange and weird that we meet great new friends through our kids’ friends. Our kids like their kids, who usually share similar outdoorsy interests, and we end up hitting it off with the parents of their friends. Nice people often raise nice kids.
Sometimes lost in the parenting advise is how important it is to practice what you preach.
If you want your kids to speak respectfully to others, you have to do it yourself, like treating waiters, cashiers, and others in public with kindness and sincerity. Or getting outside to bike your own neighborhood and finding neat places to explore with the kids. It gives you the parent comfort in knowing what’s out there. Most of it is good, hopefully. You want kids off their phones? Get off of yours. Put them in a cabinet and do something new.
Go somewhere with no wifi. Or combine the two. Anyone have kids that do geocatching? My kids love it…finding someone’s crap hidden in a tree. Go figure.
As for moving to the ‘burbs, we kind of did it reluctantly when I was pregnant with our first. We lived on a beautiful 10 acre farmette and loved the peaceful lifestyle. But there were no kids around for miles. So we moved into a very old suburban community that was built before sprawl and had a great infrastructure for families. Schools, parks, pools, golf, farms, ball fields, shopping and restaurants in a 2 mile radius. It was a conscious decision that we wanted our kids to be near other kids. I wanted to be near other families…we both wanted a community. So we picked the ‘burbs. They’re not all bad!
Everyone no matter how many times that tell them that today is not worse than yesterday they probably won’t believe it. They think all black folk are thugs. Mexican are rapist. And Muslims are terrorists. Let face the fact things aren’t always bad!
De-Institutionalization started in the mid 1970s. Some of it was the result of budget cuts and some was the result of a reaction to the horrible conditions of many mental institutions. As for the budget cuts, many of these were at the state level, so we can’t just blame the Feds.
As to the OP, it was a great read. Parents have always been critical of other parents. The problem with now is that there are so many more ways to let each other know what a lousy job they are doing.
I love what Heather had to say in the first post. I grew up in a very rural part of Michigan in the 70s and 80s (nearest McDonalds for most of my childhood was 90 miles away). Some of my contemporaries seem to have a hard time recalling what it was really like. While we spent plenty of time outside, we frequently spent time inside watching the “boob tube” or just playing.
I was born in 1967, at that time there were over protective parents the term helicopter parent wasn’t invented. I remember not being allowed out of the yard at 12, when I did get some liberty due to mom watching one of dad’s Co worker kids, I still had to be home at noon and supper at 5 pm, and in the house at 8:30, didn’t matter summer or winter, this didn’t change till I left for basic training. I was humiliated by having to beg for more time in front of my classmates on graduation night, 9:30. I do okay interacting with people but my isolation back then has damaged me, I’m 49 ,I have no close friends, I’m single and don’t date . In short if you helicopter you might make them safe but at what cost later.
CPS and a generation of “good deed doer busybodies” creating a generation of “Joels”.
Generally less interaction with peers. Less creative play. Less exploration of risk. NO RISK ALLOWED for anyone under 50!!! Heros are more likelhy to be celebrities than someone who has done something really meaningful. If you don’t clean your room CPS will come and get you! Parent ends up cleaning it quite often. And, yes, there are long-term effects, but I as a parent do not want to go to jail either. I have kids, but I think this cultural/ government forced change has made it not the best time in history to have kids and a lot of people are now having smaller families. Yes, there are other reasons for this too, but certainly one CPS case as a child or young adult is enough to take the edge off of the baby making and a recent study (UK I think said they hit about 20% of families. Over 2 generations that percentage is higher.
Amen. You cannot raise a child equipped to survive in the real world by supervising their every minute. If they never have to think about the consequences or experience them, how will they learn to cope in the real world? A parent’s job is to put themselves out of a job by raising an independent adult who does not move back home after college.
At age 10 I was living in London, England. My mother bought myself and my best-friend London Transport “Red Rover” tickets, which allowed unlimited use of London’s bus system At the time (mid-60’s) entry to museums in the UK was free (at least for children) and we spent an entire day visiting as many of them as we could. What a way to develop confidence and independence. Note that at the time the cell-phone had not been invented and there was NO-WAY for my mother to know where we were. Also note that while there were a lot of policemen (cops) on the street at the time, they did not appear to find it odd that two 10-year old boys were in central London unattended, and I can’t recall that we were ever questioned by any adult at all. At age my mother would allow me to leave the house early, on my bicycle and taking my fishing rod. My “packed-lunch” was a can of Heinz baked-beans (I took a can-opener and a plastic spoon). It was assumed that I was smart-enough to find drinking-water. As Sara Mabin says unless otherwise instructed I was not expected home until the street-lights came on (in fact I was usually hungry or bored earlier, and usually home well before dinner). I would describe my mother as a “submarine parent” who occasionally surfaced to see what was going-on, so she may have swung the pendulum a little hard in the free-range direction, but at the end of the day I grew into a very confident and competent teenager and I try to treat my kids (10 and 12) similarly. What I find with mine however (and this is a bit ironic I think) I usually have to tear the iPads from their scrawny, pasty, little hands and push them out of the door.
idk what your problem is people!
when I grew up in the 80s/90s I was in and out of the house.
but it was one summer day when it wasn’t HOT wasn’t COLD wasn’t WARM it just WAS
that was the best free range day EVAR!
our neighborhood was having a community picnic
there in a HUGE yard/feild were tables of food HUGE open tents staked down to sit/eat/play in
seemed like all the girls in the neighborhood had brought out every MLP play food homemade play kitchen doll dresup doll clothes doctor kit in the world and put them in one empty tent.
THAT was OUR tent.
as the picnic wound down we talked my friend Val’s mom into “connecting” two HUGE tents o they made two “rooms”
Val then bribed her mom with promises to do the dishes every night for a month to run home and fill two coolers one with drinks and one with snacks/sandwiches. She did. the other parents donated extra snacks from their panteries
we wheeled them into our tent “house” along with flashlight and a backpack full of batteries and a radio.
then while the adults went home (Val lived down the street so the walkie talkies from when my family drove to grand lake reached fine)
We PLAYED
the tent became paradise estate we were the my little ponies and our friend Megan was you guessed it MEGAN!!!
WE HAD A BLAST!
other days were just a fun.
but when the boys found me it was always land before time.
and i was always Duckie.
Yep Yep Yep.