Be a parent and back the fuck off.

[Anonymous]

I was going to post this in the main Troubled Parent forum but this is sort of off-topic for that.

As most of the people on this forum know, assorted sports-related activities bring me in the vicinity of a wide variety of children. For convenience purposes I'll classify them into a dichotomy, although this is more of a sliding scale than anything else.

Kid A: Usually alone or with friends. Only in certain situations (water park) followed around by caring parents who generally keep their hands off. Talkative. Moves quickly. A bit on the hyper side. Confident, even overconfident. Endures scrapes well, wants to do everything.

Kid B: Almost always closely watched by an adult. Rarely goes outside- it's obvious. Often obese. Slow. Quiet, way too God damn quiet. Usually coddled by unnecessary safety devices (motherfucking floaties in the water park on a seven year old?!). Uncertain, scared. May be on some sort of mind-altering drug.

At first when I saw this I figured the Kid Bs were just younger, maybe a bit bigger for their age. Nope. I've had a Kid A follow me around. (No, seriously. I don't approach the kids; it's not my place to do so. It's always the reverse.) He couldn't have been older than seven, probably younger than that. He was all the way to the A side of the scale- stair-climbing exhaustion meant nothing to him and he knew no fear. And when I informed his guardian (don't think it was his mom) that he was following me (and that I didn't care), she didn't freak out.

On the other hand, I've seen eight and nine-year-olds whose parents wouldn't let them more than four feet away. Those kids hesitated even before the slow circular river.

At first I wondered if it was mental retardation on the Kid Bs. No. Not that common. These kids have something done to them, something insidious. Some of it I'm sure is chemical- parents who smoke around their kids, for example. But a lot is obviously simple hard overparenting.

I can't remotely guess the percentages due to the utterly biased sample. Kid Bs are rarely seen outside, after all.

Bottom line: The kid with the parents who back the fuck off and let him go play, is going to grow up stronger, smarter, more sociable, and more self-reliant. I have seen absolutely zero exceptions to this, out of a sample size of dozens upon dozens. If you want to absolutely protect him from the small chance of injury or death living his life, there is a 100% chance you will fuck him up for life doing this.

And yes, it's occurred to me that maybe some of these parents want to have their children as Kid B, an obedient little thing that they can show off in public instead of an actual growing sentient being. I want to kick these parents in the face. Hard. With Heelys on. When the coroner sees the inch-deep semicircular indentations in the skull, he'll know it's me. "Welllp, looks like MGDP got another one. Asshole keeps me in biz, that's for sure."

[Froderik]

My parents were fine with me wandering miles from the house when I was 9. That was back in the 70's. Yeah, there's a happy medium there that lies somewhere between neglect and "over-parenting".

[Anonymous]

To think that I walked to school by myself when I was five with one friend, and traveled blocks away to play in the streets/canyons/forts without my parents knowing specifically where... this was normal then.  I never felt unsafe.

Now I have two children, 4 and 6, and I don't know if its the media or what, but I couldn't imagine letting them walk to school alone.

When I took them to the library recently, another mother gave me holy hell for letting them play outside while I read the bulletin in the foyer.  

Hell--I fear more the wrath of judgmental mothers.

Today, mothers don't support eachother, we just bitch and judge expecting everyone to go at it alone.

When I was coming up, the mothers supported eachother and you can be damn sure that one of them would be on our case when we fucked up.  In this way, we got the message on how to behave in society that we might not get if we had to solely listen to our own parent. Third party reinforcement is usually the most effective. All the kids in the neighborhood knew if there was trouble there was a whole cadre of parents we could turn to who would help us.

Now everyone is on his own, but with a nice side of judgment thrown in.

[Anonymous]

Now I have two children, 4 and 6, and I don't know if its the media or what, but I couldn't imagine letting them walk to school alone.

Dunno about the 4 year old, but just tell the 6-year-old, "You know where the school is, right? You know you have to be there on time? What do you need me for? Go."

There's a billion technological solutions to keep track of them and prevent them from getting kidnapped, including a 110 decibel hyper screamer.

When I took them to the library recently, another mother gave me holy hell for letting them play outside while I read the bulletin in the foyer.

Learn how to be nasty. "Piss off, bitch. Maybe your dumb ass keeps kids on leashes, but my kids are going to grow up to become human beings. Now maybe your tiny little mind can't handle that, in which case I have to ask what you're doing in a libratry of all places."

[Froderik]

To think that I walked to school by myself when I was five with one friend, and traveled blocks away to play in the streets/canyons/forts without my parents knowing specifically where... this was normal then. I never felt unsafe.

This reminded me that I went to the school bus stop by myself in 1st and 2nd grades... The stop was on 39th & Greenmount which was in a relatively 'bad' part of town. No one thought twice about it....

[Anonymous]

Now I have two children, 4 and 6, and I don't know if its the media or what, but I couldn't imagine letting them walk to school alone.

Dunno about the 4 year old, but just tell the 6-year-old, "You know where the school is, right? You know you have to be there on time? What do you need me for? Go."

There's a billion technological solutions to keep track of them and prevent them from getting kidnapped, including a 110 decibel hyper screamer.

When I took them to the library recently, another mother gave me holy hell for letting them play outside while I read the bulletin in the foyer.

Learn how to be nasty. "Piss off, bitch. Maybe your dumb ass keeps kids on leashes, but my kids are going to grow up to become human beings. Now maybe your tiny little mind can't handle that, in which case I have to ask what you're doing in a libratry of all places."

Pretty obvious that you don't have a 6 year old at home....

[Anonymous]

Pretty obvious that you haven't seen a six year old in several years.

I've known several real world children at that age who walked to school every day, so shut your mouth and go back to Struggling Tards or whatever hole in the wall you came from.

[Anonymous]

I've known several real world children at that age who walked to school every day, so shut your mouth and go back to Struggling Tards or whatever hole in the wall you came from.

 :rofl:  :rofl:  :tup:  ::rocker::  ::both::  ::both::  ::bwahaha2::  ::bwahaha2::  ::bangin::  ::soapbox::  ::unhappy::  ::fuckoff::  ::fuckoff::  ::fuckoff::  :skull:  ::fuckoff::  ::fuckoff::  :tup:  :tup:  :tup:

[Anonymous]

Pretty obvious that you haven't seen a six year old in several years.

I've known several real world children at that age who walked to school every day, so shut your mouth and go back to Struggling Tards or whatever hole in the wall you came from.

You sound so lovely....something you're not used to stuck in your ass??

[Anonymous]

Don't you have seven year olds to murder?

[Anonymous]

Don't you have seven year olds to murder?

Is that  supposed to be funny? You must seriously be one unhappy person :cry:

[Anonymous]

i have a boy that is 10, as far as letting him outta my site....pahlease.....the world is not a place for children to be left unattended. too many fuckin perverts in the world today. hello this is not the 70s 80s or 90s. the world is not as it was when we were growing up.

[Anonymous]

i have a boy that is 10, as far as letting him outta my site....pahlease.....the world is not a place for children to be left unattended. too many fuckin perverts in the world today. hello this is not the 70s 80s or 90s. the world is not as it was when we were growing up.

FINALLY a voice of reason!! :tup:

[Anonymous]

You are forgetting kid C, the one who falls in the middle of your two extreme stereotypes, which includes the large majority of kids. Most parents are protective or their young children, I would expect that. What nine year old wants to go by themselves to the mall and hang out anyways? None that I've seen. Kids don't usually even want independence from their parents until the age of 12, 13. When they are old enough to not be taken advantage of quite so easily, and when parents feel more comfortable allowing their kids to go out with their friends to the mall, etc. The child's sex also plays a large part, I'd say most parents would admit being more protective of their girls.
I do not subscribe to the idea that the opposite of a bad parent is a neglectful parent. They are both two negative extremes of the same spectrum.

[Anonymous]

I'm just going to pass the two posts before yours off as retarded trolling or supreme idiocy- either way it's unworthy of response. You've obviously bothered to put some thought into your post, so I'll just have to say this:

I feel like Fornits somehow is connected through multiple universes. The world in which I live does not correspond to the world in which the trolls live. Whatever abyss they're from, I only hope they go back in, and make sure to firmly seal the door behind them. Either it's a dimensional problem or someone's just not paying attention to the real world, and because I actually take time to look around I don't think it's me.

I'll clarify what I see daily. Although children occasionally go alone, they usually travel in packs. I've seen two eight year olds together, sans parents, hanging out at the local Gamestop- yes, in the mall, by themselves. No, nobody was watching them. Profane little guys, too. An eight year old goes with his fourteen year old brother to the skate park reguarly to do some truly daredevil stunts. Some nine year old got his dollar swallowed by the broken vending machine and I got him a Powerade from another one (it was that hot outside; unlike certain people in Utah, I'm not going to let anyone get dehydrated). I've seen bikes locked up at the water park, meaning they came there themselves; judging from the bike sizes the kids couldn't have been more than four, four and a half feet tall. Occasionally a seven year old will go with his nine, ten year old brothers and friends.

And, of course, there's the Kid Bs- the heavily safetied-out and chafed children of parents who watch like mother hens, stick around for a grand total of fifteen minutes, and then leave when their parents are sick of watching them play.

I did mention that it was a sliding scale but the difference is usually fairly stark. The "middle of the road" is rarer than either side.

Am I getting through, yet? This is reality. If i really cared about this flamewar I'd use a digitial camcorder (faces edited out, naturally) to prove it.

For the record, I was going to the mall by myself on a regular basis by the time I was 12, and I had damn overprotective parents; practically everyone else had the same independence I've talked about above, in the fifth grade. The town was loaded with bike paths. I knew it by heart by 13. I can still navigate it from memory.

Neglect, actual neglect, doesn't even enter into it. A substantial number of these kids carry money and have cellphones, for the specific purpose of being in contact in case of emergencies. Out of all of them I don't think I've seen one where any sort of neglect was evident.