Comments on Crunchy Chicken: Free range children

I raised two Free Range Children that played outsi...

2009-05-11T08:29:00.000-07:00

I raised two Free Range Children that played outside, walked up the street alone, rode their bikes to school and lived to tell.

We were the freaks of the neighborhood, sure, but we were happy.

Fear is in the eye of the beholder.

I don't think there are more bad people out there....

2009-01-12T19:59:00.000-08:00

I don't think there are more bad people out there. I actually think there are fewer - remember that most kids are and always have been victimized at home, and when I was a little kid they didn't have offender registries (hell, the Boy Scouts and the Catholic Church and god knows who else were still quietly pretending they could just be reassigned and all would be well.)

But when more kids were free range, they had each other to call on for help. They had near-age siblings and aunts and uncles (in big families, there is a lot of generational overlap) and the friends and school mates of relatives, or the relatives of friends and schoolmates.

You don't change this trend by putting one kid out in the yard by themselves. It has to be a general shift in attitudes...and as long as we have this fear and control-based culture that says danger is everywhere and Mom can thwart it, it won't change.

(p.s. we weren't allowed to run free in our suburb, we all had to have buddies to walk home with and we got warnings over the school intercom sometimes if a van with no windows was seen in the neighborhood...but I was allowed to free range in my grandparents neighborhood, where we did things like play kick the can and show each other our private parts. You don't get to choose what your kids do with their freedom, when you give it to them.)

What drives me nuts about this topic is that peopl...

2009-01-12T11:58:00.000-08:00

What drives me nuts about this topic is that people are very happy to keep their children indoors playing video games and watching TV because ONE child in their town was kidnapped. Of course it's a tragedy, but far more tragic is the the MILLIONS of children whose brains are becoming mush from all the screen time. Research has confirmed for years now the dangers of screen time on the developing brain -not to mention the obesity factor- but people will take those options over the very slim chance of abduction. it's nuts!!! over 2 MILLION americans weigh over 500 lbs! Talk about dangerous! Statistically speaking it is WAY more dangerous for a kid to stay indoors than out!

Mine are free-rangers all the way! While living in Japan they would go to the neighborhood park with all the other kids from the neighborhood at ages 3 and 5. They are now 7 and 9 free range homeschoolers that tend to spend many hours a day on top of the monkey bars on the other side of a chain-link fenced in public school. It drives the yard duty ladies nuts! hahaha.

they don't have free run of our neighborhood, but ...

2009-01-11T19:50:00.000-08:00

they don't have free run of our neighborhood, but they have free run of our property. when we last moved, we were unable to find a home to buy that had a yard that was suitable, so we decided to rent. when we looked at rentals, we found we could either choose a house that was sized appropriate for our family but that had a tiny yard or the opposite, a tiny house and huge yard.

we decided on a 1000sf rental that sits on a half acre (and we're a family of six). we were "upgrading" from 650sf (for five of us), so the 1000sf originally felt luxurious. we've filled it to the brim, but the yard is what keeps us here. it is fully secure and visible from almost all of the house, but allows our young children time to roam and be kids. they get a little too adventurous climbing on the playhouse and in the trees and i didn't get to eat a single apple from the young apple tree last year because they spent afternoons eating themselves sick with apples, but it's been worth it.

one trade-off: when we moved from a larger city to a more rural area, we had to give up almost all of our walking and instead drive almost everywhere.

We have free range kids. As they age they can go f...

2009-01-10T15:13:00.000-08:00

We have free range kids. As they age they can go further. So far we have reached both nearby parks and the local school grounds which are extensive, open and green. All I ask is that they tell me where they are going to be and that they come back for lunch and tea. They also have to stay together and have long since been taught about dos and don'ts as they have been walking home from school since they were 5 and 7. We spent several weeks teaching them the route and how to deal with roads and each week I picked them up a block further away until they had the whole distance including the bus trip learned. I now know that they could get themselves home from almost anywhere and they have bus cards in their pockets. They also learned stranger danger and a series of safe points along the way. (We do live in a pretty safe city where large numbers of kids do still walk.)

They have pretty much the same freedoms we had and yes..of course I worry about them, but that is my problem, not theirs. I did look up some statistics and discovered that the streets are actually safer than they were so traffic awareness was really our major concern. That got drummed in from the time they could walk.

viv in nz

in the mid 60's, when I was four, I regularly walk...

2009-01-09T23:09:00.000-08:00

in the mid 60's, when I was four, I regularly walked half a block and around the corner of our San Francisco neighborhood to the grocery store. on the way I would stop at the chinese restaurant for a complimentary cookie and then if the "big kids" (i.e. middle schoolers probably cutting school) were hanging in the laundromat, they'd 'give me a ride" in the huge dryer... then I'd pick up the half gallon of milk and pound of ground meat and have change from the dollar for a candy bar or popsicle. FOUR!! I checked this memory with my mom, and she said yes, I was four.
would I allow my child this freedom? no.

No my kids do not have anywhere near the amount of...

2009-01-09T17:20:00.000-08:00

No my kids do not have anywhere near the amount of freedom I had as a kid. Or at least my youngest doesn't. Not because I fear abduction or a horrible tragedy, but because when accidents happen today parents get investigated for neglect.
We don't allow bruised knees, broken arms, or stitches anymore without serious investigations.
My kids are 10 years apart and I have seen major changes in those 10 years. When my son decided to climb on the edge of a toy box and leap off and cut his head on a corner table at an aunts house while I was at work, we took him to the hospital and the stitched him up. They had an assembly line of boys getting stitches that day. I wonder if it was because it was super bowl weekend...
10 years later and I end up with CPS on my door step because my 4 year old has bruises on her knees from running and falling down a lot. Supposedly she was attacked by my german shepherd. The CPS officer was rather stunned when I laughed at her when she told me why she was there. Personally I think that if a full grown german shepherd attacked a 4 year old, that damage worse than bruised knees would be involved.

But in those 10 years we went from expecting kids to have minor spills to assuming that parents are neglecting their children or abusing them if they so much has have a bruise on their knee.

So yes, I think these kids would be healthier more competent adults if they could roam free like we did. But it is so socially unacceptable now, that their parents would likely end up loosing custody due to neglect if they did.

I grew up in a very secluded suburban area in a ne...

2009-01-09T07:02:00.000-08:00

I grew up in a very secluded suburban area in a neighborhood with lots of other children and no "major" roads (only the "neighborhood" roads). We had the full run of the neighborhood, the nearby park and wooded area surrounding the houses. There was also a country club about a mile away, and most of us, who lived in my neighborhood and went there to swim in the summer, walked there. I spent the entire summer (except when it got too hot - about 105° in the shade ;) outside.

I don't live in as protected an area anymore. My children are allowed to go outside, at will, and they play in my yard and in the brook behind my house. Most of the land near my house is privately owned (and much of it fenced), and I don't want them in someone else's yard, which is why they don't have as wide a range as I had.

I think giving them that freedom is what will protect them against the things we parents worry about - specifically, "predators", and I don't mean the four-legged kind. There is significant evidence to suggest that children who are self-assured are less likely to be targeted, because they are most likely to tell someone. My children are nothing if not "self-assured" :). The fact that I know most of my neighbors also helps to ease my concerns for my children's safety ;).

I grew up on 50 acres in the middle of nowhere, so...

2009-01-09T06:12:00.000-08:00

I grew up on 50 acres in the middle of nowhere, so we had free range on our land, though not many playmates except each other. We are now living on 200 acres (in town, actually (long story) but it SEEMS like we're in the middle of nowhere since we're in the middle of the 200 acres. And nobody driving by on the main roads would have any idea our house existed.

So yes, thanks to our location, we are able to give our kids the same freedom to roam outside that I had as a kid, and actually more, since I went to school so was gone a good part of the day most of the year, whereas we homeschool so the kids get free time outside every day (if they want, if it's cold & not snowy they tend to prefer to stay inside).

I don't know if the world is more dangerous... or ...

2009-01-09T05:37:00.000-08:00

I don't know if the world is more dangerous... or if we are finally aware of how dangerous! THOUSANDS of kids go missing every year. I think even hundreds of thousands. These statistics are easily found, if you wanted to find it.

In myneighborhood, a downtown neighborhood, I live where manyprofessional people want to live- lawyers, local politicians, doctors (because we have four hospitals literally up the street), but since we live down town, we get homeless people wandering down our street, and sometimes we have people who drive down our street looking for someone outside (putting out garbage, gardening, or in my case last week, putting something in my car) they stop, ask for directions, make smalltalk,then tellyou aboutsome tragedy,and they need gas money and could I help them at all. I fell for it once. They say the worst danger comes from someone that kids think are friends of yours, so check out the sexual offender/predator alert for your state and they can tell you who in your neighborhood has been convicted of one of these crimes. You would be surprised.

We live in a really nice neighborhood, but I would say it may not be as safe as my friends who live in the gated nearby (with aneven higher price tag attached.)

Our daughters a bit older now but when she was you...

2009-01-09T05:29:00.000-08:00

Our daughters a bit older now but when she was younger she roamed the trailer court with other kids her age, walked to school mostly by herself, played in the woods edge by house. the trailer court had nice big lots so you could put up swings, plahouses or small gardens. They also had a few well built playgrounds. Often she would go to the school lunch program on her own at the school during summer.

When we moved into county she still had some free range area. Lots of acerage to roam and play. Never thought twice to letting her sleep outside in her tent all summer, or ride her bike around. She walked honme the mile from the busstop even in the coldset, wettest days. Unless there was a seriously dangerous windchill going which only happened a couple times in 6 years. In crappy weather other kids getting dropped off by us would get ride ad they thought we were weird for not picking her up on those days. I think it made her a better person.

I grew up pretty much running seriously wild. Grew up living in a house on waters edge. We were all taught to swim early on. My dad worked alot and my mom could not swim. But we were allowed to swim with supervision when we were younger and by 8 we were allowed to go by ourselves w/out as long as we asked. I spent countless hours roaming the woods, building tree houses, biking and generally just being anywhere but home. In the winter we skated on a shoveled rink, built snowforts, played hockey and were outside pretty much all day. Even in really cold weather.

When we first moved back into county my husband would flip out everytime I let our daughter run free range. Most times I had no clue where she was on property. She learned quick to stay close when dad was home and roam when he wasn't. She never broke a bone or ended up in hosipital with an injury like he alwys said she would.

She checks in more now that she is going to Community College in town than when she was young. My biggest worry in her life is when she actually goes to college out of town and lives either in dorm or apartment. the amount of crime of all kinds is pretty high on campuses. Much of it goes unreported to college security or gets under reported to public in general. I lived on campus and worked for dorm director and learned from there the amount of stuff that was going on. Had my parents known the exent I'm sure they would have pulled me out of school and had me right at home again.

I think, YES the world is more dangerous. I think ...

2009-01-09T00:00:00.000-08:00

I think, YES the world is more dangerous. I think freedom of thought has reached an apex and has now boiled over into a dangerous area. People are free to think whatever they like, including but not limited to: I desire chilren for sexual partners. I can manipulate people in any way I want to, if they are gullible enough to fall for it. Etc.

So, parents need to watch out for pedophiles/kidnappers/etc. In rural MO there was a boy stolen last year (13 years old) after getting off the bus. You'd think 13 is a safe age, wouldn't ya? And this was in a very rural country-ish area.

There are just a few people in the world that ruin it for everyone else. It sucks.

I always thought that nothing would ever happen in...

2009-01-08T23:51:00.000-08:00

I always thought that nothing would ever happen in MY town... and then on the news last month a 13 year old girl was walking home and was grabbed into a van and raped. Thankfully she made it back home, but it really is scary. I played in the woods far away from our house all day every day when I was growing up, but then again I lived in remote rural Alaska with 8 houses and a float plane dock...

Keeping children safe thoughts from Pam Coronado a...

2009-01-08T23:30:00.000-08:00

Keeping children safe thoughts from Pam Coronado a psychic investigator that deals with missing children cases. She knows facts and myths about keeping children safe and our fears.

http://www.pamcoronado.com/childSafety.htm

Also, read her collaborative book: KID SAFE... How to make kids smart and safe with their innate minds.

Very interesting post Crunch!
I grew up free ra...

2009-01-08T22:54:00.000-08:00

Very interesting post Crunch!
I grew up free range inter-city, by virtue of a free range mom and her being a single working parent my brother and I relied allot on each other and also learned allot. It was not always safe but because we were raised in this environment we were always alert and took care of each other.
I have three children (7, 5 and 2) we live in the city but not the 'inner-city'. All three of my kids are ‘city trained’ (always stop when the sidewalk ends, look both ways, never cross w/o an adult, know how to ride a bus and how to hail a taxi), I have to say most of this was due to my mom who when providing free child care and respite would/still does take the kids ‘out’. The funny thing is my hippie grandchild crazy mom has few rules so the fact that she is super strict about the kids being street safe makes them listen.
All of this being said… I let the kids play in the back fenced yard when ever they want, going with the screaming/no sound at all checking method. I let my 7 year old ride his bike around the block by him self starting last summer. But none of this is the unsupervised outside time I think we are all referring to from our childhood (in or out of city). I do let them range free in a large parks but I don’t think that’s the same either. None of this is the fort building, group bonding, forever friend making and breaking kind of imaginative play that I think the great outdoors can inspire. We travel quite a bit with our children both in the country and out and I am always very interested in the different dynamics of children and parents/caregivers in other especially in other countries.
Because I am very secure with my kid’s knowledge of the end of the sidewalk I think nothing of them running full blast till five feet from the end, knowing they will stop on a dime, but it unnerves even the most seasoned of my neighbors. I get comments about letting my about letting my kids ‘run too far ahead’ and I know other parents who have gotten grief for letting their kids walk to school alone for less than one block. We all have to be comfortable with our own choices in order to make the other voices bled into the background.
Frequently I see a bike train of kids riding to school by my house, my guess is it’s like a walking school bus concept but on bikes. I don’t know the kids or parents but every time I see them I am proud of them. I have heard them working out problems together (one kid is late when they get to his meeting corner, what should they do) and I have seen them watch out for each other on the road/sidewalks.
Getting everyone thinking is the best part!
C-

I grew up free range!

Hippy mom= free range...

2009-01-08T19:28:00.000-08:00

I grew up free range!

Hippy mom= free range kids.

We lived in three basic situations when I was a kid (Marine bases, low-middle income neighborhoods or my Grandparents' ranch). The rule was simple. Go out and play, be home when the street lights or ranch lights went on.

Smidgeon is fairly free range, being a farm kid. She's only 4 so there's a limit, but I toss her outside with the dog when I need to and just keep an ear open for screams of agony rather than screams of joy.

A little slap dash, but she loves it.

On the other hand I studied to be a forensic anthropologist for a while and learned a lot about molesters,serial killers, etc. I'm the parent who looks sharply at the nice guy talking to the kids by the ice cream truck rather than the lurker in a fedora.

No kids here yet, either, so I'll comment on my ow...

2009-01-08T18:24:00.000-08:00

No kids here yet, either, so I'll comment on my own not-so-distant childhood, too (I'm 26).
I grew up in a small town in NC, and had the run of the neighborhood. We had neighbors on one side of the house, woods on two other sides, and a soybean field out front, so there wasn't too much danger. I was allowed to walk or ride my bike to my friend's house at the end of our dirt road at 6 years old. I also spent a lot of time in the woods by myself or with my dog, Toby. When I was in 6th grade I was hit by a car while riding my bike (it was very much my fault), but I don't remember it really fazing my parents. They didn't shrink my range. I got stitches and was scared enough to pay much better attention when riding my bike from then on.
I desperately hope I'll be able to give my possible future children a childhood full of forests and poison ivy and turtle-catching and bug bites. And yes, maybe even the occasional stitch or two.

Unfortunately my kids don't have as much freedom. ...

2009-01-08T17:01:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately my kids don't have as much freedom.
I am probably to blame.
Well myself and the media.
I think there was absolutely as much crime and victimization back then as there is now/we just hear of it more often. It is very sad when you can't trust those (neighbors) around you.

Since I don't have children, I'll comment on my ow...

2009-01-08T16:16:00.000-08:00

Since I don't have children, I'll comment on my own childhood. We were outside all the time, at all times of the year, and a lot of that time we were unsupervised. However, we lived on a big farm and never left it, and didn't play with other kids, just my brothers and cousins. And we always had chores to do. For example, we'd have to go collect maple sap from the tapped trees after school during sugaring season. We'd get up early to pick in the garden. We'd go to work at the farm market. In fact, there were a lot of times that I was left alone to run the farm market starting around when I was 13 or 14. Family was always close by, but being responsible was a part of our lives. We drove tractors, quads, etc. and took care of animals on our own. However, we always knew our boundaries. We couldn't go on the pond unless my grandfather had given us the okay to skate. We couldn't go somewhere without telling my mom. I guess my parents were lucky that we were pretty obedient kids. But it seemed that whenever we did something wrong, someone from my family saw and we got in trouble, so maybe we were more supervised than I thought we were. For example, once my brother "peeled out" in the gravel on his quad. My grandfather saw him and made him rake all the gravel on that area of the farm. He never did that again!

As far as kids today go, if I had a big piece of property that I knew kids would be safe there, I'd happily let mine run around free. However, at my home, even on a dead end road, I wouldn't want them to leave the yard. I'm not used to living around people and I don't trust all of my neighbors. Fortunately, my family still has the farm so I can always drop my kids off there, haha!

my kids have a ton of freedom....within our 5 acre...

2009-01-08T16:13:00.000-08:00

my kids have a ton of freedom....within our 5 acres in a rural town of about 300 people. We lived in a subdivision for 13 long months and HATED it...it was NOTHING like the neighborhoods in the 70's when we were little. I was always scared they were going to get snatched.
Ask my 16 year old how much freedom he has though.....not allowed to drive yet because of the highway...so as long as they stay on our property they can do what they want....

I don't have kids but there are a lot in my apartm...

2009-01-08T16:02:00.000-08:00

I don't have kids but there are a lot in my apartment complex and they go running and screaming all around and seem to have so much fun, but the guy that use to live downstairs gave me a real creepy vibe and the kids would go in there and play with him all the time and the parent had no idea where there kids were. One grandma did get very mad at her kid for being there when she did come and look for him, he was not suppose to go into anyone place, but did anyways.

I use to run around my neighborhood and if there were kids in the area now I would be very wary of letting them run where we did, the places look creepy to me now, but I do tend to be a worrier.

I spent a few summers in Vermont and would go out into the woods for hours upon hours, it was great and I think every kid should experience some sort of freedom like that, to just go off and do what they want, I would look for salamanders and toads and bugs and my brother would whack down all the plant he could find. It was great fun.

Great topic Crunchy.

I have 7 y/o twins an...

2009-01-08T15:58:00.000-08:00

Great topic Crunchy.

I have 7 y/o twins and a 3 y/o. I do let them play unsupervised in our yard. They know the boundaries and one of the older boys must be out when my youngest is out. I will say that my kids are not street smart. Meaning that they think nothing of crossing a street w/o looking. We are working on this one. Part of the reason is that my older ones still haven't figured out the bike riding thing...motor skill issues. Anyway, my concern for them playing in the whole neighborhood like I used to do, would be the chance of them getting hit by a car.

We live less than a half mile from the kids school and if there were a crossing guard, I'd let them all walk alone. The school has a policy that they will not let a child under the 6th grade walk home alone. In order for my kids to walk home, I have to go and sign them out and walk them home. This policy makes no sense to me. When I was in the 5th grade, I was a crossing guard. Heck I walked or rode my bike across town to school. I was, of course, too cool for the bus.

Strange how society has changed so much in just a generation.

I wish I could let my kids run amuck. We live in a...

2009-01-08T15:32:00.000-08:00

I wish I could let my kids run amuck. We live in a small town in Maine and there are 11 people on the "molester list". One of them lives right on Main Street and sits in his car watching all day. So where my kids go I go.

My two are still preschooler so they get a lot of ...

2009-01-08T13:52:00.000-08:00

My two are still preschooler so they get a lot of supervision when outside. Like Rosa, I had quite a bit of freedom as a small child until the attempted kidnapping of a child in our neighborhood.

Considering that we live close to an interstate and periodically have vagrants, it will probably be a long while before my children are allowed to play outside without supervision. However, I try not to be obvious about watching them. While they play, I'm "busy" hanging laundry, gardening, training the dog, etc. They are free to explore the fenced quarter acre without micro management. Unfortunately due to a lack of sidewalks and a major road (45 mph) between our neighborhood and the school, they will probably never have the joy of walking to school even though it is about four blocks away. Heck, as an adult, I would be hesitant to cross that road on foot.

--Ave

My kids don't have as much freedom as I did when I...

2009-01-08T11:06:00.000-08:00

My kids don't have as much freedom as I did when I was a kid, but, compared to others, they have quite a bit. We ran all day, every day, until the street lights came on. How many of us remember that rule? I mentioned recently spending hours a day in a state park about 1/2 mile from our house when I was a kid. My Dad looked at me and said "Really?" Our parents had no clue what we were doing as kids.
We live in a small town with one major street. My kids (11, 8, and 6) know they are not allowed near that street, but the older two roam the neighborhood behind our house. Racing bikes in the church parking lot, playing in the creek, going between their friends houses. My 6 yr old is only allowed to go as far as the church parking lot behind our house and two houses down to her friend. So while I would say they don't have quite as much freedom as I had as a kid, they more than most. I have been reading "Last Child in the Woods". It is a real eye opener.