Parenting

It really depends on the kid. I let my 13 year old walk by himself down the street to the game store, and ride his bike around the neighborhood, but Ive tested him and I know he can handle it. I havnt tried letting him watch a movie by himself, but he could probably handle it. I wouldnt feel comfortable letting walk around a mall by himself, because too much is going on there. But if a manager called me and complained about him, I would go get him immediately, and then we would have a conversation about what went wrong.

I went to school and back alone from 7.

In Germany and in Switzerland, many children go to school through public transportation, as I did since I was fairly young - but generally it's more than one schoolchild per bus and stop so it doesn't count necessarily as "alone". Also, many officials don't like when parents bring them by car as it creates traffic hazards.

Edited by SeptimusHeap on Feb 26th 2019 at 8:04:52 PM

It was a short walk to my elementary school. I was alone for pretty much the whole of it.

I’m pretty sure my school has a sign somewhere saying free range children, the thing is you have to teach the kids responsibility to go with the freedom.

I think we could do into town by ourselves from 13 and younger in groups, we couldn’t go alone after it got late (I think 7-9ish, it’s been a long time), we had to tell a relevant adult if we were going beyond the town or for a long time, plus we had to always mark on a board if we were in the grounds, out of the grounds or staying away.

Thing is we were held responsible for our behaviour and punished if we misbehaved while out and about, I know we had a rule against swearing while in town (swearing was always fine in schools grounds, just not swearing at someone) and people would hold each other to account for stuff.

Edited by Silasw on Feb 27th 2019 at 9:13:51 AM

Once upon a time not that long ago in cities across the globe, parents told the older ones to get out our their hair and keep an eye on the youngest — and the oldest nipped off with their mates and threatened violence if the youngest got into trouble.

Even if that meant playing in bomb craters, on the side of slag heaps or paying for the cinema/ amusement arcade.

Free-range has never just been rural.

Yeah I’m not a fan of parents making their children parent younger children, it’s lazy, it’s not safe for the younger child, it breads a bad relationship between the two children (lots of older siblings will resent their younger sibling for taking their childhood away) and it takes away the childhood of the older one.

The parents chose to have another child, the older childhood didn’t get a vote.

It's incredibly shitty to put that kind of responsibility — the well-being of another human being — on a child. Kids really shouldn't be used to pick up the parents' slack.

Edited by M84 on Feb 27th 2019 at 5:36:52 PM

Regarding letting children roam free...that was pretty much normal during my childhood in Germany. We went alone to school (which for some of us meant taking the public bus...there are no separate school busses in German cities), and we were allowed to roam to neighbourhood alone. The only rule was that when I left a certain area, I had to tell my mother first.

In fact, it is seen as part of "healthy development" that a child is able to make small purchases on its own as soon as they reach school age and are able to do basic math. Sometimes you can see a mother sending her child to the counter observing proudly how their child buys something.

And if we were on a school trip the rule was usual that we were allowed to roam the area in groups of three...so if something happens, there is one staying with the hurt person hurt and the other can go for help.

I think where you live plays a big role, as well as where they're going, specifically. I'm in a small town, but we've had a lot of issues with theft and break ins lately, even some armed robberies. I wouldn't want them walking around the Walmart parking area, for example, but I'd be okay leaving my hypothetical twelve year old at the theater because the people there are like family and I know my old manager would call me if my kid was acting up 😂

Honestly, I think the issues really come down to parents not teaching their child what's appropriate in public, and using public places as a day care without setting rules and boundaries for their child (the mother in my other post that gave no shits when the theater manager called her, being an example.)

How do y'all feel about parents putting their kids all over social media? It's something I've been thinking about because I have old friends that I'm not close with anymore, but I could describe their child's routine in detail because they post photos and videos of them constantly. I'm talking at least 5+ pictures a day with descriptions about what they're doing, where they're at, etc.

As a side not, I've seen controversy lately about a lot of family You Tube channels that force their children to be on camera and act out comedic "daily life" type skits that they try to pass off as the child's natural behavior so they can get views and ad revenue.

This can't be healthy for the child, constantly having phones and cameras in their face because Mom and Dad are attention/money seekers.

There's a big difference between posting a picture or two for close friends and relatives to see, vs Mom putting the child's whole day on her non-private social media accounts so her hundreds/thousands of followers can see and share.

It's like those weird ass toddler beauty pageants are turning into digital normalcy, and now everyone wants to know how many likes and shares their poor kid can get.

Aside from the giant safety risk that comes from putting your child's appearance, name, and location constantly on blast, there's also such a big privacy issue here in terms of how your child is going to feel about this later in life. Not everyone wants their baby pictures being shown to the world, and this person can never take them down when they grow up.

I think it's borderline child abuse. That kind of violation of privacy is bad enough. The people who force their kids to "act" out routines? That is some fucking bullshit. Those cases are definitely Financial Abuse at any rate.

Edited by M84 on Mar 13th 2019 at 9:58:37 PM

I always felt very uncomfortable with those youtube channels, especially considering the fact that youtube very recently deleted the comment section on most of them due to pedos viewing them. I seriously think that those kids are going to have some serious issues in the future due to the majority of their early lives being put on the internet and the fact a lot of them are spoiled beyond belief with the amount of money they get and the sheer amount toys from toy companies they get to play with.

All possible abusiveness aside the whole thing just looks like a recipe for disaster.

Edited by Wispy on Mar 13th 2019 at 8:51:48 AM

Besides, I'd rather watch the vids of people playing with their pet pot-bellied pigs or something. It's also adorable and a lot less questionable and skeevy.

Or stuff with baby turtles like this vid of a turtle eating a raspberry set to epic music:

Edited by M84 on Mar 13th 2019 at 11:57:35 PM

Honestly I’d have You Tube demonetise any You Tube video that features kids that aren’t child actors, if you want put your kids on You Tube you shouldn’t be making money from it, because than you’re using your child as a worker and that violates child labour laws.

The Facebook thing is something we’ve run into with my family, a lot of it seems to be people who forget that Facebook is public, people share/say things on Facebook rather than at a family gathering, forgetting that they’re sharing that thing with 100+ semi-acquaintances permanently. I’ve seen that with parents of teenage couples discussing their kids breaking up, people sharing that they’re becoming a grandparent and just general sharing of photos of their child.

Thinking about it a bit more, I'm retracting the "borderline" bit.

It is child abuse.

My daughter is into gymnastics, and loves watching youtube gymnastics videos made by girls roughly her own age (11). I realize that this is somewhat problematic because there are probably pervs out there who watch them for other reasons.

My son (13) keeps asking if he can mupload a video of himself playing a videogame because he wants to emulate Dan TDM. So far, I have resisted this notion.

I think there has been a case once involving a teenager who sued her parents that they should stop putting her private life all over Facebook.

My stance is clear: It is incredible dangerous to put your children on the internet. It might get all the wrong kind of attention if you get my drift. It is beyond me that there are helicopter parents who never let their children do anything alone, but then basically put them up for free viewing in the "wild" so to speak.

And if they use them for "reactions" and make money off them, they cross into child labour imho.

There is risk in putting a vid of your kids onliine, to be sure. I wouldnt want to see the practice entirely eliminated, however, because my own kids derive value from watching their same age peers.

I can't access the original any more because paywall, but there was an article a few months back where a "mommy blogger" was confronted by her young daughter about writing articles about and posting images of her her online. Her daughter asked her to stop, so of course instead she wrote an article for the Washington Post trying to publicly rationalize it, basically saying "well, I would stop, but that really wouldn't be a good thing for me or my child." People rightly gave her shit for it.

Apparently she also did something similar with the people in a therapy group she was part of that she wrote stories about. So I guess she's egalitarian in that she refuses to respect the privacy of adults, too.

Edited by Pseudopartition on Mar 14th 2019 at 5:37:33 AM

Sounds narcissistic to me.

There's already a serious problem with pedophiles posting predatory comments and such on vids with children. It got bad enough that Youtube disabled comments on vids with children last month. Mostly because advertisers started pulling ads from vids that had such comments.

YouTube loses advertisers over “wormhole into pedophilia ring”

And of course, parent v-loggers who make money off of vids of their kids complained.

YouTube will disable comments on most videos of kids because of pedophiles

Youtube comments sections are generally garbage anyway, so no great loss.

@Demarq

Hopefully your daughter didn't read the Youtube comments sections of those vids before they were disabled.

Edited by M84 on Mar 14th 2019 at 9:35:09 PM

Youtube comment sections were always bad but they got much much worse after the Google+ integration were downvotes just stopped working.

In the past assholes, weirdos, and creeps would get downvoted pretty hard but nowadays they only get upvotes.

I am pretty sure a lot of them felt validated by that....

I'm not very familiar with how Youtube works, but can people who upload a video control their own comments sections?

Yes. They can naturally disable it, they can also moderate it, they can also give other You Tube users the power to moderate it for them.