[hobofan]

Highly depends on what you mean by bad choices. I couldn't name one "bad" decision I made then that has a negative impact on me today.

I did wander and skatboard in a lot of locations that were closed off, or we were not supposed to be, which isn't something your parents would usually want. Doing that I made a lot of great connections with people I wouldn't have met in my otherwise pretty sheltered life.

I think it's more important that such a system could easily destroy a lot of good experiences for the children and less important that it prevents bad ones (which can also be valuable experiences).

[jdmichal]

Honest question: Looking back now, do you feel like those restrictions were overzealous? Or were the restrictions valid, and simply nothing bad happened the times you broke them?

[hobofan]

The places I had in mind while writing this were mostly old abandoned properties that were closed off due to insurance reasons. The owners usually don't mind the activity in itself but once they knew we were there, they had to send us away (again, insurance legalities). They worst thing that could have happened would be that they call the police and the police would report it to our parents.

I don't think my parents ever took note of it, but if they would have known, where I was I guess they would have been a lot more strict about it. And that would be understandable, because who wants to get a call from the police?

So no, nothing "bad" would have happened, just a bit of hassle.

[jdmichal]

Thanks. Just to explain where I'm coming from, I'm trying to mentally tie this discussion to the ones that happen around children being independent in public. This discussion is interesting, because people seem to be framing themselves as if they were the child, where in the other discussions I usually see framing based on being the parent.