[hashr8064]

completely agree. I'm roughly same age as you, same experience. When we were kids we literally ran all over the place until dark with no adult supervision. Man I still remember coming home, having cuts and bruises all over me, having a pencil stuck out of my arm, bleeding, covered in poison ivy, the works. But I loved it! Those were some of the best memories of my life, exploring the woods, building tree forts and swinging from tree to tree with garden hoses we strung up in the trees, finding lizards, swimming with tadpoles, catching carp with my hands, building fish traps. Playing football in the mud on those perfect autumn days.

We used to build spears from old broomsticks and shields from rusty trash can lids and ride our bikes down hills at one another jousting each other off the bikes. I remember one hot summer day we actually figured out how to make our own fires by rubbing sticks, sparking rocks and using a lot of very dry pine needles. We then cooked ourselves some random veggies we stole from a neighbors garden. It tasted absolutely disgusting but of course everyone said it was delicious.

I don't get why so many people in our generation turned into complete snowflakes with their kids (don't forget our generation is also responsible for "gender neutral parenting").

[mcphage]

> I don't get why so many people in our generation turned into complete snowflakes with their kids (don't forget our generation is also responsible for "gender neutral parenting").

You’re ranting about the wrong target. The parent in this story trusted their children with an appropriate amount of independence. An unknown adult was the one who complained.

[DanBC]

My mate Bob had free-ranging parents, but he was hit by a car and killed when he was seven so he's not here to say "survivor bias".

[harshreality]

Plenty of kids whose parents were watching them got hit by cars, because parents can't be watching every second. Kids with a tendency to get carried away and run in front of cars are going to do it even with their parents in view. Better to condition kids not to do a few obvious dangerous things, than to maintain constant vigilance and try to intervene before they do dangerous things.

Also, these days, a parent "watching" their kid(s) means proximity, not awareness. The parent may be within view, but that's useless when they're glued to their phone a good percentage of the time and only glance up now and then.

[lkrubner]

No, acceptance of risk, which is very different. My parents let us roam free. My parents did not think we were perfectly safe. But my parents thought we could only learn independence by being independent. The question is why those risks are no longer tolerated in the USA. Yet such risk still seems acceptable in Finland, Japan and many other countries.

[francisofascii]

Kids getting hit by cars is more of the fault of our society allowing cars to drive so fast in neighborhoods. Not the fault of the seven year old or the parents.

[hashr8064]

good point :)

[usaphp]

> When we were kids we literally ran all over the place until dark with no adult supervision. Man I still remember coming home, having cuts and bruises all over me, having a pencil stuck out of my arm, bleeding, covered in poison ivy, the works. But I loved it!

Article is about a 3 year old. I don’t think any issue would arise if a 7-10 year old did the same today.

[hashr8064]

Yes, our ages ranged from 2 to 8. There was 5 of us.