{"id":626,"date":"2008-04-13T21:42:16","date_gmt":"2008-04-13T19:42:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/?p=626"},"modified":"2008-04-13T21:42:46","modified_gmt":"2008-04-13T19:42:46","slug":"letting_children_run_free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/2008\/04\/13\/letting_children_run_free\/","title":{"rendered":"Letting children run free"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.schneier.com\/blog\/archives\/2008\/04\/overestimating.html\">Via Bruce Schneier<\/a> I found this essay by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nysun.com\/editorials\/why-i-let-my-9-year-old-ride-subway-alone\">a mom who let her 9-year-old son take the NY subway home on his own<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\nLong story short: My son got home, ecstatic with independence.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nLong story longer, and analyzed, to boot: Half the people I&rsquo;ve told this episode to now want to turn me in for child abuse. As if keeping kids under lock and key and helmet and cell phone and nanny and surveillance is the right way to rear kids. It&rsquo;s not. It&rsquo;s debilitating &#8212; for us and for them.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>\nEven more interesting is this graphic that Bruce links to, showing (anecdotally) how <a href=\"http:\/\/img.dailymail.co.uk\/i\/pix\/2007\/06_02\/playgraphicDM1406_736x800.jpg\">children&rsquo;s freedom of movement has decreased<\/a> over the past 4 generations. While I think some of this decrease is sensible (the 8-year-old in 1919 did not have to cope with cars doing 70mph on busy roads), much of it is due to excessive anxiety.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nI am also reminded of this TED talk about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ted.com\/talks\/view\/id\/202\">5 dangerous things you should let your kids do<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Via Bruce Schneier I found this essay by a mom who let her 9-year-old son take the NY subway home on his own. Long story short: My son got home, ecstatic with independence. Long story longer, and analyzed, to boot: Half the people I&rsquo;ve told this episode to now want to turn me in for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current_affairs","category-parenting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}