The Parents are Away - A first post in a sequence about helping children to become autonomous and self-reliable

[Gunnar Zarncke]

This is a post about experiences of a father of four sons. I'm a LessWrong contributor and have organized the LessWrong Hamburg Meetup. Maybe you find this post and possibly more interesting. This and the next few were already posted on the LessWrong Slack. If you like these and find them valuable please give feedback - I may post more - daily. These may later become part of a parenting blog.

Se here is the first post:

The Parents are Away - A first post in a sequence about helping children to become autonomous and self-reliable

Yesterday my 7-year-old learned the next step in being responsible for himself: Getting comfortable with being along at home for some time. He looked forward to that. It is something he knows his older brothers already can and I think he also knows that it is one more step that will gain him more freedom later on. Like going to the creek. Or the supermarket (with his pocket money he got when he got proficient enough with money). He values that. He couldn't wait to go to school alone. Now he has the "3 hours alone at home" badge. There is no real badge - though maybe we should make one? Naah. It's enough to get a name we can talk about. The next step is the 3 hour pro badge - being alone in the evening or night (woohoo!) when the parent come home later. But before he gets there he can practice with one of his older brother who already have that badge. Maybe already this weekend.

[Dave Orr]

It's interesting to think how how the norms around this have changed, at least in the US. When I was a kid, I spend lots of time starting around 7 unsupervised by adults. I would go to friends' houses on my own via bike, I'd be home alone sometimes during the day. Latch key kids were common.

Now, at least in the bay area, I think that's vanishingly rare. None of my kids' peers spend time home alone, nor do ours. It's unheard of for 8 year olds to go to one another's houses alone unless they're on the same block, and there's no opportunity for them to go explore the world or even go to the park without an adult.

My initial impulse is that this is bad, that they are losing autonomy and the ability to take chances and make decisions that could be wrong but are unlikely to lead to very bad outcomes. This kind of practice is important, because at some point they'll be making those mistakes, and it's better now than when cars, alcohol, or sex might be involved.

On the other hand, we see a steady improvement in safety and health and rates of violence over time. I wonder if this sort of thing could be causing those improvements, which have to come from somewhere.

On balance, I don't think so -- I think things like rising wealth and decreased levels of lead are likely much stronger influences. So this is actually a bad trend -- glad to see you giving your kids the chance to be on their own, Gunnar.

- Dave

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[Daniel Reeves]

My understanding is that crime started increasing in the 70s through
the 90s and then decreased again and we're back to around 1960s
levels. I think the paranoia and helicopter parenting we see in the US
and the UK (maybe Australia is also pretty bad about this, I'm not
sure) is a reaction to higher crime in the past but definitely not the
reason for it declining again.

It's super absurd and frustrating that leaving 8-year-olds unattended
is treated as irresponsible parenting. I'm in Portland where people
seem more chill than the rest of the US but even here we feel it's too
risky (ironically, the risk being how we'd be judged by other parents
or how child protective services would react if somehow we got
reported) to leave our kids unattended. We do let our 8-year-old walk
multiple blocks to friends' houses or to/from school though and that
doesn't seem to raise eyebrows.

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http://dreev.es -- search://"Daniel Reeves"
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[William Eden]

At least here in the Bay Area, you will be arrested if you leave your kids unattended before age 12.

The biggest threat is not violence, sexual predators, etc, it is the paranoid, self-righteous do-gooders who bring down the authorities you have to be worried about. Ironically they've created the threats they are so worried about.

Even though levels of crime rose in the 90s, in absolute terms it was still incredibly rare to have someone kidnap or otherwise harm your child.

--
Will Eden
http://becomingeden.com
650-681-7990

[Dave Orr]

On Fri, Jan 15, 2016 at 1:28 PM, William Eden <william...@gmail.com> wrote:

At least here in the Bay Area, you will be arrested if you leave your kids unattended before age 12.

Is that really true?

People vastly overestimate the number of scary crimes because of the accessibility bias -- this is why people worry about kidnapping even though it's super rare. I think the same thing might be happening with worries about the neighbors calling the cops because you left your kid home alone. It's happened, it's really bad, and it's gotten some news coverage, but it's essentially impossible to tell how big the risk actually is from that.

CA doesn't specify an age. Other states have a minimum age of 8, and still others recommend 12, whatever recommending means.

[William Eden]

Home alone is a different situation than the kids being unaccompanied in public - which is what Gunnar was suggesting, and I was responding to. When we looked into the laws here in SF that was what we found.

Sent from my iPhone, enjoy the unusual brevity.

[Gunnar Zarncke]

Things may be different here in Germany or in other countries. As far as I know crime rate has declined over the last centuries internationally (except for some ups and downs of course). It is difficult to find long term data internationally online but I managed to google these too:
http://ourworldindata.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/homicide-rates-in-five-western-european-countries-1900-2009-pinker-2011-jpg.jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Burglaries_per_1,000_pop.svg#file

I surely haven't heard people being arrested for letting their children play alone. Critical glances and questions definitely happen though if a 5 year old is happily going alone to the kindergarten (200m, no streets, announced by phone).

I mean children with their gps phones are 100 times more safe if left alone then 50 years back. Add in reduced crime rate there is definitely no objective reason for fear - except for subjective and social conventions and expectations which are often fueled by the media in their quest for attention by drama.

Fear is the mind-killer. Switch of the TV and observe for yourself.

Enjoy life everybody!

Gunnar

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