I have to say, slightly ironic the Daily Mail is doing a piece about how children are negatively overprotected these days. For those of you unfamiliar with the Daily Mail (or the Daily Fail as it is known in Britain), it is the UK's number one scaremongering paper. They probably aided in making these adults overprotective, seeing as for the better part of two decades they have been on a crusade to tell the nation about "IMMIGRANT SINGLE MOTHER PAEDOPHILES WHO LOVE VILE COMEDIAN AND ARE ON BENEFITS TAKING YOUR CHILDREN AND DEFACING WAR MEMORIALS WHILST EATING CANCER CAUSING RED MEAT!! DANGER DANGER!! REMAIN INDOORS!!" But seriously, they put so much fear into the hearts of middle aged middle class people it's no wonder these parents are scared shitless and overprotective.
Oh yes, I don't doubt that it's interesting in the slightest, I actually enjoyed the idea behind it! I was just saying the Daily Mail are hypocrites for negatively portraying over-protective parents and the protective culture when they themselves spent a lot of their time over the past twenty years telling parents to be over-protective through scaremongering. Silly Daily Mail.
My mom could whistle louder than anyone I've ever met. We'd come running home or face her wrath. Once we were a bit older our adventures spanned beyond her calls and the sun became our alarm. If we were home after sundown, we were in trouble. I just took my daughter sledding for the first time and that coupled with this post have me swimming in nostalgia. I had a fun childhood; its not the time spent indoors watching movies and playing video games I remember the most vividly, it's being outdoors, building forts and playing games. I wonder if my mom can still whistle like that?
On a similar thread, I used to live up on a mountain from when I was born until I was around 11. Not a massive mountain, and we lived halfway up, but a mountain nonetheless. Now, when I was about 7-8 I'd go down to the park in the town below, maybe a mile from the house (mostly downhill). Funny thing was, this park was kind of in a "dip". If my mum ever wanted to call us to come home (this was when I had no phone - mobiles were not for children) she would stand on the garden wall, and make this COOP-COOP-COOOOOO sound. You could hear it echoing from up the the mountain and when we all turned to look, see this manic, short, curly haired woman "coop-ing" and waving her arms. It was dinner time. Ah, to be young again.
Isn't that why they call it the "holler", because you can just holler down the mountain in to the valley and hear it for a long distance? Sounds like you grew up in some cool terrain.
Maybe, but that makes sense! We could honestly hear it ages away. Ah, it was a pretty scenic area, I grew up in rural North Wales, so pretty hilly and green in most parts. We weren't in the most mountainous part of the region, Snowdonia, as we were on the coast, but we had a few nice mountains around us.
Children are overprotected nowadays. When I was a kid a group of us would get together for Halloween and roam the neighborhoods unsupervised, that seems to have changed. It's detrimental to a child to be so protected from exploring his/her world. Unsupervised -to a reasonable extent- roaming of the world around them only serves to further curiosity and a thirst for knowledge. Be it walking down the street and admiring the houses or the nature around them.
The funny thing is: how is our time suddenly became more dangerous than the past? With hookers and drunks on every corner. With first cars driving without any sets of laws. With almost everyone carrying a weapon. How is it that in the past we had less crazy or dangerous people around? The over-protection is a real issue: how the hell do the children these days explore the world around them? Only TV and internet? That's not it: you can see but you cannot feel the world around you. You cannot become a certain part with it and take something from it inside you.
My father always thought that my brother and I were insane for staying inside when the sun was still out but such is the appeal of Nintendo. He insisted that we be outside. I'm glad he did. He also didn't care about us roaming far from home so long as we returned prior to sundown. We were encouraged to explore, my daughter will be too. I am sure that she will have more boundaries than I had, but they won't limit her ability to explore the outdoors. If we live close enough, she can walk to school... I may just have to volunteer as a crossing guard. What about you? What type of parents will you be? The decision for you is a bit different given that you live in a place with more crime.It also found evidence that hospital patients need fewer painkillers after surgery if they have views of nature from their bed.
-how telling.
We live: - Within the jurisdiction of LAXPD - within the jurisdiction of Culver City PD - Precisely on the boundary of Westchester (a predominantly black community that borders Compton) and Playa Del Rey (a predominantly white community that ranks amongst LA's most affluent) - Within a mile of not one, not two, but three magnet schools. Friendly restaurant owner we know had his car break down about three blocks away. The ghettocopter showed up. There are no neighborhoods in LA safer than mine. In addition to that, we live on the third floor behind a locked gate with 4 dozen security cameras and 24-hour armed response that circles the complex hourly. Within that complex are two playgrounds, three basketball courts, two tennis courts and two swimming pools, one designated for children only. That said, I grew up in a town of 15,000 that not only had a 25-vehicle strong police force, we also had Pro Force (like the cops, only with machine guns and CG Commandos, SWAT and Delta. Didn't stop my buddies from getting in an armed standoff, didn't stop one of my friends from stabbing one of my other friends in the chest with a bowie knife, didn't stop two of my friends from getting into drug trafficking, didn't stop my sister's boyfriend from ending up beheaded in a ditch outside of Amarillo for crossing the Juarez cartel. People who live in LA who think LA is tough and rugged have never been to Kansas City, Denver or Albuquerque. I fully expect to be well clear of LA by the time she's old enough to wander but if we aren't, the elementary school is across the street and the bus station is a block away. I'd have a more concise point but my frickin' inlaws are across the table from me and they keep talking.
Shirley this is re-enforcing the closed garden that the article warned about?In addition to that, we live on the third floor behind a locked gate with 4 dozen security cameras and 24-hour armed response that circles the complex hourly. Within that complex are two playgrounds, three basketball courts, two tennis courts and two swimming pools, one designated for children only.
Oh, totally. But then, my daughter is 3 weeks old so it doesn't much matter at the moment. I grew up near-feral. I would make calls to my parents in High School along the lines of "Hey, dad. I'm in Dallas. I'll be back Sunday night. Yeah, Dave's here too. Okay, bye." The morning after my last Fall semester final I piled a week's worth of clothing in a 30-year-old Buick, drove 18 hours through a snowstorm and checked into my hotel in San Diego so I could see Ministry, Sepultura and Helmet in concert. My daughter is likely to have a great deal more independence than her peers. The anecdotes were related to TNG's observation of my neighborhood as "dangerous" when it most assuredly is not.
People who live in LA who think LA is tough and rugged have never been to Kansas City, Denver or Albuquerque.
What do you mean by that? I've lived in Denver my whole life and can't say that it's tough or rugged. I think most the danger comes from being involved in things you shouldn't be. I always felt perfectly safe as a little white boy buying crack in Globeville.
Exactly. Which is why I bring it up - perception is everything. Granted, the white kids I knew in Denver tended to completely avoid areas they considered "dangerous" (and go to Casa Fucking Bonita as if it were a fun place) but Denver, at least when I was going to concerts there, had areas of sketchiness that I have not observed in Los Angeles.
Funny story. I paid for college by mixing bands in clubs. One of them was at 2nd and Jackson in Seattle, where Jackson St. is the original "skid row" (for the trees "skidding" down to the harbor - it's a long, crazy hill). I was mixing somebody big on a Thursday night with a thermodynamics midterm the next day. I was exhausted. And I walked to my car near oblivious to my surroundings. I was halfway through a group of black gangbangers tossing a wallet back and forth to each other with a disgruntled and upset middle-aged white man in the middle before I realized what I'd done. I opted to stay the hell out of it ('cuz 2 guys vs 10 isn't a whole lot more compelling than 1 guy vs 10) and kept walking to my car. A few minutes later I heard footsteps and looked back - three of them were following me. I sped up a little bit and looked back again. One of them said "relax man, we got no beef with you." I said "it's cool, man. You can understand my concern." They laughed. Then someone down an alley shouted "Yo!" and the three men stopped. The one who had talked to me said "have a good night," and they started walking down the alley. "You too," I said, and kept walking. 10 seconds later I heard gunshots. That's Seattle. My Albuquerque stories are worse.
I am in no way surprised by this. I doubt anybody would be. I remember being little and not being allowed to walk further than two houses down from my home. People wonder why American is getting fatter, and yet they don't allow their kids out of the house. Also, although abduction is a real issue, I'm pretty sure we blow it up WELL beyond it's actual threat to most children. Traffic, on the other hand, I think is a concern, though if a child is aware of proper pedestrian safety they should be alright.
The contrast between Edward and George's childhoods is highlighted in a report which warns that the mental health of 21st-century children is at risk because they are missing out on the exposure to the natural world enjoyed by past generations.
There are two things I find interesting about this quote. 1) That mental health of our country (America) is going downhill. But what causes this? I'm sure there's just as much nature here as there is in Canada, and crime rates up there aren't nearly as high as ours. Possibly, do they focus more on mental health and treating it?
2)I've always believed being in nature is a huge part of being healthy, mentally and physically. To be apart from nature is to be apart from a portion of ourselves.
From the perspective of the article, "our country" would be the UK.1) That mental health of our country (America) is going downhill.
That's why I specified America. I was speaking with my boss the other day about mental health and he's a huge proponent for expanding funding and research toward curing mental health issues. He says that if we were to help those with these "disorders" (I really hate that term), then we'll solve a lot of issues relating to crime.
Here's my story of overprotection. In June 1991, a 14-year-old girl disappeared from the suburb to the east of here in southern Ontario Canada. Her body parts were discovered later that month. Then in April 1992, a 15-year-old was seen being grabbed off the street just after school, in the town to the west of here (St. Catharines), and pushed into a white two-door car. As you can imagine, all parents were totally freaked. Billboards were up not far from my daugher's school with pictures of the car and the words, "Have you seen this car?" No one was allowed to walk unsupervised, not even across the street. Eventually this guy was arrested in February 1993. I don't know anyone who has studied the effect of this on schoolchildren and their parents. I don't think I let my daughter cross the street until she started high school. Myself growing up though, I was undersupervised and roamed and roamed from an early age.