No doubt.

In my town, few kids live more than 10 blocks from school, yet the cars are blocking traffic at dismissal time. Makes no sense to me. This is a seriously low-crime city with lots of public transportation. When my child was growing up, we found older neighborhood kids to walk with the little ones until they could do it on their own, and paid the older kids a few dollars a week for their work.

God, what a bunch of fearful little mice we have become. Thanks for posting this.

Good counter!

This is one the key reasons I am terrified of the fact that the children of today will be running the world when I am old. They are not given enough tests of their competency in real life situations. Parents who live in such fear aren't doing their children any favors and I would suspect that they are doing more harm than good in the long run.

Growing up in a tiny western town of 500 people with dirt roads and no stoplights (still no stoplight today), I loved this. We walked everywhere, to school, to church, to play with friends. We left our doors unlocked, to houses, and to cars. We never thought about danger. Now I can see that for much of our culture, a life like that would be a dream, but not a reality, parents living in fear, children raised in safety nets. I appreciated your bringing attention to this article, and thanks for your thoughtful post. Rated.

I couldn't agree more! Unfortunately, I live in an area that grew up piecemeal in an unincorporated area, and while we live half a mile from my kids' elementary school, they can't walk. We can see the back of the school, but crossing the major arterial road to get there is too dangerous--no crosswalk or light for half a mile in either direction. It's on the list to add a traffic signal, in about three or four years, when my kids will be past elementary age.

I know many fearful parents who won't let their kids ride bikes in the neighborhood, walk a few blocks to a friend's house in daylight, or play in the front yard unattended. And I'm talking about fourth and fifth graders here, not toddlers!

My local school is also full of cars at drop-off time, with very few walkers.

I wonder how many stranger abductions there are versus how many children are accidentally hit and killed in the congestion of cars ouside elementary schools when parents are picking up and dropping off their spawn.

I'm pretty sure that most children who are hit by cars and killed are not doing so while crossing the road but in parking lots and driveways.

In my developement there are 2 bus stops( all of the schools are too far away for walkers).

On the first day of school it appeared that almost every child was at each bus stop.

I walk my dog by one of the stops every day. There are now about 4 students there and all of them with a parent( they are elementary students). Maybe they are afraid of the big guy with the scary black lab( He is sometimes overly friendly).

On rainy or very cold days some of these parents drive their little Buffy's and Todd's to the bus stop and sit their for 10-15 minutes in an idling vehicle.

When I used to drive around doing merchandising at supermarkets, the various elementary schools I passed all had a cop out front to direct traffic because the sissy parents just HAD to pick up their little darlings and tie up traffic on the streets in from of the schools.

I totally agree we have been brainwashed with fear, to the point where I like to say, "Ten is the new two." We walk our budding adolescents to school as if they were toddlers. Meantime, we fear pedophiles behind every bush even though, as I like to remind people, we are back to the crime level of 1970. Crime was going up in the 70s and 80s so if you were a kid back then, YOUR kids are actually SAFER than you were! It's hard to believe and my book and blog get into all the reasons we feel so unsafe in such safe times. But suffice to say: We need more articles like this, bringing us a reality check. When parents and teachers shudder at a 6-house commute, we are truly living in strange times. And pretty much we are living in our SUVs, too. -- Lenore Skenazy, founder, www.freerangekids.com and author of the book, Free-Range Kids.

This criminal mentality happened to me too. The school staff were horrified I would allow my child to walk home alone, roughly 1/4 mile in a large residential tract that had only one way in and out. I did some research and found that the number one issue with the reluctance to let kids walk is not abduction but safety when it comes to cars/traffic. That reminded me that when I was a child there was always a crossing guard, largely now absent from many school settings.

I prevailed in the end, but always felt that these school individuals looked at me in a different way after that. I was a single mom with a job that didn't allow me to be home to pick up my child. It was a very frustrating situation to have someone else making a strong attempt to project their fears and values onto my situation.

Like the author, my now 14-yr old daughter is on the Police Explorer post in our community, can ride the bus or metro or subway all over Paris, London or New York and has an extremely strong and good sense of personal safety. I doubt she would be this well-equipped if she had been chauffered around the past five years.

Last I checked, this is still a free country.

iamsurly,

Good point. That is why I'm working on trying to give my boys more independence, etc. That way they can take over the new world from the ones with helicopter parents.

Thank you all for your wonderful comments. Lenore, I especially appreciate you checking in. "Free-Range Kids" is terrific and brings to light the extremely negative impacts that unfounded fears have on kids. Another great book on this is Richard Louv's "Last Child in the Woods". (And another on suburban planning, or lack of such, which is a secondary issue, is James Howard Kunstler’s “The Geography of Nowhere”.)

So many quality-of-life areas suffer given the behaviors you all describe, like individual cars choking school zones or idling for minutes before a bus arrives to whisk all the children away. Where are considerations of community, health or perspective? Or childhood, for that matter? This way of living has always felt extremely wrong to me.

We were also the strange ones for a while, when my daughter was younger. She started walking to school by herself at around 10 and was repeatedly stopped by well-meaning parents, asking if she needed a ride. People even asked us if we felt safe about her walking, and we live in a very safe, walkable small town. When I was a scout leader, I had to fight the moms off when they wanted to drive the kids the 3 (!) blocks from the elementary school to Scout Hall. They thought we’d have more time for the meeting that way (and that they could squeeze in a few frantic errands.) They placed no value whatsoever on walking as an activity in and of itself. I stood my ground and the girls had their moment of relative freedom -- to walk, sing, and learn a tiny bit about a part of their town they would have just driven by. I consider this downright sick.

I see that Neil slipped in. I consider seat belts a reasonable precaution, relative to risk. I cannot say the same for keeping children under wraps until the age of 18 -- indeed, there's a great deal more harm in that scenario than possible benefit. (Though, of course, I'd like to explore other ways to reduce crime.)

We have been consumed by fear in this country. Yes, each year 50,000 children are abducted ,but what the media does not say is 99% are by either a estranged parent going through a divorce or battling over custody

I grew up in the 50s and 60s as a child and yes our parents warned us about strangers and to use common sense when out in the world. In all my days of childhood myself or any of my friends came close to being abducted. Once as a freshman a pervert tried to pick me up on the way from school, but a quick duck into the local market ended the potential danger.

We are raising a nation of children that have no idea how to think or act in real world. Is it a good idea to let your toddler or pre-school child wander the streets? NO. But, in graduated steps letting your children take on more and more responsibility not only teaches them independence, but how to cope in the world. To many teens lead a sheltered life and when they turn 16 are let loose with a car and no real idea or judgement to take care of themselves.

I blame the media for creating a state of high anxiety and fear about everyday life. It sells papers, but is it real or worth the fear it produces?

"Though, of course, I'd like to explore other ways to reduce crime."

Yes! Please explore other ways--ways that do more concretely to keep the streets safe other than celebrate fear by shuttering kids away--ways which likewise reflect so much of the nation's political climate post George W and 911.

I'm back...

A girl in my 6th grade class was abducted and murdered--her body dumped in a grove. She had been cycling to school, late, on her own when she was forcibly taken by a guy in a pick-up. He was caught.

So, understanding that the threat is real, what is the sensible attitude? Personally, I think it is circumstantial. All the security in the world won't buy it (look at that Yale grad student, for example). But I know that your point--to the effect that all streets would be more safe if more people we're on them instead of moving through them in cars--is an excellent one and reflects the right attitude. This conversation needs to happen.

People need to learn risk management. They think they can eliminate all risk, leading them to way out of balance expectations. Why can't we let kids experience anything on their own?

I understand the fear. But you can't protect children from everything, and I fear this walk to school discussion stems from the need to keep children safe from everything. At what point does it become too much? You protect your children by driving them to school, and keeping them from riding bikes in the streets. Do you then struggle to find a way to protect them from side effects of too much time spent sitting around?

When does it become detrimental to their health? If you protect a child from a bully, when do they become unable to stand up for themselves?

Moderation, moderation in all things, please. It depends on the child, and it depends on the situation. But I don't see the harm in letting kids who are old enough and who know what they're doing walk or ride a bike to school.

I completely agree with this....I am a grandmother of six children. We live in a north suburb of Chicago and I do not understand why parents have to drive their children to school when the schools in our area are just a few blocks away. I raised my children in the same neighborhood, thirty and forty years ago, and at the time all the children walk to school. I have seen such a change, people are scared of some terrible thing happen to their kids.....How sad and terrible to live in such a time..Three of my grandchildren live in Italy and for many years now they have taken subway and bus to come back from school if they miss their usual way of transportation back home...\
Nobody seems to worry.... Let's hope for a change and let's give children an opportunity to fend for themselves and not raise them in an atmosphere of fear, this is the worst...

Yup, my kid is growing up in Japan, and you'd be amazed how many gaijin/foreigners come ~here~ and bitch about letting kids be independent! And I confess it took me a year to get over my PTSD from American Anxiety and realize when I heard a bump in the night, it was just a drunk grandpa falling off his bicycle.

My kid has been taking the train into Tokyo for an hour every school day for two years. No doubt inspired by the Japanese story of a ~5-year-old~ going to the local market for her mother for the first time, my daughter's first observation of her trip at 11 was that there are four convenience stores and two Starbucks between the train station and her school.

In Japanese elementary school, she walked with a group every morning, and one of the most quintessential Japanese sights you can see is the sidewalks filled with walking groups of young children in the morning, tallest to shortest to second tallest bringing up the rear. It is a beautiful sight, kids running down the street, and, yes, me and the grannies and everyone else out on bikes telling them, Watch out, you little buggers, and don't hog the whole sidewalk, beep-beep!

But my kid is tall and tired of being a freak show, so she wants to try cool, hip, surely taller America. So she's going to try a semester at her aunt's in the Bay Area this spring, and already I'm telling her aunt, You no promise how to teach her to use and let her use the public transportation (might be a learning experience for you, too!), me no let her come.

I'll be damned if I'm going to let her go seek tall friends just to become INFANTALIZED by AMERICAN PARANOIA! Exhibit A: Birthers, Teaparty-ers, Racists, Homophobes, Generic Right-Wingers--some people never grow up!

Already the kid wants to go to college in NYC because of the public transit, and I'm like, OK, let's go there this summer and see how you feel on the subway at night. I think you'll be fine, but as long as you're going that far east, you might want to keep going and try Europe. They have tall people there and public transit, too!

Since you can't drive here 'til 20, frankly, I've become much more fearful of my daughter wanting to go to high school in the States and drive. Hell, it's all I can do to get her attention between her listening to old "Roseanne" episodes on YouTube, IMing her FB friends, and working on her PowerPoint homework; I can't even imagine her paying attention to the road sober, much less after having partied. The last train home here may be the "Sake-sen"/full of drunks, but at least the only danger is getting a load of some salaryman's bad breath.

Thanks for bringing this up again. I read these alarms every so often in the States, but I think it's systemic: part car culture, part paranoia, part more spread outness, part rabid nanny state. I'm like, If the bus turns out to be slow, you could always ride your aunt's bike to the mall, and the kid's like, But you have to wear a helmet in California, and I'm like, Yup, nothing like being in the most perfect weather on earth with a big hunk of plastic on your head! Well, let's find out what the fine is. Better to get you a fake ID to go helmetless than buy beer!

I love you, America. I want to come "home" (though if the kid goes to college in Europe and gets a green card/job, I wouldn't hesitate to take that health care), but you have really got to get a grip on how whacked you are, and this is merely one symptom.

This Times piece disturbed the hell out of me, but how accurate is it to most peoples' current experiences of parenting? I'm asking seriously, not rhetorically, because I find the Times Styles section to generally be full of b.s. about, like, three upper-class twits in some suburb, which then gets extrapolated to generalize about a whole population. So, what's the real deal?

I grew up in upper Manhattan, in a not-too-safe, not-too-sketchy neighborhood, in the 70's and 80's. I am exactly the same age as Etan Patz was when he disappeared. At nine, I was taught to take the bus by myself, and I walked all over the place by myself - to friends' houses, to the store for my parents, in Riverside Park on a secluded path when I wanted to clear my head. At fourteen I started riding the subway alone (there hadn't been any need to before that; high school was further away). Nothing bad ever happened to me. I was never, with the exception of my park walks, alone. How did I ever escape the terrible fate that surely should have awaited me? I don't mean to make light of the very real, terrible things that happen to people, but I think my experience is probably more the norm.

Based on my own experience, the Times piece was not that far off, in terms of fear, overprotective parenting, and not giving kids any free rein. The behavior was a little more extreme than most (but not all) that I see in my own town, but it matches a lot of what I hear about from family and friends in different parts of the U.S. (In upscale suburbs, by the way.)

.. which is what makes it all the more disturbing, of course.

Though there are also counter-trends and groups, such as Safe Routes to Schools, Children and Nature Network, Free-Range Kids, and more, that are attempting to give people resources and information and move kids back into a childhood that includes unmediated activity and free play.

I grew up much like these kids. My parents were afraid of everything, but with a reason - my mother was sexually attacked by an intruder in our home when I was five. Since then, as you might imagine, they kept me under lock and key. Right well, since nothing else ever happened and they refused to allow me to have any independence, I started lying to them. I lied about everywhere I went and everything I did. If I had told the truth, I never would have been let out of the house. That's not how a kid should grow up. Trust your kids, know that the majority of people out there are not bad. Not trusting them will just drive them away from you. Oh yeah, I moved 1000 miles away as soon as I was financially able. Probably as another form of protest to being so secluded as a child and adolescent.

That's really terrible. I'm sorry to hear it. There are just no winners in that situation.

good book on the subject: "free range children"

Yes, indeed. In fact the author, Lenore Skenazy, visited and posted her thoughts a little bit upstream.

the picture is lovely. such a green place - is it a village or a town? the children look happy enough... and the last para of your post is so good...
"paid the older kids a few dollars a week for their work." scribblenerd
if you were in India, people would do it for you for free! ths not 'work' it is duty.

I was walking to school with my friends when I was in KINDERGARTEN. So did all my siblings. My mom took us to school on the first day to show us where it was and where to go, but after that, we were responsible for getting there and getting home on our own. Didn't think twice about it. I rode my bike to school and all over town when I was in High School. I liked the independence it gave me.

In California, I suppose the Jaycee Dugard case is contributing to a local flare of anxiety, as Jaycee was originally snatched while waiting at her school bus stop. I totally agree that more parents out on the street walking with their kids to school is the fastest way to make streets safer. But the odds are in favor that most kids can make the trip safely throughout their school years. Arranging for a large party of kids to walk to school together each day is a good way for kids to get to know each other and for parents to back off a bit.

Our Middle school is right in our town center and we do have a lot of walkers, our high & elementary schools are out on the state road and most kids have to be bused. What we have are parents who are afraid of the bus, and drive their kids because they don't want their little one corrupted by the older ones. I have heard parents say they don't want their kindergartner riding with 6th graders because the older ones will ruin Santa Clause for the younger children!

Thank you all again for your thoughtful posts and anecdotes. The OS community has cheered me with its general common-sense approach. Sounds like a lot of you have decent childhood memories of relative freedom and are raising some great kids!

A lot of you related to the price we all are going to pay when this generation of over-coddled kids becomes adults, and doesn’t know how to navigate, emotionally or physically. I live in fear for when this group starts driving, among other things. I’m told that kids who bike and use the streets make better drivers, and this certainly rings true.

Iamsurly, you hit that nail on the head. As did AshKW and SaoKay.

Luluandphoebe, so did you and you bring up the extra issue of rudeness as a consequence of 1. not acquiring experiences with others from which to learn, and 2. thinking merely of oneself and not being part of a greater community. I think parents unwittingly demonstrate this by holing up in their homes with worry and fear instead of organizing walking groups, being with their neighbors, and using some of their energy to teach their kids something about life. Traveling short distances in a car precludes the opportunity to do any of those things and generally creates more problems, like congestion and lack of integration with our surroundings.

Besides, it’s actually fun for kids to walk, be with each other, get exercise, and have some sense of their own environments. A lot of us have wonderful memories of being outside and having free play.

Kathy and Shiral, thank you for sharing yours. Unmediated time is deeply lacking for this generation of children and I also fear for them when they are alone and need to delegate their own time. The most over-protected and -scheduled of them are on track to be the most over-equipped, bored group ever, with no personal inner resources of their own, because they were never given time to develop them.

continuing ..

Ghostrider, thank you for also hitting on the community and safety enhancement that occurs when more people are out using the streets.

Froggy, you likewise demonstrate the importance of having walkable communities, and this is another of my complete hobby horses. I hate how most suburbs are designed for car travel and are completely thoughtless (and soulless) otherwise. I think people who live in these places absolutely suffer from alienation (which happens to breed more fear) and loss of community. There is currently a lot of writing about how to take back many of these sorts of neighborhoods – all is not lost! In my own town, there is talk about making one of the routes to the high school more safe and appealing – widening sidewalks, promoting storefront businesses, etc.

(Rolling, thank you. I do live in a fairly leafy small town, at the base of a mountain, in Northern California. We’re fortunate to have available nature, paths to schools, and a little downtown for gathering.)

M Todd, Leeandra and Lenore, you all bring up good points about the relative safety of kids today compared to when most of us were kids, and the ridiculously low odds of stranger abduction. (Indeed, the vast majority of abductions are by estranged parents.)

Lornadoone, I’m sorry that you were also criminalized for giving your kid a little appropriate freedom, and cheered that you followed your own inner compass. Ridiculous.

Blackflon, I never understood the idling vehicles. Even if you don’t walk your kid to the bus, another opportunity is lost by not even exiting your car to walk over to your kid or say hello to people. (I know that would require a few extra minutes to park.) We’re all so atomized. I often felt alone with these feelings during the rare times I had to get in a line of cars to pick up my kid at the drop-off zone after school and wondered if others had similar feelings of alienation and unbalance.

Thank you, also, Helene and ButchyBabbles, for the welcome perspective from abroad!

Rolling, you also raise a good point about Scribblenerd’s idea about paying older children to walk with younger ones. While I think people of all ages should be paid for work, including caregiving, I agree that walking younger ones would ideally fall under the category of community and, if such a thing were institutionalized, would begin to naturally happen and we’d all be better for it. (That said, as a parent of a teen, I also recognize the power of a couple of dollars.)

Boys of summer, that’s insane about the bus! I’ve been clamoring for a bus in our town as a way to get school traffic off the streets, and lament that there isn’t district money to pay for one. I see in your tale further evidence of general alienation and fear, and wonder how we got to this silly, harmful point.

Hi Bonnie. Good post -- you bring up a lot of good points. Yes, the press oversensationalizes a few headliner crimes while missing the boat on the sad, everyday, and often preventable ones. I think you're right on as far as possible solutions. Thanks for mentioning it here.