I was reading this article on Newsweek...and I thought I would share it and hopefully hear your thoughts. I took excerpts from it, but to read the entire article got to: http://www.newsweek.com/id/133103?GT1=43002Would you let your grade-schooler ride the subway? I really like what this article has to say. I'm a Helicopter mom...I can see signs of it already, but I don't want to be. I think there are too many out there like me...
A New York columnist lets her grade-schooler ride the subway alone, provoking a wave of criticism. But do kids really need more supervision than in generations past?
Would you let your fourth-grader ride public transportation without an adult? Probably not. Still, when Lenore Skenazy, a columnist for the New York Sun, wrote about letting her son take the subway alone to get back to her Manhattan home from a department store on the Upper East Side, she didn't expect to get hit with a tsunami of criticism from readers.
"Long story short: My son got home, ecstatic with independence," Skenazy wrote on April 4 in the New York Sun. "Long story longer: Half the people I'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's not. It's debilitating—for us and for them."
The episode has ignited another one of those debates that divides parents into vocal opposing camps. Are modern parents needlessly overprotective, or is the world a more complicated and dangerous place than it was when previous generations were allowed to roam unsupervised?
From the "she's an irresponsible mother" camp came: "Shame on you for being so cavalier with his safety," in comments on the Huffington Post. And there was this from a mother of four: "How would you have felt if he didn't come home?" But Skenazy got a lot of support, too, with women and men writing in with stories about how they were allowed to run errands all by themselves at seven or eight. She also got heaps of praise for bucking the "helicopter parent" trend: "Kudos to this Mom," one commenter wrote on the Huffington Post. "This is a much-needed reality check."
3 comments:
Hmm, hard to say, I am much more of a free range mom than I thought I would be. I can't say if I would let my nine year old ride the subway, it would depend on the kid themselves and where I lived. I do think we don't allow kids to shoulder as much responsibility as they should-I think people need to worry more about teaching their children how to avoid or react in a dangerous situation rather than sheltering them from everything, which isn't possible anyway.
yeah Im on both sides of the fence with this one. I think the world is more dangerous. I think that children are not as safe as they once were but it's up to parents to teach our kids to be street smart too. And I dont think it's ever too soon to start the education of looking after and being aware of one's own safety. I wonder if this was his first time tho, because if it were me there would have been several trial runs prior to the big journey alone. Times when I accompanied him, then when I met him at the next stop, then 3 stops along, then a few more - that kind of thing.
I guess she knows her kid and knows his capabilities. I would imagine my first born would have wanted to do the same and been quite capable at doing the same. Not so sure that my second born would be so adventurous.
What were your thoughts?
Gail & Belle - I agree with you. Although the article pointed out that we are supposedly living in safer times than 20 years ago, and we just feel less safe because we hear more about all the icky stuff via internet and news and such. Who knows. I would be like you...several trial runs for riding public transportation on their own, and I would really have to evaluate if my kid was ready. But, I do think there are a lot of moms now-a-days that don't do their kids a lot of good by "hovering" over them...I'm working on trying not to be like this.
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