And my school was over a mile away. Granted, there was a school bus, but if you missed it, what else could we do but walk?

In Brooklyn. Oh noes!

“Then I made it to the other town, which had an even more frightening thing… a CHRISTIAN COLLEGE FULL OF ADULTS.”

You were a lucky kid. On that leg of your journey you really placed your 12-year-old ass in jeopardy!

Streets are always crowded with kids. Actually everyone walks a lot, (I could never understand those american towns with empty streets) and we have a nice collective transport system coverage in the city, lots of buses going almost everywhere (there are so many, that they do jam the traffic a lot, unfortunatelly).

And most kids go to school by themselves. I’ve seen kids that looked about 7 years old getting the bus to school. And it’s not a school bus, mind you, it is a regular bus, the same one I catch to go to work

I will be honest. Once when I was 12 or so a creepy car was at a cross-street, then at another… then I saw the same car cruise by slowly. I got nervous so when it was out of sight again I walked between some houses and hung out there for a few minutes (no cell phones yet). Then I went on home. I would still let my kid walk, if for no other reason than this: If we always try to keep our kids off the street then there’s only a small step before we start saying that kids who get abducted or abused “deserved” it because they were out walking around. Only a little bit before we hold the parent accountable and forget that the problem is the criminals who target kids. There aren’t that many of them really, but we empower them with our fear.

Aye that sounds like a perfectly good Scottish childhood and adolescence.

Getting pissed but seeing your pals home, sometimes carrying sometimes dragging the buggers for miles.

Good luck in your degree by ra way.

You at Glasgow?

“”These days, parents have to be over-protective of their children or they can suddenly disappear forever.” – Has it really changed?”

From what I’ve read on actual statistics, yes, it has. It’s gotten safer.

That said, I was pretty bad for wandering off on my own when I’d had a drink. I ended up making a several mile detour up the main A9 to the 24 hour supermarket for something to eat. My house was a ~20 minute walk from where I started -_-

@32 Oh it will. I’ve got good genes when it comes to booze and I’m by comparison a moderate drinker to some people I know. But that’s more of a cashflow thing than a health choice :p

What? If he can wipe his own ass and someone else is offering to take on the responsibility for a night kick him out the door. At 10 I was walking a half mile to school with my 5 and 6 year old neighbors in tow, and I’m only 25 so not too long ago.

When I lived and worked in DC, there were a bunch of kids on my morning bus route, commuting along with everyone else. Occasionally someone would correct them or ask them to quiet down, but no one was concerned.

There’s this bizarre view of the world that 1) kids are helpless nitwits, 2)half the population are kidnappers and 3)no one else is keeping an eye on kids. If your kid is sticking his head out the bus window, the person sitting next to him is going to say something. I get pissed when parents let their kids run around the restaurant, but keeping them from killing themselves when they’re on their own is a very small responsibility everyone takes on when they become part of a community. Growing up, more than one neighbor bandaged me up and took me home when I took a spill off my bike. Neighbor, not saint.

Later on, I moved into a ‘city’ — population over half a million — where I was constantly asked by cops after dark when I was 16 to 28! are you sure you should be walking alone?

People can be helpful and concerned, and this is preferable to callousness, but it can be aggravating too.

Overall, give me the village that cares about its kids enough to annoy them without extreme prejudice, I give you Canada, the country I love.

If kids go outside and explore and socialize and do kid things, how are they going to learn about life? Books can’t teach you everything. No wonder the “dangerous book for boys/girls” are so popular.

And I won’t even get into how I used to walk to school by myself and to the library and to the toy store and…I don’t think I could stand being a kid today. It would make me a neurotic mess. That is, it would make me an even bigger neurotic mess. ;)

I’m a little slow, but I fell for the hype.

There is a minority of soccer moms that are over-protective. It’s fun to point at them and laugh. In my ten years as a parent, I’ve never met one of them. Their kids will eventually rebel.

At eighteen, I am still not often allowed to go on walks where my whims take me.

I used to have to walk about 1/2 mile to pick up my mom some cigarettes. God, I miss those days…

I think she was referring to the the likelihood that her son would be harmed by someone he knows, which is far greater than him being harmed by a stranger in the street.

What was she thinking letting me go 1/4 mile by myself?!?! What if some dog had attacked me?

Yeah, buncha crap. Personally I think unless a child is physically hurt or abused no one but the parents should have any say. It doesn’t take a village to raise a child…just a parent, preferably two. But it does take a village to blow stuff out of proportion. I say arrest everyone who complained and caused the kid to be “traumatized” by the ride in the police cruiser…

But I used to go all over the place, with a genuine child- murderer in the area at the time! Driving kids everywhere wasn’t on the list of solutions for most of the parents in the city- catching the guy was. It seems that people panic more about fake problems than real ones.