BellaOnline Forums News and Politics Missing & Exploited Children Helicopter Parents = Are Modern Kids Too Coddled?

In today's world I do not see where anyone working from home would be so busy they cannot take 10-20 minutes out of a work day to drive 0.8 miles to pick up a seven year old child after school.

I apologize for my insecurity in this world but I do not believe any child should walk to or from school alone, no matter how mature, especially crossing 4 lane roads.

You do not know what sex offenders live in your neighborhood. You may know what registered sex offenders live in your neighborhood, if you go to the National Sex Offender Registry Website www.nsopr.gov and check by zipcode or go to www.mapsexoffenders.com and put in your street address.

However, it is important to realize the majority of sex offenders move around to avoid registering, and you have to consider the offenders who are visiting a relative in your neighborhood (permanently).

Sex offenders are just one danger of walking to school alone another is bullying from older kids, fast cars driven by teenagers, threat of dogs running lose just to name a few.

If your son had a friend or walking buddy EVERYDAY for the full length of the way from school to home AND the walkie talkie I might reconsider.

Life is too short to gamble with the safety of a child, but that is just my humble opinion.

I would only have my child walk to or from school alone if there was no other option available.

We live in Canada -- not sure if we even have a registry let alone if it's public information.

Bully's aren't an issue. His school is out before any other and he's as big as most kids 1-2 years older than him. We've put him in bully proof training and is Hap ki Do instructer continues to add bully proofing and street smarts to his lessons.

We've also talked about all the various issues out there and have educated him on street smarts, using a number of different methods, books or theories out there. We've talked to him about keeping an eye out for others who are walking home from school that he can walk with.

I'm not too concerned about the road, I taught him how to cross at the age of 4 and always have given him opportunities to practice on his own. He takes the most public way home so there are lots of eyes around.

I know some people along the way and he knows which houses he should go to if there is a problem and he needs to find somewhere safe to go.

On the days I can get home early enough I'm going to see who I know walking that way. From what I know now though most kids we know around us go to a different school or take the bus, we are so close to the bus limit that not many would walk as far as us.

You soumd as if you have covered all the bases. My kids use walkie talkies when they walk to a friends house around the corner. That is a wonderful idea! Test them out and make sure they work the full distance.

I found this out when I did a search on Canada's Sex Offender Registry www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/techops/nsor/index_e.htm apparently they also do have a National Registry. You have taught me something new today.

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Thanks for keeping me on my toes.

It's an interesting discussion. I don't think most people can afford nannies, and while many people put kids into day care, I don't think that's much different than putting them into school. It's still a structured environment with a teacher telling them what to do. Kids are never on their own to make their own decisions, the parents are always making decisions for them either directly or through the day cares they have watching over them.

Here's an example. There's a commercial running on TV with the father telling their child every second "don't cross the street" and "get up and give your seat to that woman" and so on. Every decision, the father is telling the kid what to do. Then the kid is offered drugs and the father isn't there. And the tag line is, "if you don't tell him what to do, what WILL he do?" As if - unless you tell your child exactly how to act in any given situation, he'll make the wrong choice.

It really bugs me. If you teach your child responsibility, he can make decisions by himself based on values, not because you kept telling him what to do.

My mother made a lot of my decisions in my life and I had to learn how to make my own not because it was the opposite of what she said, but because it was the right choice.

My children have always had choices, whether as simple as what they will wear to whether or not they will do their chores. Every decision has a consequence that they need to experience, you wear shorts when its snowing you'll freeze when you go outside. You don't do your chores, I don't do extra stuff for you and you don't get any allowance etc.

When my child was 4 he was taught to cross a busy street by himself. When he was 5 he was taught to go to and come home from the bus(1/2 block) by himself. At 6 he was allowed to go to the park (@ bus stop) and come home from the store (two blocks) on his own. Now at 7 he goes and comes home from school on his own. So many times parents don't let their kids do stuff and then are surprised when they are suppost to be old enough to do something but can't do it.

I refuse to do something for my children that they can do themselves. They are asked questions to help them make a decision and so they can understand how to make a decision.

I disagree about the majority of American kids being coddled too much. While *some* are, I can tell you as an experienced school teacher that too many children today are latchkey or daycare kids with parents who need to be more involved rather than less.

Hmmmm, but collleges are reporting this problem is on the rise -

http://www.careerjournal.com/columnists/workfamily/20050729-workfamily.html

so these parents are coming from somewhere ...

Maybe it's a difference of parents whose kids go to college, vs those who do not?

Most of the parents I know aren't latchkey at all - they are overtaxed with personally running their kids around to boy scouts, soccer and horseback riding. So it sounds like a different crew. The ones I know are definitely all on the "college track".

So true. You can give kids choices from the very beginning. Our 4 year old makes several decisions for himself each day. <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> Sure, they're not life/death situations...LOL More like which clothes to wear, which breakfast food he wants, etc...

I agree that too many children grow up without being allowed to make choices, but I think that's because of controlling parents rather than parents who coddle their kids.

When I taught 5th grade, I often found that by the time the children got to me, they wanted to be "walked through" everything. In school they are told what to do every second--even when to PEE. They are not supposed to talk or get out of their seats, etc...

Anyway, my fifth graders usually came to me with littl self-confidence, wanting to knwo EXACTLY what I wanted for the assignment and so forth. It usually took a few months for them to start thinking outside the box in my room (which is what I wanted). Some never did.

Sorry for the tangent!

Jan

Wow. Here we have so many pedophiles and sex offenders that it's just not safe to do these things, unfortunately.

Lisa,

I'm SURE that's the difference. Any college study is going to be skewed.

Anybody have the stats for how many American students even START college much less finish?

Jan