This is where, as usual, you take what seems to be a reasonable statement and prove that you’re a radical who wants to wipe out hundreds of years or progress.

Just my first thought after living in an apartment with noisy neighbor kids. I guess it could be hysteria, but I’m dubious.

I can only imagine what she’d think if she saw her at the range with my AK-47.

It was a mouthguard.

#19 el coronado

Camel’s nose, #18. Camels’ nose. I have no problem with a parent making his kid wear the stupid-ass helmets; fencing their pool; etc. The problem is that most of that shit is now codified in law…

BINGO! Marriage isn’t a three-way partnership with the state being the head of the family. And there are some activities that don’t need to be criminalized (although the list of non-criminal activities shrinks every year).

The other issue of importance, is for those parents who disagree with our kids having the freedom to grow, play and learn. Those who do not like our way of raising kids, should mind their own business, and keep their mouths shut.

I know some of the people in my area do not like the freedom afforded my kids. These neighbours also know that I am an outspoken, strongwilled parent, and they keep their comments to themselves.

Take some advice from Montgomery-Gentry, “I don’t give a dang what other people think! What do ya think about that?!”

The reason I believe in free-range parenting is because the statistics show that the odds of your kid being abducted from out in front of your house are virtually zero. At the same time, I believe there is strong science touting the developmental benefits of allowing your children to engage in unstructured (which sometimes means unsupervised) play time. As such, the risk-benefit analysis tells me I have better things to worry about than letting my 6-year-old play in the backyard for a little while without me monitoring her.

Anyway, I’m sure most of you understand this, but I thought it was worth pointing out free-range parenting is not a free-for-all. My wife and I believe in car seats, helmets and other safety precautions that we didn’t have when we were kids. We just don’t panic about “dangers” that are far too remote to warrant significant attention.

When i was a kid, I didn’t know another kid that didn’t have free run of the town. From the minute we were able to ride our bikes without training wheels, we were all over the place. I would routinely be completely across town. Helmets? Safety crap? Did they even HAVE that stuff back then? Bikes and kids were everywhere.

Today? I can’t remember the last time I saw a kid riding a bike.

What changed? Certainly there aren’t more pedophiles, kidnappers, etc. now. If anything, based on statistical data, there are fewer.

What changed, in my opinion, is the velocity and bandwidth of news. Back in the day, you had the big 3 TV channels and of course, radio and newspapers. A “Breaking story” that preempted that tiny amount of bandwidth had to be HUGE. Some guy committing a crime was only news to the local area.

Fast forward to today. News is everywhere. There are hundreds of TV channels. The internet has spawned thousands of “news portals” in the form of web sites and blogs, both huge (Like Huff Po) and small (Like niche opinion blogs.) You can get all the info your paranoid mind wants about any issue that concerns you. In addition, special interest groups that want to steer policy are becoming adept at manipulating this cornucopia of information channels to manipulate people.

Like the Chinese curse: “May you live in interesting times.”

Do I want to go back? Back to the dark ages of being fed only small amounts of local news? No way! The genie of global information is out of the bottle and it’s not going back in! Can society as a whole handle it? Nope, apparently not.

Am all for free-range kids; letting kids BE kids, but the issue (problem?) goes a hell of a lot deeper than that. Look at that pic again. When was the last time you saw a boy in overalls? Or *any* kid barefoot while outside? Riding a bike without a stupid-ass helmet? Pushing – or even owning – his beat-up pile of crap old car held together by baling wire and hope? I live in one of them ‘master-planned communities’, so there’s _lots_ of ball fields and ball courts and bike paths all around. They should be absolutely *teeming* with kids. Nope: ghost town city, 98% of the time.

Yeah, this’ll end well.

Seriously, though, in the summers I would leave in the late morning with a backpack and a couple $$ and ride my bike 5 or so miles to the town pool. When we were ready for a break, we would wander around the area collecting cans and bottles form all the trash cans within a mile and turn them in for cash and candy.

Hell, I did walk to school – kindergarten – by myself or with friends, even in the middle of winter in MN.

And just about the second I got my driver’s license I was road tripping alone 5 hours to visit friends in another state.

I was definitely a free range kid and so were ALL the kids I went to school with, we played in large groups and small and most of us had two parents working so no supervision during the daytime. None of us ever got hurt more than a scrape or two, we all grew to adults without any serious accidents or anyone attacking any of us. My friends, whom I’ve known since elementary school (yes we still hang out together, 60 years later), call those years our golden age. I let my 3 children have the same kind of freedom when they were growing up, though by then we lived in a rural area where our children had horses and bikes and 100 undeveloped acres to roam with forest, meadows, a year round creek and a couple of ponds to explore. They also grew up with no serious injuries from their freedom, and my grandkids (the youngest of which is 11, the oldest 24) have been raised as free range kids, too. I am an advocate of letting kids roam, free of ridiculous restrictions.