
The Overprotected Kid (2014) - shalmanese
http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/03/hey-parents-leave-those-kids-alone/358631/?single_page=true
======
nevinera
I think the biggest improvement we made to our outlook on the topic was to
separate 'getting hurt' into subcategories of 'pain', 'damage', and 'lasting
harm'. Without those subcategories being explicit, it's hard to have
reasonable discussions about risk.

I have a two-year-old; she's allowed to play with a hammer and nails, but she
can't use a real knife without supervision. That's because the potential for
real damage or lasting harm are both high with a knife - she shouldn't use
that on her own until she has been trained with techniques for doing it
safely. Next year, she'll probably be allowed to use a knife on food, if not
on wood (safe whittling takes a little more effort than safe cutting).

The distinction between damage and lasting harm is especially hard for many
people to grasp. Going to the hospital usually means you have _damage_ \- you
need stitches, a cast, crutches. Harm is only 'lasting' if it will not totally
go away in the next few years - spinal injuries or major disfiguring burns.

~~~
EdwardMSmith
This is exactly how I did it with my two.

For the most part, I just let "pain" happen. You knew it was going to, and it
was hard not to say anything. It didn't always happen, but it usually did.
This is stuff like jumping off swings, "sword fights" with sticks, snowball
fights, sledding, etc. When it did happen, they always look over to see your
reaction. Mostly it was a raised eyebrow or smile and a small shake of the
head. Most of the time they went right back to doing what they were doing..
but generally didn't get hurt again. Progress, right?

For light "damage", I'd warn them, "uh, that's not such a good idea..." or I'd
force them to add some safety equipment to try to mitigate the damage (knee
pads, long pants, gloves, that sort of thing). They've got a few scars, but no
broken bones - probably equal parts luck and caution on the kid's part.

Tree-climbing (and other forms of climbing) were the hardest things to deal
with because the skill and the limit testing is so important, but the
consequences can so variable.

Anything over that, I'd be heavily involved - supervision, stopping them, etc.

On the other hand, there were quite a number of things I tried to get them to
do that were pretty dangerous, but they wouldn't do.. I tried really hard to
get them into Karting, but no luck. One of the two, the older one, has taken
to climbing walls, but the other hasn't.

I think they've developed pretty good self confidence and risk management.

They still sword fight like idiots, tho. That ALWAYS ends up in tears..

~~~
nevinera
Foam sword fighting! Join one of the leagues :-)
[http://safeswordfighting.tripod.com/](http://safeswordfighting.tripod.com/)

------
Swizec
My favourite words to hear as a kid were: "Go out and play"

This was in the early and mid 90's. It was amazing. I had a turf around our
house that I would patrol. I knew where every plant was, which neighbourhood
dogs are friendly and which aren't, where each climbable tree could be found,
and I knew exactly how long it took to tumble down the nearby hill.

I was deathly scared of rollerblading down the paved hill. Natural aversion to
pain, you see.

And yes, plenty of scraped knees[1]. Many bruises. Perhaps a stitch or two.
But I bloody well learned my limits and could spend hours upon hours
entertaining myself with everything from random hammers to pitchforks and
planks that I made bike jumps out of.

It used to be so cool to be a kid.

My sister is 8 years younger. She no longer went to the playground without my
mum. Not because my mum wouldn't let her, but because she didn't want to.
Somewhere somehow she got the idea that she needs to be constantly supervised.

[1] Apparently there was a particular summer where both my knees and both
elbows essentially had a permanent scrape. I'd always replace it with a new
one before the old one healed.

~~~
e40
_My favourite words to hear as a kid were: "Go out and play"_

Indeed. It was the mantra when I was a kid. In my neighborhood, if I said that
to my kid, he'd be the only one out there. The rest of the kids are inside,
playing video games or studying.

Last summer, my 13 yr old didn't see one of his friends face-to-face, but had
a summer of playing with them and talking while doing so over Skype. He went
to a bunch of camps, and saw kids his own age there, and spent a week with his
cousins, but saw none of his school friends in person.

Yeah, it was very disturbing to me, and I tried many times to insist "wouldn't
you like to have some friends over?" only to hear "no, I'm good"... several
times I thought about forcing him outside, but really, the playgrounds have
only young kids with parents hovering over them. He would have been alone out
there.

I'm been saying to anyone that would listen that there will be unintended
consequences for this shift. Dramatic ones. I hope they aren't too bad for our
kids and society, and that I'm overstating it. I would love to be wrong here.

------
chrisBob
As the proud parent of a 3 month old, my concern is that exposing my daughter
to small risks as she grows up could end in me going to jail. My wife and I
joke that our kid isn't allowed to walk to the park alone until she can outrun
the cops. Short of moving to Europe I am not sure how to make sure it is safe
to let my child roam alone when she is an 8 year old. I am not concerned about
her safety exactly, but some asshole calling the police is a very real and
serious threat to our family.

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/decision-in-
fr...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/decision-in-free-range-
case-does-not-end-debate-about-parenting-and-
safety/2015/03/02/5a919454-c04d-11e4-ad5c-3b8ce89f1b89_story.html)

~~~
__xtrimsky
Yea I'm worried about that too. I was raised in France but live in the US, as
an 8 year old I used to explore lot's of things. But I'm not actually sure I
want to let my kids do the same, I remember doing a lot of stupid things too
and I'm not sure any of this freedom taught me anything:

\- touching dog poop to enter a "ninja" club

\- entering many private properties

\- climbing dangerously high trees

\- crossing quadruple railroad tracks with TGVs passing on them.

\- putting my head next to a passing TGV (about 2 feet away), just to see how
it feels and be scared

\- jumping off high ledges to see how far I can fall without hurting myself.

\- walking near ledges with a 2 story drop.

\- playing with explosive fireworks, big enough to blow up a couple of
fingers. I could just buy these as a kid in France.

This is just a small list, and I was honestly a very quiet, calm kid. I just
had an active friend. And as I said, I don't remember this teaching me
anything.

Whereas I remember spending time programming (visual programming) at 8 years
old, and that was awesome and taught me a lot.

~~~
Swizec
> \- jumping off high ledges to see how far I can fall without hurting myself.

This is actually VERY IMPORTANT knowledge. Knowing how much your body can take
and knowing how to fall in a way that increases how much your body can take
could mean the difference between life and death in _many_ situations.

As the Grim Reaper said when asked about giving a sword to a kid who could cut
themselves: "That will be an important lesson."

~~~
omegaham
Yep. I remember growing up with one of those older playgrounds - there was a
platform about 6 feet off the ground that had a rope climb on one side of it.
The idea was to get a kid to climb up the wall with the rope.

Six-year-old me was fascinated with jumping off of the thing. And yes, it hurt
sometimes. I fell on my face, I fell on my ass, I took hard landings that
jarred my bones. But I learned, and it got to the point where I was taking a
running start before jumping off (Parents pulled the plug at that point).

Kids should learn that sort of stuff. Ideally, you want to protect them from
"kill / maim you with no warning" stuff like electrical transformers, the
third rail on the subway, dangerous chemicals, etc. You want to inculcate a
healthy fear of stuff that will cause lasting harm. And, well, everything else
should be free game. My parents told me I was free to go wherever on the bike
as long as I stayed away from the really busy roads and wore my helmet (again,
kill / maim you with no warning).

The funny thing, to me, is that many of the sports that kids play are far, far
more dangerous than these childhood games. Football kills and cripples kids
every single year, but it's _organized_ , so it's okay!

~~~
Swizec
> Football kills and cripples kids every single year, but it's organized, so
> it's okay!

Liability and blame. Parents are okay with letting their kids get injured if
there is somebody to blame. Like the coach. Or some higher purpose "Oh they
were training for a competition"

But parents, and people in general, balk at personal responsibility.

------
shirro
There is a middle ground between locking your kids indoors and letting them
roam feral riding on the top of trains and tagging buildings.

And that is to be an active parent and go camping, hunting, fishing with kids.
Geocaching, bushwalking, kayaking, long distance bike rides etc.

These are some good starting lists:
[http://www.natureplaysa.org.au/resources/2/51-things-to-
do-b...](http://www.natureplaysa.org.au/resources/2/51-things-to-do-before-
youre-12/) [https://www.50things.org.uk/activity-
list.aspx](https://www.50things.org.uk/activity-list.aspx)

~~~
rayiner
Who has the time?

When I was a kid, my over protective asian mother would let me out of the
house when I got home from school, and I'd wander around the neighborhood with
the neighborhood kids, and come back when it got dark.

My generation's (I'm 30) ideas of "proper parenting" are too god-damn time
intensive. You should be doing stuff with your kids, sure, but beyond a pretty
young age, it's their job to entertain themselves.

~~~
ajcarpy2005
I don't see why in evenings, families can't spend some time in the backyard
maybe grill some food or just throw a Frisbee or whatnot.

~~~
67726e
Not for nothing, but how many kids want to spend their time doing that? Sure,
playing catch with a parent is fun from time to time, but when I was a kid I
wanted to spend my time roaming the woods, riding bikes, or building a tree-
house with my friends, not my parents.

------
zwass
I'm surprised there's no mention of the Berkeley, CA Adventure Playground
([http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/adventureplayground/](http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/adventureplayground/)),
in continuous operation since 1979.

I have fond memories of being there as a young child. Want a hammer? Pick up
10 stray nails and trade them for a hammer. Then go smash things, attach
things, whatever you like.

There's a zip line and a giant cargo net to climb. It's an incredibly
empowering experience for children.

~~~
e40
I'm seriously disappointed that I didn't know about this while my kid grew up
a few miles from it. And I've been to the Berkeley Marina dozens of times and
I've never seen this. Total bummer.

------
spiritplumber
Keywords being "without making it safer".

Security theater, safety theater, everyone too afraid to point out the obvious
because they don't want to make it easy for others to accuse them of
callousness in a way that's hard to defend against.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abilene_paradox](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abilene_paradox)

~~~
anon4
I'm not sure that's really the Abilene paradox. In that, every member of the
group would agree to taking the counter action if everyone else did. What we
have is, I think, more like The Emperor's New Clothes. Most of the collective
is in private agreement that he's naked, but would never dare speak against
the misguided interest of a powerful minority.

~~~
kirsebaer
A lot of people actually believe that kids have to be "protected from
dangers". They are not just playing along to please the neighbors. However,
popular opinions can also change quickly.

------
jgrahamc
The opening of this reminded me of the hours I spent in an "adventure
playground" as a child in the UK. Now at least I know that I need to thank
Lady Marjory Allen of Hurtwood for so much fun. I do remember thinking that
the adventure playground was 'dangerous' and that was the best part.

------
jschulenklopper
The initiatives of Gever Tulley, especially Tinkering School [1], are very in
line with this article. For the interested (quoted from Wikipedia):

> Tulley delivered a talk at the TED2007 [2] conference entitled "5 Dangerous
> Things You Should Let Your Kids Do". In this talk, Tulley makes the argument
> that a growing trend towards over-protection of children is harming their
> ability to learn and think. Thus, Tulley advocates for parents to allow
> their children to do supervised activities that are considered to be
> dangerous such as driving a car or playing with fire. By doing so, Tulley
> believes children will learn concepts that they may not learn in more
> structured and conventional activities.

Later, he published a book "50 Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children
Do)"

[1] [http://www.tinkeringschool.com](http://www.tinkeringschool.com)

[2]
[http://www.ted.com/talks/gever_tulley_on_5_dangerous_things_...](http://www.ted.com/talks/gever_tulley_on_5_dangerous_things_for_kids)

~~~
jschulenklopper
TL;DR, some of the 'dangerous' things are:

    
    
      * play with fire
      * own a pocket knife
      * throw a spear
      * deconstruct appliances
      * break the DMCA
      * drive a car
    

BTW, Gever mentions that Tinkering School is also about being creative,
confident and in control of these things, learning to handle them safely.

~~~
rthomas6
Sounds like I should get my son in Boy Scouts, even though our family is
becoming increasingly less religious. My experience with Cub Scouts/Boy Scouts
included the following things I wouldn't have got to do otherwise:

    
    
      * Building a fire
      * Training to use a pocket knife (and being allowed to own one thereafter)
      * Shooting a rifle without my parents present
    

I quit early on, and they teach you way more self-sufficiency and survival
skills than I learned. I recall that there's a merit badge that involves
blindfolding you and dropping you off in an unknown wooded location with
nothing but a tarp, and you have to "survive" for 24 hours by building a
shelter, making a fire, looking for food and water, etc.

------
vhost-
The next generation of kids are going to be weak. I mean that.

As a kid, I was causing all sorts of trouble, broke a couple bones, created
scars, pissed off a neighbor or two, played hockey, and had an outlet for
figuring out who I was without my parents around. I turned out fine. I was
able to make it through my problems with dyslexia and except that was part of
me, I knew what pain felt like, and I learned how to treat people with respect
because they didn't yell at me or call the cops; they talked to me like a
little human that could learn a lesson (okay, maybe a few yelled at me).

Now I see certain family members completely sheltering their kids. No
vaccines, play time inside, choosing the TV they watch, the books they read,
the bikes they ride, home schooling. This is becoming a very popular way to
raise kids and it's no fun.

~~~
stcredzero
I was walking through a suburban neighborhood with a group of friends to find
a better vantage point to see the 4th of July fireworks several years ago.
This woman's 8 year old daughter was riding her tasseled and glitter covered
"princess" bike beside us, and had to transition from the road back to the
sidewalk. The closest path was over a concrete driveway, which had about a 2
inch (~5cm) "lip" where it met the road.

The girl got "stuck" with her front wheel against the end of the driveway, and
_called for her mom!_ (And yes, her mom came over and helped her roll past the
"obstacle.")

~~~
visarga
See? that's what we need helicopter moms for. Surpassing 5cm obstacles with
bikes.

------
reminiscentplay
(Throwaway... Not sure why, yet. Something to discuss with my therapist I'm
sure. ~89-94)

Before fifth grade, we would build fires to roast marshmallows and hot dogs in
the disused sandbox, watched over by the honeysuckles (and, I'm sure, mom from
a window). We would have pinecone wars, but only when the season was right -
fresh 'cones hurt too much. We would climb trees to see how high we could get;
we would head into the woods and build forts from branches and detritus. Once,
during a slumber party, we snuck out late at night to ride our bikes through
the witching hour. A neighbor called the police on us, thinking we were casing
houses. Maybe it was our hoodies. We were, at most, 8 or 9.

By fifth grade, the neighborhood kids my age had all moved away. The one up
the street - his mom a single mom, divorced from a gay ex-minister but still
active in the LDS, with three younger sisters - wasn't allowed to play with us
off their property once his mother caught wind of our backyard roasts and
called the fire department. She was a night shift nurse. Once, when we were
riding our bikes along the busy two lane (double yellow) road that ran
parallel to the train and past my back yard, we saw a squirrel dead from
impact. He used the front tire of his bike to crush its head, fascinated by
how its eyes bulged. I threw up. A cop pulled up and gave us a stern talking
to about respecting animals - even ones that were already dead. "It may be
dead, but we don't know if it can still feel pain or not," he said, and went
on his way.

The one down the street always had a German Shepherd that they'd give away
once it got too old and untrained and relegated to a 20' length of chain. One
of them had an accident in their play room once - I can't remember if it was
Jupiter or Saturn (never Uranus) - and it had worms squirming in it. The
stench was overwhelming. We climbed their maple trees often, we built bicycle
ramps on the downslope to the coul-de-sac. Once I raced down it so fast, and
the pavement was so rough, that I lost traction and slid fifteen feet on my
side and knee. I was fascinated when the gravel wormed its way up through my
skin; I still have the scar. We would find hollows between the lawn and the
curb, or make them in the woods or in the stacked square logs that held
erosion at bay and place GI Joes in battle stance, squared against Cobra in
their pretend pillboxes. They had Beastmaster I and II on laserdisc, his
parents smoked like a coal plant, and they moved.

The other one down the street, his dad would beat him with a belt. Once we
were in their front yard and I shinnied up a tree. Misjudged. Slipped, tore
the skin off my shin. I was pretty high up. Never climbed a tree after that.
Never saw that one again, either. I can't remember his name. I hope he didn't
continue the cycle of abuse.

I couldn't figure out, for the life of me, why we weren't allowed to cross the
gentle slope that formed a lip round one side of the playground in fifth
grade. I got in trouble for wandering down there several times. A boy showed
me a playboy magazine there; I thought the distended breasts were gross; I
tattled. He had gotten rid of the evidence in the toilet trash can, but still
got in trouble. It flurried one day, and my math teacher had us stay indoors
while she went outside and frolicked in it, gloating at us. She made me feel
stupid for not knowing long division - when I insisted that fractions were
clearly better: .3 repeating made less sense to me than 1/3.

By middle school, recess turned into "socialization time": 200 sixth graders
standing for half their lunch period in sweltering heat or shivering cold,
milling around bleachers and prohibited from going on the football field below
by the panopticonic gym teacher with his comical shorts and puffed out chest
and bulging belly and Kenny G hair, forced to interact with no context but
that which came as visual, auditory, olfactory baggage.

That's when the bullying started.

~~~
will_work4tears
Great post, that's some vivid imagery. There's many great writers here on HN,
though I'd like to mention that your style of writing is fairly unique (and
very good) and might point to your main account, especially if your main
account is prolific (which, If I'm right, is true).

~~~
reminiscentplay
Thank you.

It might at that. My writing style on this was quite a but different than my
typical comment, though -- discussion of a topic is different than telling a
story.

My therapist has hinted that writing down things about my past would be
beneficial, and has been trying to get me to do it for a while. I'd started
this as to illustrate the unsupervised play in my childhood as a nostalgic
positive, but realized there were a whole lot of other things, not so
positive, that had happened too. Between the bullying in school and boy scouts
and the sexual assault in the boy scouts, it's been hard to think back and
remember what my childhood was like before that. Sure I remember some of the
good times, but a lot of the things in the post above I haven't thought about
in decades - and thought didn't remember until I began writing and it all
spilled out.

------
djapolinares
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skype](http://preply.com/en/german-by-skype) and it was also worth trying.

------
djapolinares
This is very helpful to me because I can use skype for learning german. I have
also tried some lessons by skype with a native speaker from
[http://preply.com/en/german-by-skype](http://preply.com/en/german-by-skype)
and it was also worth trying.

------
bane
When I was very young 6-8, I lived in a low-end, but rather large, apartment
complex. It was built at the tail end of the brutalism architectural fad and
we had oddities like fully concrete playgrounds built on top of concrete
walking surface, surrounded by concrete planters with hard sharp corners.

There was a more conventional playground at an adjacent park and then a
neighboring section of townhouses with an open field up at a higher elevation,
and then by a strip mall on the other side. The whole area was maybe 2km x
1km.

The entire area was boxed in by 2 high-speed roads and on the other side a
crazy intersection. So it formed a kind of "natural" range for us.

It was in the middle of a city so it wasn't too big of a deal for my friends
and I to run around all over the complex (there were three different concrete
playgrounds and a pool), go over to each other's apartments, run over to the
park, play around in the parking garage. Run over to the local computer store.
Nobody's parents really seemed to care too much where we went inside of this
box so long as we were home by dark.

There was a 7-11 across one of the busy streets with a couple arcade games and
they sold comic books and baseball cards, so the braver of us would head over
there on occasion and spend our meager allowances on that stuff. It was at
about here I learned that different houses had different allowances on our
range. Some kids would get in trouble if they came back toting comic books or
candy that could have only come from the 7-11, some kids didn't. And so by
consensus us kids learned where was the furthest from home we could safely
stray.

While most of my friends had a mother at home, I was fully latchkey, both of
my parents worked, often till quite late. There was some strangeness in how
this was managed:

\- During the school year, between getting home from school and dark, I was
free to go anywhere in this box I wanted, so long as I called my parents when
I got home from school.

\- If I was going to a friend's apartment, I had to let them know this. If I
was just going to play outside it didn't matter where I went.

\- During the summer, my mother would hire a local mother to be my babysitter.
Her sons and I were already friends, and their house rules were more or less
the same as mine. So really we'd just come home for lunch and she wouldn't see
us all day after that. But at least there was a "responsible adult in charge"

\- There was an apartment rule that if you wanted to use the pool, and were
under 12, you needed a responsible child 12 or older to bring you.

\- If my parents decided to go out to a function by themselves at night,
they'd hire in a babysitter, usually a local teen, I'd spend most of the
evening outside with my friends, but within eyeshot of my house.

\- Once it got dark, I had to report back in at home, then I was free to go
back outside so long as it was within eyeshot/holler distance from home.

It seemed awesome at the time and I completely enjoyed growing up there. After
this, we moved to the country, and strangely it seemed my range shrunk as
there simply wasn't really any place to go so it wasn't much worth getting out
of the house for. I had a couple friends that were within a couple miles, and
on occasion I'd walk to their houses or they would walk to mine, but that was
it, for the most part my world shrunk.

I learned much later that there was a darker side to all this childhood
freedom.

\- A known sex predator lived in our complex. My mother found out years later
that many of my play friends had been abused by him. I believe one time he may
have tried to get me to come to his apartment as I remember meeting a strange
man at the neighboring strip mall who "wanted to buy my bike for $1000, but I
had to come back to his apartment to get the money" The police never
investigated any of the cases, and I rarely remember ever seeing police in the
area.

\- The tall apartment buildings were popular spots for suicides. I think I
remember at least knowing about 3 or 4 suicides while I lived there. I know
that one of the bodies was found by one of my play friends. It was so
traumatic that he was pulled out of school and the family moved away.

\- The brutalist design and the underground parking garage were extremely
dangerous. Several of my play friends ended up in the hospital with broken
bones and concussions from falling off of things or getting clipped by cars.

A couple years ago I went back to see my old stomping grounds. Of course it
was much smaller as an adult than as an 8 year old.

\- All of the playgrounds had been removed.

\- A fountain feature had also been removed.

\- Many of the concrete planters had also been torn up.

\- A high fence had been put up around the pool.

\- Some of the "secret" entrances into weird structural parts of the
underground garage had been fenced over.

\- The walking path to the neighboring strip mall had been removed and
replaced with another high-speed road (shrinking the safe play range).

\- The path to neighboring neighborhood had been completely removed. Shrinking
the range more.

There were other bits of "civilizing" that had occurred, but it seemed like a
less interesting place overall.

I don't have any kids, but I'm mixed on allowing them the measure of freedom I
had. There were many instances I can think of where we had gotten ourselves
into real danger, and only by dumb luck did nobody get hurt. Parents who's
kids did end up in the ER very quickly put restrictions on their kids. On the
flip side, it was incredibly enriching to have my world be my playground. To
see or know about a place I could walk or bike to, and simply go there without
any interference.

However, these days, I lament that there's a bus stop outside of my house,
that picks up high school kids, and takes them to a school a half-mile down
the road. I would definitely let my kid walk to school instead.

