From a young age, I was allowed to leave the house by bike and be home by dinner. I still have scars from that, but, you know, it’s not really terrorizing.
Let us contrast this with whatever the fuck passes for parenting these days.
We’re buying the concept that parents can’t raise their own kid, and thus the government needs to step in.
Well, some are. But seriously, the past 40 years of destroying critical thinking worked.
There are few reasons to be thankful for being 46. We don’t exist in the media, and we’re somehow never mentioned. Boomers … Millennials. Um, you missed a step.
I mean, I get the weather-related concern, but part of raising a kid is teaching them what to do when they see incoming severe weather. If there’s time to get home, great. If not, a phone is not going to change the timeline, and the best solution is to duck into a friend’s house nearby, from where a parent can call to confirm your safety.
It honestly baffles me that we’re regressing so far as a society that instead of education and experience, we want digital leashes.
I have nothing against leashes in general, but that’s maybe better for a BDSM scene than a kid’s Saturday afternoon.
I think we are saying similar things in different ways here. I’m not advocating for a lack of critical thinking and education. However, if technology for instantaneous communication exists, there’s no reason not to use it to check in. It’s a contingency plan, not a daily system (once my kids are even old enough to responsibility have a cell phone). I don’t want my kids tethered to me, but they also don’t have knowledge and life experience I do yet. To gain it, they have to be educated and live it, as you’re saying. My take on it, is that me picking up the phone to tell them what to do in an emergency situation, reinforcing what I’ve already taught them, is a valuable part of that learning, and I’m not going to forego a tool like a cell phone for that. The world has changed, and we as parents are forced to adapt to it in some fashion, as every generation before has had to do with their times.
I agree that we are largely in agreement. In the '80s, there were payphones. I’d be sent out with a quarter in case of an emergency. Same interest in safety, just far less expensive than a phone plan.
I never used that quarter, because if I really needed to call, a friend’s house was close enough by that a payphone would have been a mile or two out of the way in an emergency.
This, of course, was back in the day when you had your home phone number memorized, so in case of the unexpected, any reasonable adult stood ready to help, including (glad we don’t have downvotes on this instance) the police. The social contract wasn’t just about economics, it was also knowing that approaching an authority figure meant you knew you’d get help, as opposed to drawn guns.
Oh, I never wore a helmet. They were quite sweaty in Arizona heat, and really, the only real risk of injury was knees and elbows, as I knew to bail ahead of going head over handlebars. I picked my bike out of the scrub several times, sometimes having to walk it home with multiple injuries that would call for Neosporin, although, with my mom being a hippie, they only used calendula oil.