I feel sorry for my son... gone are the "good old days". :(

[tRidiot]

Simple paranoia

You should all read this:

http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/2008/04/06/why-i-let-my-9-year-old-ride-the-subway-alone/

I did, and I think that woman's insane.

My son will never be crippled with dependance. But neither will he be the victim of abuse, injury or abduction simply because of my own carelessness.

In my job, I see children all the time who are injured, quite often (in my opinion) due to parental neglect or simple carelessness on the part of the supervising adult. It's not all about abduction, it's also about injury due to the carelessness and insensitivity of people who drive too fast in residential neighborhoods, let their dangerous dogs wander the streets, etc.

But either way, I think that woman is insane.

 

[steelhorse]

maybe someday happy days will be here again

I watched many episodes as a child. I thought that the Fonz started his motorcycle by hopping up and down on the seat.....lol

 

[jbarnett]

Your not alone. I feel the same way.

 

[cjjtulsa]

Got my two young sons a wake-up call last winter when I took them to an old rock quarry in my hometown where we used to play as kids. We hunted snakes and lizards (and fossils), hiked the wooded areas all around there, etc. My oldest is into computer games, and went on and on about how fun that trip was. I told him we didn't have DS and Wii games when we were kids; this is what we did. We learned how to hide by being hunted down by my sadistic older brother and a few friends with BB guns, knew what snakes you didn't screw with, how to use dried sunflower stalks dipped in fresh cow crap in spear fights, etc. This is lost on our current generation for the most part. They know how to play those games, though.

I honestly think it's become much, much more dangerous due to PC political decisions made in the past. As bad as some things were, the more "no bullsh*t" approach our past generations had towards social issues, etc., kept everyone in check to a larger degree. Now we just want to force a socially-engineered society on people, and it ain't working. People are more separated and more hostile than they've ever been - and it's getting worse.

 

[Shooter77]

I'm going through the same struggles with my two daughters. All I can say is that I hope my wife and I can provide different great memories for their childhood since the degradation of our society has robbed them of having the same memories we had. It's really frustrating.

 

[mugsy]

I'm going through the same struggles with my two daughters. All I can say is that I hope my wife and I can provide different great memories for their childhood since the degradation of our society has robbed them of having the same memories we had. It's really frustrating.

I wish you well - I have five children and the same kinds of concerns you express made us homeschool the last three (too late for the first two) for the last seven years. Two of those three leave for college in a few weeks and the youngest just earned his Eagle Scout rank. The problem is that the influence of "society" is enormous and almost insurmountable if you only see your kids a few hours a day - dinner-bedtime. Homeschooling gave us a chance to ensure their studies were very rigorous but also to really be a regular part of their lives and to truly discuss issues of substance within a moral framework.
I am not preaching it isn't for everyone and no matter what you do I wish you well.

 

[LightningCrash]

I did, and I think that woman's insane.

My son will never be crippled with dependance. But neither will he be the victim of abuse, injury or abduction simply because of my own carelessness.

In my job, I see children all the time who are injured, quite often (in my opinion) due to parental neglect or simple carelessness on the part of the supervising adult. It's not all about abduction, it's also about injury due to the carelessness and insensitivity of people who drive too fast in residential neighborhoods, let their dangerous dogs wander the streets, etc.

But either way, I think that woman is insane.

It's far more sane to put your kid in a cage so nothing can happen to them.

 

[RidgeHunter]

I'm too lazy to back up my assumption with any data, but I really bet my left goober it's no more "dangerous" nowadays than it was when most of you 30-60 year olds were children.

Random violence is very rare, and it happened in the 60's and 70's and 80's to children occasionally just like it does in 2011. You just don't remember it. Here is just a few from a quick Wikipedia scan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Corll

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_and_Charlene_Gallego

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wayne_Gacy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mack_Ray_Edwards

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Gary_Bishop

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Bittaker_and_Roy_Norris

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Bonin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Dahmer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Erskine

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Eyler

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Fernandez_and_Martha_Beck

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Fish

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westley_Allan_Dodd

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertha_Gifford

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_murders_of_1979-1981

Ok....I got tired of copy and pasting links and I'm nowhere close to getting them all. And that's just people who killed more than one child, not single murders or rapes/assaults. No easily found records on most of those. The badness of the good ole days is overwhelming.

 

[LightningCrash]

http://www.missingkids.com/missingkids/servlet/PageServlet?LanguageCountry=en_US&PageId=2810#1

How many children are reported missing each year?

The U.S. Department of Justice reports

* 797,500 children (younger than 18) were reported missing in a one-year period of time studied resulting in an average of 2,185 children being reported missing each day.
* 203,900 children were the victims of family abductions.
* 58,200 children were the victims of non-family abductions.
* 115 children were the victims of “stereotypical” kidnapping. (These crimes involve someone the child does not know or someone of slight acquaintance, who holds the child overnight, transports the child 50 miles or more, kills the child, demands ransom, or intends to keep the child permanently.)

So really your kid is more likely to die in a car wreck than have the paranoid abduction delusion play out. But nobody here would stop driving "For the children"... no, that's insane.

I feel sorry for the kids, because the parents are crippled mentally by fear.

 

[dowmace]

I completely understand, when I was a kid we roamed the country with our pellet guns in hand, for hours at a time without our parents knowing where we were but as long as we showed up for dinner they didn't really care. Luckily my brother and I were able to buy my parents house and my grand parents house that are on the plot of land we grew up on. So my children have almost the same freedom that I did they just are somewhat more constricted on their roaming area. They must have to stay on our property, All of the neighbors around us are family so I know everyone within sight and earshot have an eye on them. One of the benefits of living on a dead end road in the middle of no-where.