I know I don’t really style this as a “Mummy blog” so you’ll have to forgive me, but this post has been brewing for a while and I think it’s time to let it all out.
Do you remember receiving the chain email that talked about lead paint being used on cots and running around on your bike from sun-up to sundown all Summer and how previous generations have been unsurpassed in terms of problem solving and teamwork? I read that many moons ago with the usual click-read-delete that happens with emails with a subject line starting FW: FW: FW: FW: FW: but something within it has resonated recently.
Back in the olden days when I was but a lass my siblings and I spent pretty much every school holiday out playing with our friends, coming home occasionally for a drink or a ‘piece n jam’ and running wild the rest of the time. We were by no stretch of the imagination perfect kids but we rarely got into mischief, we were polite and most importantly we were out of our Mum’s hair.
I walked to school every day. In my primary school years it meant walking across a road outside my house, down a street and across a road outside the school. I went to boarding school for a few years but came home to start a new secondary school three miles away from home and from 2nd year to 5th year I walked to school every day and I walked home, through rain or shine. I crossed several roads and lived to tell the tale. Not only that, but I was extremely fit and healthy thanks to this regular exercise which allowed me to clear my head and listen to some music on my way.
At playtime we’d run around playing tig or ‘kiss, cuddle, torture’ or skipping or football without any fear of us impaling ourselves on railings or splitting our head open on the asphalt. We’d have ‘cake & candy’ stalls where our parents would actually make things to be sold and the proceeds sent to whichever charitable cause we were collecting for at that time. When it was snowy, we went out to play wearing a coat and maybe gloves and a hat. I don’t recall anyone dying from eating a fairy cake made by someone’s parent. I don’t recall any severe injuries in the playground (unless you count the time I threw snow at Ellen Murphy and it hit her eye which swelled up. I thought her eye was going to fall out, or worse I’d get expelled from school).
I’m not making light of serious injuries because I know they happen. A boy at my eldest son’s school had an accident whilst playing football and damaged his thigh – damage that only happened because the school spent the better part of a year like a building site while a new car park was created – so I understand that health & safety rules are necessary and important. But – and it is a big but. As parents, as products of the so-called ‘free range’ age when did we get so neurotic about safety issues?
Findlay’s school holds regular cake & candy stalls where the donated items must be bought from the shop. Now I don’t know about you, but there’s no way I’m buying a pack of penguins for my kid to take to school to buy back. What is the point in that?! It is removing every element of fun and enterprise from learning. The list of things they can and can’t do is long and varied but seems to serve more to protect the school from litigation than to protect the kids from danger.
Of course, this level of overprotectionism starts at a far younger age than school. A friend of mine recently told me that when she fills her car up at the petrol station she removes her two young children from their carseats to take them with her to pay before returning back to the petrol station to go through the rigmarole of putting them back in their seats. Now perhaps she has particularly well behaved children, but I genuinely can’t get my head around it. I can just see it now: I pull into the petrol station, fill the car up and open the car door. I get Erica out first and clamp her arm between my knees while I lift Greer out of her seat. I close the door and open the boot to let Nairn & Findlay out but I’m holding Erica with one hand and carrying Greer so Nairn will have to hold Findlay’s hand, except he doesn’t want to so we have a meltdown in the petrol station during which one of the toddlers pee themselves and a massive queue of cars are filled with impatient businesspeople staring at us and wishing a slow death on me.
Maybe I’m a bad parent but simply the thought of having to cajole the four of them back into their carseats is enough to put me off, and my car has this magic device called a LOCK on it so I doubt any sneak thief or wannabe paedo is going to manage to break into my car, hotwire it and drive off in the couple of minutes it takes for me to go in and pay.
The reason this is particularly getting to me right now is because Findlay is going to be nine years old in June this year. His Dad lives about eight miles away from us and there is a bus that goes from almost outside our door to almost outside his Dad’s house and I’m willing to take him on the bus to do a mock run so that he can do it himself, but most people I have suggested this to have recoiled in horror. At his age, I made an unaccompanied flight from Los Angeles to Glasgow with a layover in Boston. I regularly walked to the bus stop after school and got the bus to my Nana’s house at the other side of the city. I just don’t believe that our kids today are in any more danger than my generation were.
Unfortunately we’re becoming the products of a twofold attack against our civil liberties – one from the litigous society we are becoming and one from the media hell bent on reporting PAEDO DANGER – and this is threatening to kill off any fun activities which have an element of what could be construed as ‘danger’ to them. I genuinely feel sorry for today’s teachers because how difficult must it be to work with your charges in today’s climate?
I will keep you posted as to how the bus trip thing pans out but in the meantime I’m going to leave you with a rare photograph of my gorgeous firstborn enjoying the terribly dangerous snow.
Posted under family
This post was written by Vonnie on January 8, 2010
That’s a cracking pic of Findlay!
Obviously I’m not a parent, but I agree with a lot of what you’re saying.
I’m enjoying the irony of talking about unfounded fears and a litigious society while you’ve obscured the car registration in the photo, just in case of err, urmm, yeah.
Hahahaha! It’s not my car or I’d probably just have left it
My son is also 9, an August baby so the youngest in his year group (yr5). He will be starting in high school in September next year. At that stage my youngest will be starting in reception and my middle child will be in yr 4 at the junior school in the next street. I can’t be in 3 places at once so my son who will have just turned 11 will have to get to school on his own.
It is quite a long way and there are busy roads to cross. It does scare me, BUT it is unavoidable. Like you we used to play out as kids, our house was on a development that was half finished, so effectively a building site and we used to get up to all sorts, but all lived to tell the tale. I used to cycle to high school (although in those days we went a year later and I am a November birthday so in effect two years older than my son will be).
I have already started to try to give my son the skills and confidence he needs to tackle life’s challenges, I am far more worried about traffic danger than him being preyed on by an undesirable person. Currently as part of my “training him up!” he goes to his swimming lesson, changes afterwards and comes to meet us at the local cafe on his own, which entails crossing a small road. I trust him and he feels proud of himself. We have discussed various scenarios of things that could happen and what he would do in the situation. I am guided by him and what he feels comfortable doing. Go with your instincts and how mature your son is. If you talk through scenarios that may happen and ensure he knows what to do then you can always give the bus trip a try. I think oldest children in families with several siblings are often more mature and less “babied” anyway. My son used to go into school on his own from year 2 as I had a toddler and new baby and didn’t always want to drag them all in and out of the car. But I know of kids whose parents were still taking them right into their classroom right up till year 4!
Do what YOU think is right for your son, and the best of luck.
(sorry for such a long rambling comment)
I am not a parent, but I think the bus is a good option.
you know your own child, you know if he is responsible enough to take it by himself, so you can make that decision
and he might feel very grown up himself by being allowed to do that, enhancing his sense of responsibility
The roads are in general less safe for pedestrians than they used to be, mind. There is a mix of paranoia and justifiable fear in all this – crossing roads is less safe than it used to be, unless there’s a pedestrian crossing. I can remember roller skates being banned in my school after one child lost control and skated into a window; she was in hospital for ages.
But nine is old enough to get a familiar bus journey alone, surely. It’s not like he’s scoping out territory he has never encountered before.
I was once at a petrol station where a mother walked away from her car locking her children inside to go and pay for her fuel (standard procedure I thought?). The shop assistant then started shouting at her over the tannoy telling her she would need to remove her children from the car and bring them with her. The woman shook her head geturing that they were fine and sleeping and her children and again went to approach the shop. Again she was screamed at about how dangerous it was to leave children in the car in a petrol forecourt (I can only imagine the damage sleeping children can do in a locked car) – over the tannoy in front of a forecourt full of drivers. Thankfully about 4 other drivers (including me) offered to stand by her (locked) car while she went in to pay, this seemed to placate the shop assistant momentarily.
I’m also not a parent but my niece and nephew travel to and from school on public transport. If you feel that Findlay is old enough to get the bus and you show him the route and explain potential problems – such as cancelled buses and changed routes etc. then sounds like it is your decision.
Enjoyed the rant (apologies for all the brackets).
I whole heartedly agree with your eloquent “state-of-the-nation” account, which had be giggling at my desk. You are spot on there are no more dangers today than there were 20, 50, 80 years ago, the difference is that today the media throw it down our throats for months at a time rather than it being the subject of local gossip which died as quickly as it started. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think we should be gagging the media, we just need a reality check as you say.
As a parent you should be able to decide when your child is mature enough to do various activities and if you have brought them up to be well rounded sensible members of the community there should be nothing to be concerned about.
If you and your son are comfortable then ignore everyone else.
Totally agree, being a parent and a Youth Worker I see alot of “cotton wool” kids.
Kids need to experience life and all its rough and tumble, I beleive it helps them cope in later life.
I always trust my daughter but its the actions of other, irresponsible kids (and adults) that worries me!
Good luck with the bus thing, it’ll be a great adventure for him!
Susi
x
The whole issue is that people now rely on other people to tell them how to care for their children, instead of just suing their common sense.
Taking your children out of the car to go pay at the petrol station is stupid. If you lock the car, no one will get in and your kids won’t get out.
We molly-coddle children so much that they won’t actually be able to look after themselves soon enough.
I read your piece with interest, as it echoes many of my thoughts on the subject. I think too many children are mollycoddled and have no idea how to look after themselves – I think the biggest danger on roads is not from drivers but from children who haven’t been taught any road sense (we used to live beside a high school and driving past was a nightmare, as children would step out in front of the car without looking!!) If Findlay is happy to try travelling by bus, then I think you should at least give it a try – after all you could let him have a mobile so that he could phone you if there was a problem. And as for the petrol station scenario – I think small children are far safer in a locked car than going with Mum to pay – it would only take a second’s inattention for a child to run out in front of a car. (sorry, long piece from me too!)
I totally agree with everything you said here, so rather than ramble on I’ll just say ‘well done you’.
I let the boys have a certain amount of freedom – they walk to school together in the morning (just across the road), in the summer they are allowed to go to the local shop together and I let them play with their friend out of my sight (although there are boundaries, and if they want to go outwith these then they have to come and ask).
I try and compare it to what I was allowed when I was their age, and at 5/6 I was allowed to play in our street, go to my friends house that were no further than a street away, and go the shop with my older brother, so I reckon it’s balanced out okay.
Incidentally that is a gorgeous picture of Findlay!
I totally agree with your post. My one and only was turning 8 just after the schools restarted in August and he was desperate to walk to school. There are a couple of kids in his class living nearby and I approached the parents about them all buddying up and walking together. I was looked at as if I had two heads. So since August my son has been walking to and sometimes home from school on his own and now asks to go to the shops for his papa. Kids need to be learn to be “street-wise”. I also echo the swimming, I open the locker and then leave him to get dried and dressed. He loves being independent and his daily chats with the lolly pop lady….
Excellent post, totally agree. Sounds like a good sensible plan you have for Findlay. I bet he’ll be so pleased with himself. I still remember how grown up I felt the first time I took the bus home from school on my own. I think the best thing we can do to protect children is to give them a wide range of experiences that help them develop an ability to solve problems and that help them develop resilience. They can’t develop life skills by being ferried around left, right and centre, and if all activity is supervised to the nth degree.
And great photo!
*stunned by shop bought products for the cake sale* I find my daughter’s school overly careful for my liking (they are a peanut free school, all gates are locked unless it’s arriving or leaving time, I had to sign a form to allow them to give my daughter fruit) but they do expect the parents to provide home made items for the cake sale. Well labelled with the ingredients though. And nothing with nuts in.
If my daughter was 9 (she’s nearly 5) and ok with a bus journey like that, I’d have no problem sending her.
I think the bus journey for Findlay is a great idea, My son is 10 and has been walking to school mostly on his own since he was 6 we did have a period where he was driven everyday but that was due to having to live in Paisley for about 6 months and before we moved to the house we are in now he took the bus there and back everyday(I will admit to being incredibly nervous the first day and made him promise to call me as soon as he arrived) before we moved to our new house he is now once again walking there and back though his journey is now much shorter. I hope Findlay enjoys his new adventure
And as for getting the kids out the car at the petrol station that’s just asking for one stressed out momma IMO
I agree with this, I got into trouble for letting my wee one go up stairs to her dance class on her own, She’s 6 and certainly not incapable. Not even that I stand at the bottom of the stairs while she goes up, the door opens and is secure from the side of the dance class.
Yet the dance teacher told my mum it wasn’t acceptable as she’s only 6
Absolutly and totally agree with your very eloquant diatribe. My boys school also banned homemade cakes for their cake sale, it makes you thing they must be in league with the supermarkets!!!
Gorgeous photo by the way!
I totally agree with your post. As a parent we must guide and teach our children. Thanks for sharing.