Letting Kids Discover the World
A post over at The Bradstein Household pointed me to this Washington Post article. Basically the article is about parents today not letting their kids play unsupervised. Parents will point out that the world is sooo much more dangerous and kidnappers are on every corner. What a load of crap! The statistics point out that most kidnappers are relatives or at least acquaintances of the child. And the number of kidnappings has stayed relatively consistent of the past few decades.
It really boils down to all the negative stories that qualify as news these days. If all we ever see is the bad, then that is all we’ll ever expect to get.
I have fond memories of wondering the woods in my neighborhood for hours. Completely unsupervised!!! Or riding my bike to the next neighborhood to play with a friend. For a lot of parents today, this is unacceptable. I hope that when my child grows up I won’t feel the need to schedule their lives and will be able to let them explore on their own. Exploring will build self-confidence, independence and foster a love for searching and learning. Bad things will always happen, but remember the good that can come from taking acceptable risks.
I always believed that I wouldn’t give in to the media hype, that I would let my kids run around the neighborhood as I did when I was young. But now that I have a kid, it’s all a little different. Granted, he’s not even crawling, so I have some time to get used to the idea of letting him out into the world on his own, but I worry much more than I thought I would. And that’s before he’s out of the house.
You’re probably right. As soon as that little miracle comes out, I’ll be locking all the doors and teaching him/her that the outside is bad, very, very bad.