Morning Metro: Atlanta’s “Sipping Scene”, Breast Cancer Walk and Free-Range Kids History
Decatur Metro | October 12, 2011
- Reflecting on Atlanta’s “Sipping Scene” [Thristy South]
- Breast Cancer Walk coming through Decatur on Oct 21st [Patti Garrett]
- Was Denzel at Whole Food Briarcliff? [Patch]
- Savannah ranks as Top 5 downtown by Livability.com [ABC]
- A cute op-ed on fly-fishing with your wife by a guy with Decatur grandkids [Baxter Bulletin]
- As recently as 1979 a first-grader could…[free range kids]
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Decatur sure is represented well in the “Sipping Scene” article and I’ve told anyone who will listen that I believe the Iberian Pig has the hardest working bartenders in town. Sit at the bar and enjoy a drink while watching them absolutely craft each drink.
Now…bring on this coming beer weekend. Glad my wife doesn’t like beer…she’ll run our shuttle service this weekend!!
Regarding the “free range kids” article…
I would live to know if the number of missing children and/or abductions has gone down since 1979. I remember the kids on the milk cartons – I don’t see much of that anymore.
Is it possible that we are in fact doing the right thing by waiting longer to let the kids roam free? I know my 3rd grader is much more savvy now than he was in first grade.
Whenever there’s two diametrically opposed views in parenting, e.g. family bed vs. babywise or ferberize, I suspect the truth is somewhere in between. Ditto for helicoptering vs. free range parenting. No question that my husband is a helicopter-er. Because he grew up in chaotic family of six kids born in 10 years, he goes overboard with the individual attention. But the good old days did have some true safety issues–poisonous chemicals without childproof caps, no seatbelts, no carseats, smoking and drinking during pregnancy. Moderation is usually a good parenting approach IMHO.
+1
Maybe it’s just me but I don’t think most people equate helicopter parenting with the amount of time and attention devoted to a child. I’ve always heard it used in reference to parents who maintain total control over their child’s affairs and decision-making at all levels, rendering them helpless and dependent.
One can be very involved in their child’s life and still know when to step aside.
Ok, let me be more specific. He walks them to the bus stop way after the age that either they or I think is necessary.
And it doesn’t render them helpless and dependent, but rather, embarassed and resistant!
Your definition of helicoptering is a good one. But folks seem to use it lately to describe current parenting in general. I agree that being an involved parent does not have to equate to helicoptering.
My near 8 year old has soccer practice 3 and a half blocks from our house. I have walked him there a couple of times and signed the form with Decatur Active Living that states that he has my permission to walk home after practice on his own. I touched base with the coach to tell her about our plans and to tell her I had signed the permission statement allowing him to walk home. She completely freaked out and acted like I had lost my mindt. She didn’t even want me to leave him while he was at practice… she thinks I should sit there and watch.
Makes me sad to see such hysteria…. Now he walks to soccer on his own but I come and get him to “help” him with the 3 block walk home.
I forgot to say that the 3 blocks is completely quiet, residential streets with terrific neighbors and their kids almost always outside milling about in their yards. It is neither a remote area nor an area with traffic hazards.
I read Free Range Kids on a somewhat regular basis and stories like this (and sadly, far worse) are legion. There are many, many adults out there who think that kids shouldn’t be permitted to do much of anything on their own. They’ve run stories on kids being picked up by the police and driven home to prevent them from walking home on safe public streets. More recently I read an article about a mom in TN who was threatened by the local department of children’s services for allowing her (I think she was 10) daughter to ride a bike alone to and from school.
For pure helicopter-parent safety hysteria, it’s hard to beat this website, which was on Free-Range a while back: http://www.safekids.org/safety-basics/little-kids/at-play/bike-and-wheels-safety.html. Among other things, it claims that:
— Kids under five should not ride bikes, only tricycles (and even then, with helmets), and
— Pre-teens (10 to 14) should be “actively supervised” when riding bikes.
Hooray for you and your soccer player. At his age, I was in charge of myself and my younger sister when we rode our bikes to the city swimming pool, a distance of about a mile that included a grade RR crossing and two different mean dogs. If somebody had a flat tire and no means to fix it, then we walked. (Uphill both ways
)
Parents, to enhance your kids’ free range experience even more, encourage them to have a nodding acquaintance with your childless neighbors. (That is, teach them to recognize and say hello to the middle-aged lady who lives up the street, when they see her out walking, instead of averting their eyes and acting like they’re having a stranger-danger experience.) A lot of us reflexively keep an eye on your kids when they’re out and about, even though they aren’t aware of it (and you may not be, either). It’s actually a safer world than it sometimes seems.
Good point. +1
getting a kick out of reading these comments.
3 days ago i sent my 5 & 7 year olds down to Ale Yeah to refill my growlers and haven’t seen them since. clearly i’ve raised a couple of dawdlers.
That sounds like a great topic for short story contest!
Somehow I don’t think this is going to change my husband’s overprotectiveness…….
One thing to keep in mind is that it’s a lot more fun and engaging to be a parent than in the days of Donna Reed and that’s one reason parents are so involved. No longer is it just cooking oatmeal from scratch, cleaning the oven (now auto-cleaned), ironing uniforms (permanent press is the norm), etc. Donna Reed probably didn’t even get to use the one family car during the daytime when her husband needed it for work. Plus people now delay marriage and kids until they are really sure that’s what they want. I have actually loved all the Mommy and me classes for the little ones, school volunteering, walk and roll, whatever. Mothers used to stay at home with 4-6 kids but were too busy with the housework, cooking, cleaning, logistics to be as involved with their children’s activities as they probably wanted to be. Stay at home Moms were literally stuck inside the home as opposed to choosing to be there!
Definitely a different world, in all the ways you mention, and it offers a lot of opportunities for parents that previous generations weren’t able to enjoy. But with all due and gentle respect, what is most fulfilling for the parents isn’t always what’s best for the children when it comes to granting them some freedom and giving them chances to explore their own self-reliance and independence. I read somewhere a piece of advice (from a parent to parents), the gist of which was if your kid is lying on her back staring into space, you should go find something else to do and leave her alone. I know it’s not all or nothing, and every family has to find their own way that feels best for them. Just sayin’…
That’s why I think the moderate route in parenting is the often the wisest. The latest parenting fads, especially those with catchy names or ambitious claims, usually prove to have limitations, unintended consequences, unrealistic expectations, and/or are impossible to implement. Most good parenting experts tell you to trust your gut, meaning that you understand your children and family dynamics the best and can probably make the best decisions about how to parent, assuming no pathological issues involved. The only problem with that advice is that sometimes your gut’s signals are unclear!
In partial answer to your question, this is from the FAQ section of the Free Range Kids blog:
—–
“I did that at his age!” said a couple of the cameramen. “It was fun!” The make-up ladies remembered walking to school. Everyone started reminiscing about their childhoods — the freedom, the joy, the simple fun of walking down the block to knock on a friend’s door to come out and play. And then they’d shake their heads and say, “But I would never let my kids do that today.”
Why not?
“Times have changed.”
They’re right of course — nothing stays the same. Throughout the ’70s and ’80s, crime was on the rise. It went up and up until it peaked around 1990. The strange thing, though, is that since then, it’s been going back down. Dramatically. Today we are back to the crime level of 1970, according to Dept. of Justice statistics. So — unbelievable as it seems — if you were playing outside as a kid in the ’70s or ’80s, your kids are actually SAFER outside than you were!
It doesn’t feel that way (at ALL), because when our parents were raising us, there was no CSI. Law & Order was something you believed in, not something on the air 8 nights a week, made to look depressingly real. The other day I got a letter from a guy in an old Brooklyn neighborhood where they shoot a lot of Law & Order scenes. On TV, it’s always the backdrop for a rape or murder. In real life, he said, it’s a safe, quiet safe neighborhood — and therein lies the tale: There’s a big disconnect between the horrors on TV and the reality we live in — the safest time for children (in America, that is) in the history of this disease-plagued, famine-prone, war-wracked world.
Thanks for the link! Decatur is indeed the epicenter of Atlanta’s beer and cocktail world.
Good lord, they’re re-making Teen Wolf? Why, Hollywood, why?
I will never understand the bastardization of movies I loved growing up. There have been a few good movies since the 80s, but very very few.
Re: Fly flishing, it is laudible to do things, make time to do things, for a relationship and just to make it fun. Not to be too shallow (ha), but I recently read “A River Runs Through It” and I think I’ve had enough fly fishing. Maybe Birdhouse Building or Skydiving?
Bring a bag of treats or even a high five for the 3Day walkers! You have no idea how much the community support helps on mile 14.