Reply to post: Re: Watching your kid is good

Re: Watching your kid is good

Speaking more generally one of the problems in the modern world is not enough eyes out there, by which I mean other kids. Back in the day when I was a wean then a sprog aged about 8 I would take myself down the docks for a spot of fishing. There would always be other boys there, older as well and there was a rough sort of care going on. Older boys would offer advice and give tips and ask where you were going if you got up to move further along the wharf for eg.

There were lots of kids about, lots of eyes watching and we would often have three 2c pieces for the payphone or scrounging some discarded pop bottles for the deposit would soon garner them. Not quite cellphone like but anyone causing a worry would know a phone call to the cops by eyes bearers was a possibility.

Now kids on their own out and about stick out like sore thumbs and all sorts of people rush towards them and how do you know if their intentions are benign?

Back in the '90s in Outer London we would let out tweenage kids go round the end of the road on their bikes to the recycling bins, because we were NZ parents eager to give our kids responsibility and some freedom. The youngest came of her bike and just skinned a knee. Some busybody woman wouldn't let just come home and insisted her elder sister come and get us, leaving the youngest with this stranger woman. The eldest came back in a fluster 'a strange woman won't let her leave'. We hot footed it over there and she tried to tell us off for letting our kids out of our sight and we stopped her and made it plain that abducting our daughter was not on.

If there had been legions of spawn on bikes, scooters or afoot they instead of her would have gathered round, decided a skinned knee was no odds and put her back on her bike.

Was a it a Black Mirror episode I saw recently where a woman had a tracker put in her daughter's head connected to a tablet which in the end caused the teenage daughter to leave home for good after smashing the tablet. A scenario the mother had sought to avoid by wrapping her daughter in digital cotton wool. The neuroscience of it was pretty dodgy but the point was well made.

We now have 18 year olds taken to University open days by their parents. My wife who does admissions and recruitment tells of how she regularly has to tell parents that privacy legislation means she is unable to tell them their spawn's test results or anything.

Then we have the phenomenon of young people allowed away on their own for the first time and injuring and killing themselves in over risky situations because they have never been allowed to risk themselves in things like climbing trees etc so don't know how to assess risk in the way we did through bruises, skinned knees and even broken bones. The phenomenon of a classmate with a cast you could sign was a staple, worn as a badge of pride. I never managed one, perhaps because I have loose joints so tend to land floppier than most. I can also pop my shoulders out and back in again in flash of pain but no damage done. I did that a few times, x-rays and examinations showing the shoulder was back in while I knew for a fact it had popped out, I felt it.

So no casts for me but plenty of personal risk assessment.