Old School at a New Park

Kazzy

One man. Two boys. Twelve kids.

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12 Responses

  1. J_A says:

    A- It sounds like me growing up

    B- It doesn’t sound at all like anything I see around me in Houston. Are you sure you don’t lie in some weird hippy place? Check it again and make sure.Report

  2. Blomster says:

    I’m just so convinced that the childless/childfree people reading this are going WTFFF?? 🙂

    To get to what you asked; what you described was very much my experience when our two were that age. Our two boys are now 6 1/2 and 7, and it’s so weird how by now you can just leave them with the other kids and … it’s ok. It’s really ok. They sort it out themselves, for the most part. They’ve figured out amongst their peers what fair play is, they know how to be nice to smaller children, you can let them be. Sortof. I mean you keep an eye but it’s not the constant monitoring that you describe.

    And I tend to forget that just a few years ago, when they were 3 1/2 and 4, and even 4 1/2 and 5, I had to fret like this over every second of their play time. No; I fretted like this over every second of their day.

    So just one thing to keep in mind when you talk to people about their opinions on this sort of thing; don’t trust their memories; parents with teenage children, or adults remembering their own childhoods, will say in the days of yore kids weren’t watched and coddled like this and this is just modern parents being moderns parents and all; but it’s just a question of them forgetting. They simply forget how it was when their children were really small and a single shove from a swing could have caused permanent brain damage. They can’t remember it.Report

    • El Muneco in reply to Blomster says:

      Yep. I was a literal latchkey kid, but I was twelve. I was tasked with mowing the lawn unsupervised, but I was ten. I had my own BB gun and freely used gardening implements as imagined weapons of war, but I was nine. I read whatever I could understand, but I wasn’t interested in adult stuff before 8-10 either (my parents did have to supervise me a bit – specifically to keep me from discussing stuff that was too “adult” with my peers who weren’t necessarily allowed to range as free in the library).

      All my memories are of freedom, but that’s because I didn’t form any lasting memories before that time. I have maybe two or three memories from birth to first grade, and they’re vague and impressionistic and probably mostly invented anyway.Report

      • Aaron David in reply to El Muneco says:

        “All my memories are of freedom, but that’s because I didn’t form any lasting memories before that time. I have maybe two or three memories from birth to first grade, and they’re vague and impressionistic and probably mostly invented anyway.”

        Exactly. I have a few memories from this period, but they are also very vague and probably more feeling based than known fact based.Report

    • Damon in reply to Blomster says:

      “I’m just so convinced that the childless/childfree people reading this are going WTFFF?? :-)”

      Nah, that’s how I’d raise my kids. They are supposed to noodle stuff out for themselves otherwise they turn out like my coworker’s kid…living at home at 25, no financial comprehension, no car, borrowing mom/dads, and no real independence because mom (it’s rarely the dad) never let him fail or do it on his own. Cut…the..freaking…cord….Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Blomster says:

      I’m just so convinced that the childless/childfree people reading this are going WTFFF??

      I’m relying heavily on the whole “I think I was a child, once” mindset to help me understand this post.

      Of course, I was raised in the 70’s when parents did things like yell “you’re driving me nuts! Get out of the house! I don’t want to see you again until the streetlights turn on!” so we did stuff like “go to the park”. By *OURSELVES*.

      When talking to grownups who have children today, I sometimes ask them if they’d allow similar stuff to what they themselves grew up with and, without exception, I hear some variant of “Hell Naw!”Report

      • Damon in reply to Jaybird says:

        You’ve clearly identified a significant problem in current child raising. Because if you did make them get out of the house, you’d probably have CPS showing up for a “chat” and maybe a “investigation”, cause, you know, you’re probably abusing your kids by letting them play alone unsupervised outside of your range of vision, you worthless parent!Report

  3. Joe Sal says:

    Excellent writing Kazzy, I don’t know if this is old school as much as a particular way of looking at interaction development/freedom. Good stuff.Report

  4. dragonfrog says:

    What you describe sounds like how things generally run at the parks in our area. We live in a relatively working class neighbourhood – I don’t know if other parts of town would seem different.Report

  5. Oscar Gordon says:

    Sounds like my neighborhood.Report