are parents overprotective?

[Bilge_Rat]

Lessons from ‘The Goonies,’ and from the loss of unsupervised time for kids

I’d seen “The Goonies” a million times, but this was the first time I’d watched it in 10 years. I couldn’t believe how much I remembered. Tristan laughed at the Truffle Shuffle, and he giggled at Mouth and his … well … mouth. But then, right before the young boys followed the pirate’s treasure map into the abandoned summer restaurant — the place where the criminals were hiding out — Tristan said, “Where are their parents?”

I sat there for a moment, taking in the question. He wanted to know why a group of preteens was allowed to travel so far without parental supervision. This was something that seemed so natural to me as a child that I never gave it any notice, but Tristan, a boy being raised in 2016, didn’t know that wandering the neighborhood with friends was an option.

“That’s just the way it was back then,” I said with a shrug.

“That’s scary,” Tristan said.

We live on a loop, and when we moved into our neighborhood in suburban Oregon, it seemed safe. It seemed like the kind of neighborhood I always wanted to be in, where kids could freely ride their bikes from place to place. I grew up in a rural part of Utah and had to travel a good mile to get to my nearest neighbors with kids. But by the time I was 9, I was allowed to do that on my own. In fact, learning how to ride a bike was a rite of passage. It felt like my parents were saying, “You can now travel without me, so go on and do it. Be home before the street lights come on.”


But that isn’t the case with Tristan. We don’t let him wander alone. Mel and I arrange everything for him. We have a system: He asks to play with a friend; we call the friend’s parents; a play date is arranged. When I was a child there was no such thing as a play date. It was more of a “wander the streets until you find someone to play with” sort of thing. And then, once I found someone, we went off, sometimes to the Provo River, sometimes to another friend’s house. We were wanderers, looking for adventure, just like the Goonies. We got into trouble — mostly simple things like falling off a bike, or getting stuck in a tree — and we found ways to get out of it. I learned a lot about independence.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...mepage%2Fstory

maybe I am too old, but when I was a kid, we would spend all day outside playing with other kids, our parents would have to drag us in at night. We got into all sort of trouble, like toboganning down a steep tight run betweens trees that ended at a house where you had to veer sharply to keep from running into a wall, going up a 3 story cliff overlooking a road, dropping manhole covers into the sewers, etc. I took public transit to school when I was 8, when my 6 year old brother joined, I was put in "charge" of him.

Amazingly, we all survived, none of my friends ever got hurt and we all grew up into normal adults.

It really makes me wonder what the current over-protected/coddled generation will turn into.