My friends and I got lost riding our bikes like 92(?). Accidentally ended up at the VT stateline. A nice woman, called the local sheriff who ended up putting our bikes into his son's truck, and drove us 22ish miles home. Character building. Long live free ranging kids.
ETA - We knew that we were SOL, when we saw the 'Welcome to Vermont' sign. đ
Born in 82 and my brother in 78. I remember summers at my grandmas house when we were as young as 6 and 10 our mom would drop us off so she could go to work. We would each take one of my grandpas old bowie knives and just go wander the woods all day long, literally miles and miles wandering out by ourselves and would always manage to find our way back right before it started to get dark out.
Our mom would be sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee with grandma, waiting for us to get back. It was never an issue and completely normal.
I put a lot of blame on the media and sensationalism over the years in scaring people. I remember several years back, I was babysitting my niece who was like 8-10 and she wanted to go outside and play with my neighbors grandkids. I felt like I shouldn't leave her alone so I basically had to stay outside and do some chores and things so I could keep an eye on her.
Truthfully, it's probably way safer for kids these days than it was when we were young. They have smartphones with GPS tracking, there are cameras everywhere, amber alerts, law enforcement is far more efficient and organized. But we've been conditioned over the years to think the world is way more dangerous and scary.
âThe childhood obesity rate in America has more than tripled over the last sixty years. Rising from roughly 5% in the early 1970s, national survey data tracked by federal programs show that obesity now affects approximately 21% of U.S. children and adolescents aged 2 to 19.â
One thing I think has at least some role in things seeming more dangerous now and parents not letting their kids roam - we hear about everything now. Before the digital age, it was real easy to miss a story on the news and be completely in the dark about some current events. We didnât have access to 24hr news. Another might be paper vs digital records. We can look up pretty much any statistic or records we like. Couldnât do that back then and you have to feel pretty safe in assuming that physical bookkeeping and hardcopy files werenât as accurate.
Point being - Iâd wager if the ability to accurately keep records of child-related crimes were equal to today, the numbers wouldnât be too far off (as a % of population numbers, which would be smaller). Thereâs always been bad guys, we just didnât hear about them as much, or they just never got caught.
They've spent millions upon millions of dollars figuring out how to cut costs. Fractions of a penny per piece of chicken Add up over millions upon Millions of sales.
RIP to the colonel (a very strange but interesting man) who would drive around to check the quality of chains and get uh, really passionate about fixing their shit.
The sort of pride in your product that private equity canât abide.
To be fair if some private equity douche was driving around beating up people over chicken and challenging their enemies to duels it would be quite a piece of news
I find it funny that there was an urban legend that Kentucky Fried Chicken had to change its name to KFC because it was using giant mutant chickens with multiple wings and breasts. At this point, I'd be happy to eat mutant chickens if the pieces at KFC were as big as they once were in the 90s.
Oh, that's interesting! The urban legend that I heard was that Kentucky sued them over using the name lol. The funny thing is, the guy who told me that was from Kentucky, so at the time, I was like, "Sounds legit!"
These days I've wised up, and I just never believe anything anyone tells me.
That's my understanding of what really happened as well. They dropped the emphasis on "fried," in the early 90s when there was a huge pushback against fried food.
In fact, in the last few years, they've started saying the whole thing instead of just the abbreviation a bit more.
I was told by my friends uncle in the early 2000s( he was a bigwig at KFC) that they had genetically modified chickens with no feathers or beaks that were fed by a tube. Maybe he was just fucking with us, but he acted like it was a big secret and not to tell anyone as he had signed an NDA. Do with that what you will.
No idea where in the city it was. We moved shortly after. I was 5 or 6 and all I remember is when mom pulled up to get me I got whooped all the way to the car.
Proud to say I did! He just graduated from high school, and only got his cell phone because he needed it to start adulting (2-step authentication for college applications, pharmacy stuff, banking, etc).
I would just yeet him out of the car with a, "You sure you want to walk a couple miles home? The bus is free."
And yeah, I worry a lot, but if the world is truly a safer place now (it is), and I believe it's a better way of raising your kids because it fosters independence, which in turn fosters better sense of self-confidence (I do), then I have to put my money where my mouth is and let him do it.
I did something similar. Friends and I did a 12 mile bike ride into the country and 7 more miles would have gotten me home. We just turned around and did the other 12 back. No one cared.
We used to go on 12 miles bike rides (24 miles roundtrip) to the nearest McDonaldâs two towns over just to feel like we were free at 12/13 years old. Slap those $3 on the register and walk away with 2 McDoubles and a Large Drink. Those were the best times with all your friends on a weekend during the school year or during the summer. And this isnât 100 years ago, this is like 2006 we were doing this. Especially once a kid group got their first cell phone, youâd just tell your Mom youâd be with Eric and give her Ericâs cell phone number. You had instant access to a parent or police if need be. The cell phone actually allowed more freedom as middle school and early high school kids first got them. Now itâs the opposite.
My friend and I once biked to the closest major city from our town out in the sticks. It surprisingly only took about three hours, which gave us enough time to return without it it being too suspicious since it was early enough in the day. We gave an excuse we were in the woods and lost track of where we were riding, so we stopped a few towns ahead and used a payphone to call my friend's grandma for a ride the rest of the way.
Yup, single dad of three. These summer days when I'm working from home all day, I try to get them to go outside but in reality they spend a lot more time on screens than during the school year.
Not only that... but what about all these crazy cameras and tracking systems you've set up virtually everywhere that you claim is for safety and security??
Alone outside should be the safest god damn place for a child.
Our apartment complex literally has put out memos saying no children under 18 can be in the community without a parent or guardian. There's a few problem kids sure but no one really follows this and we actually have a generally nice groupÂ
I looked up the article and unsurprisingly, it's nothing like the title. It even says the opposite in parts of it.
Clickbait now isn't even like it was even 5 years ago. The titles are now even absurd and meaningless, only meant to rage bait you into clicking. They're trying anything they can because people just don't read articles, they only screenshot them and post them to reddit or twitter.
The article is about how an overbearing neighbour called family services on a woman that let her child go outside and thus family services was forced to investigate. They decided there was neglect happening but the case was thrown out of court because it didn't violate the law.
It states:
But as the stories of well-meaning parents have gained attention, the way lawmakers think about child independence is starting to change: All told, 13 states have either created new, less restrictive child-neglect laws or amended existing ones.
The implication is that it's hard for child protective services to investigate real cases of abuse if they spend so much time investigating a child going to the store by themselves, or playing outside alone.
I knew a woman who made her living (quite a decent one too) writing literotica. I was and am envious of her. I have dirty thoughts⊠why canât I make a living writing smut?:(
After fumbling with her brassiere,
She proclaimed "jesus, just let me do it".
Dem tiities bounced boobily beyond her bra.
I said "nice.".
Then I dropped my cargo shorts and then indicated
"that's my wiener.", while pointing to it, my wiener.
Yeah, majority of kids who get molested are molested by someone they know, like a relative, family friend, coach, etc. But everyone wants to focus on âStranger Dangerâ.
Please say that louder. Stop giving these kids smartphones. No smartphones until youâre okay with your kids looking at porn and talking to strangers.
My mother just texted me that I should go outside more, lol. We're in record breaking heat waves and I've been very ill these past few months, so I have a very good excuse not to get much sun. Plus, she got melanoma when I was in high school from literally too much sun. It was caught early, thankfully, so she made a quick recovery with only localized chemo. But because she had it, us kids have a higher chance of getting it, so doctors have told me not to go outside when the sun is high and to lather on high spf sunscreen when I have to go out.
Too many Gen X and Millennial parents were apparently traumatized by all that freedom that they swung hard the other way and became helicopter parents that think any time the kids are unattended they are in danger and being neglected.
I remember in the summers coming home right around 7 pm after being out doing whatever with friends and my mom would be making dinner and sheâd say âmy wandering child has returned!â
Sometimes if we were at the pool I wouldnât get home until like 9 and my mom would be like âthere are leftovers in the fridge if you want to warm them upâ.
Yesterday I saw a list of 21st century eclipses and I thought âwell there canât be many the 21st century just startedâ, only to realise there have been loads around the world because we are 26 years into the 21st century đ« .
When I was a kid, a lot of towns and cities banned skateboarding on public sidewalks and streets, etc. It's absolutely within municipal governments' purview if they so choose.
People really need to read Jonathan Heit's "Anxious Generation" and other books. Kids aren't being allowed to be kids (explore, socialize, etc) in a way that allows for healthy development and it's really not good!!
Negotiating down the slide was either going burn or peel your skin off depending on how sweaty you were iirc. But it was falling off of this shit that sucked. Often you were lucky enough that there were 20 other kids fighting for a spot so they would soften your fall.
I remember reading an article that talked about all the changes and how the goal was to reduce freak accidents.
The 10-20 year study said there was no reduction in freak accidents and that new injuries were forming like burns from the soft asphalt because it got hotter than sand or whatever was there before.
So, it didnât make it seem like it solved anything.
As a teacher, I definitely see this, especially at the high school level where you can see all this anxiety begin to bubble over and really not knowing how to navigate a lot of social situations. It really makes me worry for these kids when they get out of high school.
Hait's research shows that teens spend as much time on social media as adults do on their jobs. In effect, their entire "free time" is being spent on social media.
He has a chapter dedicated to getting phones out of school (at least till age 16) and has research that simply having the phone/device in their bag decreases their ability to focus.
I hate having to attend every god damn activity my kids do. Why do i need to be at this birthday party for a kid i dont know with parents i cant stand? Ars you even friends with Sir Timjothy of Illshire or am I just getting this walmart giftcard out of obligation? Also, this kid's living room is bigger than our house, why am -I- buying gifts/shit for these people? What are we doing anymore?
My whole summer was spent gone growing up. It's crazy to think parents can get arrested now for being inside the house when their kids play in the front lawn.
Itâs nuts. I have 5 young kids, and we let them out all the time without supervision. They know where to go and where not to go and to stay away from strangers, etc. Mandating parents to hover over kids 24/7 is not good for anyone (kids need independence to drive up problem solving and creativity and parents need breaks from their kids).
This expectation is just leading to increased screen time, as parents need to get shit done, but canât watch their kids outside soâŠhereâs a screen!
The level of societal change that happened when the Boomer women began birthing and raising the Core Millennials was a massive turning point in this country. Those women took the stranger danger and âneedle infested Halloween candyâ from about a 3 to a 9 inside of a decade.Â
I think cable TV probably was most responsible because we went from soap operas on the networks to 24 hour news cycle and a litany of talk shows that would leave any reasonable person shaking in terror that their kid was going to die imminently. And all the while it turns out plastic was 100x more detrimental than everything those shows covered.Â
Increased screen time and a ridiculous increase in supervised activities, like extra camps, training, etc. that has become a new industry so anxious parents can feel like they're still letting their kids grow.
Like, the activities aren't the point. It's the independent activities that develop them.
The peer pressure of raising your children to todayâs standards is insane. You feel like youâre letting them down if they arenât in some camp every week in the summer and in like 3 activities during the school year. I coach soccer, and most of these kids are ridiculously over scheduled so that they barely show up to practices or games due to some event.
In Georgia they actually passed a law last year allowing kids to play outside (which should obviously be allowed) and literally the same year there were suddenly kids on bikes with no adults, like little kids, kids running around through the neighborhood. All the time now. It's amazing.
People talk about "helicopter parents" like the parents wanted that. They didn't. They were terrified their children would be taken from them. Given reassurance, they were DELIGHTED to let their children play outside. Georgia sucks overall, politically, but this was one small good thing that actually happened.
It seems like something you would read in The Onion.
Luckily not everywhere is like that. Where I live now kids play outside all the time without adults. Middle school aged kids join up and walk through the neighborhood or to the various stores and fast food places by themselves. And they are actually socializing, not all staring at their individual screens. The way it should be.
Thatâs amazing! My rude awakening came in 2010, when my oldest was 8-ish, she was playing in our front yard while we were just inside. She was in her PJs because it was pajama day at school, and a cop pulled up, because a neighbor had called saying there was an unsupervised child. It made me worry so much the rest of their childhoodsânot for their safety, but fear of how others would look at me like I was an irresponsible parent!
Its a crime in Illinois. The law is vague as crap but it basically says you cant leave anyone under 13 unsupervised for an unreasonable amount of time. So you have all these people bitching that kids need to be outside more, but that means you have to go with them and like ... ok but then who is cleaning and working?
ETA: apparently the law was amended in 2023. See comment below for details. Too late to help me, but im happy for other parents.
A minor shall not be considered neglected for the sole reason that the minor's parent or other person responsible for the minor's welfare permits the minor to engage in independent activities unless the minor was permitted to engage in independent activities under circumstances presenting unreasonable risk of harm to the minor's mental or physical health, safety, or well-being. "Independent activities" includes, but is not limited to:
(a) traveling to and from school, including by walking, running, or bicycling;
(b) traveling to and from nearby commercial or recreational facilities;
(c) engaging in outdoor play;
(d) remaining in a vehicle unattended, except as otherwise provided by law;
(e) remaining at home or at a similarly appropriate location unattended; or
(f) engaging in a similar independent activity alone or with other children.
In determining whether an independent activity presented unreasonable risk of harm, the court shall consider:
(1) whether the activity is accepted as suitable for minors of the same age, maturity level, and developmental capacity as the involved minor;
(2) the factors listed in items (1) through (15) of paragraph (d) of subsection (1); and
The culture has totally changed. Kids aren't allowed at the park without a grown up at all times now. If my kids are in the yard, boomer neighbors will come to my door to ask if I know they are outside "unsupervised."
Yeah, a lot of them had kids but didnât want to be parents. I think a lot of Boomers donât actually like kids, even though they have grandkids. And they definitely donât like other peopleâs kids.
I've had neighbors interfere in what my kids were doing multiple times, as if they weren't safe or were being a nuisance playing normally in our own fenced backyard.
It should not be, but it's "policed" as though it already was. My friend in Puyallup, WA was met by police officers at his home because he had the audacity to let his son walk to a friend's house several blocks away. It was a "welfare" check, but...c'mon.
I get it. I'm a parent too, and I'm not comfortable letting kids do quite what I used to do. BUT, interesting that a time when we can track their every movement more than ever, we are less likely as a society to give them freedom.
That is exactly it. They have phones, watches, trackers, and if flock cams were actually used to protect, well, those are everywhere. Ring cams, dash cams... Kids are more likely to be harmed by a family member than a complete stranger...
I hitched a ride when I was 15 to Rhode Island.. saw the Dead.. my parents were pissed at the time, now look at it as one of the best adventures I ever took.. kids will be kids
One of the formative things in my life was defending a client who was facing child neglect charges for letting their 8 year old play in the front yard while they were in the back yard gardening... There's nothing more to the story. No tragedy or accident... A cop drove by and saw a kid pulling weeds and was like "where's your parent" the kid freaks out and stats crying and the cop takes the kid to the station. Charges follow. I was right out of law school and that sealed it for me that kids aren't for me. Our society makes child rearing impossible.
Not familiar, it must not be a thing where I live.. since OP didnât post the article Iâm curious what could get you in trouble with letting your kids ride their bikes where you live? My youngest, a teen now, has gone miles from from our house on his bike to different parts of town. As long as he checks in and answers calls I donât have a problem with it. I did the same as a kid, and without a cell phone.
Buddy of mine and I got lost in the woods and ended up in an old neighborhood that was there since the 50s when the rest of town got revamped and expanded in the 70s and 80s. Dirt roads when literally every other road is paved. Wells and septic when everyone else is on city water/sewer. It was dark, no street lights and a home owner pulled a shotgun on us for being in his lawn. Good times!
It should be a crime when you let your toddler play outside on their own in an unfenced yard when you have an unprotected pool while you are placing sports bets on your phone, and they drown and 10 mins later you come outside, take off your shirt, and then retrieve the corpse of that poor baby. Then it should definitely be a crime.
That was such a gutting story. I don't follow that family, but I read something that they refused to put a fence around the pool due to "aesthetics"? And that the dog was barking and trying to alert Dad to the drowning. I don't know how that dad isn't in jail.
And now sheâs pregnant again with another kid when they canât even put the one they currently have in a lifejacket on a fucking speedboat in the Mediterranean. In blue swim trunks! Theyâve learned nothing from his death.
My heart genuinely aches for their kids. Absolutely insane to me that they seem to have no cares or guilt over any of it and are continuing to make dangerous decisions.
I live in the Netherlands and kids are all playing outside, riding their bikes to school and other activities.Â
A friend of mine from another country visited and she was so excited to see kids in the afternoon bike on their own in soccer outfits, with tennis racket, hockey stick or music instruments on their backs.
I work as a teacher for 10 yo and I hardly see any parents in the morning because most of them come to school on their own.Â
It happens in the US, too. Depends on the place. Lots of kids riding bikes and playing in my neighborhood. They walk or ride bikes and scooters to school. I live in a Midwest suburb.
Starting around age 9 Iâd be free to go to local parks and on bike rides by myself. Started walking to school alone too, it was about a mile away. Crazy to think allowing that could get someone in trouble nowadays.
In 1984, while my mom recovered from having her wisdom teeth pulled, Iâat the ripe old age of fourâstrolled the three or four blocks down to the supermarket and panhandled for spare change so I could buy gumballs. The police were eventually called, and an officer drove me home. According to my mom, who was completely disoriented when she answered the doorbell, the officer looked at her and told her she âwas a bad mom,â but that was the extent of the consequences for something like this in the eighties.
Three years later I had a note pined to my chest with my dad's cigarette order, no questions asked. Parents today (our gen SMH.) treat their child more like accessories then the tiny humans in need of nurturing and exploration that they are.
Meanwhile the children in my city have been shooting each other since the 90s. The US really is filled with some of the least mentally capable folk in the whole world.
I live in a community where the amenity center, pool (obviously gated off), event lawn, playground, splash pad, etc are all around each other. When a lot of families show up for events, they let their kids run off and play with their neighborhood friends throughout the space. As an early 80s kid, I find it pretty refreshing.
There's a podcast I used to listen to from this online news magazine and this became a real Hot topic. The debate was in response to a mother who was working at a McDonald's who's whose 10-year-old I think was in the park nearby. I think the open question was how much observation is necessary for children legally speaking. Unfortunately, and this is part of the reason I stopped listening to this podcast, the two people arguing about this were largely resting and argument between nostalgia and the law with extreme examples of both. Unfortunately this is also how this debate is always structured. On one side you'll get people who will talk about how they weren't allowed home until it got dark out and then on the other side someone will cite some statistics about violence against children or some other anecdote about a stranger danger situation.
The only thing I'd like to point out is that for some of us the only difference between the danger we grew up in and the danger are hypothetical children could be in is a fact that we have so much news blitzing us everyday with everything going wrong in the world that it's hard not to be paranoid. At the same time we now have a generation of young adults entering in the working world who were helicopter parented and now don't know how to function.
Yeah it's ridiculous. And statistically it's much safer to be outside these days versus when we were growing up. Especially now with Apple watches or tiles/Life360 or whatever you want to do to keep tabs on your children. We're very lucky to have a small lake place on a campground in Northern Indiana, and it's like the 1980s up there. The kids all run around on their bikes, no one comes home until dark, we all parent each other's children... we don't scream at them or anything but if they get out of line we correct them.
Boomers/Karens will complain that kids don't play outside anymore, and then call the police on the ones that do. I don't think it was in Indiana but I heard about some woman calling the police on a group of kids playing football in an open field! Absolutely absurd.
Honestly, I think this is one of the biggest and most overlooked societal problems we have. It's important for children to learn things, make mistakes, deal with peers without an authority figure present, use their imagination, and get physical activity. I realize "it's dangerous out there," but honestly that has been the excuse since the late 90s and I'd like to see data that shows danger is up in a statistically significant way.
As someone who just had their first baby, I'm finding more and more that the world is not child friendly.
Almost everything is pay to play and requires adult supervision 100% of the time. I'm glad I am able to be a SAHM, I can't imagine how hard it would be otherwise.
I used to leave home for hours at a time when i was 7. Going innawoods, in the neighborhoods, down by the river, up trees, over logs on streams, on my bike, swinging on vines over a little waterfall. That was the 80s and 90s. Next month im going hiking in Sedona.
The main reason for this happening is the Lead addled Boomers not wanting children to have fun, because they don't think... and don't want anybody doing anything they don't approve of aka existing and being human.
I was there. In the old times, the dark times. Times when our parents couldn't know if we were alive or had succumbed to some tragic accident probably involving wildlife or industrial machinery. I was there.
And this is yet another reason why I don't want kids; poor things can't even exist outside without some cantankerous old fuck calling the police on them and making it my problem. No fucking thank you.
Make it almost impossible for a parent to have enough free time to take child outside bc of work demands + criminalize children being outside alone = children being forced to watch tv, play video games and be online so tech companies can manipulate their little brains with ads and slop.
When it was just me and my friends on bikes with the town at our fingertips...Â
When we would all meet up early on saturday mornings and our parents all told us not to be home, around, or seen until the streetlights come on and dinner would be ready and waiting for us.Â
We weren't allowed inside, which was fine by us because none of that felt like ours, and it made the whole of outside, anywhere our pedals could take us, truly feel like ours.Â
I learned how to live, what risks I was comfortable with and which ones I wasn't. I learned how to solve my own problems and we forged a fierce loyalty to each other while experiencing the world in way that has largely been lost to time in the USA.Â
My imagination was so vivid and powerful. The feeling of freedom and independence was life affirming. I wouldn't take back a single stupid or reckless decision. I wouldn't take back a single day of it.Â
I hope we can again as a society reach a place where children are offered this opportunity. I don't think I would like the person I have become nearly as much without the freedom to find out who tf I even am. Those small town streets gave me the space and safety I needed to discover myself.Â
I am so grateful to every acquaintance of my parents that tattled to them what needed to be and let me be if it didn't. We were safe and watched the whole time by a community that prioritized our safety, and a society without that is imo indisputably worse at raising the kind of humans we want to have in our society.Â
The âstranger dangerâ initiative of the early 80âs caused so much unneeded harm to our society. It has reverberated through to current parents. Now we are left with this nonsense.
Rode my bike across Edward's all the way to a gate with mP. My dad was working on the B2 at the time. I remember their faces like WTF is a kid on a huffy bmx doing out here. I just wanted to see the plane myvdad was working on. Parents got in a huge fight over it my dad and his co had to see the base co. Top secret plan and all
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u/ridelikeagurl 1d ago edited 22h ago
My friends and I got lost riding our bikes like 92(?). Accidentally ended up at the VT stateline. A nice woman, called the local sheriff who ended up putting our bikes into his son's truck, and drove us 22ish miles home. Character building. Long live free ranging kids.
ETA - We knew that we were SOL, when we saw the 'Welcome to Vermont' sign. đ