If you talk to people you’ll hear all about how the world is going to hell because parents aren’t watching their children anymore. I can hardly go to church, have lunch or momchat on the playground without hearing this come up.

Irresponsible parents do everything from let their children play with the neighbors to allowing their children to watch commercials on TV.

Don’t parents know commercials are full of sex and mass murderers inhabit next door.

It’s such a load of crap. It’s revisionist history really.

When I was a child my parents might not see me and my brothers for HOURS. We were always at the neighbors’ houses or in their yards. They summoned us by yelling out the door.

We had boundaries, of course. But, we were allowed free reign within those boundaries. Compared to today they were pretty liberal boundaries.

We were allowed to talk to people of different religions, we were allowed to play at our friend’s houses and even in the street. We walked to school and back – alone. We even rode the bus! We went to slumber parties.

(Psst. . . We even went to public school.)

Here’s the kicker – my parents were religious conservatives who had pretty strict standards for pretty much everything. If they erred – it was definitely on the side of caution. I rebelled because there were so many freaking rules I could barely stand my restrictive and confined life.

Of course, that’s before this latest parenting standard where “good parents” know where their children are every second of every single day and control what goes on. Talk about stifling creativity and killing childhood altogether.

There’s hysterical outcry about a woman who let her 4th grade child ride the subway alone in New York City in Newsweek.

I’m reading a memoir about Brooklyn at the turn of the last century. Children as small as 6 were being given a penny and being asked run to the corner store for bread. The same small child walks many city blocks to the city library and goes into the apartments of various shady characters because they are essentially harmless.

Safety is UP, Crime is down – stop being so damned paranoid! We’re turning children and parents into raving neurotics with TMI – too much information!

Swallow these feel-good and little-publicized statistics printed in the Newsweek story:

* Nationwide, stranger abductions are extremely rare; there’s a one-in-a-million chance a child will be taken by a stranger, according to the Justice Department.

In other words children today are significantly safer than they were when I was growing up.

And yet when I’m around a growing proportion of parents being called HoverMoms in the media, and what I call Paranoid Parents – those that remain so close, watching every move of their child with minute scrutiny I am so uncomfortable (for fear the same scrutiny will be applied to me next) it makes me want to . . .want to . . want to . . .invite someone a little more mellow and a little less neurotic over to play.

I’ve been trying this experiment. When a parent talks about supervising their children in an overly cautious way or how no one else is doing so, I ask them if they were allowed to roam the neighborhood as children. Inevitably, their face lights up remembering this shared childhood bliss. Yet, they rob their children of the same treasured experience.

Free Range-Kids is a blog by the mother who let her kid ride the subway alone. She’s “pro-sane parenting” and I can’t really argue with that.

From Free-Range Kids: At Free Range, we believe in safe kids. We believe in helmets, car seats and safety belts. We do NOT believe that every time school age children go outside, they need a security detail. Most of us grew up Free Range and lived to tell the tale.

Childhood bliss with some freedom versus neurotic paranoia? Liberated bliss for me and my kids please.

Image: So Sioux Me (That’s right – no helmets)

Oh and one hint to combat paranoia – turn off the news.

More on why the news is banned in my house.

Post from: Blisstree

Parents Watching Kids?