“When I Was My Daughter’s Age”

Nice…………..but what movie did they get?

Lovely. I remember doing all those things; I remember all those books. My mom kept me in, as she was paranoid, but on the weekends we (me and my brother) stayed with my dad in this huge forest and were expected to spend most of the day outside. When we got back, dirty and exhilarated, talking non-stop about what we’d done, we’d shower and he’d make us something bachelor-eske for dinner and we’d stay up til two in the morning playing Dungeons and Dragons.

Beautiful!!

We used to go tons of places my mom would have had a cow over. Our distance, however, was severely hampered by the knowledge that our mom would call home every two hours when she had a break at work. If we weren’t there to answer the phone we’d be in serious trouble. We really hated that!

List of things we did at elementary school age in without supervision: (in the NY area)

After 1st day of kindergarten-we all walked to school.
We were taught how to cross a street and expected to do so on our own
Play outside unsupervised
Dig in the dirt, climb trees, rocks etc.
Rode our bikes-no helmets back then
Play (tag/baseball/fungo/stoop ball or just have a catch) and other games we made up
Leave school and go home for lunch!
Return on time
Leave school and go OUT for lunch (to local pizza place/deli/candy store)
We were fully capable of sitting ourselves down in a restaurant, ordering a meal, and even knew how to leave a tip. Most of the time we were afraid of the high school kids in there smoking, so we just got our pizza to go!
Return on time
Walk home
Sometimes we rode our bikes and locked them up to the fence next to the school parking lot.
We walked ourselves to the library and took out our own books
We were responsible for returning them on time
We walked to baseball/softball practice alone even though we had to cross a very busy intersection. It had a traffic light and a cross walk. Our parents showed up for games. Not practice.
For 3 years, starting at age 7, I walked to karate class that was several blocks away. I was never late, I never missed one.
Our parents could drop us off at the movie theater and pick us up when the movie was over. We knew how to behave. They told us what time to be outside waiting. It didn’t’ require 3 phone calls and 10 text messages to coordinate picking us up.
I used to go around the corner to the laundry room to buy my mom’s cigarettes from the vending machine. I never started smoking.
By age 10 we got on the bus and took ourselves to the movies. After looking in the newspapers ourselves or calling the theater and deciding which show/what time we wanted to go.
At age 7 I was expected to take care of my infant brother-change his diaper in the am when we got up, feed him, etc… full nighttime babysitting duties started at about age 9
We all had keys to our apartments and if we came home before mom or dad was home and we were expected to start our homework.
In the winter we went sledding. We walked ourselves to the park/hill and did it ourselves. It was cold. We put on coats and boots.
Sometimes we would walk to the Bronx river and fish or feed the ducks.
We used to take the bus to Nathan’s on Central Ave and play at the arcade.
Sometimes play miniature golf.

Thanks for this. Perhaps it’s just the book nerd in me – but by far the point that really describes my childhood was your statement:

Harriet the Spy  was my heroine.
Bridge to Terabithia  was my inspiration.
The Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler  was my aspiration.

Yes.

Wait, you have a Blockbuster?

@ Jen
Yes, and in Beezus and Ramona, the 9 yr old Beezus has to watch her 4 yr old sister at the park, and then they come home together from the library. It stands out because it’s hard to picture that happening anymore.

When I was 9 I played in the woods for hours, built tree forts and bridges across creeks with random wood we *found*, and came home only for the dinner bell. This was the ’70’s. We knew all the kids too because everybody played outside.

I also rode my bike everywhere and never owned a helmet. I once rode to my friend’s house a few miles away and broke my arm being dragged by her dog on a walk. She rode me home on her handlebars and my mom didn’t believe me that I broke it because I didn’t cry. My friend showed me her trick- to put Ben Gay under my eyes to make me tear up- and my mom finally agreed to take me to the doctor. They put a cast on and sent me on my way. I was a swimmer and didn’t like the idea of sitting out of practices and meets so I put a yellow rubber glove over it with a rubber band at the end and swam the rest of the summer. I think I even won some races with that cast on.

I also found myself baffled that there is a Blockbuster still around.

This doesn’t quite work for me. When I was my daughter’s age … I got in trouble for walking to the library alone and for climbing trees that were too high and I couldn’t get too much sun or swim in the lake. But…when I was my son’s age, I was considered old enough to babysit for hours, so that’s something, for those who think I shouldn’t be leaving him home alone or teaching him to cook his own lunch.

It’s a little harder to be “free-range” when I know what my overprotective mother and mother-in-law would say, but thankfully I live in a neighborhood full of children who are allowed to wander and play outside without adult intervention.

Love Harriet and the Mixed-up Files, of course.

@Peter: We’re going off-topic, but the need for a helmet has of course everything to do with your own speed and the surface you’re riding on. But I always fail to see how a helmet is going to help if you get hit by a car though – it won’t prevent you from getting crushed and die from internal bleeding…

@papilio. I have never, and probably will never wear a cycle helmet, but surely you cannot justify your remark about a helmet not making a difference in an accident where a vehicle is involved? It might just be that you are caught in the vehicles’ bumper/fender, and had you wore a helmet it might have saved your cranium taking the full impact of going up the kerb, for instance..

I am on vacation at my mom’s house, in the countryside, with my 3YO son. Today at the park we met a 8YO girl we know well, she was babysitting her neighbour’s almost-3YO daughter. Everybody looked at my son’s helmet like a funny thing.
Every kid in the town where I live go by bike with a helmet and no 8YO is allowed to stay at the park alone (what? babysit a toddler? come on!).
BTW, the girl was so careful, so sweet and full of attention for the little one, that I would gladly let my son with her. I worked with kids for years and found very few people able to carefully watch AND willing to play with a kid at the same time, like she did.

Nice poem! I bet many of us have a similar poem we could write. I hope my kids will feel nostalgic for their own childhoods as well.

However, I do wish my 15 year old son would find somewhat safer ways to develop those experiences. He is now riding his skateboard in traffic–I think even my parents would have worried about that.

Love this! I have fond memories of exploring nature and riding my bike around the neighborhood with friends as a kid. Seeing how some parents hover over older children at parks near my home makes me realize how lucky I was to have independence from my parents to play freely. I wouldn’t deny my children those sorts of experiences for anything in the world. One thing I want to bring up: Periods of depression is not that uncommon in adulthood. Memories of how happy and how capable I was as a kid helped me at one time through this. They helped combat the typical negative thoughts depressed people are prone to (such as that I’d always been sad and couldn’t do certain things).

“Helmet has saved my brain twice in the last three years.”

Either you have been particularly unlucky, or you are falling way to often. Most bicycle falls cause injuries on hands and legs, head injuries are comparatively more rare. Which makes me think that you are falling too much.

Second, if helmet less bicycling would truly endanger ones brain twice in three years, then there would be much more head injuries in Netherlands, Austria and any other country where people still do not wear helmets. Plus, most 30-50 years old would either have suffered head injury in the past or would know someone who did have head injury.

That stat seems plausible only if you are from country with strong helmet campaign.

And, Andy, don’t forget that helmet laws in the US only pertain to children and many adults still don’t wear helmets even today. It will be interesting to see if today’s helmeted children maintain their helmet-wearing into adulthood or shed them as soon as they are able.

My 7 year old has never worn helmet. I saw no point when she had training wheels. She learned how to ride a 2-wheeler in A. Samoa where helmets are not even available. I have no interest in buying her one now that we are back in the states, but she wants to be like her friends so we will see. We haven’t bought a new bike yet.

“At what speed and from what angle should a car hit you to make that helmet *the* factor in saving your life?”

At whatever speed and angle causes you to fall and strike your head without any other life-threatening injuries. Maybe you’re not even struck, maybe you just lose control and fall as the result of an evasive maneuver. Is such a scenario so hard to conceive?

I don’t know the stats on helmets so I’m not arguing about how necessary they are. But it doesn’t seem so implausible that there are situations where protecting your head could be lifesaving.

@andy
That actually would be interesting. Seeing how necessary helmets really are by looking at numbers in the Netherlands.

“At what speed and from what angle should a car hit you to make that helmet *the* factor in saving your life?”

As others have said, with the car situation, the relatively common situations where the car driver of the parked car opens the door into the cyclist riding past, the situation where the car turns and catches the front or back wheel on one edge of the bumper, and the situations where no car is involved and roadway junk gets into your wheel spokes.

The situations above encompass the most common ways cyclists are injured, and two common falls: either sideways or a flip over the handlebars. In both situations, your head is at risk of impacting the pavement. In 20 years of riding, I’ve done two flips over the handlebars, and I’ve gone sideways more than that.

And my neighbors are currently dealing with a situation where their son was out riding with a friend, the car clipped the back wheel of their son’s bike, and the son’s bike fell over, with his front wheel clipping the back wheel of his friend’s bike. The son was wearing a helmet and is fine. His friend was not, and is not. He fell and his head hit the curb.

Wow, I am having typing problems today.

^ Bikes and cars aren’t sharing the roadways to the massive extent they do in urban areas of the US.

“Either you have been particularly unlucky, or you are falling way to often. Most bicycle falls cause injuries on hands and legs, head injuries are comparatively more rare. Which makes me think that you are falling too much.”

Okay, and having said that, now what?

The “I was 9”-
I did all that stuff, and it was not at all remarkable. My parents were not lenient, nor strict, just average.

These days, people wanna call CPS on you if you let your 9 yr old be alone, ever. And even younger kids? You better have them leashed to you at all times.

We do impact testing of helmets. They do indeed offer protection. Whether or not they’re needed for cycling, we’d have to do some stat hunting to see if it’s a myth.

Me and my cycling experiences? (And I’m not a pro, just a Sunday ride kind of thing) Especially when I was a kid? Cars or no cars, I think a helmet would be useful like a seatbelt.

“Did the son hit his head? If not, the fact that he was wearing a helmet is completely irrelevant.”

Yes, he did. He suffered a mild concussion. The friend cracked his skull, had a brain bleed, and has had intellectual impact due to the resulting brain damage.

I’ve also cracked my head hard enough in a helmet to be staring up at the blue sky and seeing stars. And was very glad I didn’t crack my head that hard without the helmet.

One thing helmet advocates forget to look at is the perception of safety from helmets (and bike lanes) that bicyclists now have — turns out even tho there are relatively fewer cyclists, there are now more accidents, which boil down to “cyclist thinks they’re immune to traffic” since they’re now “protected”.

Same problem as with kids… if you’re always “protected”, you never learn to watch out for yourself.

[I’ve done thousands of miles on my bike, none of it with a helmet, and a great deal of it in urban traffic. I’ve never taken a header, nor had a ‘disagreement’ with a car. And I did a lot of riding on icy streets, and on my old bike I could do 50+mph on a good downslope.]

@Natalie Such “experiment” happened in Australia I think, there were not much savings. People drove bicycles less, partly cause they found helmets hustle and partly cause they started to see bicycling as high risk activity.

So, you got people moving around less, getting less sport and risking a bit more when they actually do it.

Other problems is that head injuries are not the biggest cost when falling on bike. Legs and hands got injured more. And if you are hit by car, your internal parts of your body gets a lot of injuries.

Oops, I posted this previously on the wrong thread.

Here’s another article from the Washington Post.

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-06-03/national/39708755_1_mandatory-helmet-laws-rates-pediatrics

No one is advocating not wearing a helmet. People agree that helmets prevent some kinds of injuries. But some are saying that a “law” is counter productive.

It’s an interesting discussion.
– See more at: https://www.freerangekids.com/would-your-kids-pass-the-predator-test/comment-page-2/#comment-264951

Dumpster diving! Glad I wasn’t the only one! 🙂 My mum was appalled, of course. We used to bike for miles (no helmet, plenty of accidents, mostly road rash) and visit lakes, parks, and the fancy public gardens in the richer part of town. We used to walk to school past ‘cliffs’ (maybe 30 feet) that we would inevitably stop to climb, and pull the Virginia Creeper off to look at the suckers and search for bugs. We were often late. I still remember seeing a huge rat and thinking it was a chihuahua. The whole trip to school was along a busy road. At lunch we would go out to the video arcade (the vice principal forbade it, but screw him!) and get day-old doughnuts cheap next door. They’d have to kick me out when I was on a roll at Karate Champ. I’d pass my game to some other kid, who would die immediately and waste my quarter, plus get to put his initials in the high score screen. We’d stop at what I now recognise was a kind of seedy corner store on the way home for gum and comics. We’d go after school to where houses were being demolished and find cool things in the rubble. We’d build “airplanes” out of the old cars that someone had left in a ravine. Every single day was an adventure, and we had total freedom. I really miss those days, and I would not trade those memories for anything. I wish kids these days could have the same, and I wish that parents could give it to them without guilt or fear of censure.

“I wasn’t saying that the helmet would save you in a car crash, it might. I brought up regular circumstantial falling to the curb/pavement because everyone was talking about bike crashes only in terms of accidents with cars”

I referenced with crashes caused by cars, and crashes caused by other things in my post as well.

In fact, both times I’ve rung my bell in an accident while riding, there was no car involved. Once was a hard-to-see section of heaved pavement which trapped my front wheel and sent me flying–I cracked the helmet on that one.

Helmets don’t prevent head injuries from occurring. But they do lessen the risk that a head injury will be a traumatic brain injury.

Yes, other injuries are more common. But broken legs and arms don’t have the risk of resulting in long-term intellectual impact the way that major head injury can.

@Donna: our areas must be rather different then. I rarely see adults riding without helmets anymore and I see cyclists often enough. There’s quite a bit of bike commuting going on in my local area.

@pentamom: Around here, I’d say that 9 out of 10 adults I see riding are wearing helmets.

We also do get a lot of weekend distance/century rides on the roads around us, and those all require helmets. So almost every adult I see riding on the weekend on the roadways has a helmet on but a good number are riding as part of some sort of group.

If I go out riding on any of our extensive trail systems, almost all the kids and adults riding on those also are wearing helmets.

For the bike commuters: there is a distinct different between the majority who do, and the minority who do not. What I will say is that the people for whom bike commuting appears to be not a choice but a necessity tend not to wear helmets. Whereas those who appear to be making the choice to bike commute are wearing helmets.

@Donna I did not tried to compare those countries to USA, I did not wanted to talk about USA at all. I picked countries where people do not wear helmets a lot and where people drive bikes a lot.

The point I wanted to make is something of the sort: if helmet saves ones brain three times in two years on average, then most adults in Netherlands would have suffer head injury within last two years. The fact is, most adults in Netherlands never suffered bike related head injury.

My impression was that Americans drive bikes a lot less and when they do then it is mostly as sport and not as transport.

It is also impression that Americans (and UK) tend to stress danger and the need to wear helmet a lot. So, it is true that I assumed that they also wear them more often.

As in, every time there is a discussion about biking, someone needs to bring in the need to wear helmet. The forum is then full of people that a.) have been saved by helmets suspiciously often b.) think driving bike is so dangerous that you will suffer horrible injury for sure.

The impression is then that driving car is better for your health then driving bike without helmet, while nothing could be further from truth.

DH: “Also, in a country where both sides of the spectrum are screaming about deficits and reducing spending, which is overall cheaper on the government side of things? Public campaigns, in general, cost in the order of millions. Redoing traffic ways in the way you are talking, cost in the order of billions.”

I think it all depends on what you wish to consider as costs in this particular matter.
Finding out what the main routes in a city are, where does traffic come from and where is it going, etc, and making plans considering that, costs money.
Lowering speed limits in neighborhood streets costs money.
Building traffic calming measures to make motorists lower their speed costs money.
Building separate bike paths along the through streets costs money and will take some space.
Reprogramming the traffic lights at intersections so cyclists and pedestrians can cross the road while motorists wait, costs money.
Teaching children in school the rules of the road and how to cycle safely in all kinds of circumstances, costs money.
Teaching (future) motorists to look for cyclists in traffic and be careful around more vulnerable road users (and never throw open that door without looking over their shoulder) costs money.
Keeping streets and roads and bike paths clean costs money.
Building bridges and tunnels so cyclists and pedestrians can safely cross main roads costs money.
Building bike racks near apartment buildings, workplaces, schools and public transport stations etc costs money.

Maintaining roads worn out by all that heavy motorized traffic using it every day costs money.
Cleaning up after an accident costs money.
Oil costs money, and independence.
Using very expensive pieces of land in the middle of the city as parking space costs money (also by increasing traveling distances).
People getting hurt in an accident costs money, and more than that.
People getting killed in an accident costs money, and a lot more than that. (Road safety in the US is laughable compared to the other first world countries.)
People getting ill from air and noise pollution in cities costs money, and quality of life. (~40% of trips is 3 miles or less.)
People getting ill because of a sedentary lifestyle costs money, and quality of life. (~30 minutes of mildly intensive exercise, such as walking or cycling, is enough to stay in a reasonable shape.)
People who are hurt or ill can’t work — that costs money.
Driving people around who can’t drive themselves costs money, and time.

Being unable to travel even short distances safely without a car costs freedom.

But I’m sure doing nothing is cheaper for the gov’t.

Wonderful essay! I hope my girls get to have the kind of childhood that you enjoyed.

Let Her Eat Dirt
http://www.lethereatdirt.com
A dad’s take on raising tough, adventurous girls

One thing I’ve always wondered is where they got the idea to call it Blockbuster’s. I have nothing against video rentals, but why name it after a particularly offensive instance of racism?

The issues aren’t whether or not a helmet protects your head on the chance that you fall. It does. Nobody is arguing that. Neither is anyone arguing that because it is still possible to get a head injury with the use of a helmet that they shouldn’t be used, that’s not a reason, indeed, without a helmet said injury would most likely be worse.

The issues, if anyone is interested in reading either of those two articles, are misleading data, and helmet laws.

It’s being advertised that helmets prevent head injuries by 85%. Which makes helmets sound pretty damn effective. And if they’re that effective, the result is that

1) laws will be made requiring people to wear them

2) people won’t demand a better product because 85% is great, it doesn’t take into account that helmets actually cause injury in a small percentage of cases, among other issues

The downsides of a law requiring people to wear helmets is that it discourages biking. Companies that rent bikes on the fly will have to give you a helmet, or you’ll just have to have one ready, and it’s just another inconvenience. The stressing of helmets also gives the impression that cycling is a dangerous activity, which discourages people.

There’s also some data suggesting that drivers are less careful around cyclists with helmets than without. No one has said that cyclists themselves are more reckless when wearing helmets, although it’s possible.

All that being said, no one recommends cycling without a helmet. They are simply against a law requiring everyone to wear one, and want better data available.

Andy seems to have the best grasp on the issues at play here.

“One thing I’ve always wondered is where they got the idea to call it Blockbuster’s. I have nothing against video rentals, but why name it after a particularly offensive instance of racism? ”

The word “blockbuster” referred to very successful movies before it referred to tactics used to manipulate the racial makeup of neighborhoods. Actually, I’ve never even heard the word “blockbuster” used in the second sense; I have only ever heard of it as “block busting.” Words that have more than one meaning need not always be sacrificed to their most offensive use and obliterated from the language.

The question of poor perception came up in the fire service with many improvements – most particularly, bunker pants (instead of the old tall boots/long coat system) and SCBAs. Each time, you had people arguing “that new stuff will kill you, making you think you’re safer than you are.” And yes, a few people have done dumb things with new equipment they wouldn’t have done without it – but in the end, you simply can’t compare the health and longevity of the fire service with air packs to what it was before. In the old days, the FDNY didn’t have to worry about its pension system…

One thing I’ve always wondered is where they got the idea to call it Blockbuster’s. I have nothing against video rentals, but why name it after a particularly offensive instance of racism?

Well, the first (oldest) definition of “blockbuster” was a bomb capable of destroying a city block. This cites back to the 1940s.

The figurative use was originally of anything that made a public impact, but the term was quickly adapted to films that are wildly popular.

Block busting, using minorities to convince whites to sell their homes at lower prices, started as a practice in the late 40s and early 50s. It is possible that the two terms are related, but if so the connection is the “make a public impact” sense of the word “blockbuster”.

At any rate, the “hit movie” sense narrowly predates the racist motivation for selling cheap, because prior to that point people could simply refuse to sell to blacks.

@papillo
I don’t really have a strong opinion on this, I’ve never really knew anything about the issues until reading those articles.
I want my daughter wearing one simply because I see what she does on her bike. And helmets do prevent head injuries. I wear one because it’s not fair to require that she wear one if I don’t. When she’s a better rider, I’d have no problem with her taking off the helmet, but I’d have to check what the law says obviously.

Sorry about that, is that like the French for butterfly? Not that I speak French, but I read the book and saw the movie about that convict escaping that jail island. Paul Newman… Sigh.

In the US, I bike in parks, maybe in towns with beachfronts, and now recently, with my daughter around town. Not for transportation on a day to day basis. In Amsterdam it’s different because that’s just how you get around. It’s definitely more crowded. (More pedestrians, more bikes) which would be akin to a beachfront town where you have that more. Except COLDER. And people coughing up phlegm just to say hello. 😉

Regarding helmet wearing, it’s one way of avoiding a fight. There’s enough we argue about.

Helmet + daughter: I see.