As Recently as 1979, A First Grader Could…

I’d love to read the entire series. Off to look for it now.

I was JUST thinking about this yesterday. When I was in first grade, I remember walking home from school in a complete rain storm in which the wind blew my little rain hat off of my head. Nobody was there to pick me up. A woman who was a counselor at my school (though I didn’t know her personally) stopped and asked if I wanted a ride home. I told her yes and showed her the way to my house. I recall my mother was angry that I’d gotten in the car with a stranger! And, yet, she hadn’t come to get me. Not that this is a good example, but shows how much independence we were given at that time. (I was six in 1971 actually). This all came to mind as I picked up my six year old at her school with every other parent in the neighborhood. I remarked to my husband this past weekend how it’s awful that we never see kids out and about in our neighborhood–riding their bikes or playing. They all stay right in their own yards. There doesn’t even seem to be any inviting of other children who are right across the street.

I would love to let my almost seven year old and almost six year old walk home from school. The school has forbidden it. If your child is not in the 5th grade, they cannot walk/ride bikes home alone (even with another sibling).

@ Kristen That would bring out the rebellion side of me. I would drive up every afternoon pick him up in my car and then promptly have him get back out and walk. Now the school can do nothing, you have picked him up, what you want to do with him after that is your choice!

I love it! My oldest son is six now and I’m seriously considering giving him more run of the neighborhood. He has had the run of our (very large) yards since he was four or so, but now it’s starting to be pretty limiting for bike-riding, etc.

The thing that’s holding me up is partly the lack of sidewalks, (though there IS plenty of grassy sidebar) and the fact that people just don’t really drive carefully through here. I guess they think they’re out in the country, but there are lots of houses and little kids here.

Hell, I very nearly got run over the other day walking with the baby in a stroller. Idiots drive through here like it’s the Dukes of Hazzard. Ugh.

Guess I gotta muster up some faith that the kid can be aware of his surroundings and knows what he’s capable of. Still scary!

One thing I am NOT worried about is kidnapping or “pervs” though, so thanks Lenore.

I WAS 6 years old in 1979 and I was allowed to ride my go cart anywhere on our 800 acres that I wanted to, sometimes, miles from home, and my cousins and I (none of them older than 8) pilfered wood and tools to build our awesome tree forts. Mom always sent me off with a PB&J or a leftover biscuit with bacon (which didn’t kill me because it wasn’t kept at the proper temperature), a canteen of water, and the warning to “watch out for snakes”.

In spite of her “neglect” (sarc), or maybe because of it, I survived childhood, one deployment to Iraq and three to Afghanistan. Thanks Mom!

Four to eight blocks? I guess I’d want to know how big the blocks are, because in my neighborhood, 8 blocks would be a couple of miles. I could see some 6-year-olds doing it, but I can see others where the mom would be pulling her hair out even in 1979. But if the blocks were small city blocks, I could see it.

My brother and sister were little in those days. They most definitely went 4+ blocks alone by the age of 5 (to walk to school, babysitter, etc.). When I went to KG at 4-5 it was only about 3 blocks, but included crossing a main (big city) street and a couple other streets. By 6, I walked to the playground and the library, which were further away. After my mom went to work when I was about 6.5, if I was sick, I had to walk about 10 blocks to my mom’s friend’s house to be babysat.

Of course, in those days, they had crossing guards on the main city streets before and after school. I haven’t seen a crossing guard in a long time.

I forgot to mention: getting to school meant crossing a major highway and intermountain train track that saw 3-400 car trains at 60 mph.

This is not a checklist for a first-grader. This was one of the criteria the book said would help you decide if your child was ready for KINDERGARTEN! This is a pre-kindergarten developmental milestone!

What I want to know is WHEN it changed. Because it changed not only in “our” mind but with the authorities and schools etc. like Kristen sadly pointed.

Ok, maybe I also want to know WHY it changed but I think it’s harder to uncover…

What a great reality check. My brand-new middle schooler is walking home from school this year and is home alone for 1-2 hours before I get home from work. Thanks to this site I have had the courage to face both my fears and reactions from other parents to do this for my son. I regularly have to turn down offers from other parents to drive him home with “No, I want him to do this. It is good for him.” But he has a cell phone and texts me that he is leaving school and arrived home safely and we live in a nice area will little crime.

I am happy to say that it HAS been good for him. Each day he has managed to arrange (on his own) a walking buddy for at least part of the walk home. He completes his homework before I get home, has a snack, sometimes plays a little. He told me he LIKES it – he feels more grown-up.

And just yesterday when he got home he noticed the empty trash cans out front. So he brought them in. Without any prompting.

OK. I know this new chapter is still in the honeymoon phase and I am sure my tween will succumb to moments of irresponsibility again, but right now it feels like we are making great strides and I am finding that being a better parent sometimes means letting go. Can they really, truly impress us with their accomplishments if we have done it all for them?

Walking to school is a particularly hard issue because it really does require community participation.

It was much safer for a 6 year old to walk home because there were other kids who were older doing it too. If they fell, wondered off, got distracted, etc., there were other kids around to help.

We all used to walk home and even if you were not walking “with” other people going to your neighborhood, they were still just up the sidewalk or behind you. Even if you weren’t “friends” you can be assured that everyone watched out for each other. (I can beat up my brother but you better not touch him!)

So now if you fight the good fight and write letters to make it so YOUR child can walk to school, you still have the issue of him/her walking without other kids around. I guess we can only hope to motivate other parents to let their kids join but that the default position is driving makes it a much harder fight.

What an incredible resource this blog is. Love this post… So glad I’ve found this site!

My 8 yr old has been walking to school with friends for more then 1 yr now(sometimes by himself if he was late leaving) and now my 6 yr old is wanting more freedoms, so he figured out how to get it by himself! He asked me if when we were walking to the grocery store if he can take a different route then me and the baby, so I walked down the alley and he took his scooter on the sidewalk. He beats me every time lol, as if that’s very hard when he has a scooter and I am pushing a stroller 😛 we take both routes regularly so he knows them both by heart. He is out of my sight for around 2 mins, probably less but feels like much more lol.

I for sure was walking down the road to my friends house (busy road) and riding my bike in the subdivision behind us by the time I was 6. I belong to a “stay at home mom” group and they are horrified when I bring up these ideas or explain about the current crime rates compared to when we were kids. They don’t believe me and they all think I’m nuts! I think it’s nuts that at 3 yrs. old they still don’t let their child play in the next room by themselves!!!!

I also want to add something funny… I found my favorite childhood book and have been reading it to my daughter who is 3. It’s called, “Popcorn” by Frank Asch. It’s no longer and print and hard to find… My husband and I decided it’s no longer in print probably because it’s about a little bear who’s parents go out to a Halloween party and he’s left home alone. He in turn invites his bear friends over for his own party… In the end they make (on the stove) and eat too much popcorn and they all get sick. The best part is… in him being home alone. He cleans up after the party and puts himself to bed and his parents wake him up to give him a present of…. popcorn! This scenario would never happen today! I loved this book as a kid and still love it today! I hope I can instill the beauty of this story in my child!

I was born in 1970, so started first grade in 1976. My mom dropped me off in the mornings, but I walked home in the afternoon. Even had a 5th grade boy carrying my book bag by the end of the first week. LOL! We only lived about 3 blocks from the school, and there were no streets to cross since the school, playground, and ball field all run on the same side of the street as my house. Across the street, though, was an old man who used to take a lawn chair out to the road and sit and watch the kids play on the playground and ball field. We were all scared of him, although he was completely harmless – just bored and lonely. None of us ever talked to him, and I regret that to this day. I imagine he had wonderful stories! You couldn’t see his house from the street due to the overgrown bushes and I guess he couldn’t see out the window for the same reason so would go sit down at the street.

There were several neighborhoods in our “free roaming zone.” We could go to any neighborhood as long as it was inside of the square, which was bounded by four major highways. In 5th grade, we moved less than a mile away, but outside of that zone. My parents allowed us to cross the one highway at a redlight and continue to go play on the old playground and visit old friends. We thought we had so much freedom, having essentially doubled our roaming zone to include the new neighborhood.

At age 15, I got a car and was actually allowed to drive without a license. I could go anywhere in town (and was sent on errands often) as long as I stayed in town, was home by dark, and didn’t “get caught.” I knew “don’t get caught” meant being extra careful and attentive while driving, which was actually probably a good thing if you think about it. At age 16, my range was about a 5-county zone and the “by dark” rule was lifted. Check in at dinner time and be home by 9 during the school week, midnight on the weekends. At age 17, I was allowed to go anywhere in the state as long as they knew where I was going and I called when I got there (collect from a payphone back in those days.) Even as free range as I like to think I am as a parent, I’m not sure I’m going to allow my daughter those same freedoms. Looking back, they seemed excessive, yet we handled it well (and this was before people were sue-happy looking for a quick, easy buck and long before you could call for help with a cell phone). We were, for the most part, good kids. We had our share of mischief and fun, but weren’t hoodlums. And, I attribute a lot of that to the freedoms (and responsibilities) we were given. We knew a screw up meant those freedoms would be taken away and we didn’t dare risk that.

Lately, I have been getting my parenting advice from the Ramona books. I remember when I read them as a child, I felt like Ramona was just like me and now I am reading them to my children. Ramona’s mother walked her to school on the first day of kindergarten, then she and Howie walked by themselves every day after that.

Now my son is entering kindergarten. The school has a rule that if an adult is not waiting at the bus stop for their kindergartener after school, the child cannot get off the bus. The child will be taken back to school and the parent will be called to pick up their child.

@Bill Hobbs, in Houston a mother was recently charged with felony child abandonment for making her misbehaving 10-year old son walk the remaining mile home, after having had to pick him up from school where he had gotten into trouble.

Felony child abandonment.

On the academics vs life skills issue: My MIL is a kindergarten teacher and has been since her youngest started school. More and more during the school year she watches kids who are incapable of (imaginative) play, self directed activity and basic if-then thought processes- but every last one of them knows their letters, numbers, etc. Their parents are so busy pushing academics that they fail to realize that children learn important skills from free play. Those skill are not only necessary for independence but also *future* academic success. What good does it do if little Johnny can read at three if he can’t muster basic reasoning skills (necessary for every academic subject) at 17?

I have a serious question for the FRK community. What do you do if you have coyotes running around your neighborhood, both day and night? I’ve always let my kids play outside, but the coyotes are making me nervous. What if they get rabies? Do coyotes gang up on kids?

Usually I’ll see a couple of coyotes a day, so far never more than one at a time. They are bold enough to hang out in our garage and on our porch.

Interesting contrast. My 7 year old is only permitted to go two blocks by herself. I was permitted to go 6-8 blocks at her age, but here’s the difference — I’m still living where I grew up. But when I grew up, there didn’t use to be this busy road running through the middle of the neighborhood with fast cars zipping by and no crossing light to get across it. That road, in fact, was a dead end, not a busy thoroughfare. Thus, she isn’t permitted to go past that road alone at age 7, whereas I was. I don’t think it’s just more overprotection that has led to this generational shift in autonomy (though that’s an element); it’s also a growing population, more development, and lots, lots more traffic. I think the checklist for academic skills is more fitting for Kindergarten, not just now, when we push academics earlier…but even when I was going to Kindergarten. These are pretty sad low-level skills for 1st grade entry – being able to state where you live, repeat one sentence, count to 8, and color more or less in the lines. I’m pretty sure even in the 70’s, I was expected to have more academic skills than that by the time I entered first grade.

@SKL- We have coyotes here. My neighbor across the street had her AC unit worked on and they found fresh rabbits killed and buried (they like to bury their kill and return for it.) We’ve also had two confirmed sightings (one scratching on a door for a female dog inside that was in heat and another chased a cat.)
This said, these were for sighting of single coyotes. My kids know this (and also know how to behave around wild life- we have all kids of animals here- bears, foxes, etc.)
To quote my husband, “They are carnivores and kill small animals, they are more likely to get the annoying chihuahua that barks incessantly behind its electric fence across the street than any one of you. That is if they are out in the daylight. They should not be.”

I grew up on a farm and went to one-room country schools for kindergarten & first grade. Because of time issues, my parents usually drove me to school, but I almost always walked home (2-4 miles) by myself. I would walk the first 1/2 mile or so with the other kids from school, but after I passed their homes, I was on my own. I remember closely examining roadside flowers, animal tracks, butterflies and other bugs flitting around in the ditches along the roads. I had fun, never got lost and learned all sorts of life lessons (orienteering, responsiblity, etc) during those walks.

For months, I’ve been suggesting that my kid walk/bike/whatever the seven houses down to where the other 5-year-old boy lives, to ask him out to play. My kid has been kind of shy about doing that … and I didn’t know if the other mom was going to appreciate it.

This weekend, I was weeding, and he was complaining that he “didn’t want to play with the girls” (we have two girls on either side of us, a bit older than him). I say “go down the block and ask A if he wants to come over and play,” not really expecting the kid to do it. 2 minutes later I look up again, and kid+bike are gone. I look down the block to where he is parking his bike in front of A’s house and walking up to the door.

Although I do think it freaked A’s mom out a bit, and the kid stayed there to play instead of bringing A back.

@Jen: “And she’s not reading yet so I’m still lacking even though she can handle responsibilities most 10 year olds can’t.”

Huh? O is not reading yet either and he starts kindergarten on Monday/he’s been in an official preschool. Kids should learn reading during kinder, not before kinder. Unless they want to learn before.

I walked myself to elementary school every day – about six suburban blocks. Never seemed to be a problem. My parents did mention to me that if they ever sent someone to pick me up, it would be someone I would recognize.

Curious thing, though – there was a girl in my class who lived halfway between us and the school. Every morning, her grandmother would walk with her to school. It always struck me as an odd thing; that, and the fact that her parents dressed her as if she were a porcelein doll.

I was a 1st grader in 1979, I did walk about 1/2 mile to school so this article made me smile. 🙂

Cheryl – I have a sister who breeds German Shepherds, and she’s made that suggestion many times, LOL. Don’t think I want a dog, though. I am too busy and my yard is too small. I live in a suburban city, near a national park. I know it probably sounds like the boon-docks, with all these critters running around.

I was in elementary school in the early-mid 80’s and I remember walking the half mile home from the bus stop by myself. Where I lived, we really didn’t have to worry about crime, but we did have to keep an eye out for bears and moose. There were times when I was late getting home because there was a moose blocking the road. We would wait for it to wander off into the woods, and then continue on our way. When we got home, we would call my Mom, let her know we had arrived safely, and then either do homework, or go outside to play in those same bear and moose infested woods!

DH, I think Jen was being facetious. The academic expectations are out of whack, but we still expect them to be babies as far as life skills.

Cheryl, are you talking about a public or private school? I would be surprised if the public schools around here were requiring mastery of multiplication facts.

I have one kid who is way ahead, so I am a believer in making opportunities available for intellectual growth. I hate the thought of her sitting in school all day and not learning one thing. I love the thought of my other child having the gift of challenge, and seeing what’s possible, even if some of it is a stretch goal for her. But, making kids nervous about academics will close their minds, not expand them.

My kids’ daycare director promised me that they’d go easier on the younger kids. And, I noticed that at least half of the kids in the class are early entrants (turning 5 in the fall). So I’m not too worried, but that made me all the more skeptical when I saw that worksheet. Don’t they usually start KG by introducing letters and sounds? I mean, yeah, my kids are familiar with letters, but not all kids have them down before age 5.

@Laura: “Popcorn” was one of my favorite books as well! I’ve never heard anyone else mention it before.

Jo – I can’t believe there are sleepaway camps that take 4-year-olds! Has your son always gone to the same one or tried multiple ones? I always wanted to go, but only got to try it out once, and not until age 13.

Jen – does your daughter bring bandages with her to the park, or did they stop by a house nearby that had some? She did great taking care of that injury.

I too just google mapped my childhood route to school. 0.7 miles. I walked every day from kindergarten on, in Denver, rain, snow, whatever. In high school, I took the public bus. But by 6th grade (which was ’79) I was taking the bus downtown on my own during every school break, or riding my bike downtown.

A point I want to mention about the academics. While I do agree that they push too hard on getting the ‘right’ answers, there is so much more to learn these days! Since I was in high school, there have been so many scientific advances, and so much more history! DNA? Tectonic plates? None of that existed. And to understand that, one has to have a better grasp of math and chemistry and such. Also, history kind of went through Watergate, touched on Vietnam. Reagan was ‘current events’. So, the same 13 years (counting kindy), but lifetimes more information kids are supposedly responsible for.

That said, I started kindergarten able to read. I loved to read! And, if the academics are being so focused on, I suspect it’s in better-funded school districts. A great many kids are certainly NOT experiencing academic success, particularly in lower income, poorly funded districts. My own son ended up leaving high school at 15. He was incredibly frustrated by a school system that expected a 300 page novel to be above his head as a sophomore, and found himself in a reading group in which at least one student was functionally illiterate. My daughter was told she’d NEED the Cliff Notes for ‘And Their Eyes Were Watching God’… sophomores couldn’t possibly understand the metaphors in the book. At which point she analyzed one of the more obvious metaphors, and was chastised for reading beyond the assigned 10 pages. Her great crime? Making her classmates ‘feel stupid’. So, in my opinion, we need to focus MORE on academics, but in the analytical, think about this stuff kind of way, not just the parrot the answers way that looks good on the standardized tests. Really. A 16 year old in honors 10th grade English isn’t expected to be able to read Les Mis? Or needs Cliff Notes? Good grief! I was assigned Tale of Two Cities in freaking 8th grade!!!

I also believe in high achievement, don’t get me wrong. But if they were doing it right, wouldn’t actual achievement of school kids be increasing phenomenally? Yet I don’t see any improvement at all. And also, they hold back the kids who do have the ability to excel.

I don’t really agree that there’s more out there for the average student to learn. Older generations had to learn multiple languages, memorize poems and the founding documents, read and compose at a much higher level of English mastery, understand astronomy, world history, world geography, and lots more. Today’s typical public school student may be briefly exposed to a number of things, but considering both depth and breadth, I don’t believe they come anywhere close to the knowledge they used to learn. (Granted, not everyone was expected to complete high school in older generations.) And without depth of knowledge and mastery, are students actually learning how to learn – which is the only way they can keep up with science in adulthood anyway? I mean, they didn’t teach about solar panels or fiber optics or even Excel spreadsheets when I was in HS, but I seem to have gotten by.

Sorry, “the worse the 13-year outcomes begin”/”the worse the 13-year outcomes become.” Somebody should have taught me to proofread. 😉

@pentamom

And that’s why something like “are you smarter than a 5th grader” can be somewhat enlightening. Many of us probably had a lot of the same useless knowledge stuck away in our brains when we were in 5th grade … but we’ve long since discarded it.

I was helping my parents clean up their basement in recent years, and going through the file cabinet in which I’d stored lots of stuff from high school. I found a whole series of essays I wrote on various events in Spanish history. I have no recollection of writing these essays. I have no recollection of ever studying Spanish history. In these recent years, I knew nothing about these events in history which at one point I’d done apparently some pretty deep analysis on. Which was actually pretty surprising to me, because I tend to be the type of person who keeps a lot of useless knowledge stuffed away in the dusty corners of my mind but accessible to the proper stimuli.

@Denny: yes, in France there are sleepaway camps that take 4-year-olds, and they are common for kids from age 5 and up. My son had been invited by the leaders of his summer camp program to come along for the week’s stay, when he was four. He turned to me and said: Mom, can I? And I said yes. So far, he’s been to three different places in two different countries (we are in Canada now), and has always loved his stay.

And FWIW, I’m big on kids reading as early as reasonably possible as well, but for a different reason — because reading is FUN and a great way for kids to entertain themselves! I love reading so much, that the idea of learning to read a few years later because no one bothered to teach me sooner would make me very sad for the lost years. Fortunately, this was not the case with me — I learned to read “on my own” with just a little guidance from my parents well before KG.

But I also believe that kids learn at very different paces, and I believe there were some studies done in past years showing that by the middle of elementary school, kids who were reading before kindergarten did not, on average, outperform kids who learned to read later. (So we went through all kinds of grief because my older son wasn’t reading well by the end of his first time through first grade, and now he’s an honor student taking AP classes.) So I’m suspicious of the push for early reading *as an expectation for all kids* for two reasons: one, I think it pushes an expectation onto kids that not all of them are ready for, and two, I don’t believe it accomplishes what everyone thinks it will.

Regarding free-range kids in 1979, has Ms. Skenazy considered the fact that there were less people on the planet in 1979? I am a 63-yr-old grandmother, who was raising kids in 1979, and I can tell you that pedophiles grabbing children was a less frequent happening than it is today. One reason is people were less mobile (moving around the globe), and children were not a commodity around the world, as they are today, especially in Southern Asia. Back then, it would have been more the case to hear of a “funny uncle”, etc., but only occasionally. Certainly not human trafficking, as is heard of today. Our kids were raised in a city of 130,000, and neighborhoods were quite safe in ’79. Unfortunately, that is not the case today. Just recently, a three-year-old was grabbed from her front yard in a Missouri town. There is more of everything today in this world, than there was in 1979, and that means pedophiles as well. Please, dear young mothers, 30 and 40 somethings, DO NOT allow your children to be free-range!!! It is not safe to follow Ms. Skenazy’s suggestion, as she may not have considered that it is a different world today than when she was a kid…..and how would she? She was just a kid. At my age, I have seen the changes in our society, and it all comes down to more people on the planet means more problems existing. If the chicken coop is overcrowded, the chickens start pecking on each other. Also, I do not agree with her statement that crime rate was worse in ’79 compared to now. Not possible…….more people equals more crime. Only one solution comes to mind regarding our difference of opinion. Given the fact that we now have more news coverage today, I will concede that we may have not heard about child abductions back in ’79, as often as we do now. The same concept that dictates hearing about more diseases because of better diagnosis today, compared to the past. Aside from all that…..it is still best to not get too lax, when it comes to keeping tabs on your children. Ms. Skenazy’s ideas are all lovely “pie-in-the-sky” visions, but how would it feel to not have your child return home…..ever?

By the way, five years ago, we left that city of 130,000 plus, due to the crime rate…….much worse now than in 1979.

@Sherry B of Ilinois- No thanks. I do not want to drink your Koolaid.

As for your overcrowding analogy with chickens pecking each other, my free range kids don’t have these problems because they are not in a chicken coop. They play outside (the coop.)
They are playing outside now with minimal adult supervision and are blissfully happy and will sleep their worry-free heads soundly tonight.
They also will not need anxiety medications like it sounds like you need. Peace.

Oh great we live in TN so I hope they don’t try to pull that not letting my kids bike or walk home from school stuff. I doubt they will because our subdivision actually backs up to the school and they have a walkthrough and other kids currently walk. Still if they do I am just going to have to get into my irate mode on them!

SKL, the curriculum is K12, a virtual school. I too believe in proper placement for kids – my oldest entered kinder reading, and left reading less (because the other kids weren’t good readers yet.) When we first started using K12 they had placement tests, which meant that a kid good in math could be ahead there, but at grade level for reading. They have done away with the placement tests which I feel is a great disservice to the kids, and the parents trying to teach the kids, as the program is academically more advanced than most states. We ditched the math finally because it was not a fit for my kids.

But, that said, we started in CA public schools (in the failing district of the county) and are currently in WA (in a very good district.) Both expect that kids start mastery of multiplication in 2nd grade. Good teachers should be able to challenge all the kids in the class, even if they are at wildly different levels. That I started multiplication in 4th grade, well that was the average grade it was introduced. Some kids got pull out for reading or math, and it was introduced sooner. But for the rest of us, it was easy to absorb in 4th grade, where before we would have had to spend lots of time working to get it. Fact is, I didn’t have homework until 4th grade (and most of that I could get done on the bus home.) I was able to go home and do things that I wanted to do. My kinder daughter had homework that had no real relation to where she was at. It was given because parents expect a good school to give homework. So they did. Which is a stupid reason to give homework.

Sherry B, you do not live in my neighborhood and I will not subscribe to your fear. I will allow my kids to do what I feel is age/development appropriate.

At some point, my kids need to know how to take care of themselves. That means that they can stand in the line for the arm bands for rides at the carnival. They can go around the store on their own to get items that I need to buy. They can walk to their friends houses, even, (gasp) after dark. (It gets dark really early in the winter here in WA.)

Last week we were at the county fair all week. My kids were showing ducks in the poultry barn as part of 4-H. Judges were walking around taking notes on cleanliness, politeness, interactions with birds and people. If a parent helped the child, the child got knocked down in score. My kids had to feed, water and clean their own cages. When they had barn duty they had to sweep the floor, put water in ALL cages, staple skirting if it came down, and sweep edges of all the cages to keep them neat and clean looking. Then, they could get out their bird and sit and talk to people and let people pet the birds. (Yes, I let them talk to strangers!) Oh, and to get wood shavings for the cages they had to go a block in one direction, and then to empty them, they had to go several buildings in the other. ALL ON THEIR OWN. Yes, while other people without background checks were there! My oldest is 11, the youngest is 6. I did not even make them walk together. The only issue that I heard that any of the kids, in any of the barns (about 8) had, was that one kid fainted due to heat and dehydration and went to the hospital as a precaution. No attempted kidnappings. No lost kids. No gang wars. No rapes, gropes or inappropriate suggestions. No one hurt or in a fight. Even with about 10,000 people passing through a day.

My daughter (age 8) went to a day camp this summer about 5 blocks from our house (across one busy street and partially with sidewalks and partially not). I was worried that the camp would have trouble with her walking by herself, since a lot of camps my kids go to are paranoid about adults checking the kids in and out. But I called the camp the week before and explained that I would walk my daughter the first day but after that she would be walking by herself. I was pleased to find that while they were a little surprised, they were fine with it. They just asked her to check in at the table where parents sign kids in and out and tell the person when she was leaving for home. She came back proud of herself and with tales of being the first person to volunteer for the camp talent show. Unfortunately the camp my son (age 7) attended the same week wouldn’t even let me drop him off in front of the building to walk in alone. I had to park the car and walk in with him to check him in.

Jennifer and Cheryl W, I think it might help to leave some space between the 8 and the parenthesis. Let’s try: 8 )

Cheryl W……. Where does a 4-H Fair compare to the author’s suggestion that kids should be free-range? What part of my original post even implies that kids shouldn’t be taught independence skills at a 4-H Fair? You are getting away from the original topic of the author, saying in 1979 kids were so much freer, and that they should be today as well. I was stating that things are different now……just the facts. No, not every kid in the nation has been grabbed! However, there have been reports of such things, right? I just said, don’t get too lax with the vigilance…..out in the open world. That certainly doesn’t apply to an organized event such as a 4H Fair. You put your own spin on what I was trying to point out with the author’s statements. The “Elizabeth Smart”, and other stories, do make one take notice. Stories we did not hear in 1979.

First graders can read, right? (I forget)

If you can read street signs and competently cross a road by yourself, then you’re ok to walk around a town or city alone, in my opinion.

I’m surprised in general on how we infantalize our children long into later ages. They’re not responsible for remembering their homework or cleaning up after themselves or, gasp!, helping with household chores. My SIL doesn’t require much, if anything, of her son, and then complains about how she has to do EVERYTHING. He’s 10 and doesn’t even pick up his dirty clothes off the living room floor without whining and then just tossing them in the direction of his room. The irony of it all is that my SIL also complains about her husband not helping around the house… but she’s raising another boy to be a slob.

It seems to me (at the risk of starting a firestorm) that the delayed potty training in the US (not STARTING until after the age of three) is related to this belief that children are not capable of any responsibility or self-care. I’ve received a bit of flack already because I’ve begun potty training my son (now 14 months). I’m apparently “pushing” him into something he’s not ready for. Except no one can tell me how he’s “not ready” (and honestly, he rather enjoys sitting on the potty and reading books.) Then I’m branded with the worst of the worst– I’m juts being SELFISH for wanting him trained “early.” Uh, yeah, guilty since I’m really done with squirmy diaper changes and a pail of poop sitting in the house. When did a little selfishness on the part of parents turn into a cardinal sin? I feel that a little selfishness makes me a more interesting and happy person– I’m no good at martyrdom!– and it models to my son that a woman can be more than just a mommy.

Most parents today lived that era. They know exactly what they/we all did back then when we were 6 yrs old. Which is what kills me, because they fear the very thing they enjoyed as children.

Though it really bites that my son rides the bus 45 minutes each way. Eek.

Thanks for this, Lenore.

Today while at a meeting my 7 and 9 year old came to the reception area of the building I was in to find me – as the playground they’d headed for was under construction and they wanted to check with me if they could go to another. They knew exactly how to find me but by the time I got down there three very concerned adults were involved. As in you’d think my two kids couldn’t just sit quietly and wait! (and, just so you know, Yes They Can). I sorted the kids out and went back to my meeting. And as I took the elevator back up I wondered if those women thought I was an irresponsible mother (dads, my partner and I find, get let off the hook a lot more in general).

But you know that quote, “What other people think of me is none of my business”? Well I’ve taken that a little further: “What other people think of my parenting is none of my business.” As far as I knew these women were only being kindly and helpful (if a bit over-fluffed up) and not judging. Maybe some WERE judging but, if they want to observe my kids’, my parenting, & my kids’ confidence and skills they are welcome to do so. And heck, they didn’t put a call into CPS or the police at least which I know – from this site – sadly happens too often and can cause good parents some nasty troubles.

I decided to go about my day concentrating on my kids’ needs and my own, and I was kindly to the women involved because, why assume they were judging, you know?

But in the meantime, it’s always great to know that yes, once upon a time we let kids live up to their capabilities… and there are still many grownups who support these measures.

Sherry B, I am not “spinning”. You said “30 or 40 something mothers should not follow this free range”. I happen to fit that. You are saying not to let kids out. This was not “just” a 4-H fair, this was a county fair in an area with 300,000 people. 4-H was a small part of this fair. There were bands – Kenny Rogers and Blue Oyster Cult. There was rodeo, carnival, itinerant food vendors, and other staff as well as the general public. As I said, 10,000 people were going through a day…seems like there should be a few deviants in there, yet, they all behaved themselves. And, I did not stick around with my kids the whole time, I let them do what they needed to do without me there. At times, their father and I took off and viewed things on our own. I let them ride rides on their own. Most parents seemed to take off for the day and leave the kids 6-18 on their own, based on their own appraisals of the kids. Seems to me that if “something” were to happen, this would be a more ideal place for it to happen than on the way home from school with neighbors watching out the windows.

Do we have crime in our area? Certainly. There is an element of gang mentality that the police have to deal with. Lets see, in the past year – there was a guy following women into the women’s room at the library and turning out the lights. (The women called or faked calling 911.) A police officer was charged with molesting two neighbor girls. There have been a some murders, a couple gang related and a couple domestic violence. There are reports of gang related stabbings on a weekly basis. A couple of weeks ago a guy was taking photos of kids who had left the sprinkler park and went to the library, and then was trying to feel the toddlers up. Enough to make people think – and yes, I instructed my kids on what to do, but in reality they were on their own a good bit.

So Sherry, what exactly are you opposed to, if this wasn’t Free Range enough? Because Free Range is not about being dangerous, it is about instructing our kids and then allowing them to do stuff on their own. Was I not letting them do enough stuff on their own? Many other mothers were following their kids around the whole time, not letting them out of the barn on their own, not letting them go ride the rides on their own or with sibling or friend – had to be an adult there. And I was letting my six year old do this stuff, with instruction. Other parents, in some of the other barns, I never saw. I saw kids in the sheep and goat barn, but not so much parents. The whole 6 days. With kids the same age as my son.

“The “Elizabeth Smart”, and other stories, do make one take notice.”

Hmmm. Wasn’t Elizabeth Smart kidnapped from her own bedroom while her parents slept down the hall? Should parents now not sleep? Or just not sleep in their own bedroom?

@SKL we have some coyotes, and foxes, around us and honestly I don’t give it a second thought. You may have more in your area than we do in ours? In terms of rabies, yes, they can have it, and if an animal bites someone and can’t be caught, slaughtered, and tested (you must kill an animal to find out for sure if it has rabies) then the person will need to get vaccinated against rabies promptly — unpleasant and perhaps expensive, but do-able.

Cheryl W., After reading about your entire experience, including the pedophile crime in your area, my only answer is that you were lucky,
…..this time. 6 years old?….alone,… with instruction, of course, …at a county fair, with 10,000 people. (Initially, I understood it to be a 4H fair only). When an adult can grab a 6-yr-old physically,…..instruction goes right out the window. Hopefully, your 6-yr-old was with older siblings, and not alone. By the way, I’ve heard that shin-kicking is always a good self defense move.

To Rob W., In my original post, I stated that news coverage is far more prominent/saturated now more than it was in ’79. So, even though your reply is much appreciated, you are not telling me anything that I hadn’t already posted. Likewise, we hear of more sickness/disease, due to better diagnosis, than in ’79.

To anyone else who may be even remotely interested…..Again, in my opinion, I could not agree with the author saying kids can be free-range, and with her statement that crime is less now than in ’79. The free-range concept would depend entirely upon the age of the kids, and the area considered okay. I would say adolescence on up, and prior to driving age, neighborhood only. With that, I mercifully end this discussion on my part, as it is getting to be a tired/boring subject. Good night, young ones……..Happy Parenting!!
(In thirty years, don’t be too hard on your adult children, when they do things with your grandchildren, that you don’t agree with).

Sherry: it’s unfortunate that you think that Lenore’s statements are false. They are based off of fact. She can and has cited every single statistic that shows that crime is less. There’s been report after report that backs up this FACT. And yet… some people dismiss these facts, citing their own feelings and the media coverage. It saddens me that facts and data mean nothing to so many people.

Here’s a link– http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/05/24/national/main6514022.shtml
Lenore is not the only person reporting the FACTS that crime rates are down, significantly.

That means the world is a SAFER place.

Though you are absolutely right, being free range and letting a child have freedom means taking into account the age AND maturity level of the child. I may place the age lower than you, and I respectfully request that you allow me to do so without judgment and without legislation against it. In return, I will allow you to palace the age as high as you’d like without judging you.

@DH–I frequent parenting sites with way too many know-it-all mommies. It’s been implied that Nora is “behind” because I leave reading up to the schools and that it’s negligent and reading should be the parents’ responsibility. I think they’re nuts. If I wanted to homeschool my kids I would. I send them to school to learn to read and write. She only did 1 year of preschool when she was 3 1/2. She can write her letters (knows the sounds of some of them), can count to like 80, knows all her colors and shapes and has been coloring in the line since she was 2 1/2 but since I didn’t teach her to read she’s going to be “behind”. According to the crazy women on one site.

I think Nora actually would be reading right now if she had a 2nd year of preschool. I just don’t have the patience to teach anything. I was getting frustrated showing my 11yo how to use a combination lock (the one I had on my locker in high school) because she needs to know for gym. I’m sure Nora will catch on to reading real quick once school starts.

@Denny–her little friend lives across the street from the park so she ran home and got some. I’m actually proud of both of them staying level headed. I’m not sure if there was anyone home at the friend’s house. She’s just as free-range as my kids. Sometimes it’s just her and her older brothers (who are teens) or just her at home. I guess they figured no adults were needed in the patch up job which I actually find kind of cute. They did it all themselves although as shocky as she was I’m glad she made it back to the house in one piece. I’m pretty confident, though, that if she started feeling light headed she would have stopped and lied down. She’s a smart kid.

Her knee is almost healed already. She’s graduated from gauze and tape to just bandaids to cover the gashes.

@gramomster: I graduated in 1981, I knew about DNA then…

I walked half a mile to school in grade one too…in groups at first but then by myself. But my little guy won’t get to do that at that age, because though I don’t agree more people means more crime, it certainly means more traffic. The collector street I had to cross wasn’t even close to as busy, or as speedy, as the one between home and school now. And mostly people then were driving, not drinking coffee or talking on the phone. Our car might not have had seatbelts when I was in grade one, but neither did it have cup holders.

I had to wear tie up shoes in grade school. Were there any other kind?

Sherry B- Lenore has stated, and provided proof, that crime rates are down. You are stating the opposite. Will you admit that it is possible that, providing it is indeed fact, your area is the *exception* and that to judge others who don’t live with such a freak crime wave is inappropriate? Or do you prefer to be an exercise in how to deal with fear-mongering parents who completely disregard facts?

@Sherry B- I have heard of child abductions. Who hasn’t with Nancy Grace and all the news channels sensationalizing them? I also hear of car accidents and drownings, which happen way too frequently and take away the lives of so many more children. I’m just trying to be a rational parent here.

Let me tell you a story of my Mother-In-Law (who just loves her CNN news.) We spent the last week on an incredible vacation at the lake. Our house was on the water and the kids (and their friends they invited) were in heaven with fishing, swimming, boating, and dives off the floating dock. Playing outside all day, campfires every night, both kids and adults were in heaven.

Grandmom called EVERY DAY of our vacation. She wanted to tell us DON’T LET THE KIDS GO IN THE LAKE. Why?! Because 3 people died of a brain-eating amoeba that was found in lakes in Louisiana, Florida, and Virginia. It was all over the news. So, all lakes are dangerous now. See how spreading The Fear works?

Thankfully (for my children’s sake), we ignored her (though we did remind them to close their mouths in the water) and enjoyed old fashioned fun without the side of irrational fear.

socalledauthor: According to pediatricians children are not ready for real potty training till at least 18 months old. That is the current standard recommendation. You can start introducing them to the potty and stuff earlier but don’t expect anything because it probably won’t happen. Sure they might pee while sitting there but will wet their pants an hour later.

I am for late potty training around 2 and a half or 3 and never earlier than 2. Just because I know moms who started super early and then potty training takes over a year to be having no more accidents. That is crap and I am not investing that much time in it. You could have just waited longer to start and still been finished at the same time! When mine turned 3 I started potty training. We did the intense potty training in one day type of method where diapers were just gone for good and they stayed home and all we did was potty train. They were completely pee trained in 4 days. They were poop trained in one month for one son and 2 months for the other son to where they have ZERO accidents now expect for the occasional I didn’t get there in time accident.

I have never had to freak because a kid pissed down my leg at a store or whatever. They don’t have accidents out in public period. It was so much easier to wait and then get it all over with at once and not take months and months and months. No child I know who was potty trained early actually mastered it till much much later. So personally you can start early but that doesn’t make it better than people who start late. It is about preferences. I wanted it to go fast and go well so I waited till they were very mature to do it and it went very very easy and fast. It would not have gone like that if I started at 18 months.

Not sure how the reading thing got brought up. I don’t push my kids to learn anything. I just expose them to stuff and it they retain it, great, if not, no biggie. I have one son who is almost reading at 4. He knows all lowercase and uppercase letters and their sounds and can identify some sight words. My other son who is a little special needs, knows most of the letters and some of the sounds and some sight words but is behind my other son on that. My other son also knows how to count to 10 in Spanish and has been doing that since 2 years old.

I think the big thing is READ with your kids. ALL the time. I never push mine to learn anything but when I read to them, they naturally pick things up. That was how my son learned the Spanish numbers. It was in a book we read a lot.

I also recommend http://www.starfall.com. It is a fun learning website that is mostly free. My son learned all the letter sounds through that website just playing the games.

Hi Uly, in response to your question of whether I must take my neighbor’s opinion about my letting her son bike home without an adult into consideration, I suppose I have to say yes – if I want to maintain the friendship between our children, if I want her to respect my choices in return. (Plus, my kids go to private school so neighborhood friendships are a bit more precious.) Our levels of comfort in free-ranging our children are very far apart but I like to think I’m helping her overcome her fear bit by bit.

To be fair, she is ‘new’ to the concept. She had never dreamed of her child biking out of her cul-de-sac with an adult much less without one and finds it amusing that we ‘pick up’ her son on our bikes. We on the other hand have steadily built up ties in the neighborhood and the confidence in our children – literally over years and with some effort. We’ve gone on daily walks/rides after dinner since the kids were infants – in slings, strollers, bikes with training wheels, then without. They would practice biking in different cul-de-sacs. In doing so not only did we get some exercise but we met and now know many more of our neighbors than we otherwise would – and they know my children. That comforts me greatly when I send my kids out into the neighborhood alone now. Hopefully by virtue of spending time with my children the neighbor boy will expand his community beyond his cul-de-sac, and that in turn will give his mother peace of mind to allow him greater independence. Baby steps…

Sherry B, with about 40 people within any given 50 feet, a child kicking and screaming “This is not my parent!” would get immediate attention. My kids were not “Lucky”. They were prepared by their parents, and knew what to do should something happen. Which, NOTHING HAPPENED, not to my kid or ANY other. The fair board did have security too. I did not see them patting any one down like I have seen before but we were fine.

All of those events that I mentioned as crime, well that happened out in the general community. Which is about 300,000 people. Yes, crime does happen, but being aware of where you are and who you are with makes a HUGE difference. (Like, I don’t shop in stores in the gang ridden area. We don’t wear colors. The kids don’t leave stores or get into cars with strangers. They let me know if they see something that doesn’t look “right”. We look out for our neighbors without having an official neighborhood watch.) Actually, I think that last year my area was voted among the top 5 of most family friendly places to live. And, from personal observation, more kids walk to and from school here than I have seen in many other communities.

But yes, my kids came into contact with way, way more people than they would even at the local school. And they were fine, because MOST people are good people. And even the ones who are not “great” like gang members? They have their soft spots and can be nice and help too. (Like when our 6 year old friend played his violin at the mall for a visiting friend they were out to lunch with, and the gang kids came over and gave him $5! NOT what anyone expected!) Or when 5 foot, 90 lb 20 year old friend broke down on the highway prior to cell phones? A real biker dude (not one the 50 something wanna-bes) stopped and helped her change her tire and get her going again. MOST people are good, unfortunately a small portion are not. We will prepare for those ones who not, not live in fear and do the great things we did last week because a few people are not good.

You know, there are bears in Yellowstone. But I can prepare, bring repellant and hike in groups and wear bells. And we will statistically be just fine. Or, I can live in fear of the bears and never leave the car and miss the most awesome place in the world because I was scared. Sounds to me like you are not going to Yellowstone. Good for you, but don’t stop me because I have taken the time to educate myself.

Cheryl W – Your “Yellowstone” comment really resonated with me. The other night I saw a program on (I think) the Discovery Channel called “Yellowstone: Battle For Life,” which focused on how animals survive the extremely brutal winter there each year. It struck me how almost every animal in the park had to put themselves at risk of attack by some other species in order to continue with life. And yet … they did. They had adapted ways to minimize risk, or to fend off the attacks, but they did not wrap themselves in bubble wrap and hide in a cave and never venture out.

It also really struck me how all of the animals went about their lives completely oblivious to the fact that Yellowstone sits atop the largest active underground volcano on a planet, and that “supervolcano” will blow again, scientists say it could happen soon or not for 75,000 years. When it blows, it will wipe out every living thing in the park (and about half of North America with the ash fallout). If the animals knew this, they’d all leave. They don’t know it, of course, and so they don’t factor that fear into their thinking.

We know so much that we think is true, and we live in fear, and yet so much of what we think we know isn’t true.

Re potty training (since y’all brought it up), My daughters both trained day & night at 1.5. My youngest did the 3-day method at 17mos and she was pretty much done after 1 day, out of diapers 100% including nights within about a week. My eldest was training in the winter, so I used more precautions and it took a little longer – but she was fully trained at 19 mos. Accidents extremely rare – and zero by age 2. Before age 2 they could communicate when they needed to go, and if we were at home, they were completely independent except for the old butt-wiping routine. So, yeah, it’s possible. I started my kids gradually, painlessly at 9mos and 12mos and with the elder, I only changed poop about 2x since the first potty sit. If that’s not for you, fine, but it’s certainly not impossible. I do wonder why people think they are doing their kids a favor by having them shit on themselves, but hey, whever floats your boat. Personally it was worth it to me to start and finish early.

“He was 30 and in college before he heard of tectonic theory. And, DNA has only been used in court for about 10-15 years. We certainly didn’t know about it in terms of lay knowledge in 1981.”

Well, the lack of being taught about tectonic theory is because they were using outdated/shoddy materials for teaching. But it’s not because that is a subject area that was unknown in the 70’s. If you wanted to work in geology you had to know about tectonic theory in 1950 every bit as much as you do today.

DNA not being used in court and not being talked about in the newspaper is very different from not enough being known about it to teach to high school kids on the superficial level that’s appropriate for that level. It wasn’t used in court because it took a while for the testing techniques to become sound enough to be reliable as evidence. It wasn’t talked about in the newspaper, because it wasn’t yet commonly used in criminal law. But none of that means that the knowledge wasn’t available to be taught, if the curriculum was so designed. I absolutely know I learned about it in high school, class of ’83.

But my larger point was that the advances in science of the last 30 years aren’t highly relevant to high school science education. Yes, everyone should know *about* them, but I still think that means just a small amount more of instruction on modern advances — not anything that requires or benefits from from pushing kids to learn to read years before they did in the past, and before a significant portion of them are ready anyway. All that means is that instead of all the kids being solid readers by second grade, and that being the normal expectation, now some kids are called “delayed” because they don’t learn to read before second grade, and are in “remedial” classes, instead of just saying “oh, well, we don’t expect every normal kid to read fluently before second grade” as it was in the past.

Everybody should graduate from high school knowing what DNA and tectonic theory *are.* Nobody except the 1 in 5 million prodigy is going to learn anything about them that will be useful in the sense of “producing scientifically educated students” at least until the mid-college level, and then only if they are specializing in a related area. And that goes for most modern scientific advances. Everybody should learn that Einstein superseded Newton by discovering relativity. 99% of people are not EVER going to be able to do more with that knowledge than that, and almost no one is going to be able to do much with it before grad school. And it doesn’t take so long to teach kids about basic advances in science of the last thirty years that we have to push them at a rate of being years ahead of the *generally better educated people* of previous generations when they’re in first grade.

Right Cheryl. Each to his own about when to try. I just personally see the benefit to later training because with most kids it will happen quicker and will probably be less frustrating.

My main example of why I believe this was another mom of twin girls I knew. Her mother also had twin girls. Her mother pressured her daughter that her and her twin were both potty trained by a year old or something like that. I of course think she was full of it. Anyway, this woman gets it in her head that she needs to potty train the 14 months old. None of the other moms of twins were even thinking about potty training at this point. We all kinda thought she was loony. But whatever, watch and see how it goes.

Well for the next year she continued to train and complain about all the accidents and how hard it was blah blah. Well if she had just probably waited longer to start they would have ended up trained at the same time a little bit after 2. Potty training should not take months and months and months. Most experts say try it and if after a couple weeks there is not a lot of improvement, stop and try again later. It stresses the parents and the kids out I would think.

So that is just my 2 cents about it. If you want to try early, go for it. But if it is not working within 2 months, you need to give it up and try again later. The whole process should not take more than 3 months total. It is better to wait however long it takes for the child to be ready and the parent to be ready to start instead of drawing the whole thing out for a year.

Of course, it is your life and do what you want in the end. I just think my friend would have been a lot happier and saved herself a lot of frustration if she just waited to start.

Oh nevermind Robin, I think I misread your comment. I thought you were saying they started training at 2 and then finished at 3. Whoops! My apologies!

I’m so relieved! I was on vacation a couple of months ago with my in-laws, staying in a cabin in the mountains. One morning, I was hiking with several of the kids and some of the adults. My 6-year-old niece decided she wanted to go back when we were about the equivalent of two blocks from the cabin. We were walking on a main road that met with the cabin’s driveway, so I decided she could do it on her own. She was thrilled and headed back with an immense sense of pride. I was excited for her to see if she could recognize the driveway and get back on her own. I figured that if she couldn’t, she would simply try another driveway or meet back up with us, as we intended to stay on the main road the entire time. My sister-in-law (not the child’s mother) noticed that she was heading back and when I explained that she was done hiking, my SIL was aghast that my niece was going back alone. Then, my father-in-law insisted on walking her back and lectured me on how since the girl’s parents weren’t around (her mother was sick and had to be driven home), we had to be responsible for her. I was more than offended, obviously. I had spent a lot of time looking after the children since their parents had left the night before. I was also really sad for her, since she had seemed so excited to try it alone. I was even more disappointed when I confided in my husband, who is normally on-board with the free-range theories, and he said that he wouldn’t have allowed her to go back alone, either. He said “wouldn’t you be worried?”. I said I probably would have been a bit, but that it was definitely the right thing to do. But since then, I’ve waffled on the issue and wondered if when I have a 6-year-old, I should allow them to go that distance on their own. I really needed to hear that a child that age is capable of finding her way home on a main road, just a couple of blocks away.

These days a 9 year old riding the Subway home alone is FRONT PAGE NEWS:

“Mom lets 9-year-old take subway home alone ”
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/23935873/ns/today-today_people/t/mom-lets–year-old-take-subway-home-alone/

Here’s a semi-free range story for the day. I took my four-year-old to an outdoor street festival today. It spanned several city blocks downtown. While we were walking she (voluntarily) held my hand the entire time. When we sat down to eat (outside! without hand sanitizer!) we sat down near a fountain. I let Avery run around the fountain and get wet, soaked to the bone was more like it. Other mommies pulled their little darlings away from the fountain afraid that they would get a sprinkle of water. One older gentleman that was sharing my bench (and whom I let sit next to my daughter!) commented on the “helicopter mommy” who wasn’t letting her darlin’ get wet at all. Avery ran around the fountain for over an hour much to the delight of everyone watching (yes, they were all watching and smiling, offering her high fives, chatting it up with her). Of particular interest was about a half dozen elderly people in wheelchairs on an outing from their nursing home. THEY. LOVED. IT! Every single one of them was smiling, talking and waving to the little girl playing around in the water. It was probably the best medicine they’d taken all week.

How sad that other children are not allowed to bring joy to others by being allowed to play in water. (And no, she wasn’t being bratty, running wild or splashing, just running around the fountain in the spray.)

Denny, I did not, but the 8 block walk in 92 degree heat dried her out pretty well. 🙂

Joey, I’m pretty sure, without even clicking the link, that that article is a. a few years old and b. already been covered here because c. it’s Lenore’s kid 🙂

You never can tell.

When I was six in 1979 I lived in another country, but we had a great deal of freedom. I went everywhere alone or with other kids, I don’t even remember where any adults were. I walked to school, to the park to the stores. I remember one kid was killed by someone near my house. It made national news. Although it was shocking to everyone, I don’t remember it changing anyone’s behavior regarding restricting their kids.

On the other hand, in British novels about kids, like Mary Poppins, or the Secret Garden, or Oliver Twist, upper class kids NEVER went out alone. They are always playing in their huge mansions, or in their extensive gardens, but they never go anywhere else unaccompanied. Lower class kids did, and could be arrested for being urchins. Ironically, considering what we are discussing here, these novels often highlighted how much fun the lower class kids had, because of all their freedom.

I wonder if something similar is at play now: only “bad”, i.e. poor, parents can not afford to have constant supervision of their kids, so any kids out is a declasse reflection on their parents. It definitely feels like a money thing to me: picking up your kids in your SUV makes no sense from a safety perspective, but you do get to flaunt your wealth.

“How is changing multiple diapers daily, including buying, storing, cleaning squished-on shit, disposing, etc., easier than spending a little time potty training?”

No wet beds, no wet carpets, no wet furniture, no tears (mine), no kid who who feels guilty about not getting it and hides his dirty underwear (and this is NOT because I was harsh on him) — I definitely think changing a few diapers a day is easier than potty training.

@Me — frustration when it doesn’t go well. Not saying it’s reasonable, saying it happens.

My husband and I are raising 3 girls in downtown Chicago and we routinely allow them to walk around the neighborhood on their own — they are older now (11, 9 and 8), but they’ve been doing this for a few years now. I think it’s so important for them to feel self-sufficient and confident in their own home/neighborhood. We also routinely leave them home alone (during daylight hours) and for short periods of time. They have strict rules: do not answer the door; do not leave the hosue; do not use the stove, etc. It works for us.

As far as walking around the neighborhood, I have had some moments of panic when they were gone longer than I would have expected, say, a walk around the block to take. I have managed to calm myself by regularly doing some playacting with them about what to do in various situations; ie, “What if someone wants you to help them find their puppy?” “What if someone says that mom or dad is hurt and that they are going to take you to us?” “What if someone tries to grab you and pull you into a car?” etc etc. There was a time when I was reticent to play these “games” with them as I wanted to preserve their innocence for as long as possible, but I realized finally that it is better to know that they are prepared as best I can prepare them. This gives all of us confidence, and despite the fact that mine are the only kids that I ever see walking alone on our block, we feel confident in our choices.

Kawaii — I’m not saying they do. I’m not saying it’s a reason not to potty train.

SKL asked why anyone might think that not potty training was easier than potty training, and I answered (from personal experience) why someone might think that.

Ooooh….good question, Uly!

But apart from that possibly erroneous detail, I think Nasrin’s overall point is fair — “good parents with the means to quote-unquote appropriately care for their kids keep them close, it’s only the urchins or kids who’s parents just *can’t* manage to keep track of them because they’re too busy surviving, who run wild like that” is not an unknown attitude in our society. In fact it’s the only answer that many people can give for why some sectors of society let their kids go out and about regularly without out-and-out calling them bad parents.

@Binxcat1: I think we went wrong – academic vs real world – when we slowly stopped our kids from doing things on their own. How much math can you learn with a trip to the store? Geometry? Reading? Locations and directions? Nature? Weather? Life?

OK, and my theory is it all started with Kevin Collins – the kid on the Milk Carton. http://bit.ly/rcKnxC

“we’re homeschooling and responsibility is part of her education.”

That is great. I have to remember that one. Not that anyone has gotten hassled, yet.

The problem I have with ‘current’ potty training recommendations and claims that children can’t learn to be reliably dry is that they are not backed up by studies. And in the rest of the world, where they don’t have disposable diapers to reduce “accidents,” children do learn full bowel and bladder control around a year of age– before they have the chance to develop the habit of doing their potty business in their diapers, which becomes the norm. (Read Diaper Free by Age Three for the studies that support “early” potty training.)

A friend of mine, who is older than my parents, potty trained her children around one year of age. That’s what you did back in the fifties and sixties. She doesn’t recall any issues with accidents, other than the normal that can be expected with ANY child that doesn’t want to interrupt what they do to use the potty. (She said she combated that by requiring an “Accident-prone” child to sit on the potty even if they didn’t “have” to go… )

The delay in potty training age in this country is directly correlated with the rise of the disposable diaper industry. Not causation, but it makes me wonder…

How is that we expect a child to take care of themselves at school at age 4 or 5, but only a year before that, they’re not able to practice proper hygiene and use the toilet? They can tie their shoes, write their names, but not control their bowels? Something seems strangely incongruous about that whole thing to me.

I don’t recall any documentaries on the natives in Africa where the young children had urine or feces running down their legs… what are we doing differently in this country? (To me, it seems we’re busy saying that children “can’t” reliably control their bodies, in spite of evidence that they can and will.)

While I may concede that the convenience (and dryness) of disposable diapers may be delaying potty-training in some respects, I’m going to say that everyone on here claiming that it’s so easy to potty train, etc, has never had a difficult to potty-train child. End of story.

Pentamom, I read your point, but I don’t think those issues are significantly more likely with a child who trains early. Kids who are not trained can have leaky diapers overnight, “blowouts,” and all variety of mishaps caused by the child not in fact enjoying crap plastered to his skin. Kids who train later have accidents too, sometimes for a year or more, not counting bedwetting. Problems especially happen to parents who can’t be consistent and confident themselves.

Maureen is right – I’ve never personally taught a child who couldn’t learn to use the potty pretty quickly. I’ve also never considered it the child’s decision where the poo/pee should go and when. Granted, I’ve known kids who didn’t finish day training until around age 4 (two gifted kids come to mind), but their parents were giving them too much leeway in my opinion. My sister also has a 4yo nephew whose mom explains he “has no interest” in potty training. WTH? At some point you tell the child he needs to get interested.

The physical readiness thing is somewhat misleading. It’s kind of like having the balance necessary to ride a bike Nobody is born with this; it only develps from actually getting the feel of riding a bike. When my youngest was in diapers, she did not seem to notice the sensation of needing to pee, and she generally didn’t hold it very long. But within an hour of playing outside in training pants, having attention called to her peeing at the moment it was happening, and being encouraged to go sit on the potty to finish the deed, she started to hold it purposefully and to do a pretty good job. (She was 17mo). She never wore another diaper in the daytime, and soon was sleeping through the night with no diaper (and no wet bed). If the physical readiness indicators were right, how to explain the fact that within a week of her first potty boot camp day, she could hold it all night and for multple-hour periods during the day?

I also think the parental fears behind potty training are ridiculous. Oh, doing it wrong will make him hate you, be friendless, wear diapers until age 30, and have a horrible sex life in adulthood. For real? I guess most people in the older generations are perverts, then.

But… if children learn at different rates, how do we explain that children in countries without disposable diapers (who train their kids before a year old) are ALL potty trained far, far earlier than US kids? Is it biology… or culture that’s different?

And, in the US, in the 1950s, only special needs children were NOT fully trained by 18 months. What changed in the years in between?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_training

My money is on culture changing. I’ve been accused of pushing my son to potty train “too early.” He’s 14 months and neither of us are having ANY fun with diaper changes. I don’t find a trash can of feces in the house to be appealing (we take the bag out every other day) or sanitary. And I don’t understand what the real arguments are against starting “early.” Something in our culture changed– are we more afraid of letting our babies grow up or afraid of the boogeymand of the so-called irreparable harm that comes from pushing our children to improve themselves– as all pushing is bad?

My favorite thing are the kid leashes I see people with, sometimes disguised as backpacks, sometimes not. Even better when the parent knocks over the kid with the leash. Le sigh.

Seems like teachers are guilty on everything. They are solely responsible for failing schools and low international scores. Because they are lazy to teach and whatever.

And they are responsible for overprotected kids too. Because we focus too much on academics and it is their fault.

This is just a blame game and academics and teachers are easy targets. Nobody likes them. Except that, those early learning are just another educational fad. And as far as I know, educational theory says a lot about need for physical movement, exploration, breaks and so on. Neither academics and neither educated teachers promote it.

The cycle is sad: there is a hype. Teacher are against and they are marked as lazy and unwilling to change. Or worst, as theorists or academics. Then, everybody has to use the new method to the extreme.

No combining methods, no choosing which topics should be touch by which method. Some projects are good, so everything will be a project. And discovery for math is great, so everything will be learned by discovery.

Of course it does not work. And then, the teachers are blamed.

Sorry for long rant. I’m not a teacher, but I do value education and all those campaigns and reforms are destroying it. And then blame teachers.

@ Vanessa– motivation is a HUGE factor. I used to work with alternative high school kids, and the biggest problem was that they were motivationally challenged. They could read, and do the work– usually with ease– but they’d rather not. They saw little value in education beyond the pervasive notion that they HAD to finish high school, but they weren’t getting much out of the experience. And these were middle and upper class white kids in suburbia with few excuses. But their parents also didn’t care– in the 7 years I taught there, I think I dealt with one parent every year. One parent out of all my students actually contacted me to talk about their kid– out of the 150 or so students under the age of 19.

@Andy– I agree with you. Parents don’t look at themselves as being part of the problem. They don’t trust their kids to manage their homework, but then trust the kid when he says, every day, that he never has any. Kids who are failing their senior year, still get to go on trips to Cancun and still get to drive the nice car their parents bought. Teachers can’t fix motivation, though we may try. Many kids believe that they don’t and SHOULDN’T have to work for anything, a culture that is probably linked to the permissiveness and overprotetiveness that starts young telling kids that they aren’t capable and Mommy will do it (such as crossing the street, cooking, or any number of things that kids rarely do around the house anymore, because it’s dangerous or just easier for the parents.)

*I should quantify that not ALL kids have these problems, but it is a lot of them. Perhaps even a majority.

I do think it’s possible for parents to teach both self-care and basic academic info (e.g., letters, number concepts) before KG. However, if the child seems unable to learn both, then I would focus on self-care (including the ability to get from point A to point B without holding Mommy’s hand). Taking care of oneself and picking up after oneself involve thinking skills that do carry over into schoolwork.

I haven’t read through all the comments here, but I have noticed several seem to be talking about potty training. A few years ago my aunt found the booklet the hospital gave my grandparents when she was born in 1951. It was all about how to care for your new baby. One section was on potty training and started out talking about how you shouldn’t push your child and each baby will be potty trained on their own time schedule. It went on to say that you shouldn’t be upset when your neighbors 8 month old is trained and your 11 month old still isn’t!! 60 years later the debate seems to be between 2-3 years, so it does make me wonder if 60 years from now potty training will be considered kindergarten readiness, not to be attempted until closer to 5-6. I really think the main reason people potty train later is because of disposable diapers, they make it so convenient. If I had had a pail of filth in my bathroom that I had to clean myself I would have started earlier. As it was my kids were both around 2 just because it was so convenient to diaper them.

Nora, you bring up another reason I think potty training is being postponed. Moms just aren’t home with the kids enough to know when they have to go. Dolly mentioned that her wonderful state liscened facility won’t let them train until 2. That means to me that they have to wait until the kids are vocal enough to tell them when they have to go, where a parent home every day will notice way before then.

I agree Robin, I went back to work when my boys were around 1 year old(gotta love Canada) but I realized after paying for daycare and such I really was not contributing much extra to the home finances, I was basically working to pay for someone else to take care of my kids. So when I had my baby girl I decided I would not even try to go back to work until she starts school.

as far as what dolly said about not starting until age 2 or so in daycare, the daycare my boys went to were expected to be fully trained by age 2 1/2 so they can go into the next age group, but that was 5 yrs ago or so and in Canada, I don’t know if things here have changed much since then…

One of mine potty trained early, and one late. It was not my decision to potty train late. The late-training one was just not ready until 3.5. I tried earlier, but it just caused frustration, and did not cause her to potty train. She couldn’t read the signals, and she is neurotypical.

The early one would have been pulling off her diapers to use the toilet way before 2. No daycare would have been able to keep her in diapers if she needed to use the toilet. I would have been very angry with a daycare that tried.

All kids are different. Please don’t assume you know what is best or right for other people’s kids based on your own.

Re: Academics

I was born in 1982 and to this day I do not know the entire multiplication table. Shocking, I know. People don’t believe me when I tell them that, but I simply never memorized the upper half. I honestly don’t remember it being a big issue. I also can’t write in cursive. I remember thinking that my teachers didn’t really care if I ever learned either. I’m not necessarily blaming them, I know that I have some type of learning disability and had a hard time with many many other concepts. Additionally, my parents never cared too much about my academic success. When I play blackjack in Vegas, I figure things by tens and add or subtract. I do the same thing when figuring sale prices on outfits and tips at restaurants. I get by and am successful work-force-wise. Unfortunately, it took me YEARS to undo the caged parenting that my mother cursed me with. I’m 29 and I’m still learning that it’s ok to do things on my own. Someone a few comments back mentioned that some 19-year-olds can’t handle a trip to the store. Some days, I still can’t. I’ve never lived on my own and I have to psych myself up to do many things that seem normal to other people. Including going out to water the lawn alone after dark. So, in my opinion, social awareness is much more important than academics. Of course, this is just one person’s experience.

My mom, who put kids (including me) into daycare in 1976, sent me the method she used to get us potty trained before 2, and it involved having us sit in the bathroom for hours a day if need be, and spanking us every time we had an accident. Just because most kids were potty trained at 2 doesn’t mean it always done in a gentle way, and just because you were able to do it gently doesn’t mean everyone else would.

Yeah that’s called Elimination Communication, and it works well for a lot of moms and kids. It would be hard to do if in daycare though.

I introduced the potty before 18 months with both kids. One just took to it and it was great, but the other just could not read her body’s signals until she was older. I think early potty training is ideal, I just hate to see assumptions made that all kids can be potty trained early. Kids are individuals. I do think most kids, even a large majority, cold be potty trained earlier than they are, and I also agree that the disposable diaper industry is a large reason why they aren’t.

BTW, for the person who wondered how people in the developing world trained their kids and assuming they didn’t run around soiled all the time —

that’s because they learn to squat, anywhere outside, as soon as they can walk. At least in some places — I’ve seen it in Haiti. You don’t need to be potty-trained if there’s no expectation of using a potty, and I suppose the transition from “squatting wherever” to “squatting in the accepted place” is smaller than diapers to indoor plumbing.

My mother likes to say that we moved from our house just as I was finally old enough to go to the corner store by myself…. the year was 1983 i was a month shy of 5 years old LMAO.
now she wont let my 7 year old get in the car on the street side even though that’s where his seat is.

Look, please don’t try to convince me (or anyone) that “early” potty training is wrong or bad or that I need to just wait for my son to be ready. If you want your child to learn to poop themselves on a regular basis, that’s your choice, but I don’t believe that’s healthy. I *HAVE* done extensive research on how potty training is done “early” in our history and in other parts of the world. (And in many places without toilet facilities, they DO still teach sanitary habits, as in you do your business in designated places, so it may not be a potty, but it’s not always just anywhere they feel like it.) Part of the shift is how acceptable an accident is seen. It’s okay if the child is wearing a diaper, but as soon as they put undies on it’s proof they’re not potty trained. Except, with undies, they’re using the potty a majority of the time, but it’s still somehow worse than pooping themselves all the time…?

And, Elizabeth, your link, actually seems to prove my point, that it’s healthier for the child (less constipation, stool-holding, power struggle, illness, etc.) Personally, I’m willing to take extra time for the health of my child. And that’s the thing the article misses as well– since it’s “okay” these days to let a child poop and pee themselves (because it’s contained in a diaper) then that’s better than taking the time to train them earlier. Though, I do question the sample size– 406 children is a VERY small sample, and may not be a good cross section of potty training ages/ completion rates. There’s a A LOT of evidence on the health benefits of early potty training, but only the convenience and duration seem to play into the delay.

The thing is, that culturally, it’s considered bad to do it early, with people always trying to talk early-birds out of it. Just wait, they say, your child will be better off… unless they get a UTI or get into a power struggle. My SIL has to BRIBE her child to do what should be normal and healthy… the little girl is three. We keep our children in diapers, and a child who was in diapers only last year certainly can’t be trusted to climb the stairs or play unsupervised, right? I think that these shifting milestones may be related to an overall cultural infantiliztion– we push hard to keep our children as babies. I hear that it’s hard to watch our children grow up, but so far I don’t understand why… I’m really looking forward myself to continuing to see what sort of man my little boy will grow into.

In my limited experience, I’ve learned you can start potty training them at 18 months old, and they’ll be done by 3 years old. Or, you can wait and start training them at 3 years old, and they’ll be done in 3 days. I opted for the 3-day process with my second rather than the 18-month process I’d undergone with my first. To each his own, and call it laziness if you will, but beating your head against a wall for 18 months to ultimately achieve the same result as not beating your head against the wall…

My child trained at 2 and was trained within a week. She’s never had an accident since. When I was a child ALL children were 100% trained right around 2 – not with a many accidents but potty trained. It was unheard of to wait longer. Has this generation become more developmentally slow than prior generations?

I do think the trend to infanticize children as long as possible plays out in potty training. But I think there are other things at play. First, the smaller families. Parents in earlier generations didn’t have time to have a bunch of kids in diapers. You needed the previous kid out of diapers before the baby was born. Second, the advent of disposable diapers and their great improvement. A child in cloth diapers feels wet and uncomfortable. Disposable diapers from most of our baby days were bulky and not much less wet and uncomfortable than cloth. Todays diapers are heaven for children. They are dry, thin and comfortable. What motivation is there for kids to potty train? All potty training means is that they now have to stop playing to go potty. Hell, if it weren’t socially unacceptable I could go for diapers at times (not really but it’d be a whole lot more convenient). And Pull Ups are the worst invention in the world for actually potty training children.

My daughter trained quickly and at a youngish age (1st in her class) because once I started she never wore a diaper again. She had showed no interest in the potty at the time and didn’t show many “signs of readiness.” I didn’t try to coax her or get her interested in pottying. I simply woke her up one day, told her it was time to use the potty, threw her diapers away and put her into panties. It only took a morning of pee running down her legs for her to have the desire to go to the potty. She wore Pull Ups at night for awhile. Interestingly, if I would forget to put one on, no accidents. If I put a Pull Up on – her diaper (and that is what they are) was ALWAYS wet in the morning. So even in her SLEEP, she knew that she could be lazy in a diaper and not in panties.

You young mothers make me smile. Toilet training your baby isn’t something to brag about, and yet it has been for generations. Mothers love to compare their children and pass judgement on others over the sillest things. Who really cares how old you toilet train? It’s really something you will laugh at when you get older. It has no bearing on how good of a job you are doing as a mother or how smart your child is. I raised 12 children back in a time that supposedly people toilet trained so early. (Maybe they did but it wasn’t an issue where we lived.) I had a few of my babies train at 18 months and one as late as 3 1/2! (And that was in the 1940’s. Shocking, right?) Also, take my word for it. If you had another baby and you still had one in diapers, then you simply had two in diapers. A few pushy, what you ladies would call “helicopter type” moms who worried about everything would push them along, but for the majority it wasn’t anything to stress about. Don’t believe everything you read about how it used to be, ladies. Also, to be perfectly honest, I did not notice a difference in the intelligence of my late trainers and my early ones. In fact, my 3 1/2 year old trainer ended up in Harvard on a scholarship! Well, that’s all I have to say.

Mabel, by no means am I trying to “brag” I just think it is nice to have different options available, and the internet is a great way to share those options with other people who may not have thought it was a possibility. I don’t have any opinion on how long anyone wants to wait or start training, whatever works for you in your situation is fine by me.

Nora, sweetie, I was not referring you to when I was talking about some of the mothers here being a bit judgemental and bragging. You sounded like you were truely just sharing. But some of the comments on here seemed like they were saying that if their child could be potty trained at a certain young age using certain methods, which are the whole reason their child potty trained at that age, then any child could. Therefore if your child wasn’t then you must be “babying” them or not trying hard enough, which is hogwash. I also agree with Sarah. These so called “experts” are always telling us one thing or another and it changes every few years going back and forth on their “theories”. Just know your baby and use common sense. Mother’s intuition is a real thing and better than any expert advice.

Like often happens here, there is confusion between (a) telling people what to do and (b) disagreeing with advice about what people should do. I don’t tell anyone that they should potty train as early as I did. I am very glad I did, but if it’s not for you, so be it. But what bugs me is the “expert advice” that tells inexperienced moms that they would be wrong, even hurting their child, if they did what I did. That it doesn’t work at all and only makes everyone miserable. This advice, which is everywhere nowadays, is not only wrong, it’s harmful. I’ve seen people see their kids show “signs of readiness” but the parents are afraid to try potty training, convinced it will not work and will make things harder in the long run. The only people benefiting from such fear are the owners of diaper manufacturers.

Now let’s think outside the box for a minute. Could you imagine wearing a diaper on your dog instead of training him to go outside and do his business? Would that even be considered humane? Now think about how much society has affected the way we look at baby/toddler elimination.

Some one mentioned why don’t we hear stories on starting potty training earlier and earlier, and that made me think of a story I heard a couple of years ago about moms training babies at I think 3 months or earlier.

In actuality, I think it was more like some mothers here, the ones it worked for were the ones who had super regular babies and they could hold them over the potty to go at the appropriate time. However, like my ducks and geese, the babies had no actual control over the muscles until a much older age. (Ducks and geese have no control. Which is why some people put diapers on them when they have them as house pets. Unless you time it so that they come in for the 15 minutes between going.)

But, I do think that the library where I used to live had this series. I remember reading it because my daughter and her best friend were having friend issues, with fighting, and at this stage girls tend to be two is fine, three is a crowd, and the friend, an only, couldn’t stand it when my boys butted their way in. I do recall some of the other stuff that Lenore mentions too. And based on the neighborhood we lived in, she could do all of the things listed, although, I admit, I was not as free range, and though the park was around the corner, it was an excuse for me to get out and talk to other adults while the kids ran wild.

Sarah, my point was that the thought of a dog wearing a device that holds its pee and poo unnaturally against its skin is a gross thought. Yet we’ve gotten quite comfortable with the idea of a toddler walking around that way. We force them to tolerate this when they have no choice, and then because they get used to it, we start thinking we’re doing it for their own good.

As for your example of dogs being 6 months old before they are housetrained – that is another thing created by humans via breeding. The dogs that are closest to their wild ancestors start toddling outside to potty (if given access) almost as soon as they can walk. And also, their mothers don’t leave them lying in crap before that age.

“As for your example of dogs being 6 months old before they are housetrained — that is another thing created by humans via breeding. The dogs that are closest to their wild ancestors start toddling outside to potty (if given access) almost as soon as they can walk. And also, their mothers don’t leave them lying in crap before that age.”

You’re right that their mother’s don’t leave them lying in their feces. The wild dogs/wolves will actually EAT their feces. (As will the puppies when they are old enough.) Disgusting but true. They actually make products for owners of dogs to use to deter them from eating their own feces. Again, my point that comparing humans to dogs is ALSO unatural. We are different. God made us that way. And 6 months old is NOT created by humans via breeding. Dogs can’t open doors. So they have to learn not only to go outside but to tell us they need to go. In the wild they would just wander to a different area a few steps away to go. That can’t be done in a home unless you designate a corner of your kitchen as the dog’s toileting area, which would be highly disgusting. So we have to make them be able to communicate und understand the only place to go is outside and not just any area other than its sleeping quarters, as is done in the wild. The wild mother dog does not train her wild puppies to use a certain area. They only learn not to go where they sleep, (because they naturally do not like to sleep in their own feces, not because they are being trained. If they do go there they will happily eat it to clean it up.) Pet dogs do this, as well. They don’t go where they sleep as soon as they are old enough. They will go on your living room rug or chair. So no different than the ones living in the wild, except we have to go a step beyond and teach them that the ONLY acceptable place is outside, which is why it takes a bit longer. 😉

Mabel, yes, they eat it at the very beginning, and no, I have no desire to eat my kids’ poop. But as for the ability to go outside, that depends on how you design their area. My sister is a breeder of GSDs and she has a doggy door that the puppies can use (leading to a safe outdoor area). You are right, they don’t need to be trained to not want to lie in their feces. That is natural. What I don’t understand is why we think human nature is to want to lie in our feces until forced to do otherwise.

Elizabeth, there are a lot of online resources for Elimination Communication. They would answer all of your questions and then some. While my family doesn’t practice it, I know many people who do and they didn’t let their children lie in their waste or wake every hour at night. Instead of reacting after their children eliminate they learn the cues that their children give *before* they go then get them to a toilet in time. EC isn’t about training the child or about letting them go willy-nilly, it’s about the parent learning their child’s cues and responding efficiently.

Elimination communication includes paying close attention to a baby’s signs (which apparently can be a toe wiggle, a grimace, or whatever) that he or she is going to eliminate. There is ample evidence that children know when they are eliminating– because they do have to open the muscles– the pee or poop doesn’t just leak out, the muscles have to be voluntarily opened from birth. As they eliminate, the parent makes a ssssss sound. Soon, in a very pavlovian way, the child learns to eliminate when the sound is given and not otherwise. This is practiced in places where they don’t diaper the baby at all, because, again, even tribal people know that wastes are unsanitary.

I didn’t do this because I’m just not that aware of my son (even as a breastfeeding mom, I could never tell when my son was hungry, or just moving his mouth, but he lived anyway.) I diapered my son (in disposables, gasp!) BUT I don’t want to prolong the use of diapering any more than necessary. I see diapers as generally necessary in the beginning because of the convenience, but I’m not interested in keeping my son in the habit of pooping or peeing himself.

Now, I understand the convenience of diapers and that potty training early does take longer. I’m with SKL that there’s a push against parents who buck the trend on potty training. Every time I mention that we’re potty training my son– currently 14 months– I’m told, “Gasp! That’s WAY too early! You can’t do that!” Why? “It’s not right/ It’s not good for him/ It’s too early.”

Lastly, anecdotes are not facts. Just as I don’t use the story or two I hear on the news or from people who know someone who was abducted to change my position regarding the facts that such things are rare, I don’t use a few anecdotes to tell me that potty training late is both without problem and the best thing to do. Instead, I prefer to read the studies and literature that take data (facts, surveys, and other published information) that show that 1) early potty training healthier for all and 2) early potty training can work easily. Every kid who eats raw eggs will not get salmonella (I never did eating cookie dough!) and every toddler who trains at 3 years old will not have UTIs, stool holding, or power issues, but there is an increased risk that I would rather avoid, if possible, by not eating raw eggs and by hopefully potty training my son early.

I will say that for several months (about 15-19mos), I was on high alert, especially when I took the girls out. We stopped at restrooms everywhere we went and if it had been much more than 30 minutes since our last stop, I started feeling stressed. It took extra time, yes, for those few months.

But there are many things I never had to do. I never had to leave a gathering or leave the table because my child had just stunk up the place. I never had to pack a diaper bag after they were 1.5. I didn’t have a location in my house for poopy diapers. Never dealt with diaper rash. Never had a diarrhea blowout diaper, never had poop on my kids’ clothing or bedding. My kids didn’t play power games with me over potty training. When my kids went to preschool/daycare at 2.5, I didn’t receive peed clothes in a bag at the end of the day like the other parents who waited to train. I saved a lot of $$, and I’m pretty sure that if you add up all the things I didn’t have to deal with after my kids were independent / communicating their needs, it would more than outweigh the extra effort I put in while they were training.

So you choose what you want to do, but I wish people would stop scaring folks who want to give it a try before age 2 or 3. Why do people do that, anyway? Do they want to make sure other people’s kids don’t do something earlier than their kids? Actually, I get that in other areas, too. My kids are generally early at most things because I encourage them to try. Whether it’s bike riding or shoe tying or cutting their own meat, reactions are most often negative or “shocked.” Why not just be happy for me that I have one less thing to worry about for the future?

@Joe Murray: The boy’s face appeared on the milk carton in nineteen eighty-four. Since then, it has become more and more true that past events have no objective existence, but survive only in written records and in human memories. The past is whatever the records and memories agree upon. Though the past is alterable, it has never been altered in any specific instance. For when it has been recreated in whatever shape is needed at the moment, then this new version IS the past, and no different past can ever have existed. You must hold two contradictory beliefs in your mind simultaneously, and accept both of them. You must tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, and forget any fact that has become inconvenient. (quote is from Orwell’s 1984.

SKL – If you have coyotes in the neighborhood, give the children paintball guns and slingshots and have them shoot the coyotes … hassle them until they learn a bit of fear of humans.

Yes, coyotes have been known to attack humans, but they are more likely to be after pets, per food and garbage. Just don’t let the small children play alone. If they see a coyote, run towards it, shrieking and making a lot of noise and throwing rocks to discourage it. It’s looking for an easy target, not prey that might hurt it.

Well put, Sarah. There’s a difference between advocating for our own way to be acceptable, and predicting all kinds of horrors based on something like when you choose to potty train.

Personally, potty training at 9 months makes little sense to me. What good does it do to train a child who can’t get to the toilet by himself anyway? I know, it gets them out of diapers. But that, in itself, was never a value to me, even during those intermittent times when I used cloth. That is to say, I didn’t hate washing diapers more than I would have hated trying to figure out when a pre-verbal, non-ambulatory child needed to get to the bathroom.

Again, that’s just my personal opinion and I have no criticism to offer anyone who thinks differently. But I suspect I’m not alone in considering the mere absence of diapers, as opposed to truly independent personal sanitation, as having little value.

Pentamom– how did you know when to feed your child? Did you always wait until they cried? Or did you eventually fall into a routine with more or less set times to eat that they got used to. Early potty training includes routine times to potty, which help overcome any problems with communication. The kid gets used to going potty on schedule, which is also healthy.

While I don’t understand waiting, I don’t begrudge anyone who thinks it best for their family. There’s a point where we each have to decide what works best. IMNHO, that decision should also be built on facts, not just feeling, but it doesn’t always work out that way. I tend to question how things are done, and methods with sound reasoning appeal more to me than those with weaker reasoning. I haven’t found any good evidence that waiting is better for the kid, though my research found that starting earlier does have benefits that align with my beliefs.

Sometimes it feels that people who are on one side of an issue feel the need to defend their position when in discussion with those who believe a different position. It’s as if by stating, for example, that I don’t believe in waiting until age 3 (as is the current AAP recommendation) to potty train, because I don’t like me son learning to soil himself– those who DID wait feel they have defend the fact that they did wait. My beliefs are somehow an attack on their beliefs, even when not intended. I’m still not convinced that late potty training and the notion that children are far less capable than their historical counterparts are not culturally linked as we keep children “babies” longer…. this may not be the case for everyone, but cultural influence, imho, are hard to pinpoint. It just becomes “how things are done.” Doesn’t mean that every, or any, parent who practices late potty training is going to believe their child is incapable of other things that previously were considered age appropriate. But is there a correlation?

Did we make too many comments or something? Things are a little screwy!

No, we didn’t make too many comments. The guy who mentioned 1984 forgot to close his tags! That shouldn’t be a problem, except the commenting system is set up so that if he doesn’t close HIS tags, the rest of us are screwed.

@Kristen: I have to ask why it matters that a ‘black male’ tried to pick you up? Would you have been compliant if he were caucasian? You behaved responsibly in regards to your own personal safety and that of your younger brother. Quite admirable. Has nothing to do with race.

On walking and biking- at 7 I was riding my bike several miles, on main roads, and walking all over. I refuse to keep my son penned in, as street smarts are vital, and cannot be learned if trapped at home, supervised. The world is safer than it’s been in a long time, thats a fact. Even if it wasn’t, not allowing a kid to learn how to live in it isn’t helping anyone. The obsessive focus on total safety is what makes parents anxious. My mom never was, and I ran the neighborhood until dark every day!

On Schools- they are suppose to teach academics, and ideally, wouldn’t interfere with my teaching life skills. Good academics are important these days, but aren’t more I portent than critical thinking and being able to take care of yourself. Schools do a good job considering what they have to work with. Teachers are among the most disrespected, and blamed of professions. They are not magical, they do the best they can in most cases.

On EC- EC is basically parent training. Fine, if you want to do it, my son wouldn’t tolerate being held over the potty, so we didnt. I have a friend that EC’s her DD, and gets most pees and poos in the potty, but still uses diapers. My kid spends much of his day playing Independently, so I don’t know his “cues” like someone that was attached to them all day.

On “the diaper industry”- why does everything have to be this big profit motive conspiracy? You never considered that diaper makers created new, easy to use, comfy diapers because *parents* wanted them? I use cloth, for the cuteness and huge cost savings, but disposables are awesome. Parents don’t use them be use they are lazy, they use them because they are easier and more convenient. What’s wrong with this?

On potty training (or learning)- I just don’t see why anyone cares what someone else does. You cannot tell what kid learned early, and which were late, once they are school age. Kids may have been trained earlier in some cases, 100 yrs ago, but many of the methods would be frowned on today. Since when is something better just because it happened in the “old days” anyway?

On my kid- My MIL swears both my DH and his brother were trained at one year, but when I look at my son, I just don’t see how, as he’s so far from having a clue about when he goes. Of course I hope he trains early, and am putting him on the potty now (he is 1) hoping he catches on, but if not, oh well. Im not gonna kill myself to make it happen.

And I just had to comment on a few things:

Dolly says: “Just like when you are trying to stop abortions…”
Maybe, just maybe, you could MYOB? Ever think of that? Being nice is always better, but not sticking your nose into a strangers life in the first place is much more appropriate. You can’t take the risks of labor and delivery, or the responsibility, for the kid, so bug out.

Kristen: was his being black relevant to the possible crime? I don’t see what race has to do with it. I will assume you meant it descriptively. Good job being attentive and reacting safely!

I think early potty training sounds great. I’m not doing it myself, my daughter in 10 months, but I imagine once she is walking I will start trying, so I imagine sometime in the fall. I figure at first I’ll put her on the little potty and show her how to sit, and then if she poops or pees I’ll cheer wildly.

Gotta confess I cannot see any bathroom cues to save my life. Gotten oeed on a few times,,,,

When I was 8 years old, in 1989 in Austria, I went to my elementary school unattended after having practiced the way with my parents for a couple weeks. It involved a 4-stop streetcar ride, crossing two streets and walking a couple blocks. It was normal!
After school, I was supposed to come home immediately, but especially when I was 8 or 9, me and my classmates would sometimes play on a plaza a few blocks from my school before going home. My parents lectured me on this (there were no cell phones! ;-)), but again, it was normal.

Another blogger mom in need of Lenore’s information and education about fostering children’s independence. http://www.zookbooknook.com/

Jane, I’m confused by your statements. Are you saying that after 5 years of age kids should NOT be outdoors?

I think Jane means that after about 5 years kids don’t need to be supervised all the time like the site says.

As far as the daycare’s rules about not allowing us to potty train them till at least 2, that was the state’s rules. The state comes up with the rules from pediatricians, lawyers, childcare experts, child psychologists, etc.

Some of the rules were for legal reasons. Some for proper care of the child mentally and physically reasons. I was never told WHY that rule was what it was. I was just told that was the rule. They actually had bathrooms built into the 1 year old to 1 1/2 year old room and the 1 1/2 to 2 year old room, but they were not allowed to use them. They functioned as closets and extra hand washing sinks. They were not allowed to use the potty.

Most parents had ZERO problem with this though because they left the potty training up to us anyway. We did all the hard labor when it came to the potty training their kids. We were the ones that said when it was time to start and we worked with them all day long and the parents just followed up at home. Often the parents would put diapers back on them to go home because either they were not ready or they wanted us to get them good with it at daycare and then they could just reap the benefits of our work afterwards.

Dolly, I was with you until your last sentence, “I try to warn other moms away.” I wish you wouldn’t. Maybe you don’t personally know anyone who has been successful at earlier potty training, but there is plenty of experience out there to show that it can work, and that many people are happy to have gone that route. It’s not something to fear. If someone asks me, I will say “it’s up to you, but this was my experience (good and bad).”

My sister has a 20mo girl and she brings this up with me all the time. I think whe wants me to talk her into it. But I will not tell her what she “should” do. I believe her daughter probably “can” learn, but the real question is how committed the parents are, and she’s the only person who can answer that. I do tell her what I did and that I’m very glad I did it.

Once upon a time, diapers over a certain size couldn’t be found in stores. Then the sizes get bigger, and bigger and bigger. Do parents pester the company and ask for them, or assume that because they’re there, the product should be uesd? I see a LOT of evidence on the latter. A big example is the introduction of toddler formula. Infants use infant formula to help them get balanced nutrition, but toddlers should be eating solids, ideally regular food, and getting a reasonably balanced diet that way. I suspect that the formula industry saw a “problem” that they realized they could offer a solution too. At this time, it’s not recommended to use toddler formula, as most doctors think it’s unnecessary, but I have already encountered numerous moms with toddlers who think that they should be buying it– the rationale is “why would the company sell it if my child doesn’t NEED it?”

With diapers, I think it’s quite possible that parents saw them in the store in larger sizes and thought “well, we can wait until he’s too big for diapers,” which reinforces what many parents seem to want– as potty training is apparently this scary, stressful event. And then the pull ups come along, and in larger sizes, and so on.

As for early potty training being parent training… I’m okay with that. To me, it beats the pail of feces stinking up the house (even taking the trash out every day, it’s still a pile of poop), the screaming and crying when I do catch the baby and change his diaper, and the cost, both financially and environmentally, of continued diapering. As a mother, I am also trained to be home for naps, to feed the baby at times regardless of my own schedule, and to respond to his cries. Besides, what’s so wrong with the parent being in charge until the child is able to take control? Have we become so child-centric as a nation, that the idea of a parent-centric family become scandalous?

And serious, I am kind of upset that anyone would try to talk me out of early potty training (or any decision) unless I ask them what they think. Just because it didn’t work for you, or someone else, doesn’t mean that it can’t work for me. That’s really unfair to me to presume that my experience will be like yours, or that you have to “save” me from my decision. You may share your experiences, and I may ask you about how you did things, but please, out of respect for my intellect and preferences, do not assume I need you to save me from myself.

Amazingly, I *just* had an argument on facebook over this same issue. I happen to let my 6 yr old, 1st grader walk to the drugstore and back… this is all of 3 blocks. OMG! The horror! He could get kidnapped by a pedophile and killed! *Facepalm* I am proud to be a mom of a free range kid.

socalled, it wasn’t the “figuring out” that I was mostly objecting to, it was going through the whole process of toilet training when the child still wouldn’t be independent anyway. I get why that seems to be worthwhile to some people — you’ve expressed it well. But it never seemed worthwhile *to me.* (BTW, I always dumped the solids in the toilet anyway so unless there were digestive issues going on, I didn’t have a pail full of feces around.)

Sarah@ I’m not sure how stating my opinion is the same as telling other people how they SHOULD raise their child. I was trying to just say what I thought and what I did. There was no implicit statement that what I did was right, only that it was right for ME. I didn’t say that anyone who waited was doing it wrong. I did speculate why parents may do things, but certainly did not pass judgment or make any subtle, between-the-lines jabs.

It dishearens me that, in spite of my efforts, you feel that I am being a pushy mother, trying to exhort my method as the best way, when I have really been trying to say what I do, why I do it, and ask questions why others do it other ways. I do sometimes speculate based on the evidence I have, and perhaps this is where I fail in not being pushy. Though this is not the first time I’ve been accused that by saying “I’m doing X with my child” was an attack on a parent who was doing Y with their child… so I’m apparently doing something wrong. (Well, more wrong than going against the accepted norms of parenting.)

To me, saying “I’m doing [insert method] with my child for reasons x, y, z.” is different than saying “You shouldn’t do [insert method] with YOUR child because of reasons x, y, z.” I don’t beleive that I have said why anyone should do what I do, only offered the reasons why *I* do what I do. I really do not know how else to share my story that would be less pushy, but welcome any input on it as I’m really just trying to share and not to push.

@
@pentamom: I’m curious where you change diapers, if you dump the wastes in the toilet. (Not snarky, just curious.) We’re set up to change on the changing table with a pail nearby and we wrap the diaper around itself and toss it in. Since I’m considering (if I can get Husband on board) using cloth with our next child, and the question of solids and changing-location is one that I’m not able to answer.

And I do get why many parents decide to wait. I mostly object to being told that I “can’t” train my son (I like SKL’s term “diaper-free!”) or that I “shouldn’t even try!” to train him at his age. It seems like the fact that I’m willing to do it– extra work that it is– rather than wait for him to do it is, perhaps, an offense to those who weren’t willing. As if by doing so, I’m making them feel guilty/ lazy/ bad? Which again, pains me, because, I do try very hard to not push my ideas on other people. I offer them, like a buffet, because I LOVE to learn about things and share that learning with interested people (hence,being a teacher!), but I don’t intend to change anyone’s mind. I don’t care what other people do with their kid, but I do have to be happy with what I do my son. I really wish I could convey that better… -_-

Socalled, I used to change my daughters while standing over the toilet (before they could walk). I can’t exactly explain how I did it, but part of the reason was so that the poop could go right into the toilet, and the child saw it going in there. Afterwards I wadded up the diaper, taped it together, and put it in a bag in the garage.

My mom used cloth, and I shared diaper duties. We used to change the babies on the dressing table and then carry the diaper to the toilet, slosh it around in there and then put it in a diaper pail. Some people keep a pail full of bleach water for after the sloshing, but if you do that, you need to make sure the baby can’t get at it.

I have cloth diapered all my children and I usually just changed them on the carpeted floor or couch. When they were all clean and had a fresh diaper on and on their way playing I took the solied one and dumped the feces in the toilet. Then I took it to the laundry room and had a special basket with a lid for them. I washed them everyday, as well so there isn’t any smell build up.

Man, all these italics are making me headache-y. Socalled, I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you. Potty training is a contentious subject in general, and we’re… as a rule, we’re pretty opinionated people. Strong personalities. (And if everybody is like me, having to read a page of italics makes them cranky. But maybe that IS just me?)

Don’t knock the Goodnight diapers! My mom says everyday how she wishes they were around when I was a kid. I had a medical problem that meant I wet the bed until around age 7. I had urinary reflux meaning the urine would not all come out at once so I would later wet the bed. I think I did some surgical stuff and eventually also you outgrow it over time. Also a lot of boys have medical issues where their bladders don’t grow as fast as the rest of their body so they also have bed wetting problems.

Goodnights solve that problem with dignity and ease. It did not matter how much I was trained or withheld water or whatever, I still wet the bed. It was no one’s fault. So why should my mom and I have to be embarrassed and bothered when we would have to wake up in the middle of the night once or twice even to change my sheets and pjs?! It was so hard for both of us. Goodnights would have made both our lives so much easier. So I am glad they exist and in big sizes for kids like me.

My mom would actually put me in diapers at night but eventually even though I was small for my size I outgrew the largest size and then we just had to change the sheets everytime and neither of us got sleep. I was always so ashamed too because I had to make my mother wake up and I knew it was hard on her.

I think SKL might be right that pediatricians warn against early potty training because of the child abuse thing. I have seen cases of it getting out of control with younger kids or heard about it. Of course I have heard about cases of older kids and it getting out of control too. I hear about parents making the kids sit on the potty for hours and they claim that is training.

That is the difference between parent training and kid training. After the initial 4 days of pee training my kids no longer ever had to just SIT on the potty. They just went when they needed to go and I made them go before we went somewhere. Whereas when I hear moms talking about early training it involves the parent putting the kids on the potty constantly and having them sit there A LOT. I think that is more parent training and I don’t think that is good for the child too. Sitting on a potty all the time can’t be fun. But if you can early train and not do that, then go for it!

@Dolly: I’m in agreement there– sitting on the potty (at any age, really) should not be a chore or a punishment. Routine, sure. My son and I sit and look at some books and once he gets up we’re done for that sitting. No pressure, no big deal as I know he’ll get it when he’s ready. In the meantime we’re (in theory) reinforcing taking a break to go potty in the morning, after naps, after meals, etc.

Now we’re all different, but to me, carrying around a poopy diaper to put it outside is not any better than the hassle of early potty training. And one is way cheaper, which, with my job situation right now, has a sudden increase in appeal! But it’s an interesting idea. There are lot of options, of course, and we all have to find what works for us.

“I’m curious where you change diapers, if you dump the wastes in the toilet. ”

I change the diapers in whatever room the changing table is in, then I walk into the bathroom and do what’s necessary when I’m done. 🙂

But it should all be past tense — my baby is 10.

There is (or at least was) another option to help children who wet the bed late, rather than Good Nights. It’s probably considered cruel these days. I was a late bed wetter (3rd or 4th grade iirc). Eventually, my parents bought a buzzer pad that went under my sheets. When it detected wetness, it would sound an alarm. In a rather Pavlovian sense, I was trained to wake before the alarm– meaning I had to pay attention to my bodies signals (the theory being that since sphincters are voluntary, I was at least aware enough to operate the muscles.) In a few days, I was dry– and SOOOO proud to not be “a baby” anymore. I still remember this experience– still remember the first time I woke up in a dry bed!– twenty-some years later. And my parents were never harsh about the bed wetting, it was something I was acutely aware of myself. I admit that, because of my ‘training’ if I have even the slightest sensation of needing to use the restroom, I cannot sleep. But looking back, it’s worth it to have been able to go on sleep overs and be a “big girl” that didn’t wet the bed.

I suppose the question is which is worse? A child that is ashamed and excluded (or afraid of his problem being exposes) for his bed-wetting or the possible trauma of waking to a terrible alarm that’s directly related to urination?

Socalled, that really is a good question. A lot of parenting theories have arisen over the past half-century or so, based on the idea that a very short-term trauma is going to cause a lifetime of sub-conscious issues. Maybe that is true for people who are wired a certain way, but I don’t think it’s true for the majority of us. The tiptoeing around certain aspects of childrearing may have caused just as many problems. Honestly, I think the whole potty training “control issue” thing is a recent phenomenon – or perhaps a rare issue that has been blown way out of proportion, and turned into a fear that has significantly changed parenting. When you think about it (notwithstanding the celebrated lunatic who taught that 3-year-old girls want to have sex with their fathers, etc.), the idea that pooping is a delicate emotional matter for a baby is utterly ridiculous. And yet, look where we have found ourselves.

The same is true of many other things. Take spanking for instance. Now, don’t get me wrong – I think it’s great if you can discipline your child without any physical punishment. But those who do use spanking effectively will tell you that it only takes a spank here and there to get most kids on the right path. My mom used to say she could count on one hand the number of times she spanked me. Because if you just do it and mean it and be consistent about it (and not a crazy loon taking your own frustrations out on your kid), it works without creating any lasting drama.

Teaching kids. Now the pendulum is swinging back, but for a while, they wouldn’t even teach reading until the middle of 1st grade, because they were so afraid that the few late bloomers would feel bad, and their lives would be ruined forever. They also stopped retaining kids lest they feel sad about not keeping up with their peers – as if putting them into a harder class with a few minutes a day of tutoring is going to fix that problem – and, as if every kid in the class (including the slow one) doesn’t realize their relative standing. They’ve also stripped teachers of many discipline and motivation alternatives to protect little kids’ “dignity.”

You know, kids are not that weak. At least, not unless we teach them to be.

One of my good guy friends apparently wet the bed till middle school according to his older brother who is also my friend. There was no reason they could find, it just happened. He was otherwise a totally normal kid and always had friends. He is actually the most charming and lady killer man I know. Women throw themselves at him as an adult. He is totally normal and smart and is married now and going to college and was in the military, etc. He is by no means a weirdo or a loser or coddled, etc. It really is one of those things that some kids just don’t outgrow till much older. Not sure what his parents did about it at the time.

My parents put me on some sleeping medication when I was in middle school and they thought I was depressed. I was not able to wake up to pee and wet the bed a couple times then too. I freaked out on my parents and told them I was not taking the meds again. I imagine that is how it might be for the very heavy sleeper kids. You just don’t have any sensation of it because you are dead to the world which was how that stupid medication made me feel.

OK, I will concede on the big GoodNites – perhaps the problem has always been more widespread than it appeared.

But there are still a lot of kids with no known problems whose parents are afraid to night train. I’ve seen many parents ask timidly whether they dare try when their kid is age 4-6 and has been day-trained for a while. In a world without pull-ups/GoodNites, this would not be the case.

Although I understand that some kids with extended bedwetting attribute it to deep sleeping, most kids (and adults) don’t pee when they are asleep. They feel the urge shortly after waking up. They can get up and go to the toilet, if there is any motivation to do so. Now if both parent and child are OK with letting the child pee in a diaper so mom can address other priorities, fine. That’s their choice. What bugs me is the idea that people think kids cannot learn – and they are afraid to try – because of hack advice.

The alarms don’t work for every kid either. They sleep through the alarm. The kid a babysat had a stepmother who was a multimillionaire (literally). A lot of money was thrown at the problem and nothing went untried (doctors, shrinks, alarms). In the end, the only thing that worked was time — he grew out of it.

Yeah my kids wear pull ups at night even though they have been day trained for over a year. I have one son who mostly is dry in the morning and another son who can be dry but mostly is soaked in the morning. He evens wets through the pull up some mornings and dirties the bed! So I think I have one son who might be ready and could do well with night training and one that is not so much ready. So I just keep them in them and will both night train at the same time when they both no longer are wet in the morning.

I am going to try to see how it goes after Christmas with it but if it doesn’t work, no biggie. I will just put them back in pull ups and give it more time.

I have the WORST handwriting in the world and I have dyslexia. I never learned to hold my pencil right and I still hold it funny. I was ambidextrous and they made me pick a hand. I picked right because I figured it would be easier on me but I am pretty sure I picked wrong and that also is why my handwriting has always sucked. I think I was also meant to be left handed or at least allowed to continue to use both hands.

Ouch sorry for the italics… I accidentally put the slash after the i instead of before it. WordPress really needs to fix that… all they need to do is add a regex that changes an i with a slash AFTER it to an i with a slash BEFORE it.

As a parents we tend to be overprotective. That’s our maternal instinct. We are so scared that something bad will happen to our kids but sometimes we just have to let them have their freedom. As early as possible we should teach them to be independent.

another attempt

Or, Kyohaku or whoever it was that started it.

My son just started middle school, too. His mother is, in my opinion, seriously over-protective, but for various reasons she consented to letting him ride the city bus. He has a cell phone. He calls me when he gets to school and again when he catches the afternoon bus and sometimes when he gets home. There have been a few times he has had me worried a bit, like the day he didn’t bother to call me when he got there – I had to call the school to be certain he had gotten off the bus and not fallen asleep. Still, it usually works well, and he likes the independence.

Did that help with the italics?

That was me. Sorry!

@pentamon wordpress is automatically closing open tags. If I put only closing tag in, opening one is created before it. It was fooled by slash on the wrong place (<i />).

I tried </i /&gt to fix it; but it was auto corrected too.

It seems like it is the only bug, all our attempts are ‘fixed’. Formatting is not leaking from our posts, so the italics stay.

Well, we can read it (obviously), it’s just… itchy.

I’ll try really hard not too…!

Uh-oh. Now that’s just darn troubling….

I’m with you Dolly. My cursive is still at a 5th grade level. I always hated writing in cursive, so as soon as they stopped making me, I went back to printing. I’m not even sure I know how to make some letters in cursive any more.

With that said, if, as a society, we wanted kids to write in cursive the solution would be simple: Stop teaching them print for three years first. Teach them cursive FIRST and then printing in second grade. Or, alternatively, teach them printing in kindergarten and the first half of first grade, then switch to cursive.

Hey Lenore,

I have no way of contacting you, so I’m posting this link here.

David Hembrow, who, with his family, emigrated to the Netherlands from Britain because of the Dutch cycling culture, posted a new entry on his blog about Dutch children cycling to school, complete with a video. Go check it out!

http://hembrow.blogspot.com/2011/09/cycling-to-school.html

This is how I grew up and how all Dutch children *still* grow up, and note please how David, a stranger who quite videos and photographs these kids, is greeted and then ignored, both by the kids and by ‘the authorities’. No one arrests him for ‘being a pervert for showing an interest in cycling children’ and no policeman would EVER arrest a kid for cycling alone to school. The idea!

I disagree about cloth versus disposable being cheaper or more energy efficient. My mother ran a daycare from her home. She provided the diapers for the parents while the kids were in her care. She decided to try cloth diapers and see how it went instead of disposables. Well she was washing all the diapers from all the kids and she said her water and electric bill was way way way higher than it ever was before from all the loads of wash she had to do. She did the math and it was costing her more to use cloth when you factor in initial cost of the cloth diapers plus the added electric and water costs. Plus it was more work on her part.

This was a long time ago but might still ring true today. After about two months of that she went back to disposables.

I disagree about cloth versus disposable being cheaper or more energy efficient.

Yes, but Dolly, she wasn’t paying the initial cost. It’s not just about her electric bill!

The initial environmental cost of producing the disposable diapers in the first place.

Sadly I haven’t the time to read through 334 comments, so please forgive me if this has been brought up. It occurs to me that according to this list, not only was it acceptable for a 6 year old to walk to the park alone, it was required. Meaning, that if he couldn’t accomplish that task then he was immature for his age! Remarkable how far down the crippling path we’ve gone.

This article seems related to some of this post: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/magazine/22Adulthood-t.html?pagewanted=1

The article is about the idea of “emerging adulthood” – young adults who haven’t reached the milestones to actually become adults. Not really relevant to the idea of potty training, but definitely relevant to the idea of what a child (or adult) can – or should – do when. It’s interesting to consider what makes someone an “adult” – I think the milestones were finishing school, leaving home, getting married, having children, and becoming financially independent. Honestly, almost nobody I know or have heard of has done all of these by age 30… or even 40 for many. An old roommate of mine bought a condo with her parents’ help at age 20 and is still living there; she has a masters of education and taught for few years, but due to budget cuts, she is currently unemployed. However, she is financially better off than many I know. Many people I know do not plan to have children and aren’t seeking marriage anytime soon; a good portion of these are supporting themselves at least in part. However, i would not consider one to be financially independent just because one pays one’s own bills – I pay my own bills but still have to have a job and do not make nearly enough income to pay off my debts or to quit my job anytime soon. I am married and want children, but I do not have any yet – primarily due to the cost (monetary) but also due to the mental, emotional, and temporal cost.

Anyway, I’m going on a tangent… the point is that this article shows that children/teenagers are taking longer to become adults – maybe because parents/society do not give children the freedom and responsibilities they need and deserve.

Denny: A lot of those “definitional stages of adulthood” mentioned in that article are based on assumptions about what sociologists call “normative life course” and those assumptions were in turn formed by looking at middle-class American life in the three decades or so following WWII and assuming that represented some sort of inherent norm. The problem is that socioeconomically that period was a rather unusual one in American history. For example, in the 1950s and 1960s people generally married and had their first kid in their early 20s. This, however, ran counter to a trend, which started in the very early twentieth century, of increasing later marriage and childbirth. That trend seems to have resumed about 30 years ago; today people are marrying and having kids “late” only by 1950s standards (my mother talks about how young (21) she was when she got married in 1954. Actually, the median age for a woman’s marriage then was 19).

Similarly, in those times anyone with a high school diploma could expect to get a good-paying job and be able to stay with the company until retirement. That was by no means The Way Things Always Were, and it hasn’t been the case for the last several decades either. It was largely the combined result of the economic stimulus produced by WWII (and that didn’t really wear off until the mid-1970s) and the efforts of labor unions in the preceding decades. The mere fact that nowadays you usually need at least a bachelor’s degree to have a Career rather than a mere job is enough to account for a lot of the time shift. Many of today’s largest employers weren’t around 40 years ago, and many of the largest employers then aren’t around anymore. Careerists had a lot more promotion opportunities because a typical large corporation had fifteen layers of middle management and lots of tasks done by technology now were done manually back then (as recently as 60 years ago, the primary definition of “computer” was a job description for a person!).

Although I haven’t yet read it myself, Stephanie Coontz’s The Way We Never Were, which addresses a lot of these issues, has gotten good reviews.

Well, nobody above seems to be taking into account that the average kid in cloth diapers potty trains about a year sooner than the average kid in disposables. Isn’t that better for the environment?

My kids were in disposables (housemates wouldn’t let me put diapers in our washer), but since they wore their last diaper at age 1.5 – and wore fewer than average for the 8 months before that – their impact was relatively low compared to the US average.

As for the arguments about cloth diapering being expensive and not environmentally friendly – those analyses were done based on ridiculous assumptions. You can buy a dozen cotton diapers at Wal-Mart for a few bucks, and basic plastic panties (to prevent diaper leaks) are also pretty cheap. You also don’t need to use a whole wash load for every 8 diapers, as was assumed in the analysis. My mom used the same old diapers over and over again for six kids. It was one load per week for one kid in diapers. The work was a little more than disposables, but not that much more – instead of dumping the bag into the garbage, you dump the pail into the washer; instead of going to the store and buying diapers, you remove them from the dryer and pile them up. So OK, the step of moving them from the washer to the dryer once a week was extra – big deal. (Washing the diapers was my job for at least 2 years, so I do know what it’s like.) You should also consider that disposables increase the incidence of diaper rash that requires ointments / medical treatment.

But naturally, companies that sell billions of disposable diapers each year are going to tell you otherwise.

Huh, based on those criteria (apart from the age and permanent teeth), my 3-year-old is ready for first grade.

We lived in a rural area when I was a kid, but we were only a mile or so from school. The bus passed right by our house, so we usually took it, but if we missed the bus, we were responsible for walking to school or arranging our own transportation (the mail carrier would usually let us ride in the bed of his pickup if we made suitably sad eyes). Now there’s something you don’t get to do anymore. Put a 6-year old in the bed of a pickup…you’d be on Nancy Grace before five minutes had passed.

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