Does a GPS Device Give Kids Freedom?

I don’t know if this will help any, but why don’t you just get a pair of those Motorola FRS walkie-talkies? They have like a 35 mile range (probably more like 5 or 10 effective range) and come with a belt clip. Then if the kid needs help he/she can call you or if it’s time for dinner you can say “Hey kid, dinner in 20 minutes, time to come home.”

I think that still respects the kid’s independence, but gives you some way of reaching them without resorting to a cell phone or GPS constantly tracking their location. That’s my 2 cents anyway. . .

I agree that there are times when I would love to be able to get in contact with my child while she is out and about. Times when I’ve either forgotten to say when to come home like this mom or I’ve decided I want to go do something. But a wearable GPS doesn’t seem like the right answer either.

Could also get a watch and plan a specific time to be home.

I think the convenience aspect is a bit big brotherish. But in this case, if used purely for safety and emergencies, it’s a reasonable mitigation against real risk, depending on other factors.

As a 12 year old, I had about a 10 mile radius I’d ride in, and my 9 year old sister got heat exhaustion, and was extremely close to heat stroke. As it happened, we were on the one of 5 routes I routinely took that was in town and I only had 1/2 mile to get her someplace cool with liquids. Most routes I would have had to leave her and it would have taken 30+ minutes to get help.

In SC and Texas, I’ve been nearly stranded with bike flats many miles from any residence in extreme heat so heat stroke was a real possibility (I always carry 2 spare tires and more gatorade than I’d need), and been caught exposed with a sudden extreme storm coming up. In addition, out in the woods it’s easy for a fall to disable someone.

So in our area, tromping in rural areas, I will definitely get my kids one when they’re old enough (I’m not turning my preschooler loose in the mountains quite yet).

In the suburbs, I might make a different decision. If stores and houses are fairly dense, and routes are limited, maybe there’s not a benefit. It’s about assessing real risk and mitigation cost and going from there.

I would rather go with a cheap cell phone. Kids like to start texting and stuff early on nowadays. But the cell phone makes it easy to tell them to come on home or for them to call you and let you know they decided to go to Sue’s house instead of Jane’s or whatever. I think it does not hinder their independence because most kids like having a cell phone.

That web site is really creepy. Their blog has a post and graphic honoring “National Missing Children’s Day.” The whole site is about serious fear-mongering. The device has a predator alert that will tell you if your child comes within 500 of a registered sex offender’s house. It also has a “breadcrumbing” feature that will send you your child’s exact route periodically. Another feature will alert you when your child is travelling beyond a set speed limit. That thing where they have to wear it around their neck reminds me of a dog collar. Children will live up to your expectations. This sets them pretty low.

My son rides his bike to and from school which is a mile away. One day on his way home, he noticed a problem with his front brake. If he had had this device, he would have had me come rescue him immediately. Instead, he had to walk his bike back to the school, go inside, and ask the secretary to call me at home. I came and picked him up. He told me going in to ask the secretary to call me made him uncomfortable. But I was thinking THAT’s GREAT. He was forced to problem solve and gained confidence in talking to an adult he didn’t know that well. It was definitely the most important thing he learned at school that day. If he’d had this GPS thing or even a cell phone the result would have been the same (I’d have come to pick him up), but the gain in independence would have been lost.

Kids are more resourceful than we give them credit for. Even a kid with a sprained ankle can hobble home.

Here is my thinking. Once I was old enough to leave our street, I was required to take a small purse with a couple of dollars of quarters. If I got caught with a flat tire, or in a sudden thunder storm (common in Houston Summers), or was changing destinations I could call my parents from a pay phone and give them an update.

For my niece and nephew – there are no payphones. For that reason I think once a kid is old enough to go off on their own, either a cell phone or one of those radios is appropriate. I prefer a cell phone because they can call 911 if they need it. This doesn’t mean setting kids loose to be consumed by tech. Niece and nephew have ipads that they can text or facetime on. Sis and BIL have to approve of all contacts because they are still young. Niece has been able to Text since being diagnosed with dyslexia in Kinder, to encourage her to use written language and associate it with fun activity.

“I don’t know if this will help any, but why don’t you just get a pair of those Motorola FRS walkie-talkies? ”

When I was a kid my dad hooked up a CB radio to my bike…

That’s right, a CB radio, it was during the whole CB craze and I wanted one SOOOOOOO BAD…

And yes, it was as awesome as it sounds.

I provided my son with a cell phone when he was about ten years old. Not long after, I called him and he answered with an exasperated, “MOM, I am in A TREEEEEE!” He couldn’t believe I would have the audacity to call him when he was trying to climb a tree. I said, “Well, a monkey would know not to answer a cell phone when climbing a tree. Hang up and use both hands while you climb.”

Sorry, but if you can’t pre-plan with your kids then you should learn to – this is similar to a situation where I learned to specify when my son had to come home. These devices don’t really cover the times you feel a little lazy and just want to know where the kids are. I’ve also had to tell my kids to let me know when they move about, since the one time they did and did not tell me I hit three friends houses getting the Mom telling me “oh they went to so and so’s”. I got a lot of walking that day!

@Bob, the walkie-talkie idea might be a solution to the communication problem we’ve been wrestling with. In the summer, when everybody’s home, my younger kids and I will often want to spend a few hours visiting with my neighborhood friends who have little kids (all within about a 3-block radius). My oldest is at the point where he just gets bored being dragged along, and he’s old enough that we’re comfortable leaving him home alone for a while if I’m nearby in the neighborhood, but we don’t have a landline in the house and don’t want to get him a cellphone yet (mostly because we don’t trust him not to lose it).

A long-range walkie-talkie could be a great alternative to either sucking it up and getting him a cellphone or paying for a landline. It would also be less of a loss if he lost it and probably more fun.

@SKL “But here’s another thought. 🙂 When I was a kid, and with my kids, there have almost always been friends / siblings around. So if anything bad happened, someone could go for help. When we were kids, we’d call on some unsuspecting nearby neighbor lady (who may or may not have had kids), because people in the neighborhood were not “scary strangers.”

We did this too. And many were always happy to help. The community were extra pair of eyes and discipline for our parents.

“Now if I had an only child and he didn’t have friends to go around with, then I could see sending him with a device he could use to send an SOS in an emergency. Better than lying in a ravine with a twisted ankle and wondering when someone would find him. Not to be all “worst first,” but who hasn’t ever twisted his ankle or the like as a free-range kid?”

If we hurt ourselves, twisted an ankle, bumped our heads, we hobbled home. The only thing we were worrying about was getting in trouble because we did something we weren’t suppose to, or we got hurt. lol There were a couple of times where friends ended up breaking an arm or a leg. There would be at least 2 of us, so while bystanders looked after my injured friend, I would run/bike to his house or mine (which ever was closer), and tell the parent there what happened. And we would drive to the location. We didn’t even bother to call the ambulance, the injured would just be dumped into the car and taken to the hospital. They cried. But after the cast was put on, it was like a badge of honor. Especially when everyone signed the cast.

What ever happened to “come home when the street lights come on?”

@EricS: But, in the past (at least the past couple of generations) we had something that kids today don’t have–access to pay phones. My parents would routinely send me off into the world with a couple of quarters in my pocket, just in case I needed to get in touch with them. Pay phones were pretty ubiquitous in the town where I grew up, and I used them to call my parents about things on numerous occasions (I was going to be out later than I expected, I was ready for a ride home, I had a flat tire, I was wondering if I could go to X’s house even though that hadn’t been my original plan, etc.).

And, we also had landlines and phone books, which mean that, if my parents knew the name of the kid I was with, even if they didn’t know the parent or their phone number, they could look them up and call their house. In the situation described by the OP, as long as she knew the kid’s last name, she probably could have, 15 or 20 years ago, looked up the phone number in the white pages, called the parents’ landline, and avoided a walk to their house.

So it wasn’t like, when I was growing up, parents just sent their kids into the wild to fend for themselves, with no means of communication. They made use of the communication available to them, which included pay phones and landlines. Today, pay phones are a thing of the past in most places (have you tried to find a working pay phone lately?) and many homes don’t have a landline a concerned parent could look up the number for and call. I don’t think giving a child a cellphone is inappropriately relying on technology any more than giving a child a couple of quarters for a pay phone used to be.

Like someone up above said, what payphones? I haven’t seen a working one in 10 years.

And for those of us in rural areas, it’s a completely different set of risks.

Overall, the logic that a safety device allows more risk is sound. As a chemical engineer, the better the safety devices, the more risks I can take, but, at the same time, frquent use of the safety devices is an issue.

It’s potentially useful, but shouldn’t be the first line.

Overall strategy:
1. Plan on routes, and times and decisions and needs (for bike riding, staying hydrated and taking liquids, or ensuring liquids will be available on route).
2. Mobile emergency equipment. I never rode my bike far without a basic first aid kit and spare tire and pump, and at least a little cash.
3. Cell phone or GPS

Knowing when to call for help is also a part of learning and using one’s head. 1 and 2 can handle 99.9% of what can go wrong. There’s nothing wrong with 3, so long as 1 and 2 are still treated as the preferred option. If 3 does need to be utilized, then do an after action review to see how to improve 1 and 2 to prevent needing to rely on 3. Repeat as needed.

Besides, I consider the risk of idiots overreacting to a kid struggling or needing help and calling the cops or social services high enough to justify a higher probability of me being the contact.

I agree that the GPS device is like a tether, just an invisible one. There’s a book called “A Nation of Wimps,” and it’s all about the whole helicopter parenting phenomenon. One thing I learned from this book was how the whole cell phone craze means that people are not needing how to learn the important skill of making plans, as everyone just relies on their cell phones to do so. It also talked about how it hinders young adults from learning to problem-solve, as they simply call Mom or Dad whenever they have a problem, instead of trying to figure it out for themselves. I work with college- and university-aged young adults, and I encounter this all the time.

It sounds to me that Tannis needs to sit down and have a chat with her child about what time she is expected to be home.

My middle daughter is 9. She often goes to the park alone, which is about a mile away. We are not a cellphone family, and she often forgets her watch. She knows that 6 is when she needs to be home during the school year and 7 is appropriate for summer. The other day she goes “But Mom, how am I to know what time it is?” and I told her.. Repeat after me .. “Sir, pardon me, do you know the time?” .. “Ma’am, excuse me, my parents want me home at x time, do you know the time?”. Additionally I told her she’s welcome to walk up to the local 7-11 which is right near the park, and they have clocks abound inside. Only once has she failed to return home on time, but in that case she had ran into a friend at the park and lost track of time. Still earned her a week of being ‘grounded’.

In regards to “If she has a flat tire and a skinned knee” Well, I am not sure about you, but when I was a kid, I had to ride my bike to school. I remember quite vividly the day I biffed it, and I biffed it bad. I managed to flip over a tree, disconnect my brakes, and my chain came undone, both knees, elbows, and a chin skinned. I walked my bike back home, about a half-mile, and my grandmother fixed my bike, put bandages on, and wrote me a note as to why I was late to school, and set me on my way to school. I remember being so upset with her for doing that, I mean surely blood, warranted a day home. But, I thank her for it now. Things happen, all of the time, Life doesn’t stop around you, and neither should you.

Look times have changed. In my day I always had some quarters and I used pay phones to call my mom to keep her informed of my movements or if I needed her. Those do not exist anymore. I also used house phones at my friend’s house to call her. Most homes don’t even have house phones anymore. So yes, cell phones are a little more necessary now than they were before and there is nothing wrong with that.

And this is coming from someone with no smart phone but just a 10 year old flip phone she only uses for calls.

To paraphrase “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people”, phones and GPS don’t tether people, prevent them planning properly, or make kids unable to function.

The failure of the college kids not knowing how to do stuff is a parental failure at home, not he fault of an inanimate object. While growing up, I was taught to cook, do laundry, hem and do other minor sewing work. If there were repairs needed on the house, my father talked me through it. Parents not introducing self sufficiency is the problem. Not the phone.

And while 1/2 mile on a road with scrapes is reasonable, is that same distance reasonable with a broken ankle, when weight on it will cause further, more permanant damage?

Just because we shouldn’t get overly panicked about hazards doesn’t mean we should take pride in not taking reasonable precautions, and reasonable precautions can enable greater risks. A GPS can easily mean the difference between staying in town and going 5-10 miles into the country.

In my case, I’ll be getting one for myself. http://outdoorsafetygps.com/ I go backpacking, and am looking at a backcountry trip with no trails in Colorado. Even as someone very experienced and skilled, since I have a family, I could never justify that risk. The flip side is people without those skills not prepping properly and taxing the emergency service with their stupidity. Again….just a tool. Good use/bad use.

I don’t believe any device can replace responsibility and communication skills between parent and child.
I think GPS child trackers exist to make nervous parents feel better, especially ones who need to know where their child is every minute. Makes me miss the dinner bell I had growing up.

Whoever mentioned long range walkie-talkies as a communication method-YES! We had these when are kids were younger (we got motorola ones cheap on amazon)and they used them for games at parks and for when they went all around the neighborhood and we had to get them home for dinner (but they usually came home by 6 anyway. They also enjoyed some of the interference calls from truckers, etc. who yelled at them to get off their line. I highly recommend them.

As for the direction of child tracking, I am placing money on the child electric fence coming as a legit way to corral kiddies. Treating kids like they are mindless cattle who have to be tracked and chipped and not as capable, independent future leaders who can actually figure out to come home when they are hungry.

Emily, come home when the street lights come on doesn’t work all that well in the summer time when dinner is at 6 and the family eats dinner together. It’s fine for other times of year or after dinner in the summer time if there’s nowhere else you’ve planned to be, but sometimes an agreed upon coming-home time is appropriate. But as I said above, my response to Tannis is that she should have face-palmed herself and then reminded herself not to do it again, not turned to intrusive technology so she’s always be within device-reach to prevent such a minor issue from cropping up again.

pentamom: ha no actually. when I was a kid in the 90s as I said on another thread when I was upper elementary school I spent a ton of time staying at friend’s houses some lived near me within walking distance, some did not. My one best friend C had parents who worked. So we were alone all day at her house with her brother who was about 3 years older.

So if no house phone, then no way to call home unless the kids had a phone too. But then you still go with kids having a phone so why not your kid?

Or I had friends whose mom would go over to a neighbor’s or run to the store and then again, no phone if no house phone.

This is a difficult one for me. In large part, I agree with Lenore. A GPS device is way too much omniscience.

Yet, just the other day, I was musing on just how awesome communication technology is and, indeed, how grateful I am for it. I love that in emergencies we have so many new instant ways to get a hold of one another.

Then I go through that thought process and balk at my use of the word “emergency”.

Yes, all that technology is great in an emergency. And I realize that emergencies spring up out of the blue. But should we treat every excursion as a potential emergency?

Since they do spring up out of the blue whether you are free range or not, perhaps there is a tiny niche for prudent use of technology. I love the idea of cell phones to replace the payphones of yore (and yes, even the vocal call and the dinner bell.) I love that those phones could even become useful in case of actual emergency.

My thought process really is more “be prepared” than “helicopter fear monger”, I hope. I’m sure we all love being prepared.

GPS for everyday playing is a bit much, but perhaps there is room in Free range thinking for technology?

I think the biggest problem with GPS and cell phones for kids is that they do become a crutch. Once you send your kid out with a GPS, you’ll never want them to not have it. You’ll feel out of sorts if they forget it at home. It will become a necessity in your mind, whereas before you got it they were fine without it. Annoying to track down, but fine.

I too have a kid who makes a habit of making me wander all over the neighborhood looking for him. But I’d much rather work on his responsibility, trustworthiness, and logistics skills, than have this constant way to know exactly what he’s up to at any given moment.

The walkie-talkies are a great convenience and let the kids wander about and provide changes of plans without bothering anyone.

We bought them for a cruise… much cheaper than paying for cruise-activated cell phones and hundreds of dollars cheaper than our own cell phones (bought for grown-ups on the cruise).

I’ve told this story several times. My daughter’s bus had a new driver. There are only a few kids on the bus. My daughter and her friend (they were 4th grade) my son (he was 2nd) and a K girl. Maybe one or two others. The bus driver was crazy. He stopped the bus at a busy intersection in a city away from the K kids stop, and yelled at her to get off the bus. My kids stood up and told K kid not to get off the bus – there was no adult, and they knew it was the wrong stop. The bus moved on, finally stopped somewhere else and he told all of the kids to get off. They refused, and managed to direct the bus to where it was supposed to go. Everyone got off at the correct place. They were really shaken when they got off the bus, but my fourth grader looked at me and said “if I had a cell phone, that never would have happened.” I constantly go back to that even, I remind her that if she had a cell phone, she would have called me to deal with it, and she was perfectly capable. She did an amazing job in a very difficult situation. In the end, dealing with that day has given her unsurmountable confidence in her abilities. At fifth grade graduation this week, the teacher had one word she associated with each child – my child’s word was “independence.”

Personally I do not like having to make my kids “Beggars” in the sense of they will always have to ask to borrow a phone. Some people have limited minutes and even if they are willing to let my kid borrow their phone that is taking away their precious minutes. So I would rather just get them their own cheap little one or even let them borrow mine for when they are going to be out roaming or away from home. We still have a home phone. It is not everyone else’s job to be constantly letting my kid borrow their phone.

Which that has not changed much. Back when my mom used to drop me at the movie theater or the mall I could borrow a phone from one of the stores, but she told me to take quarters and use the pay phone or even call collect over bothering those people. She instilled in me a sense of personal responsibility to plan ahead and not expect other people to rescue me in a sense.

The “predator alert” feature is what got to me. The sex offender registry is full of people who did things like download porn on the internet or have a girlfriend who was 17 when they were 21. The damn thing would be going off all the time.

Since we live in a cul de sac and the kids only play by themselves with other kids within the cul de sac, we used a whistle for “get home now.” But if we let them go farther afield, which sometimes happen, that wouldn’t work. That’s why we always pre-arrange a time, and they wear watches. The younger ones always wanted to wear watches anyway.

Everyone is talking about the kids reaching the parents. I want my child to be reachable for ME. Not to helicopter, but because I sometimes get bored hanging out at hone and want to go do something spontaneously. Even if she isn’t going to come, I like to tell her that I am going. She’s not ready for a phone, but walkie talkies are a good idea.

“Everyone is talking about the kids reaching the parents. I want my child to be reachable for ME.”

Yes. Not because they won’t be safe without my being able to reach them, but sometimes I have a reason to want them home. Plans change for moms, too. Or sometimes plans were already existing, but mom forgot to remind the kid about them, which brings us back to the OP.

It’s not like kids need to frequently contact their parents during their free time. When I was young, nobody had a cell phone (or voice mail) and my parents didn’t give us money for pay phones. My parents both worked; my dad was not to be bothered at work except for a dire emergency, while my mom didn’t have a car, so we got ourselves home in every situation (with the help of friends / siblings).

I can’t remember one single incident where I called my parents. A few times other people called my parents to inform them of unwise choices I made, though. Were there a couple times I should have called if it were easy, sure. Like the times I decided to take my toddler brother shopping and, due to issues unforeseen by me, ended up coming home quite late. Or the time my sister lied and told me she & I had permission to go to a friend’s house (in another city) after school – it would have been nice to be able to call my mom and check before hopping on the friend’s school bus. 😛 But generally there was no need for a cell phone call. If a call was necessary it was usually done on our land line after we got home from school and before we took off for free-range destinations.

Nor do I recall many kids asking me to use my cell phone. I think this did happen one time (I offered because a kid had been dropped off at school though it was a snow day), but it was not irritating to me. I was happy to be able to do the community thing for a change.

Point being, it’s not like sending a kid out without a cell phone is going to mean our kids constantly begging to make calls from annoyed people’s phones.

Warren, it must be nice to not have to worry about a grocery budget.

In the summer–when we tend to have kids over a lot–I don’t teach and our grocery budget is about $100/week for a family of five. There isn’t a ton of wiggle room. My kids don’t get to graze at will all day; the kids who come by to play in our yard don’t, either. When I had fewer kids who ate less food, I used to be less strict about it, and had numerous times where, by opening up the fruit basket to the kids playing in the yard, ended up with all fhe fruit I’d bought for the week eaten in an afternoon, or by opening up the pantry, had a week’s worth of snacks eaten in a couple of hours. Or the juice that was supposed to last us a week drank up in thirty minutes.

If I happen to have enough of something on hand that I can share it with whatever kids are over and not run out of food before the week is over, I’ll do so. I made two dozen cookies last weekend, and gave half a dozen for my kids to bring over to their friends who live next door. And certainly if it’s arranged in advance that a friend will be spending the day, I’ll provide them with food when my kids get it.

But, no, you can’t come by my house, ask if my kids can come outside to play, and then start asking for stuff. I don’t know if you’ve dealt with very pushy neighborhood kids, but I’ve been doing it for years, and I’ve had to learn to set boundaries. If you live three houses over and get hungry, it’s time to go home, at least for a bit, to have a snack. If you need to use the bathroom, go use it at your house (which I learned to do after I’ve had kids end up in all rooms in our house–including mine–going through stuff, coming outside with toys that are not outdoor toys, and in the case of one kid trying to sneak off with stuff). If it’s hot, I’ll bring out a big jug of water and a bunch of cups, but that’s it.

Unfortunately, there are both parents who don’t teach their kids appropriate boundaries when being a guest, and lots of kids who haven’t yet learned those lessons when their parents are trying to teach them. I certainly wouldn’t want my son to walk over to a neighbor’s house and, ten minutes later, start bugging them for juice and cookies. He knows that’s not appropriate. My own kids aren’t allowed to do that–they can snack at snack times, and between that they can drink water. I’ve become much stricter about enforcing my house rules even with guests, simply because otherwise things become extremely chaotic very fast (especially since it’s not super uncommon, on a summer day, for us to have 4-8 neighbor kids end up playing with the kids in front of our house either all at once or at various times).

I used to try to be the “nice mom” who would give visiting kids anything they asked for. I was miserable. I’d spend hours each day fetching food and drinks and various items for visitors and trying to track them down as they went in and out of my house at will, and I’d end up counting the hours until they would finally go home (and the days until they’d be back at school). It was a silly on my part, and was not helping these kids learn appropriate boundaries (the same way I hope my neighbors and friends help my kids learn appropriate boundaries when they are guests).

I’m with you, Lenore. The GPS app is just too tempting for control-hungry parents, and it sends a terrible message to kids. Of course the web site emphasizes “independence” — no one would buy it if it said, “Spy on your kids!” But that’s exactly what parents would do. They would check it regularly just to know where the kids are. Prepare them beforehand and then let ’em roam a bit!

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

My neighborhood has a lot of larger families. The two families who live closest to us on either side each have five kids, and within a couple-of-block radius there’s a few more families with three kids whose kids come by sometimes, and one family a block over who I think has seven or eight, a few of whom might come by. We live in an urban neighborhood and most people have small yards, but there is this enormous, well-maintained field that the owners are fine with people using right across from our house that is great for running around and playing games with lots of kids, so we get a lot of kid traffic here. Our house can easily become a public canteen and bathroom if I’m not strict.

We had a similar problem with the feeding of the neighborhood children. They would eat all our fruit which can really get expensive and inconvenient. So I taught them they had to ask first. It wasn’t a big deal. Now I buy big boxes of saltines specifically for the neighborhood pack of kids. Crackers are cheap. They’ll keep the kids from starving, but no one gets excited about them. When kids come in saying they’re hungry, I offer the crackers. Many times they say “no thanks,” and some kids just stopped asking for food once they caught on. Sometimes kids will take a sleeve of them if they truly are hungry.

When my oldest was about 3, he was playing at a neighbor’s house, and the mom let him inside to use the bathroom. She came over to get me (we lived about two houses apart) a few minutes later to let me know that he had decided to poop on the bathroom floor, rather than in the toilet. I’m sure she was sorry she had broken her normal outside-only rule for kids who were playing over there.

My kids are cracker monsters. They could devour a box of Saltines between the three of them alone in probably twenty minutes. And the way a lot of their friends eat, I’m sure they’d do the same.

I’m especially cranky about this this summer because I’m currently 35 weeks pregnant, and I’m at the point of feeling like, if you are going to allow your kids to come over to my house unannounced, at least have the courtesy to tell them not to ask me for stuff. So many times I’ve had kids see that I’m drinking water and immediately, first thing, want me to go inside and get them a glass. Kid, you should be offering to get me a refill, not asking me to get up and get you stuff.

I think this is where something that has some up before–the difference between being free range and just being kind of lazy and expecting other people to do stuff for your kids that you could do for them or they could do for themselves–comes in. It’s one thing to let your kid freely roam the neighborhood all day. That’s totally cool with me, and it’s totally cool with me if they end up in my yard or the field across from my house for hours. But, it’s not “free range” to expect that other parents in the neighborhood are going to make sure your child is fed, watered, and given access to a bathroom during all that time. (This is also why I don’t think cellphones are a replacement for payphones; I don’t want my kids having to ask neighbors if they can borrow expensive gadgets that they probably don’t know how to use; I’d rather they have some way, whether it be a cellphone or GPS or walkie talkie, to contact me without having to bother an adult–an emergency is diferent, of course, but I’m talking about just regular everyday communication they might want to have with me or I might want to have with them.) If they are going to be gone all day, either tell them to come home for meals, or have them pack food to bring with them. Send them off with a water bottle, etc., so they can actually be somewhat self-sufficient, instead of just asking other adults for the stuff that you don’t want them bugging you about all day.

Again, my usual annoyance with pushy kids is much worse this summer due to being pregnant, but I do think part of what allows kids to roam neighborhoods on their own and adults being okay with it is if parents teach their kids appropriate boundaries.

I do think we should resist the tendency to idealize our own childhoods. The question shouldn’t be, IMO, how do I recreate for my child the child I had but how do I provide them with the kind of childhood they need and deserve in 2014? The world *is* different now, not in a “It’s more dangerous!” way (we all know that’s not true), but in the sense that things always change. My parents didn’t have GPS or cellphones when they raised me, but they also didn’t have the internet, Netflix streaming video, Ergo baby carriers, or little squeeable containers of yogurt and applesauce, all of which I will happily incorporate into my parenting. Just because something is new does not necessarily mean it’s bad, and just because something isn’t strictly necessary doesn’t mean we can’t employ it in healthy ways.

All of these things are tools. That’s it. I don’t think we need to eschew all post-1995 technology out of a belief that somehow the problem today is the technology itself. It’s not. It’s the fear that motivates a lot of people to use the technology. But, if we find that we can utilize new technology in non-fear-based ways that suit our family’s needs, I don’t see any reason to not do so. Every argument being made against cellphones or GPS here could have been made against regular phones, TVs, radios, and telegrams. I’m not saying that every use of GPS devices or cellphones is good–clearly that’s not true–but the same is true of every new technology. The thing we need to do is figure out if and how we can usefully incorporate a technology into our parenting, not just rejecting anything new.

Anonymous Mom has hit the nail squarely on the head. Just because the Internet, Netflix, GPS systems, cell phones/smartphones, iPads, etc., exist, doesn’t mean they’re destroying all those who use them, especially children, and just because we have access to more sensationalist news stories, doesn’t mean the world is actually more dangerous than it was when I was a kid, or when Lenore was a kid. So, I’m not a parent, but I agree that it’s possible to incorporate these modern inventions into positive parenting–I mean, what’s the harm in sending kids outside to play, and then wrangling them inside when it’s dark and setting them up in front of the plasma-screen TV to watch Frozen, or in front of the computer screen to Skype with friends and family members who live too far away to make frequent in-person contact feasible? I mean, leaving kids to rot in front of screens and shovel down junk food 24/7 is bad, but teaching kids how to use technology appropriately can be a positive thing. For example, where a child of the 80’s might have written a letter, or called Grandma on the telephone to thank her for Spirograph she sent her for her birthday, a child of this generation would be able to actually go on Skype, and say, “Hey, Grandma, I really love the Rainbow Loom you got me. Here, look, I just finished this starburst bracelet.” You wouldn’t send a child out into the real world with no guidance whatsoever, so you probably shouldn’t allow a child to navigate the online/digital world completely independently right from the beginning either. Also, final thought–when I was in grade three, and I read “Anne of Green Gables” for the first time, I was shocked to learn that people of that generation thought that BOOKS (other than the Bible) were a negative influence, especially on females.

I am kind of on the fence on this. I don’t have these GPS things for my kids, but a friend does. When we all went camping in the mountains, we had the kids pair up and go their own ways. Everyone got to see pretty much what they wanted to see, and the parents had a way of finding them if they didn’t come back to camp.

At home, eh. I either go outside and holler, ring the dinner bell, or if I think they are inside another friend’s house, I get on Face Book and message the parents to send them home. If they go off riding bikes, I usually send my phone with them. Not because I am going to call them, but because we have this horrible plant around here called a Goat Head, and it will put holes in your tire in nothing flat. Including ones that have Slime and liners. So, yes, if they want to call me to pick them up if they have a flat, I really don’t care.

And when it comes down to it, I guess I must be a helecopter parent, because I ask my kids to let me know where they are going before they go, and if they leave the place they were going, I ask that they tell the parent there where they are going. It is not perfect, sometimes I have to search because they forget, but the kids from 3-4 families tend to roam around and it is easier to say they went on to Y’s house after mine when a parent comes looking for a kid.

It is not free range to let kids have free reign over their diet. Now maybe teenagers or tweens who have learned to make good food choices. But letting a kid eat whatever they want, whenever they want is why we have so many obese kids in this country. If your kids make good food choices, good for your family.

I would not advise any parent to keep that policy of they can raid the fridge and pantry and go nuts with junk food and snacks whenever they want. Because most kids don’t make good food choices by nature. We had to start putting crackers up out reach of my autistic son because he kept sneaking in there and eating a whole box of crackers. If doing that makes me anti free range, so be it. I don’t want a kid with diabetes.

You teach kids to have good food choices, but you also have to enforce it if necessary. I think it is actually more free range and good parenting that our house rule is if you eat between meals it has to be fruit or nothing unless you ask first and most of the time my answer is still fruit or nothing. It makes them learn to eat what is offered at meal times and wait and be patient.

Kids who need to be constantly eating or drinking things (besides water) drive me batty.

If kids have the ability to go nuts on junkfood in the house, the entire household pantry needs adjusting. My kid has pretty much free reign over our kitchen. I will occasionally tell her to get out because it is too close to dinner, but otherwise she can help herself to whatever she can make herself (I don’t prepare snacks) throughout the day. I also keep very little by way of junk in the house so pretty much anything in the kitchen is healthy. And she snacks a few times a day. In fact, regular meals other than dinner are kinda rare on the weekends. My little snacker comes in at a whopping 3rd percentile in weight. Snacking is absolutely not causing the obesity problems. Snacking on CRAP is certainly contributing, but not snacking itself.

I want my kids to be hungry when they come home for dinner.

@Donna, same here! All my kids are underweight, have just been told Midge is well under the first percentile for weight :-). And they virtually snack whenever they want, long as they can fit in dinner….

Could be, of course, that the percentiles are crap! 🙂

On other stuff, off topic but would be interested in ideas, I am not a ‘good’ free ranger at the moment – recently did one of Midge’s assignments virtually for her! First time, but I didn’t feel guilty …. the darn thing was pages of crap of a budgeting assignment that added to nothing if, as all the girls did, you missed that neither parent was working full time. Appears either the teacher was trying to get the girls involved in labour issues (i.e. what do you do if your employer is paying you below minimum wage?) or teacher was simply out-of-date/lazy about the figures (below minimum wage input, lack of correct output from Min. of Social Development about correct entitlements).

Anyone got an opinion on whether I should have helped her, or just told her to go back to the teacher for the correct figures? Can’t believe I’m rambling about this, but was one huge piece of homework that required at least a modicum of adult input (even the ‘poor’ kids I teach whose families are dependent on some of these entitlements aren’t able to find their way around Government websites – you have to be of a minimum age to log on to them), and way more than a modicum of help if they were going to learn anything from it. Felt like they were being set up to fail!

Sorry about the rant, have good evenings :-).

Hineata, how old is your daughter?

Sometimes my kids get assignments that the teacher couldn’t rationally believe they could do by themselves. Since my kids are in private school, they could get kicked out if we were too uncooperative, so I choose to go along. In those cases, I figure out what the girls *can* do and I structure/manage the project accordingly. For example I have dug in the basement for books on topic, and broke their projects down into manageable steps, giving suggestions / corrections along the way. It can take days to do it this way, but I don’t want the girls to think they are not responsible for their homework. Not sure if they learned any study skills or not. 😛 The last one was a research paper on a famous inventor or explorer, complete with title page, bibliography, illustrations, and a list of about 12 other specific requirements. Plus it had to be presented orally as well as written/typed. My kids are 7 and just finished 2nd grade. 😛

If my kids were in public school, and were assigned a ridiculous project, I would probably tell the teacher that either my kids would not be doing the project, or that I felt the project was inappropriate but I’d let them spend __ hour(s) on it and turn in whatever they came up with on their own.

I tell my child to eat when she is hungry … and no other time. I may make her wait if it is within an hour or so of dinner (if we are actually eating dinner), but otherwise she can eat if she is hungry. In fact, pretty much every nutritionist will tell that going hungry for extended periods of time is the worst thing you can do for your diet. The longer you are hungry, the more your body craves fat and sugar and the more likely you are to gorge yourself when you get food.

Food just really isn’t a big deal at our house. I haven’t made it a battleground, nor is it a big emphasis in our life. Unless we are going out, dinner isn’t even that important. I’m not a big nighttime eater so will often just skip it. She’s content with me throwing together something simple for her.

And she is still perfectly capable of functioning in school. She understands that rules and routines are different at school and home (and friends’ houses and grandma’s and …) and can adapt.

And, no, Dolly, people are not becoming obese by overeating fruits and vegetables.

“I know some overweight kids that eat healthy. Even too much cheese, fruit, nuts, veggies, meat, etc can make you fat if you eat too much of it.”

Too much of nut or meat (especially fat type) is not healthy food. It might not be junk food, but that still does not equal healthy. On the other hand, no one ever got fat from eating too much of raw fruits and veggies. At worst, eating them whole day will make the child eat somewhat smaller dinner.

Reread my post. I said fruits and veggies are okay to eat anytime but other things are not. Warren said he has all types of food available at all times and I said that was not a good idea unless your kids are really good at healthy food choices and self control. Then someone said they only have healthy food at home so their kid will not get fat and that is not always true either. If you eat a grilled chicken breast which is generally considered healthy but eat 10 of them, you are still going to get fat.

I like Ellyn Satter’s food philosophy, which is largely about division of responsibility in feeding (with the child increasing the amount of responsibility they have and the parent lessening the amount they take on as the child ages), and try to follow it. For littler kids, the division of responsibility is that the parent chooses what foods to provide and when to provide them, and the child chooses whether to eat, which of the available foods to eat, and how much of the available foods to eat. As they get older, they get more responsibility for planning and preparing meals. It makes sense to me. If I asked my oldest to put together a menu for the week, he’d probably do a decent job of having a variety of balanced meals. If I asked my 4yo to do the same, we’d likely eat nothing but Lucky Charms, strawberry smoothies, and pizza. Again, being free-range doesn’t mean placing developmentally-inappropriate demands on kids, like expecting a very small child to be able to make good choices about what to eat without adult guidance.

Dolly, you are just an idiot with major issues. The first two items listed were fruits and veggies, then junk food.
And if you cannot teach your kids balance in their choices that is your failure. I did not fail my kids that way.
As for junk food, it is not candy and chocolate bars. It is chips, cookies, crackers, nuts, granola bars, and the like. Yes they are junkfood.
But when my girls would have sleepovers………damn right they loaded up on sugar and crap. That is part of a sleepover.

We are on a well, that has to be put through a softener, so we all get bottled water, including the animals, because of the softening salt. And at less than 2 bucks a case of water, I will hydrate every kid in town if they are thirsty.

Y’all are a bunch of extremists. Just because someone says they would not say no to snacks does not mean that all the kids need to go to Jenny Freaking Craig.

I will put the diet, health and fitness of myself and my family up against anyone here, anyday.

And if kids are over at your place with your kids, it is down right deplorable not to feed them.

I should clarify, as I mentioned above, I won’t NEVER feed a child at my house. If one of my kids invites a friend over and that friend is here for a meal or snack, they join us. My oldest just asked today to have a friend over, we picked him up an ice cream when my kids got some on our way to get him, and he’ll be joining us for lunch and probably dinner. That’s totally fine.

I’m not talking about having an extra child or maybe two join the family for a meal once or twice a week. I’m talking about kids who live close who aren’t that good friends with my kids and who might come over to play in groups of 3 or 5 or 7 every day. If, as sometimes happen, 4 of the 5 kids who live in the house at the end of the block ring our bell to see if my kids can play, that’s cool. It’s not cool to start asking me to get them stuff, to think they now have a free pass to enter my house whenever they want, or to feel like they have free access our food. Or, as has happened, to come over when they are actually playing at their own houses just to ask me if they can have a snack. Uh, no. If we were talking about families in dire poverty, I’d probably assume the kids were hungry and feed them. (My son, when he was smaller, had a good friend whose mom was really, really struggling, and we know he wasn’t getting regular meals at home, and he was always welcome to join us for food.) But these are kids who have enough to eat at home and whose parents just probably didn’t want to get them a snack right then. That doesn’t make it my job to provide it, and that absolutely is mooching/begging for food and being pushy. And it’s rude.

I’m not blaming the parents, because I know kids often act in ways contrary to what their parents teach. I have one friend whose daughter, every single time she sees me, asks me if she can eat dinner at my house that night, and her mom ALWAYS reminds her it’s rude to invite yourself over to people’s homes. But she still does it every time I see her. So I’m not blaming parents, but I don’t think it’s behavior adults are required to enable.

I think a watch will foster independence much more than a GPS.

Not that I understand why this is an issue. The kid will come home when they get hungry enough. At worse, they’ll have to re-heat their dinner in the microwave, or they’ll eat at a friend’s house.

I personally don’t mind “food moochers” or whatever you want to call them. As an adult, if I have a friend over for hours I offer them food and/or drink before they have to ask. I teach my kids to do the same. So, I expect them to be able to get a bit of food/drink at a friend’s house. I teach them not to ASK for it, but being the type of family that offers tends to mean that the reverse happens – their friends offer when they are over there.

It’s rude to ask for food and drink; but it’s equally rude to eat/drink and not offer your friends some.

We do have a food budget. But it isn’t so tight that giving a friend a snack is going to break it. If it were that tight, then unpredictable things like a kid needing to eat more because of a growth spurt would be an issue, and imo it’s irresponsible to put your family in that position. If the food runs out, then the food budget obviously doesn’t cut it anymore and it needs immediate adjustment.

Anyway, it all evens out – I’m paying for Joe’s snack today, but Joe’s family is paying for my kid’s snack tomorrow.

We also have food allergies, but I teach my kids to deal with those allergies. They can’t be independent if I have to constantly monitor what they eat for them.

As for contacting a kid because you want to leave the house… in the past, people would have just left a note and went to the store.

“I don’t expect other people to know my kids’ nutrition issues, nor do I expect to know those of other kids.”

This is why I expect kids to know THEIR OWN issues and not eat something that isn’t compatible with those issues.

If your kid can’t handle that, maybe they aren’t ready to be in situations where it’s an issue.

A kid that is allergic to apples – if left to his own devices without being taught how to deal with his allergy – could find an unowned apple tree and decide to eat from it.

If I am playing hostess meaning I invited the guests over then I will usually offer all kinds of refreshments. For playdates at my house that are scheduled I provide cupcakes or brownies or some kind of treat and offer fruit and goldfish and water and juice and whatever else. Same for parties during a meal time. I provide a meal.

But if the kids just happen to start playing in my yard or migrate into my house from the neighborhood randomly that is not really my job to host them. I would offer water or if I had some snacks on hand that is fine, but that is a lot different than a set invitation.

If your kids just showed up on my doorstep Warren I would be happy to let them play with my kids and if I had some snacks on hand to offer I might. But it can’t be an every day thing and it is different than if I called you up and invited you specifically over on Tuesday at 10. In that case I make sure I have refreshments available.

Dolly,
Don’t worry about it. As I have said before I wouldn’t allow my kids within miles of your unstable mind. Besides, you have already said that you don’t answer the door for those uninvited anyway. So keep being rude and antisocial, it works for you.

LOL, and she wonders why the neighbors don’t like her.

Thanks for the two-way radio suggestion! I hadn’t realized they made them with such a range. I don’t want to get my son a phone, but having a radio seems like a nice compromise that could help me talk my husband into letting him go to the playground by himself.

Didn’t know being able to afford groceries was privelaged?

I work for my money, nothing privelaged about it. There is a lot of stress, sweat, and blood in that grocery budget.

So some of you are saying I must not let my kids out because they have metabolism issues?

Why does play time always have to equal snack time? Is there no value in getting together if there isn’t food involved? If that’s how some people feel, good, because we don’t need those kinds of “friends.”

“because we don’t need those kinds of “friends.””

Eeek.

Well I suppose that works if you pre-screen your kids’ friends, or only allow them to be friends with members of families you’re also friends with.

Personally, I don’t do that. I don’t decide my friends based on their eating habits. I don’t get along with most parents, and the very few friends I have that are parents were my friends long before they were parents and live too far away for our kids to be friends.

My kids make their own friends. I’m not going to become friends with the parents simply because our kids are friends and I’m not going to tell my kids what “type” of people they can be friends with. I don’t debrief my kids’ friends’ parents on what my kids’ issues and expect them to remember and cater to them.

Because of that, I mostly don’t know if their friends are the type to offer my kid something they are allergic to. Therefore, I rely on educating my kids.

And I’m going to say: if your kids have some sort of food issue, and you’re refusing to educate them about how to stay safe despite of that, then letting them out without someone that DOES know how to keep them safe despite of that is unsafe. Educate them, and then let them out.

Or doom them to a life of nothing but approved “friends.” My kids won’t pass the pre-screen so I’m not worried.

@Amanda, I don’t disagree with anything you say. I don’t think it’s wrong, at all, to offer a snack, or for a child to accept a snack offered. I don’t think it’s wrong for kids to snack or to share their snacks with friends (and by that I mean share *their* snack, not raid the pantry and eat up the entire week’s worth of snacks in an hour with friends).

But, I assume that you do teach your kids that it’s not cool to go to a friend’s house uninvited, ask if they can hang out, and then start asking for food. Or, for your kid to show up at a friend’s house uninvited, and then ask if they can stay for dinner, and, when the parent politely tells them no, start asking “Why not?” and demanding an explanation. I assume that if your kids are playing outside with other kids who live on the block, and they get hungry, you’d want them to get food from your house, not head over to a neighbor’s house to ask for food. And, if they have to use the bathroom in that situation, they’d come in and use yours instead of going to a neighbor’s house and asking to use their bathroom.

That’s what I was complaining about, not the idea of providing snacks for children who you had agreed to host that day or children eating snacks, period. I’m just talking about what to me seems like egregiously rude behavior, which honestly makes summertime a bit miserable for me, because, again, I spend enough time dealing with my own offspring’s egregiously rude behavior and trying to teach them out of that. I probably count the days until school starts up again more than any homeschooling parent in history, because I am so eager for the day when I’ll only have three ill-mannered, constantly-hungry little monsters to deal with again. 😉

I guess what it comes down to for me is that teaching other people’s kids manners and courtesy is not and should not be my job.

Amanda, I was not saying I screen friends. I don’t. But I also don’t go out of my way to attract “friends” by offering snacks and drinks that I normally would not even offer to my own kids.

My kids don’t have deathly food issues, but their health will suffer if they spend the summer scrounging snacks everywhere they go. One of mine puts on weight very easily, and the other won’t eat at meals if she snacks much.

And I made the point that I DO teach them not to ask for food, and also, we are not grazers here, so they are not in that habit. Scrounging food has not been a problem for us so far, nor do I foresee it becoming one.

I was simply responding to the attitude that I’m a sucky community member if I don’t arrange my life so that kids who stop by randomly will always get fed at my house. I don’t really think most parents want their kids grazing all the time when they are supposed to be out getting some exercise, fresh air, and social interaction.

There are a lot of chubby kids around here. Some people say “I don’t care what kids weigh,” but I care that my kids are generally healthy and not overweight, and most parents I know also care. For those who have kids who can eat all they want and not gain weight (or suffer other health problems), that is nice for them. It can make people underestimate the issue for the rest of us, though.

I am not a food hoarder. But…I grow a lot of my food. I spend hours getting the soil ready, weeding in the heat, and doing my best to grow healthy food for my family.

The year before last, I made two raised beds in my driveway for strawberries. Because my family likes to eat strawberries and whipped cream. Want to know how many my daughter, husband, and son each got? None. That is because a boy in the neighborhood, who has a sweet tooth, ate ALL of them. So now we have a new rule. He can have 1 berry each time he comes over so that the rest of the family can actually get some of the fruits of our labor. Same goes for other produce in the garden. I will share it, but dang, we have worked hard and want some too.

When in the house this kids will also eat all of my fruit that we get for the week if I do not put a limit on it. He can have one apple per visit. If he is still hungry, he can go home and eat. Otherwise, he is not going to starve. He is a sweet kid, but he insists that he needs to eat constantly, especially things that he is not supposed to have and things that I actually don’t let my kids have on a daily basis. (Like the juice boxes that we get for hiking.)

The rules that I have for visiting kids are NOT different than the rules that I have for my OWN kids. They are the house rules, and when kids visit, they are expected to follow the rules. I don’t let my kids climb and play on our tractors. Nor do I let neighbor friends do that. Our kids cannot chase our ducks and geese, neither can the friends.

What I am hearing from the above conversations is that most people are expecting the same from guests as from their kids. No one likes a rude hog. I will never forget one day when I was about 15, when we got a bushel of oysters. Shucking oysters is hard work, (unless you were my grandmother who was fast and knew the tricks.) My step brother, step sister and I work for hours getting all of those oysters ready for frying up for dinner – a treat we had once a year. Then a friend of my step father dropped by and stayed for dinner. When my mother brought out the plate of fried oysters, he took half the plate. None of us said anything but all of us were thinking the same thing: “What a RUDE A-Hole!” He had no idea how hard it was, how much they cost. Each of the 6 of us got about 6 oysters, he got about 20. He was never invited to stay again. And, that is what I am trying to teach my kids, and my neighbor’s kids. Don’t be rude – leave enough for everyone to enjoy – it is not there JUST for you, little snowflake! Moderation is important.

Okay Warren: If people don’t have to be mannerly enough to not smear peanut butter all over public tables and let it get into the pool, then I guess I don’t have to bother checking for kids behind me when I pull out of my parking space at the playground right? I mean why should I? My kids are buckled in their seats. Screw watching out for other people’s kids. If they get backed over that is their parent’s problems LOL. Oops!

No, that is not quite what Lenore had in mind when she said build a community. A community watches out for one another.

One of my things about free range I usually add in is “if the kids are well behaved”. If your kids cannot handle seeing a movie solo without acting up, than you better helicopter right on in there and supervise them. I don’t care if they are 16. Kids should only be allowed to independently roam around without their parents when they prove they can do so and follow the rules, behave, act politely, act safely.

So you do things like what I am doing now where I back off and let them handle it and watch how it goes, but I am there to jump in and make them act right if they blow it. Not to rescue them, but to rescue that poor store cashier from my kid being rude to them or rescue that poor kid my autistic son is now yelling at. Because I do have responsibility to my community and my fellow man to not let my kids bother them and be rude to them and to cause trouble.

Whenever Warren starts to lose an argument he resorts to insults and name calling. Same old same old.

@SKL, the problem is when neighbor kids come over and start using up all the supplies you’ve prepared for your own kids. Again, this isn’t unreasonable selfishness: I’m not talking about thirsty kids taking a glass of water to hold them over until they can get home and drink more. I’m talking about three kids coming over and having three huge glasses of water in a row each and suddenly the water jug intended to last for the whole afternoon is empty.

@Warren, you’d be surprised at how many kids, because they are denied adult attention all day, will desperately crave it from any other adult who’s willing to offer a smile and even half a willing ear. I don’t think many of their parents really think very much about various parenting philosophies, but I would caution people to consider if their “free-range” kid is actually being indepedent or is instead going to other adults for the things their parents aren’t doing for them (and may very rightfully not be doing for them).

But this is why teaching kids basic courtesy and respect for adults is important. Because I don’t *want* to be a hard-ass, and I’m not. I don’t want to have a “No, you can’t ever come in my house” rule or a “No, I will never give you food when you ask” rule. I don’t want to have a “Kids can’t ever play on the porch” rule. But, when you’ve got kids who will take a mile if given an inch–not because they are young, but because their parents have apparently never told them that making demands on the time, attention, and resources of neighbors on a regular basis is not okay–then you are in a hard spot. If parents aren’t teaching their kids not to invite themselves into people’s homes, not to invite themselves to people’s meals, and not to ask people for stuff–and then, if they do do those things, to take “no” for an answer and not continue to push the issue–then they are making life a lot harder for the people who are otherwise inclined to enjoy sometimes hosting the neighbors and sometimes bringing out snacks for all the kids and sometimes having a chat with a neighbor kid or two for an hour on the porch but don’t want to have it be an everyday expectation, where every single day they are having to either play neighborhood hostess or justify to child why they aren’t today.

Anon,
I don’t jump up and cater to them. If they ask for anything, they get the standard response, “You know where everything is, I am not your butler.”. And if they are new to the circle of friends, they are told to go see one of my kids. As from an early age I made sure that any guests over to see my kids are their responsibility, just as when my friends are over, I take care of them.
Standard rule in our place, I will get you your first drink, after that you know where the bar or fridge is.

And if they are not getting the attention at home, I just look at it as being a positive male influence in their life.

I think the neighborhood etiquette thing does fit in because that’s why I’m not comfortable with the idea of just telling my kids, basically, “If you ever need to call, ask somebody to borrow their cellphone.” And why I like the walkie-talkie idea.

Cellphones are expensive and not particularly hard to break. If it was a genuine emergency, by all means I’d be fine with my kids asking somebody to use their cellphone. But if they just want to let me know they have changed plans or to ask if they can stay out later or just to check in about something, I’m not comfortable with the idea of them asking to borrow a cellphone. That’s especially true if they are older. I don’t want to put people in the position of having to figure out if this kid is trying to steal their phone or really wants to borrow it, if the kid can be trusted to not break the phone, or to have to feel badly if they don’t want to lend the kid their phone.

I’m not anti-sharing, but I’m not in favor of the presumption that other people MUST share with my kids. If I think my child might need to contact me, I do think I need to figure out a way to allow them to do that independently, rather than just assuming that it’s the job of other adults around to lend them a cellphone.

I agree with E that because people are so protective of their tech, that common courteousy has gone out the window.

Besides when we were out and about, and same with my kids, and the group changed plans, we either all jumped on our bikes and went home to check in, or we went to the nearest house of one of the group and all called home from there.

If money is so tight that you cannot lend a kid a cell call, change carriers or lose the cellphone altogether. Without the cellphone, you can afford more snacks for your kids friends.

Lollipop lover: and thanks for acting like you know more than my allergist. According to him my son will never outgrow his allergy. It might even get more severe over time. But what does that man know right? Medical school means jack when some random person wants to have an opinion to insult you. LOL

E, I’m with you. If you don’t give a kid a phone for a significant period of time after it becomes clear that he’s going to need a phone regularly or frequently, and just expects that he can always borrow one, that’s being a mooch. But if the occasional unusual situation comes up where he might need to borrow one and does, no. People who do not have landline phones in their homes are not paying by the minute or begrudging younger kids who come over a one or two-minute call home in an unforeseen situation. They expect their phones will be used the way phones normally are, not the way our grandmothers regarded long-distance calls.

I don’t know where anyone got the idea that people are opposing giving phones to kids who are old enough to spend lots of time on their own without having informed their parents where they are and what they’re doing, more than a couple minutes’ walk or bike ride from home. We’re talking about no, your 9 year old does not need their own phone just because they might walk down the street and you forget to tell them when to come home.

I think the problem in the OP here is that people confuse “making sure this won’t happen again” with “making sure this CAN’T happen again.” A rule of thumb might be that if the situation is really not all that terrible, an intervention that makes sure it “can’t” happen is overkill. Stick to finding ways to make sure it won’t, not that it can’t.

Lollipop lover: There is no cure or documented reason why anyone outgrows any food allergy. The only thing they can tell you is to avoid it and avoiding it gives you the best chance. Thus why I was concerned that the peanut butter would get on him when he was swimming in the small kiddie pool about 4 feet by 4 feet. Not really anyway to avoid her. And you are right it was also against the rules to eat by the pool.

They don’t even know what causes food allergies. For us it is prob genetics since his Dad has one too. So nothing you can do about that.

With every potential exposure or reaction it can actually increase your allergy. So yeah, you should not take any kind of exposure lightly. He was swimming and water gets in his mouth and she gets pb in the water, not a good situation. Which could be avoided if people had enough manners and sense to not eat in the pool and clean up after eating,

Dolly, with the social skills you have talked about and demonstrated, it would be oh so much better to talk with the lifeguard. Because if you handled it, the way you come across in here, the mother of said kid would probably drop you.

Don’t care what allergy it is, you and your kid are the only ones responsible. Stop expecting the rest of the world to change to accomodate your kid.

Dolly- I personally would have done neither. I would simply avoid contact and take a short walk while it takes the kid minutes to finish the sandwich.
Second choice would be to ask the lifeguard if food was permitted in the pool and let him/her enforce pool rules.
Last choice would be to call out the parent directly for her parenting fail and tell her “to please make sure they clean up good” like there needs to be a hazmat decontamination suit on this kid. That to me is the opposite of polite.

I think SOA handled it fine. We’re always saying here that people shouldn’t run to the police first thing; why should they run to the lifeguard immediately? If I were inadvertently or non-maliciously breaking a pool rule and somebody were concerned, I’d rather they politely approached me about it rather than reporting me to the lifeguard.

Well to many people they think they should be able to do whatever they want with their peanut butter and people with allergies should just either never leave the house or go ahead and die.

So yeah, to many we should have just packed up and left even though we paid $300 for the pool membership and had every right to be there as they did and we were the ones following the rules.

A head nod would not have told that mom anything as she was too occupied with her 4 kids to probably know what the heck I would be nodding at. But apparently I am not allowed to even speak to other people. Yeah that builds community, not even speaking to other people lol.

She did not seem to be bothered by me saying something and certainly seemed happy that her kids were entertained playing with all the pool and water toys I brought. If I just packed up and left then her kids and my kids would have missed out on getting to play together in the baby pool with all the cool water toys. I mean you cannot talk about how important it is to build community than act like people can’t speak to each other or ask favors of each other or try to get along and hang out near each other.

@anonymous mom-
Please, for the love of mankind, say no to these kids.
If they ask more than once, tell them they need to go home first and ask their parents where babies come from and then come back and tell you the answer. Only then will give them water.

You are right when you say some kids are starved for attention. Pregnant women seem to attract kids in general (at least I did) and I remember how exhausting it was feeling I need to *take care* of other children who played with my own. You don’t. You’re pregnant and please chat them up and ask them about their days, what you should name the baby, etc. They clearly seek you out because they like you and want to interact with you. It doesn’t mean you operate Anonymous Mom’s Snack Shack. Those little buggers should be helping you out so you can sit and rest. Make them weed or do yard work and then reward them with an ice pop. Say “Kitchen’s closed” or “Asked and answered” for repeat requests then start asking them for stuff.
“Can you sweep my porch?Can you take my trash out?”
That will scatter them in no time.

Dolly
Yes we should do whatever we want with our peanut butter, and why the heck not it is our peanut butter.

When we leave the house for any reason at all, you kids food allergy does not concern us one bit.

You can control your home, but you cannot control what we do in public. Sucks to be you, but that is life.

You warn me or my kids that your kid is allergic to what they are eating, you will be politely told,”Sorry, best keep your kid away from us.”, because we would not be changing what we are doing or eating.

Oh and ps: I guess if she responded rudely I would have had to take all the toys back that were ours I was sharing with her kids and then they would have boo hooed about it. But oh well. If you are rude to me, you don’t get to share our toys. I am known around the pool as the cool toy mom because I bring a giant basket of water toys and several giant cool pool floats like sharks or alligators every time we come.

Actually, I take back how I would handle this. I wouldn’t. Not with the lifeguard or the mom. It’s completely irrational to think that an errant crumb from a sandwich eaten pool side would contaminate a pool and be a danger to an allergic child to drink the pool water.

You’re in the baby pool. Kids with shit-filled diapers are all around you. There is fecal matter in the pool and e.coli is more of a risk than anything else. Kids regularly pee in the pool which is why it is always warmer than the bigger pool. If your kid is drinking the water here, you have bigger problems than lecturing fellow pool members on your kid’s allergy and being rude to them by telling them to clean up good, like they are dirty people and you are the food patrol.

Our baby pool has an age limit of 5 years-old. Once my kids learned to swim (around 4) they wanted nothing to do with the dirty baby pool. You can keep your cool toy mom status and police your baby pool for food predators all you want. But your floaties and rafts are bathed in fecal matter and urine, not pbj sandwich residue. Maybe instead you should monitor the bathroom and make sure everyone washes their hands after using the toilet or watch for the grimacing toddler who’s making a loose deuce in his swimmy diaper. That is what makes kids sick at the pool. E. Coli and Giardia.

Dolly, do your community a favor. Let your kids go, but you stay home, to make it a much better world.

Actually you got me thinking Dolly.

In this day and age, those bullet proof blankets and white boards won’t do anything when the shooter is throwint peanut butter cookies at everyone.

My mom had a simple answer to this problem: a coach’s whistle. A good, loud, one. Mom would stand out in the yard and blow it, when she wanted someone not immediately in evidence. Kids, dogs, and even the cats were expected to show up pronto when the whistle blew. Then, Mom would sort out who she wanted. The whistle could be heard a block and a half away at the creek. I’m about to intiate the same procedure in our family, as it is easier than shouting.

Well SKL, I guess we’ll never know, because we have a very open door policy with our kids friends, and our neighbors. Hell I cannot remember the last time we locked the doors.

I would rather have my property filled with playing kids, than all that space doing nothing. And when we want it quiet, we just kick em out. It is not complicated.

You may not like my in your face ways, but that is what you get here, when it is always about issues. Personally I cannot stand all you fence sitters, that hide behind the “you have to pick your battles” mantra. Experience has shown me that those people never pick their battles. They yip and yap, but never do anything.

And I really do not give a rat’s ass who likes me or not, in here.

Dolly, I am just curious as to why your 7 year-olds are swimming in the baby pool? Do they like wadding in shallow water vs. swimming or is this your decision to not let them in the big pool with kids their own age?

Our pool is very strict about enforcing the rule of no children over 5 in the baby pool. Older children tend to play rougher (or have cool pool toys like squirt guns that splash the babies). Baby pools are designed for very small children to play safely. They are brimming with polluted diapers and children with no control of their bladders. Most parents would not want their 2 yo toddler to get knocked over by a 7 year-old on a crocodile float.

@crazycatlady- I was a lifeguard for years growing up and lectured many children on the contents of the pool water to stop them from spitting it on each other. Those in the know. My only two *saves* as a lifeguard were for a choking incident (I gave the heimlich to an 8 yo who ate a snow cone from the ice cream man with the gumball at the bottom. The gumball was lodged in his throat but shot right out. Yeah Red Cross courses!) and another was a 5 yo with swimmies who jumped in the deep end and lost one. She just sank with one arm sticking out of the water until I scooped her out.

I think it is tempting to assume the parent of an allergic child is a drama queen (esecially since “allergies are a go-to claim for actual drama queens), but it’s a little unfair. For most of us, allergies mean the sniffles or a bit of discomfort, but peanut allergies can be deadly. So, the “backing up your car” analogy was not that far off.

However, the idea that being around peanuts and peanut butter is going to cause a reaction may be another instance of the media/schools causing more hysteria than is warranted. The Mayo Clinic page seems to indicate that the only kind of airborne elements that are dangerous are “dust or aerosols containing peanuts, such as that of peanut flour or peanut oil cooking spray.” If this page is to be trusted, peanut butter is no threat, nor is anything much of a threat in an outdoor setting: http://allergicliving.com/2010/08/25/can-i-react-to-the-smell-of-peanutnuts/

Not that I would fault a parent for playing it safe, but this may be a case where you want to sit down with your son’s allergen and get a real, solid sense of what you need to avoid.

Seeing as I don’t always have the time or ability to look this stuff up, I always play it safe when someone tells me they are allergic or sensitive to something. It really isn’t that much of an imposition to me to skip perfume, leave my dog at home, or have my dinner at another table, especially compared to the potential risk to the other person. Raising a stink about a slight inconvenience based on ideas of who *should* be moving or how I *think* allergies work isn’t how we build communities. I’d rather be a good neighbor than get sanctimonious about something so minor.

For the record, I don’t have any allergies, nor any kids with allergies.

Lollipoplover: this was last year. this year they are too big to get in there and I won’t let them in there anymore. They still like it because they can play more with toys but they are too big now.