"Two or three decades ago, children were roaming neighborhoods in mixed-age groups, playing pretty unsupervised or lightly supervised. They were able to resolve disputes, which they had a strong motivation to because they wanted to keep playing. They also planned their time and managed their games. They had a lot of autonomy, which also feeds self-esteem and mental health."
Neighborhoods used to be packed with kids running around all the time. Now they are empty. There are quite a few kids in my neighborhood, but the only time you see them is when they get off the school bus. None of them roam the neighborhood or anywhere. There is a huge park in my neighborhood, too. It's always empty. I never see packs of kids walking on the sidewalks going to the theater or to corner stores. School playgrounds are empty and stay empty unless school is in session.
When I was growing up from age 6, my mom would tell me to be home by dinner, and I'd spend all day running around with friends or adventuring by myself. This was the norm for every kid I grew up with.
> School playgrounds are empty and stay empty unless school is in session.
The kids at my local school used to play for hours after classes but last week were told they have to leave within 10 minutes of the bell for 'liability reasons'
Combined with the volume of traffic nowadays and the conversion of local parks to pay-per-use 'sportplexes', most parents unfortunately just decide to coop their children in their gardens.
Kids don't want AstroTurf pitches and climbing walls, they just need quiet residentual streets or a brownfield site with sticks and ponds. But they're gone.
I think a lot of this comes from the general movement of America towards a police state. I have heard several stories of people having the cops called on them for allowing their children to play unsupervised. Some places consider it neglect to do so.
Pair that with the fact that we're giving kids hyper-addictive computer terminals with access to games and the internet and an endless landscape of different things to explore with an understanding of anonymity/privacy that they can't get anywhere else and no judgement because all the other kids are doing the same thing and you've created an environment where parents are more likely to try to keep their kids inside, and the kids distracted enough to accept their imprisonment.
We are pretty lucky to live in a neighborhood with kinds in the same age range as ours. All the parents know each other and the kids know where they're allowed to go. This includes a few acres of forest. Our kids are allowed to go out and roam, they just have to give us a general idea of where they're going to be playing (or they just bring a cheap walkie-talkie and check in occasionally). It's exactly how I grew up and I'm grateful for it. It makes me sad to see how many kids are growing up without the autonomy they need.
There is another change too. Houses used to have porches, elderly people sat on them. They knew every kid and who they belong to. Now they don't, everyone is inside on their electronics. People don't even know their neighbors names. Today's kids are not encouraged to be kids. They are playing "travel" soccer at age 6, 5 nights a week and traveling on the weekends. I not claiming one or the other is a panacea but there are lots of factors and even more we can't even truly know.
My parents have five siblings each, but I only have a sister. I know it sounds bad, but I wonder if having less kids makes you worry more about keeping them safe. Perhaps my parents just sort of continued with how they grew up, but limited me and my sister a bit more, and I'm limiting my kids even more? Or it could have to do with media, where my grandparents wouldn't get news about abductions in the US and walk around worrying about that in their small Scandinavian village. Or it could be a time thing, where my grandparents just didn't have time to supervise the kids full time, so the older siblings had to guard the younger. Now, me and my wife will take turns to bring them to the park, and if we don't have time, the kids (at least the 5-year old) will have to stay indoors.
I try to give my kids more freedom than I'm comfortable with, but I just know that if something happens, people around me will think I'm a neglectful parent if I let my 9-year old stay out until 8 PM on her own. I want to give her the opportunity to explore the neighborhood on her own, and learn how to navigate the world. I mostly worry about cars hitting her, because I've almost been run over a couple of times where cars should have stopped, but she has to learn to look out for herself.
Since we're doing anecdotes I have exactly the opposite experience. Nearby parks are full of kids, mixed ages, playing lightly supervised, making up their own games.
But so goes anecdotal evidence. Anyone know if the book cites evidence supporting the premise that kids these days are "worse behaved"?
There was a great radio program a few years ago - which I cannot find at the moment - about a sociology study that focused on a small town in Vermont or New Hampshire in the 1970s where kids essentially ran free and just came home to eat.
The program went back to the same town and interviewed the same kids, now parents, to find out how they were raising their own children. Fascinatingly, they had all become strict parents who never let their kids out of their sight.
"Neighborhoods used to be packed with kids running around all the time."
Exactly how my childhood was, too. "Be back by dinner, call if you'll be late" were my instructions as a kid. My wife and I are about to buy a house and we drove all over our target town, and eventually settled on the neighborhood where we saw the most kids outside playing and/or roaming around in a group.
In my area, school playgrounds are usually locked up during non-school hours, but there's been a recent movement to change that. Soon the elementary school near my house will be open for general use on weekends, which seems like such an easy and obvious win. I can't believe it took them so long to do it.
I had the same feeling in my area, until I came out of the house myself, just to see a lot of youngsters in parks, chilling on the bench, playing on the playground.
But it's just in the summer.
I think back when I was a kid we didn't have anything better to do on colder, moody days.
Heck, I myself preferred to stay home and play video games.
This is a steady trend that is down to numerous factors the least of which I’d ascribe to overprotective parents.
I saw a map a while ago showing the reducing radius from the home children could range over the last 100 years. And a lot of it boils down to overpopulation.
1. Cars. There are significantly more and faster cars on the roads. As a child I could play on my street without a car passing in a couple of hours. Now a car passes down our street every few minutes. And there are more congested intersections for kids to cross these days.
2. Green spaces. We used to have multiple green spaces to roam and cross through. Nowadays those are all built up with property developments.
3. Crazy people. The amount of violent crime against children has increased.
As a youth I definitely had the experience of going off on my bike and being home by dinner. The difference though now is there is a lot more for kids to do inside the house. Video games, netflix, smart phones and the like are heavily influencing behavior.
The key and accurate part of that is this: “Two or three decades ago, children were roaming neighborhoods in mixed-age groups, playing pretty unsupervised or lightly supervised.” The rest is pretty dubious differences, but this is key because kids were misbehaving all the time then, too, they just had lots of opportunity to do it without adult supervision. Which made it easier to conform to restrictive rules when they were supervised, because the opportunity to act without constraints was usually right around the corner.
The children I know are now playing online games with their friends. Instead of going to the park and still playing, they're at home talking on mic/chat and doing things online. Are things like 'resolve disputes' and 'planning time' still possible? Seems like it'd be even easier to communicate and discuss with the added benefit of less violent/aggressive confrontation.
It's been like this since early 2000s, meaning that the generation of overly protected, caged and "play-dating" children are now adults and entering the workforce. Sadly, we don't have anyone in their 20s in our small company, but I'm wondering what kind of consequences this upbringing style has inflicted on people.
I know it's trite, but I blame computers. I have an 8 year old and getting her out of the house is often a struggle. I'd love of her to head out into the woods behind our house with her friends have adventures, but the truth is that there is nothing in those woods that can compete with Minecraft of Fornite or whatever.
Until recently we had a few families in my neighborhood that had kids that played outside just like my brothers and I did as kids. They all recently upgraded their homes and moved out of the neighborhood though. Those kids were my dog's best buddies.
And the bad thing is that now people are getting used to the empty streets, driving faster, paying less attention, assuming the streets will be empty. It will be very hard to go back.
As a father of three elementary school kiddos, here's my anecdotal-evidenced perspective:
I see a lot of other children who are experiencing a simultaneous excess and deficit of parental authority. Their parents rarely or never correct behavior that is disrespectful, self centered, or too demanding. From my point of view, they should be saying "No" much more often - firmly and respectfully.
At the same time, the kids are forced into endless regulated, supervised activities and given little or no free time. Or what free time they have is spent on YouTube. Seems to result in kids who are rude, fragile, and ignorant of normal human interaction.
I'm a parent of two, and step-parent to two, between the ages 5 -11. I think a lot about this, and one of the biggest issues I see (besides the many valid points I feel the article raised) is that with the rise of Internet video, we are showing kids to kids more often, if that makes sense.
I grew up in the 80's, and cartoons were most of the media I consumed. You usually saw anthropomorphical characters depicting behaviors. When you did see live action, it was usually centered more around adults teaching or mentoring the kids (or Muppets), and when kids did appear, they were polite unless being used to illustrate bad behavior.
Today, with so much self-published content, kids are seeing other kids, often acting in outrageous ways to get views, likes, followers, and fans. When media became decentralized, I think we lost a powerful cultural platform for shared experience and norms, and it is starting to show.
There doesn't seem to be any legitimacy to that claim. Meaning there are places that claim they can certify you, but they themselves have no real legitimacy (e.g. no specific educational track, just a broad philosophy you agree to adhere to).
The article is worth reading, but it is more accurate to describe the author as a journalist with three kids, they have no specific qualifications.
As a father of three here is what keeps me from just sending my kids out to play:
Other parents.
Other parents see your kids alone and freak the fuck out. Some will call the police, and then threaten you that they will call CPS/DPS if they need to and report neglect.
In fact I was out with the kids on their bikes the other day and they were a bit ahead of me when they stopped safely at a crosswalk to wait for me. A woman pulled up and started chastising them for being unsafe because they weren't with a parent, when I walked up. She said "You're lucky I came along because some other people around here would run them over or call the police."
So yea, I'm not sure what's wrong with these other parents, but I'd love to send my kids to play outside all day without me worrying that I'm gonna get a cop on my doorstep.
I think it’s Adults who are supposed to manage their own behaviour. Children? Not so much. This sounds like a rehash of the ‘Kids today’ perspective. Children have always been children and Adults have always struggled with their behaviour.
Adults have always romanticised their own childhood ‘it wasn’t like that in my day, I’d have never gotten away with that’ etc.
This is a terrible article that just uncritically assumes the worst of the 'kids today!' stereotype (which has been around since Plato's time) as a starting premise. I know it's Sunday but I'm surprised to see such fluff high up on HN.
It's all down to cars. In two ways, one of them less facetious than the other:
1) Automobiles have a vast amount of land space dedicated to them. And the land that is not physically occupied by parking lots and roads is subdivided, separated and made inaccessible[1]. And this trend is continuing[2]. It's why other large mammals (bears, moose, wolves) face significant problems in reproduction. Add to this the noise and the light pollution and even if you did not fear that your neighbor, reaching back to pass an organic fruit-leather to the fruit of his loins, would mow down your child, the available outdoors is just not what it was.
2) Paedophiles and rapists are greatly facilitated by the availability of fast, relatively anonymous, convenient transport. The same characteristics that make said automobiles attractive to terrorists (when they're not actually directly driving them into people as a weapon that no one acknowledges).
The part about being “unemployed” to me immediately made me think about the prevalence of future tense pressures for modern kids. I’m in my mid 20s and I went through it.
While my parents had good intentions and many others I’m sure did too. You start building this monster of future pressures about colleges, social media emphasizing what you should like, and lots of other pressures you can’t actually resolve in Elementary or Jr. High but you are made aware of them and focused on them by your surroundings.
The reason children aren't behaving (at least in the U.S.) is because a large number of parents never practice parenting and never seek out advice from reliable resources.
For example-- I've heard numerous vacuous rationalizations from parents young and old for spanking their children. What's the research say on spanking? The vast majority over decades says that it doesn't improve behavior and in fact increases the likelihood of aggression in children.
So why would parents continue doing it? It's the same reason an ineffectual guitarist keeps starting over on Stairway to Heaven. Because, "Gosh, I had it perfect once out of 200 failures in my bedroom by myself last week."
So it is with parents: "Gosh, I don't get why they're acting out, they were so good that one time out of 200 outbursts while I was paying a moderate amount of attention to them last week."
What reliable resources would those be? Poorly defined, crap studies done by people who've never had children and the study was never independantly reproduced by anyone?
In the beginning, pain is the only means of communication (although we didn't actually spank, a little tug on the side burns did the trick). In my experience, once a child is old enough to understand time-based punishment (e.g. you don't get to watch TV tomorrow) a little and what it will mean, that becomes more effective.
Agreed. Obviously you are being voted down by people who are spankers, but just can't reach you through the intertubes, no matter how hard they try. We have never had to spank. Maybe we'll regret it when they turn into heroin addicts in their 20s, but right now they are decent, loveable people.
There is a general belief that parents inherently know best for their own children and to hell with any experts or professionals who might experience from more than their own children.
Having seen a whole tide of articles like this recently, I wonder how long it will be before popular opinion and parenting practices trend back toward giving children appropriate amounts of autonomy.
I hesitate at the thought of raising children here (or at all) for a variety-pack of reasons, one of which is that I was rather over-protected as a child, and I'd rather not pass the results of that that on to my kids.
Any current American-kid-havers care to comment on how difficult it actually is to raise non-sheltered kids in the modern age? Is it a big problem or perhaps overblown for the NPR crowd?
I'm not sure what are the root causes of the kids' behavioural crisis (I'm not even sure there is one), but let me tell you with 100% confidence what will not solve them: Yet another parenting book.
We've been reading and seeing this shit since Socrates.
“The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.”
Lets frame this a different way.
1. Crime has gone down in all measurements. (Theories state its likely lack of lead pollution.)
2. More people renting, and less engagement in the community.
3. People whining about kids these days
4. Older adults realizing they dont younger generation doing what they did
5. Kids now have more inhouse distraction (computers, games, etc) that their friends are on
6. Parent(s) working long hours and cant take kids to friends houses
7. Scare articles like this one whipping parents into a frightful frenzy
20 years ago, my father attributed the general "change in children" to the widespread availability & use of household air-conditioning.
Granted this won't be true throughout all climates, but I recall thinking it had a lot of merit at the time and I continue to think so today. My father would tell me that, when he was a kid, they'd either sit at home in a 90F+ house on Long Island with the windows open -- miserable, as I can attest from living it when we'd visit as a kid -- or they'd go outside and play "stick ball" in the same weather with their friends. For them, it was an easy choice.
Today, children either play on their devices at home (often interacting with 'friends' online) or they go to the home of their friend and, likewise, they often play indoors.
I truly believe that the climate-controlled dwellings of today are a large part of the reason; I know that personally I'd generally far prefer to be indoors in my climate-controlled 72F dwelling versus outdoors riding a bike or similar and I'd imagine the same, unfortunately but not surprisingly, holds true for children as well.
As a fairly new parent with another on the way, I'm not sure to what extent we'll try to combat this; as a child myself "screen time" was often a point of contention though in my case it was also the early start of my career.
Spanking. No kiddin. You don't need to put your children in a hospital. But a little slap in the buns never killed nobody, and as a last resort toll. can be really effective. Of course, go for ligth mesures before, and then scalate.
Take the things the kid like first, for a while, like no videogames fo a week, or two. If the nocive behavour dosen't go away, increase the time.
> asks why so many kids today are having trouble managing their behavior and emotions.
...For starters, is there evidence that this is actually a thing?
Once it gets down to the details it sounds like Generic Parenting Advice From Any Point In The Last 50 Years: don't use bribes, make consequences clear, give kids some control but not too much, when you're overwhelmed walk away... but the initial premise is a pretty big one to just throw out there unsupported.
[+] [-] AmVess|7 years ago|reply
"Two or three decades ago, children were roaming neighborhoods in mixed-age groups, playing pretty unsupervised or lightly supervised. They were able to resolve disputes, which they had a strong motivation to because they wanted to keep playing. They also planned their time and managed their games. They had a lot of autonomy, which also feeds self-esteem and mental health."
Neighborhoods used to be packed with kids running around all the time. Now they are empty. There are quite a few kids in my neighborhood, but the only time you see them is when they get off the school bus. None of them roam the neighborhood or anywhere. There is a huge park in my neighborhood, too. It's always empty. I never see packs of kids walking on the sidewalks going to the theater or to corner stores. School playgrounds are empty and stay empty unless school is in session.
When I was growing up from age 6, my mom would tell me to be home by dinner, and I'd spend all day running around with friends or adventuring by myself. This was the norm for every kid I grew up with.
[+] [-] erentz|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dingaling|7 years ago|reply
The kids at my local school used to play for hours after classes but last week were told they have to leave within 10 minutes of the bell for 'liability reasons'
Combined with the volume of traffic nowadays and the conversion of local parks to pay-per-use 'sportplexes', most parents unfortunately just decide to coop their children in their gardens.
Kids don't want AstroTurf pitches and climbing walls, they just need quiet residentual streets or a brownfield site with sticks and ponds. But they're gone.
[+] [-] makewavesnotwar|7 years ago|reply
Pair that with the fact that we're giving kids hyper-addictive computer terminals with access to games and the internet and an endless landscape of different things to explore with an understanding of anonymity/privacy that they can't get anywhere else and no judgement because all the other kids are doing the same thing and you've created an environment where parents are more likely to try to keep their kids inside, and the kids distracted enough to accept their imprisonment.
[+] [-] aedocw|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] snarf21|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scandinavegan|7 years ago|reply
I try to give my kids more freedom than I'm comfortable with, but I just know that if something happens, people around me will think I'm a neglectful parent if I let my 9-year old stay out until 8 PM on her own. I want to give her the opportunity to explore the neighborhood on her own, and learn how to navigate the world. I mostly worry about cars hitting her, because I've almost been run over a couple of times where cars should have stopped, but she has to learn to look out for herself.
[+] [-] abalone|7 years ago|reply
But so goes anecdotal evidence. Anyone know if the book cites evidence supporting the premise that kids these days are "worse behaved"?
[+] [-] subpixel|7 years ago|reply
The program went back to the same town and interviewed the same kids, now parents, to find out how they were raising their own children. Fascinatingly, they had all become strict parents who never let their kids out of their sight.
[+] [-] fatnoah|7 years ago|reply
Exactly how my childhood was, too. "Be back by dinner, call if you'll be late" were my instructions as a kid. My wife and I are about to buy a house and we drove all over our target town, and eventually settled on the neighborhood where we saw the most kids outside playing and/or roaming around in a group.
[+] [-] dominotw|7 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0MKBdD2FGA
[+] [-] bonniemuffin|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Dowwie|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mirimir|7 years ago|reply
And that meant that I had a lot of privacy. My behavior wasn't being monitored, 24/7.
[+] [-] dominotw|7 years ago|reply
still the case in my puertorican neighborhood in chicago.
[+] [-] slykar|7 years ago|reply
But it's just in the summer.
I think back when I was a kid we didn't have anything better to do on colder, moody days. Heck, I myself preferred to stay home and play video games.
[+] [-] snowwolf|7 years ago|reply
I saw a map a while ago showing the reducing radius from the home children could range over the last 100 years. And a lot of it boils down to overpopulation.
1. Cars. There are significantly more and faster cars on the roads. As a child I could play on my street without a car passing in a couple of hours. Now a car passes down our street every few minutes. And there are more congested intersections for kids to cross these days.
2. Green spaces. We used to have multiple green spaces to roam and cross through. Nowadays those are all built up with property developments.
3. Crazy people. The amount of violent crime against children has increased.
[+] [-] nighthawk1|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dragonwriter|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lighthazard|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] old-gregg|7 years ago|reply
Young HN readers, what do you think?
[+] [-] dagw|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toastermoster|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] teekert|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] madshiva|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] musage|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jpm_sd|7 years ago|reply
I see a lot of other children who are experiencing a simultaneous excess and deficit of parental authority. Their parents rarely or never correct behavior that is disrespectful, self centered, or too demanding. From my point of view, they should be saying "No" much more often - firmly and respectfully.
At the same time, the kids are forced into endless regulated, supervised activities and given little or no free time. Or what free time they have is spent on YouTube. Seems to result in kids who are rude, fragile, and ignorant of normal human interaction.
[+] [-] ravenscrow|7 years ago|reply
"Today's teenagers are the best-behaved generation on record"
https://www.vox.com/2014/5/25/5748178/todays-teenagers-are-t...
"Today's Teens Better Behaved Than Their Parents"
https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/02/the-kids-are-more-...
"Wonkblog Today’s teens are way better behaved than you were"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/12/13/today...
But it's summer ( notoriously slow news season ) and what better to sell than fear to parents. The other parental fear piece within the last 24 hours.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17214841
[+] [-] dsnuh|7 years ago|reply
I grew up in the 80's, and cartoons were most of the media I consumed. You usually saw anthropomorphical characters depicting behaviors. When you did see live action, it was usually centered more around adults teaching or mentoring the kids (or Muppets), and when kids did appear, they were polite unless being used to illustrate bad behavior.
Today, with so much self-published content, kids are seeing other kids, often acting in outrageous ways to get views, likes, followers, and fans. When media became decentralized, I think we lost a powerful cultural platform for shared experience and norms, and it is starting to show.
[+] [-] Someone1234|7 years ago|reply
There doesn't seem to be any legitimacy to that claim. Meaning there are places that claim they can certify you, but they themselves have no real legitimacy (e.g. no specific educational track, just a broad philosophy you agree to adhere to).
The article is worth reading, but it is more accurate to describe the author as a journalist with three kids, they have no specific qualifications.
[+] [-] abalone|7 years ago|reply
What evidence does the book cite to support this premise?
Also, a plea: let's please answer this question before everybody posts their personal hot takes on children and parenting.
[+] [-] AndrewKemendo|7 years ago|reply
Other parents.
Other parents see your kids alone and freak the fuck out. Some will call the police, and then threaten you that they will call CPS/DPS if they need to and report neglect.
In fact I was out with the kids on their bikes the other day and they were a bit ahead of me when they stopped safely at a crosswalk to wait for me. A woman pulled up and started chastising them for being unsafe because they weren't with a parent, when I walked up. She said "You're lucky I came along because some other people around here would run them over or call the police."
So yea, I'm not sure what's wrong with these other parents, but I'd love to send my kids to play outside all day without me worrying that I'm gonna get a cop on my doorstep.
[+] [-] sjclemmy|7 years ago|reply
Adults have always romanticised their own childhood ‘it wasn’t like that in my day, I’d have never gotten away with that’ etc.
I just don’t buy it.
[+] [-] cwp|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anigbrowl|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frabbit|7 years ago|reply
1) Automobiles have a vast amount of land space dedicated to them. And the land that is not physically occupied by parking lots and roads is subdivided, separated and made inaccessible[1]. And this trend is continuing[2]. It's why other large mammals (bears, moose, wolves) face significant problems in reproduction. Add to this the noise and the light pollution and even if you did not fear that your neighbor, reaching back to pass an organic fruit-leather to the fruit of his loins, would mow down your child, the available outdoors is just not what it was.
2) Paedophiles and rapists are greatly facilitated by the availability of fast, relatively anonymous, convenient transport. The same characteristics that make said automobiles attractive to terrorists (when they're not actually directly driving them into people as a weapon that no one acknowledges).
1. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2016/12/19/roads-i... 2. http://science.sciencemag.org/content/358/6362/442
[+] [-] awat|7 years ago|reply
While my parents had good intentions and many others I’m sure did too. You start building this monster of future pressures about colleges, social media emphasizing what you should like, and lots of other pressures you can’t actually resolve in Elementary or Jr. High but you are made aware of them and focused on them by your surroundings.
[+] [-] jancsika|7 years ago|reply
For example-- I've heard numerous vacuous rationalizations from parents young and old for spanking their children. What's the research say on spanking? The vast majority over decades says that it doesn't improve behavior and in fact increases the likelihood of aggression in children.
So why would parents continue doing it? It's the same reason an ineffectual guitarist keeps starting over on Stairway to Heaven. Because, "Gosh, I had it perfect once out of 200 failures in my bedroom by myself last week."
So it is with parents: "Gosh, I don't get why they're acting out, they were so good that one time out of 200 outbursts while I was paying a moderate amount of attention to them last week."
Edit: clarification
[+] [-] alien_at_work|7 years ago|reply
What reliable resources would those be? Poorly defined, crap studies done by people who've never had children and the study was never independantly reproduced by anyone?
In the beginning, pain is the only means of communication (although we didn't actually spank, a little tug on the side burns did the trick). In my experience, once a child is old enough to understand time-based punishment (e.g. you don't get to watch TV tomorrow) a little and what it will mean, that becomes more effective.
[+] [-] frabbit|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bambataa|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thx11389793|7 years ago|reply
I hesitate at the thought of raising children here (or at all) for a variety-pack of reasons, one of which is that I was rather over-protected as a child, and I'd rather not pass the results of that that on to my kids.
Any current American-kid-havers care to comment on how difficult it actually is to raise non-sheltered kids in the modern age? Is it a big problem or perhaps overblown for the NPR crowd?
[+] [-] avip|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crankylinuxuser|7 years ago|reply
“The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.”
Lets frame this a different way.
1. Crime has gone down in all measurements. (Theories state its likely lack of lead pollution.) 2. More people renting, and less engagement in the community. 3. People whining about kids these days 4. Older adults realizing they dont younger generation doing what they did 5. Kids now have more inhouse distraction (computers, games, etc) that their friends are on 6. Parent(s) working long hours and cant take kids to friends houses 7. Scare articles like this one whipping parents into a frightful frenzy
[+] [-] adanto6840|7 years ago|reply
Granted this won't be true throughout all climates, but I recall thinking it had a lot of merit at the time and I continue to think so today. My father would tell me that, when he was a kid, they'd either sit at home in a 90F+ house on Long Island with the windows open -- miserable, as I can attest from living it when we'd visit as a kid -- or they'd go outside and play "stick ball" in the same weather with their friends. For them, it was an easy choice.
Today, children either play on their devices at home (often interacting with 'friends' online) or they go to the home of their friend and, likewise, they often play indoors.
I truly believe that the climate-controlled dwellings of today are a large part of the reason; I know that personally I'd generally far prefer to be indoors in my climate-controlled 72F dwelling versus outdoors riding a bike or similar and I'd imagine the same, unfortunately but not surprisingly, holds true for children as well.
As a fairly new parent with another on the way, I'm not sure to what extent we'll try to combat this; as a child myself "screen time" was often a point of contention though in my case it was also the early start of my career.
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] major505|7 years ago|reply
Take the things the kid like first, for a while, like no videogames fo a week, or two. If the nocive behavour dosen't go away, increase the time.
[+] [-] newnewpdro|7 years ago|reply
These fundamental changes in the average family have consequences.
[+] [-] outsidetheparty|7 years ago|reply
...For starters, is there evidence that this is actually a thing?
Once it gets down to the details it sounds like Generic Parenting Advice From Any Point In The Last 50 Years: don't use bribes, make consequences clear, give kids some control but not too much, when you're overwhelmed walk away... but the initial premise is a pretty big one to just throw out there unsupported.