What are your views on it concerning yourself as a kid and your children or future children?
I was walking by an elementary school near my house and I saw this group of kids probably in the 3rd or 4th grade. I'm not around school age kids that often and it struck me how small these kids where, like they where legit children, not capable of taking care of themselves. I'm like shit that was me at latch key age. It got me thinking about it.


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DJTB YOMM

>this group of kids probably in the 3rd or 4th grade. I'm not
>around school age kids that often and it struck me how small
>these kids where, like they where legit children, not capable
>of taking care of themselves.

But then i have to go back to when I was that age. We turned out just fine. I just think it looks different when you're on this side of the age spectrum.

Shit was so much fun we ran home from school and turned right back around to get picked up for the after school program.

if you missed that pickup it was a long ass walk to the center.

it was torture if you missed a day and heard a story about someone getting clowned or a girl you like hanging out with some other dude cause you weren't there.

there were times when it was tv and more tv if the center was closed. That Shit was cool too... seemed normal. Always sounded odd when other kids would tell us they couldn't stay home alone.

my mother was brave as shit" I mean, she was doing what she had to do - single mother, working nights, or sometimes 2 jobs.
I was watching myself starting in the 3rd grade. and i skipped a grade, so I was like 7.
I have a 7 year old daughter I don't even let her go into bathrooms by herself in public places. I don't even let her go outside by herself.
Shit, when i was in 3rd grade, I was living in the inner city of Baltimore, walking home from school and playing outside at night until dark. My mother didnt get home from work til midnight.
I can only imagine what our family members were saying about her.

somehow as America got safer over the years we somehow become more afraid of crime.

Shit was bad back in the 80's but we played outside by ourselves. Now do you leave a 12 year old at the park parents call the cops on you.

Like 8, 10, 12?
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DJTB YOMM

before us, mothers didn't work, or you lived near family so the kids went to your mother/sister/aunt's house. After us, people started hiring babysitters for 13 year olds and shit.

Before I know my mom stayed with her grandma after school. As people moved away from their families, granny, auntie, cousin so and so weren't so near by to watch the kids after school.
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DJTB YOMM

I rode the subway alone at nine or ten. My mom said she remembers riding the city bus in second grade.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLCA32diBAg&feature=youtu.be&t=33

Or, god forbid, go to the park, will get nosy assholes calling CPS on you.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/free-range-parents-cleared-in-second-neglect-case-after-children-walked-alone/2015/06/22/82283c24-188c-11e5-bd7f-4611a60dd8e5_story.html

I was more talking about leaving your kids at home for hours at a time, not walking too and from school or to and from the playground/corner store.
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DJTB YOMM

Hadn't considered that.

and I could be looking at my childhood thru rose-colored lenses, but people seem more 'scumbaggy' nowadays and I don't truss it.

NAH.

just wondering if we are slipping as parents because the news has us shook.

I will definitely be overprotective when it comes to my daughter but i want her to be just as responsible as I was when she was 7 or 8.

did we shoulder too much responsibility and it's actually better to let our kids be kids?

just thinking out loud.

I would be worried about kids younger than that for sure.

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DJTB YOMM

But I wonder if I've kinda been brainwashed into over-protecting my kids. My daughter JUST started taking public transportation by herself and she's 14. Some people think that's too loose.

We do other stuff that some parents think is too loose....but the 9 year old ain't going anywhere in our city surroundings without us. No way.

Which also brings me to this....why would I feel more comfortable about it in the suburbs? Are there less child molesters/kidnappers there? No. There's less drug-dealers and knuckleheads....but those people really don't have any interest in kids or present a threat to them. It's probably an irrational bias on my part.

He has been at a charter school that didn't have bus service, so my wife and I juggled our schedules so one of us could drop him off and pick him up everyday. So he's never been a latch key kid...not because we think it's wrong. Both my wife and I grew up that way.

Next year he starts a school with bus service, so we won't need to juggle our schedules. He will let himself in and get started on his homework (sure...) until one of gets home an hour or two later.

yeah, me and my sister was latchkey like a mug. morning and afternoon, lotta times.

eff naw.

world is a different place. part of it was ignance. if there was internet and a sex offender map back in the day, my peoples prolly wouldn't have done that ish then.

but for today? hell no.

now, leave 'em every now and then? like, lowkey latch? yeah, thats' doable, if you stay in touch, lock the house up, and all that.

but day in day out basis, on a visible routine?

nope.


peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

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I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

No.

If I was still where I grew up in the countryside - absolutely. Worst trouble we ever got in was a grazed knee (or learning to smoke, but they're going to find out about that somehow...)

Where I live now though? Nooooooo. They'd be mainlining Smack by 14.