Modern parents are shit at being parents

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

If you have children make sure you let your kids out to go and play with joyful abandon in the muddy fields every once in a while, preferably out of your zone of control, otherwise they'll become allergic to everything man-made or otherwise and become unable to take risks or develop friendships with other people. Don't worry too much, they won't jump into a car with a fictional confectionary-enticer, break their leg tripping over a pebble or cross a road without looking if you've spent the contact with your children teaching them the basic foundations of sensible behaviour. Of course you need to have a different attitude towards this depending on where you live. It's easy in the countryside to let kids roam off to go sliding down grassy banks and climb trees but if you let kids roam off in an urban conurbation it's considerably riskier. And you have to measure just how able your child is to be off on their own or with their friends somewhere at the age they are. The inclination seems to be towards keeping them indoors and plying them with indoor based amusements which is all fine, but maybe not totally. Perhaps if there was less paedo-hysteria and better maintained public amenities this wouldn't be an issue. Parents must have a legitimate reason not to let their kids wander off as much these days but partly it's just being over-protective too. So it's a very hard job at being a parent in the current world we're in, but a lot of them seem to be pretty awful at it, whether it's leaving their kids socially paralysed through home-schooling, unable to judge risk independently through never being allowed to be independent or allergic to entirely dormant and harmless things through living in a Dettol-cleansed, double-glazed safety cabinet.

[Aubrey Barkus]

What?

[duckorange]

What?

This: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6720231.stm

[Aubrey Barkus]

Oh.  I thought he'd just gone mental or something.

[Emma Raducanu]

It's true though. If I hadn't been allowed out to play I'd have ended up just spending my days surfing the net.

[ccab]

Their predecessors weren't any better, flaying their offspring with belts, shovelling bread & dripping in their faces and frogmarching them to the coalpits on their 12th birthday.

[Toad in the Hole]

On their 12th birthday?  You were lucky.
[/python]

[Morrisfan82]

Just a nebulous musing I had the other day, but kind-of related: have you seen the fucking size of pushchairs these days?! They're made out of a Volvo chassis or something.

[hoverdonkey]

We have to get one soon - Not sure it will fit in our flat to be honest

[SOTS]

Bloody hell. Even twelve or so years ago, at the age of five, my mum sent me on my merry way out into our street, telling next door's daughter to come and get me I fall. As well as sending me from and occasionally to school on a bus from a pretty young age. The worst I ever had was a scrape on the knee or something, and it gave me the opportunity to socialise with the huge amount of kids that were about, including one who is still my best friend today.

Most fun we had was with stuff our parents would probably tick us off for if they were supervising. Like sneaking into the back garden and almost ruining the lawn filling up water pistols for our water fights against the other kids.

Plus... how long is a parent prepared to supervise? I'd never get the hours and hours of play that I had in our street if my mum or dad had to supervise because they would get bored. There are a couple of girls in our street whose mother doesn't let them go further than the pavement in front of their house, where she almost constantly watches them play, and occasionally tells them off for going on the road (and I live in a housing scheme that is off a main road, the "road" is essentially just a car park for a few of the houses round about.)

When I was about five there used to be a boy in our street (he's in my high school now, nice guy) who wasn't allowed out to play at all other than in his own back garden. Just about every single kid in the street thought this was bizarre but I suspect that nowadays it's probably a lot more common.

[Sebastian Dangerfield]

If you have children make sure you let your kids out to go and play with joyful abandon in the muddy fields every once in a while, preferably out of your zone of control, otherwise they'll become allergic to everything man-made or otherwise and become unable to take risks or develop friendships with other people. Don't worry too much, they won't jump into a car with a fictional confectionary-enticer, break their leg tripping over a pebble or cross a road without looking if you've spent the contact with your children teaching them the basic foundations of sensible behaviour. Of course you need to have a different attitude towards this depending on where you live. It's easy in the countryside to let kids roam off to go sliding down grassy banks and climb trees but if you let kids roam off in an urban conurbation it's considerably riskier. And you have to measure just how able your child is to be off on their own or with their friends somewhere at the age they are. The inclination seems to be towards keeping them indoors and plying them with indoor based amusements which is all fine, but maybe not totally. Perhaps if there was less paedo-hysteria and better maintained public amenities this wouldn't be an issue. Parents must have a legitimate reason not to let their kids wander off as much these days but partly it's just being over-protective too. So it's a very hard job at being a parent in the current world we're in, but a lot of them seem to be pretty awful at it, whether it's leaving their kids socially paralysed through home-schooling, unable to judge risk independently through never being allowed to be independent or allergic to entirely dormant and harmless things through living in a Dettol-cleansed, double-glazed safety cabinet.

Are you a parent, my dear?  Because if you are not, then I'd be wary of being so judgemental.  Let's see you do a better job when you pop out a few.  (Or if your wife or girlfriend or etc does, I am not sure what gender you are).

[Still Not George]

Are you a parent, my dear?  Because if you are not, then I'd be wary of being so judgemental.  Let's see you do a better job when you pop out a few.  (Or if your wife or girlfriend or etc does, I am not sure what gender you are).

You officially lose at this thread. There should be a Godwin's Law for this sort of thing...

[SOTS]

I shouldn't have brought this up on Digital Spy. The people are such idiots. Apparantely there ARE more perverts and bastards out there so NO child should be allowed to play outside without a parent on standby.

[Fry]

Words!

I very much agree, I remember some times from my childhood where I met some of my closest and dearest friends today, and how we bonded  by climbing trees and falling down and just being a nuisance.

We even had a 'Den' at the big field near our house, we spent ages just collecting planks of wood and rope and just creating the perfect hovel for me and my friends...that was before some 'big kids' came and kicked it down - and that was another important life lesson right there. People are cunts.

[buttgammon]

I shouldn't have brought this up on Digital Spy. The people are such idiots. Apparantely there ARE more perverts and bastards out there so NO child should be allowed to play outside without a parent on standby.

I'm now going hugely off topic, so please forgive me, but I see what you mean about Digitl Spy. This is, after all, the forum with a 922 page long thread about Maddy fucking McCann! All of that devoted to a little girl none of them knew who has disappeared in extremely rare circumstances. As for their politics forum, I happened to wander in today to find that it basically has people saying "W00t! BNP! BNP! Muslims are smelly!"

As for the thread...I grew up in the nineties and the start of the new millennium, but I was allowed out from the age of about 5 or 6 and I would often hang around with older kids then, playing football, throwing buckets of water into open top cars (as I once did) and generally having fun. They were sometimes absolute twats to me, but that's a part of it, I think. In fact, I used to go out far more when I was about 6 or 7 than I do now. I only ever used to come in before my bedtime either to have tea or to watch the football, which usually meant a Borussia Dortmund Champions' League game on ITV in those days. I have always had a lot of shit from various people, but that was almost exclusively at school. I think I was far safer as a 7 year old out in the street without adult supervision than I was as a 16 year old in school.

[SOTS]

We even had a 'Den' at the big field near our house, we spent ages just collecting planks of wood and rope and just creating the perfect hovel for me and my friends...that was before some 'big kids' came and kicked it down - and that was another important life lesson right there. People are cunts.

That must happen to everyone. We nailed some bits of wood to this huge tree so that everyone had their own seat, and even better, made a tree swing! The whole thing only lasted a few weeks before some kids ruined it all and broke off all the seats and the tree swing.

They were the same kids of "The Big Water Fight" we had soon later. They just all came down one day and expected a water fight. So we immediately bought shitloads of water balloons and filled lots of bottles and a couple of buckets with water. That was hilarious fun... the minister's grandson was so up for a waterfight until someone lobbed an entire bucket of water over him and he chose then to reveal that he wasn't allowed to get wet and we all got told off.

[hpmons]

I wasnt allowed out on my own until I was 10, and wasnt allowed on a bus until I was 14.  Even then my mother felt the need to remind me not to talk to strangers, and would frequently ask me whether anyone was following me.
Now I mostly just stay indoors, filled with woe.

I did go out of the house today, but the outside world seemed horrid and not worth my attention.  My fault for going to Croydon I suppose.

[Morrisfan82]

We nailed some bits of wood to this huge tree so that everyone had their own seat, and even better, made a tree swing!

Uncanny, same thing here. Though it lasted for years, I remember strolling by many years later and seeing younger kids playing and sitting on the seats we nailed up in the tree.

Great times. The only downside was that the tree was situated not particularly far from my back garden, and I didn't realise that my Mum could hear what a foul-mouthed little cunt I was & subsequently gave me a bit of a bollocking.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Are you a parent, my dear?  Because if you are not, then I'd be wary of being so judgemental.  Let's see you do a better job when you pop out a few.  (Or if your wife or girlfriend or etc does, I am not sure what gender you are).

I'm not passing judgement, my dear, just raising the issue.