Past EED rants

Labels

Live leaderboard

Poker leaderboard

Voice of EED

Thursday 12 June 2008

Neglect or Independance [Slim]


A parent has been labelled the worst mother in america by the press for allowing her nine year old to return home alone, via the public transport system from a shopping trip in New York.

http://www.nysun.com/news/why-i-let-my-9-year-old-ride-subway-alone

A modern day parental dilemma. Give your kids independance and let them get around themselves, and you're a slack parent raising uncontrollable ferral kids. Ferry them about everywhere and keep them in the house all other times and you're a cotten wool wrapping nanny who's stifling their kids independance. How do you win? I'm trying to let me kids have some independance, my 9 and 11 year old walk to and from school themselves, and the older one will go to town on her own or with mates, but it's definately not the easiest thing to do here on the Isle of Man, let alone in a huge place like New York. I think I'm doing the right thing, and I could be doing more. I am accutely aware however that if something happened to my kids on that trip, the finger of community judgement would be pointing directly at me for carelessly letting them out of my sight. Where's the guidebook anyway? What age can you leave a kid home alone? What age can they use the bus system alone? What time should they go to bed? Nobody will tell you, but ever bugger will judge you on it.

2 comments:


  1. The nine year old kid was probably safer than you or I, because all kids these days carry knives.

    ReplyDelete

  2. There is some govermental guidence on some of this stuff I thought? Right or wrong, I believe there are laws (I think.. it may just be suggestions) that range from what age a child can be left alone to more obscure things such as at what age syblings of different sexes are no longer alowed to share the same bedroom..

    Okay, not even finished writing this and already I've found out that part of that claim isn't true as this link shows.

    However, the bit about members of the same family, but different sexes, sharing a room is true apparantly. Not allowed to happen after the age of twelve.

    ReplyDelete