The other day while in the grocery store, I noticed Dave’s furrowed brows as I placed a carton of eggs in our cart. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “I’m just wondering why you’re paying twice as much for brown eggs.” He replied. I explained they weren’t just brown eggs, they were “free-range” eggs and I feel better about buying them. The thought of chickens being treated like machines, cramped in tiny laying boxes doesn’t sit well with me. “It just makes me feel better.” I told him. It is a quality of life issue.
The next day I saw a report on the news regarding a woman who was being investigated by CPS in her town for allowing her two children, aged ten and six to walk together to a neighborhood playground “unsupervised.” The children have been tagged as “free-range” kids.
Like most folks my age, I guess you could say I was raised as a “free-range” child. I’m not sure I like the term which implies I was allowed to wander where ever I wanted, but I was given a much larger area to roam than my children were. Part of the reason I had a larger area to roam was that since as I child I lived in the same town my parents did as well as some generations back, there was a sense of security, of knowing who lived in each house and their knowledge of who I was and who my family were.
But, when my family moved away from our home town when I was nine, nothing really changed. My brothers and sister and I walked to school each morning while our mother stayed at home with our newborn brother. We never thought there was anything odd about our walking the several blocks to our school, rain or shine. We learned how to dress appropriately, navigate the streets and get to school on time.
These lessons were not always easily learned. Sometimes we would get a late start to school or dawdle making us late for assembly. Those times we faced the stern looks and scolding of Sister Veronica. In all fairness, she was not a harsh woman so we were not scarred by the experience but knew full well we didn’t want to have to face her again under similar circumstances.
As a child, walking was my main source of transportation. We walked to our friends’ homes, to the movies, to girl scout meetings and occasionally downtown to spend our allowance. For safety reasons, we travelled in pairs; either with a sibling or friend. These little adventures on our own helped us to build important life skills in time management, navigation and most importantly in dealing with strangers. They were important steps in developing into strong, confident, independent young people with good instincts regarding situational awareness.
It’s a tough call to know when to hold children close, and when to let them have some growing space. I know I held my own children to a smaller range area than I had but I also eventually let them go off on their own adventures. To say that they were unsupervised because I didn’t hover over them would be wrong. They couldn’t go off without permission, they had a specific place to go (which I’m now learning isn’t where they always went, but that’s another story) and had to be home at a certain time. To me, this is parental supervision. I suppose the question is at what age letting two children go to a neighborhood playground unescorted is appropriate.
Again, it’s not an easy question to answer, but I do believe that it is one best answered by a parent; someone who knows their children and trusts that they are old enough to handle the situation. In the case of the family in the news story, the parents seemed pretty ordinary. There was no sign of neglect or lack of concern for the children’s welfare.
I don’t pretend to know the answer for all parents, but I think one good way to begin would be to take some quiet time to determine what is tempering your decisions about your children; instinct or fear? Fear is never a good point to start from. Once you find your instinct, you can begin to encourage your children to develop theirs and their confidence along with it.
And Dave, I’m going to continue to pay more for my free-range eggs. I can’t say that I notice they taste any different, but they make me feel better about myself.
I agree Monica, the term “free range” doesn’t sit well with me in regards to children because it’s most commonly associated with animals but I did grow up as a “free range” child and cherish the memory of that freedom. Even though the world was getting scarier (or perhaps we just had access to more information) when my sons were growing up, we usually lived on a base and they also enjoyed a tremendous amount of freedom. That, and the fact that a lot of eyes were on them on those bases, much like the town you grew up in where you knew your actions would be reported and people were also looking out for you. I’m sad for the children in today’s social environment, where this even has to be a topic for discussion at all or for the parents who have to worry about Social Services coming after them when they decide what’s in the best interests of their children. Yes, there are plenty out there who don’t make an educated decision but these particular parents were responsible professionals and you would think that would have been determined by the authorities once they knew the children were okay. Ugh…time to get off my soapbox!
I’m with you! I know Maggie and Andy cherish the time they spent exploring Coddington Cove with the gang. Even now stories pop up about sledding down “suicide” hill and climbing the “scenic tree” . I worry that today kids will only have memories of what they were watching on the car video while they rode to their next activity. Thanks for sharing!