We’ve talked about this subject before, but it’s always an interesting conversation to me. Mom, don’t read this post. You won’t like it!<\/p>\n
Now that the weather is fine, the boys have started playing outside every evening after dinner, and they’ve made friends with the family that lives across the back fence. Their kids are a little older — ages eight, 10 and 12, I’d guess — but they seem to enjoy playing with Tristan and Simon. They’ve been playing catch over the back fence (it’s one of those 6-foot wooden plank fences) and Tristan has clambered up and over once or twice — until I firmly and unequivocally forbade him from doing that. Even so, the kids on the other side (and it’s one of those yards that seem to contain almost all of the neighbourhood kids) climb up from their side and sit on the top to chat with the boys.<\/p>\n
I like this family a lot, but I don’t know them very well. Just a kind of “Hi” over the back fence thing. I think Tristan is old enough to play with them as a peer, but they’re tolerant of Simon as well. I’ve debated pulling out a plank or two to give the kids access through the fence, but worry about (a) damaging the fence and (b) the dog escaping. Last time we talked about this, someone suggested adding velcro to a couple of the planks, making them removable. This seems like a neat idea, but I really don’t want to muck too much with the fence — a replacement fence is simply not in the budget right now, nor is building a gate. Plus, I’m just not sure how long this fledgling friendship will last — I figure the older kids will lose interest pretty quickly.<\/p>\n
After a couple of evenings of watching them play and holler across the fence, I started thinking about walking Tristan and Simon around the block to let them play in the other kids’ yard. This poses a couple of inconveniences, including what do I do once I’m there (with Lucas) — do I sit on the deck and supervise in someone else’s yard, waiting to walk them back home again? Knock on the door and ask the mom to call me when they’re done? This seems to me to be a big imposition, because her kids are old enough to play unsupervised.<\/p>\n
So I started thinking about letting them walk over by themselves. There’s lots of reasons why it would be okay. It’s a single block — no streets to cross, and they live on a cul-de-sac, so it’s pretty safe all the way along. Tristan is fairly responsible, and there is safety in numbers. I could see them when they get there, and they could come home whenever they wanted without having to call for me and I wouldn’t have to wait for them. Plus, I do believe in giving freedom where freedom is earned. The drawbacks are that if they left the yard, I couldn’t see what they were up to, and I don’t know that any progress is made if I spend the whole time hovering at the window spying on them.<\/p>\n
Late last week, I took an informal poll on Twitter<\/a>, asking this question: would you allow your five and seven year old to walk around the block, unescorted but with no streets to cross, to play with the kids who live behind you?<\/p>\n The results were split pretty much down the middle, with most of the “yes” answers having the caveat along the lines of “as long as they’re together” and quite a few “as long as I could see them” or “I’d creep along behind them” type of answers.<\/p>\n I’m a huge believer in the idea of “free range kids” and I wish there were more (heck, any!) kids on our street for the boys to play with. Not to haul out this old song again, but really — when I was four I was walking to and from school by myself, and when I was six I used to walk down to the corner store and the park by myself all the time. I really don’t believe the world has changed so much in 30+ years that it’s any different now.<\/p>\n In the last year, the boys have been earning more and more freedoms. They’re now allowed to play in the front or back yard unsupervised (unless I leave the front door open or watch from the bedroom, I can’t see the front yard from the house) and they’ve been allowed to walk to the mailbox around the corner unescorted to get the mail by themselves. There’s a park across the street and down a bit, just out of my line of sight, and I think next summer they’ll probably be allowed to go over together and without an escort. (Although by that time, Lucas will be old enough to demand that he go to the park with them, and perhaps two is a little young for unescorted trips to the park…)<\/p>\n So what do you think? Would you let your five and seven year old walk around the block unescorted to play outside? Not a supervised playdate, just neighbourhood kids running around together, just like I remember doing back in the golden days of my childhood. If not five and seven, then what age? And is it really so different now than it was in 1975?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We’ve talked about this subject before, but it’s always an interesting conversation to me. Mom, don’t read this post. You won’t like it! Now that the weather is fine, the boys have started playing outside every evening after dinner, and they’ve made friends with the family that lives across the back fence. Their kids are … Continue reading “Growing boys, growing freedom”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mothering-without-a-licence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2103"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2104,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2103\/revisions\/2104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}