Playing outside alone

  • Thread starter Thread starter Allegra
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We have had some copperheads in our yard, but we live close enough to the hospital and the EMT has a very good response time here.
 
It really is only dangerous if you are unprepared. Or in the outback or country.
 
There are certain things I worry about too though. One is the neighbor’s dogs. Another is the creek or a pool. My MIL has a huge pond on her property and I wouldn’t put it past them to try to go swimming without her.
 
Allegra said:
So, just to get an idea on what other responsible parents think, when is it okay to play outside alone? When is it okay to leave the yard, the subdivision, etc?
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I think it’s when they express that they’re ready and ask you to go. They need to learn some basics and how to deal with nosy neighbors freaking out about it. I strongly recommend the book, Free Range Kids.
 
The dogs have a history of breaking loose and are very aggressive when they approach people. One of them has climbed the fence and gotten into my yard twice before. They have finally been cited for it and if they allow them on other people’s property again, they will face more severe consequences, assuming it can be proven.
 
That’s a case where no one is safe regardless of age. But there’s certainly a case for protecting your kids! I’m sorry you have such difficult neighbors. 😦 Hopefully you have your Smartphone or camera ready.
 
We have a some trail cameras set up. We’ve caught all sorts of interesting goings on in our neighborhood with them.
 
To answer your question, I think you’re doing just fine with things status quo. My generation (Gen X) over-killed on the over-protection, and I’m glad to see kids getting more freedom and self-reliance.
 
A lot depends on the kid and area. My oldest (now 10) didn’t get to play out front alone until we moved last summer. Same neighborhood but now we’re in a cul-du-sac whereas before we were on the main road into the neighborhood. Now all the big kids can play outside on their own but I have to check on one of the 8 year olds more than the others because she’ll blatantly ignore rules about when it’s ok to approach other people or animals.

The 2 year old can be left with her siblings for maybe 30 seconds. She’s my daredevil though. So the age I’ll let her play outside alone will definitely depend on how well she’ll follow the rules. Almost definitely before 9.
 
Sometimes I feel safer leaving the baby alone than the 4yo! He does not get “stranger danger” a all.
 
Allegra said:
He does not get “stranger danger” a all.
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This was my son, too. It seemed that no matter how often I talked to him about strangers, he never “got” it…but mommy, they were nice! Thank heavens nothing bad ever happened to him but this was the kid that I put on a leash when we went to the airport. In spite of many funny looks, he didn’t escape me and try to find new friends. They now make child leashes…I had to use a dog leash back then! They do outgrow it!
 
I’ve always been very free range, DS was doing latchkey in 1st grade. He was playing outside for sure by age 4.
 
Maybe there is a reason that isn’t evident to the child. When we first got new neighbors with kids, our kids and their kids were so excited about eachother that they just ran in and out of eachothers houses before the parents could even meet eachother and establish any boundaries or manners for how to act with neighbor kids. It was un uphill battle to carve out boundaries and behaviors with my own kids. I often felt like I had to be out there to keep it from getting out of hand. That might not be anywhere close to why, just an example of a non safety non age related reason.
 
blackforest said:
I strongly recommend the book, Free Range Kids.
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I second, third, and fourth this! Lenore Skenazy is awesome!

Back in Raleigh NC, my daughter was outside in our fenced-in yard when she was two years old. I wasn’t worried about her.

Within an hour, my doorbell rang. It was our neighbor, a Chinese man that we had waved at over the fence, but hadn’t actually met yet.

My daughter was with him and his beautiful little daughter, who also happened to be 2 years old. MY daughter had climbed over our fence (chain link!) and was playing with this little girl.

Interestingly, the little girl spoke very little English. But she and my daughter were playing like old pals!

And my daughter was s fluent talker from a very young age–people were always amazed because she was so small for her age (five percentile!), but she talked like a five year old!

So our good neighbor asked her where she lived, and she told him, and he brought her and his daughter to our house to let us know that she was safe.

Of course I apologized that my daughter had climbed over the fence into his yard, but it turned out that he was thrilled. He was a Chinese businessman, and told me that his teenaged sons were very fluent in English, but his wife and daughter were not, and he was hoping that we would allow my daughter to play often with his daughter so that she could learn English (they had been considering hiring a tutor).

This was the beginning of a wonderful friendship between our two daughters, and our families. It turned that this family came from Mainland China, where his parents were pastors and fled the country to escape persecution. His mother was living with them (they had a huge home, BTW), and she was fascinating! I once brought my Pioneer Club (girls club) to their house and she taught them how to make an authentic Chinese stir fry!

Through the years, we have kept up the friendship, even after this family moved to a different state.

Now the girls are 37 years old, and still best of friends. My daughter will be attending her friend’s wedding as soon as the COVID-19 bans on wedding receptions are lifted (she actually postponed her wedding!).

THIS is the kind of thing that happens when children are allowed to be “free range”. They have adventures! I’m not advocating that people allow their 2 year old children to play unsupervised in this day and age, but I think it’s important from BIRTH to help a child become independent of their parents and have their own adventures.

I really miss the days of my childhood (I’m 63), and my brother and I had a range of around 30 city blocks, and were allowed to cross busy streets and play with anyone who seemed friendly. We knew about “Mr. Stranger Danger,” and we even had a little song that we made up to help us be careful. And we stuck together, at least until we were teens, and even then, we often went bike riding together.

Almost all the kids we knew had this same freedom, and within our 30 blocks, there were hundreds of kids who were out and about.
 
When I was in 1st grade, we lived in a townhouse subdivision and all the kids in the subdivision ran in a heard around the neighborhood. One of the places the other kids went was to a guy named “Bob”'s town house. He lived there alone and had lots of toys. He often invited kids to go to the movies or Six Flags on his season pass and they came back with all kind of toys and stories of roller coasters and sweets. Kids often came from his town house with ice cream and candy. I was so mad that my mom forbade me from going to Bob’s house, since all the other kids who went got to go on trips and be given loot. I figured Bob must be one of those ice grownups like the ones on Sesame Street who just hang out with kids all day because they realized that kids were awesome. Obviously, my mom had very good reasons for not being okay with me going to Bob’s house. In retrospect, probably a lot of my friends who went over there didn’t actually have permission to go into his house. But my mom couldn’t really explain to a six year old why this guy’s behavior was inappropriate so I was always mad about missing out.
 
Yes it is. I have to admit, I did go there with some friends on two occasions to get popsicles. One time, I actually went into his house. Nothing happened and I couldn’t understand what my mom was so upset about. Fortunately nothing bad happened to me either time. With my eldest daughter, who is the same age I was, I always tell her that she is never to go into anyone’s house without coming and asking me first, even if her friends do and even if it’s her friend’s house. If there was a “Bob” on our street, I would tell her straight up that it is inappropriate for an adult to want to hang out with children when their parents aren’t around and if he can’t make friends his own age there’s probably a good reason. If he was a safe person for her to be around, he would come and talk to me first. I would not use my mother’s response of “No. Because I said so,” because I would be afraid she would find that insufficient and be tempted to see for herself, or be tempted to go off with some other “Bob” because I didn’t teach her how to recognize inappropriate adult behavior. You don’t really want to explain sexual perversion to a young kid, but they should be taught to be aware of anyone, kid or adult, who encourages them to disobey their parents or go places their parents don’t know about.
 
I think my generation (X) has really disabled our offspring. We didn’t try. We were told it was “good parenting” to hover over their every move. I’m glad to see some pushback against this tendency.

My late father used to let us play by the river unsupervised when we were really little. It was a swift river, too, so he warned us that it was full of snakes that ate off children’s toes. 🤣 We believed him and stayed a safe distance from the water. His little whopper wasn’t A+ parenting by today’s standards, but it worked! 😆
 
Allegra said:
So, just to get an idea on what other responsible parents think, when is it okay to play outside alone? When is it okay to leave the yard, the subdivision, etc?
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About 3 yrs for the yard, and I guess they were about 5 when allowed to ride around cul-de-sac and down a couple side streets to play at friends homes. But then we moved to a different neighborhood in a different state - just as absolutely safe - but that neighborhood and parents were weird. I told my 7th grader to ride her bike to her friends home, about 4 blocks away, in a neighborhood - no busy streets, highways or anything, just boring cul-de-sacs and suburban streets with no real traffic and the friends Mom acted like she felt horrible my daughter wasn’t getting a ride and offered to come pick her up in her car if I wouldn’t ‘drive’ her. LOL.

Different strokes for different folks I guess.
 
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