Should this Mom have been arrested & charged with a crime?

rambot said:

Wait....
Are you defining helicopter parents in bold?

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I didn't know that I was defining helicopter parents at all.

chevyontheriver said:

I didn't know that I was defining helicopter parents at all.

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Sorry describing. I'm just not sure who the people are rhat you were referring to.

Because that really isn't what helicopter parents are.

chevyontheriver said:

While we both know there are parents who are negligent in their duties, there are people who really are too involved in micro-managing the rest of their communities to fit their own tiny views. As always, balance and appropriate liberty. I was a free-range child and I look at the helicopter parenting of today as suffocating. The cops should be attuned to genuine neglect but not everything is neglect.

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Were you a free range kid or were you a child of the 80s or earlier decade? because getting on your bike and coming home at dark isnt free range. Thats just less supervision.

This is free range

Vambram said:

IMO, that video is a radical definition of a free range kid and/or free range parenting. Perhaps that there parenting style from that video would only be effective in only a limited amount of circumstances.

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It's actually not all that radical. What makes free range unique is the lack of rules and structure. It makes parents more like observers of their kids growing up....in no way guiding.


YES you can argue for more play more freedom. But free range is more than that.

rambot said:

But free range is more than that.

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Most people honestly don't know that.

I have always thought the term was descriptive of the way most were raised in the 70's and 80's as opposed to the more obsessive styles of parenting common now.

Hazelelponi said:

Most people honestly don't know that.

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I agree. I would agree (of course) that there IS a continuum of parenting style from overbearing to (essentially) absent and that the parenting of the 70s and 80s is definitely closer to free range. But a BIG reason for why that time period looked the way it did (compared to what our kids are going through) is that most of us didn't have video games in our childhood (or very little). Video games park kids butts at home and some parents "liked knowing where they were" and they "really didn't cause any kinda trouble. Just go in there for hours at a time coming out now and then for water or a snack. In oth er words, I think it was more US than our parents that made our childhood awesome because we were the ones going to explore...and parents allowed that. Kids THESE days are less keen to explore...at least urban kids seem to be).

The 80s...that's when I grew up...and it was infinitely better.
As a Xennial, I can tell you what happened. I watched it happen....maybe you have your own example.

Starting maybe gr3 all the kids in my crescent played 3 older high school kids in streets hockey (Canada....so....of course). Every day. 345 til dinner. It was awesome.
Then when I got to grade 5, one of the high schoolers got a Nintendo....and two of three or the younger kids got one. Within about a month, hockey basically stopped. Over the next couple months there was the odd gathering but nothing happened. And then, never again. Even just getting my friend to play catch football outside was getting tough. He just wanted to play supermario (which I sucked at).


I know how much "joy' people get out of video gaming but I saw what it did to my little community and I will always believe they're impact has been very VERY roundly negative.

For the record, I think 70s 80s parents got a LOT right.

But I think TRULY free range kids do not grow up with appropriate socialization or, I'm not really sure the word, determination/followthrough/resilience/flexibility.

I think you'd probably have very happy kids. But I'm not convinced you'll have happy, fully functional society members.

rambot said:

I think you'd probably have very happy kids. But I'm not convinced you'll have happy, fully functional society members.

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do... we really want fully functional compliant society members?

johansen said:

do... we really want fully functional compliant society members?

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1) Who said "compliant"?
2) This isn't about the powers that be, this is about how they interact with you and me and the people around them.
3) Have you ever done group work and had that one member who didn't do anything?

rambot said:

1) Who said "compliant"?
2) This isn't about the powers that be, this is about how they interact with you and me and the people around them.
3) Have you ever done group work and had that one member who didn't do anything?

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its intrinsic to the word choice you used: "functional society"

no one i know prior to the 70's ever said the native americans were functional members of western society.

but they were functional members of their own society.. but you would never raise your kids as one.

my brother laments the hippy communies died off. no.. they didn't die off.. they were murdered.

johansen said:

its intrinsic to the word choice you used: "functional society"

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No, it really isn't. At all. It's about how they function WITH US.
Is that not important to you?
Do you want a society of idiots? A society of jerks? People who disrespect you?

Wouldn't you rather surround yourself with pleasant happy well adjusted people in, say your workplace or your family home?
Of course you would. So why wouldn't you want that your your society at large?

johansen said:

no one i know prior to the 70's ever said the native americans were functional members of western society.

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That may speak to the people you know

rambot said:

No, it really isn't. At all. It's about how they function WITH US.
Is that not important to you?

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Whats important is they are functional to Jesus.

Not you.

johansen said:

Whats important is they are functional to Jesus.

Not you.

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Platitude.

Pragmatically speaking, you prefer to not be around jerks.

It's OK to prefer that. And if you don't get that then you get to practice grace with them.

rambot said:

It's OK to prefer that. And if you don't get that then you get to practice grace with them

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Its also ok to admit you dont know what the next generation should do with their lives, or how to live them.

You know your kids are free to quit paying the taxes you voted for.. right?

Otherwise thats slavery to entrap them in it. But we all do it because we were born into it too.