Livre d'Or

I happened to see this entry:

I tend to end up arguing with just about everybody on this topic. Background: I've worked in childcare for ten years, due to siblings with special needs and being quite a bit older than they are and thus expected to take on a more parent-like role as we grew up I have a really solid background in child psychology/neurology plus what more or less amounts to an informal ECE degree. (Which, you know: as it's informal, there's only my word I've done the actual background and work, but, well. I have.) And finally, my dad's a crown counsel, my mom's a GP and my uncle's with the RCMP child exploitation task-forces. (Which always sounds so funny to me - no, they're FIGHTING the exploitation!)

And the biggest thing that I've always taken away is, most people's assessment of both risk and their kid's developmental stage is wrong. In all kinds of directions.

Risk is the first one: my parents actually got a lot of accusations of being "helicopter parents" back in the late 90s when this was juuuust starting to be a Thing. This is because they wouldn't let me walk five blocks to go to a friend's house in the dark even when I was a teenager. (I lived in a relatively small town.) The same people who tut tutted them about this were always baffled and confused about why me and my best friend were ABSOLUTELY free to wander around together all over downtown Vancouver as late as we wanted and then to take the bus back to the ferry to go to her house on Bowen Island, at 13/14 respectively.

I myself didn't realize the context until I was older, and the context was this: my father has prosecuted an astonishing number of rape cases that happened in parking lots, in school-fields, in vacant lots, in various little bits of suburban/small-town-urban space (including in someone's back yard and that person never knew) and these were ALL features of any walk around my hometown after dark. And this was because after dark in my hometown nobody is outside. It's all Nice Residential Neighbourhoods where people stay inside and watch TV and you can actually scream and might not be heard or, if they come to the door and they can't see you, be dismissed.

Whereas downtown Van at night is full of lights, people EVERYWHERE, and a LOT of cops. You have a semi-loud argument at a bus-stop and you're going to get a whole bunch of people rubbernecking. Similarly, the bus has the bus-driver and everyone ELSE going home, and the ferry likewise and is also full of CCTV systems. There is no such thing as perfect safety, but the blunt fact is we were as safe just us two as we would have been with an adult (possibly even slightly more, because people like yourself see "two young girls alone" and pay a little bit of attention to whether or not we're okay.)

Similarly, child molesters: the stats are, your kid is in most danger from someone they know. Teacher, family member, family friend, coach, instructor, even just Someone They Know around the neighbourhood. Both my parents and obviously my uncle were well aware of this, which means I got very specifically coached: when I got the "people shouldn't touch you anywhere you don't want them to" talk (which definitely included accurate terms for genitals etc) all of those people were explicitly included.

Similarly too, my "stranger" talk was modified and focused: stay out of arm's reach; don't get into a car with anyone you don't know/trust and actually in specific cases (like if you're getting picked up and expecting Mom but someone else comes instead) don't get in a car with anyone who doesn't have the right safety word; if you're lost or scared find a mom who has other kids with her first, a lady who's alone if there's no mom, a dad with kids, and then an employee of somewhere nearby if there's no one else. Still stay out of arm's reach. If you need turn to a police officer, make them show you their badge, and don't get in a car with just one police officer (and if you explain that this is about safety your dad the crown counsel taught you, real police officers will understand). Etc.

It wasn't "be afraid of all strangers ever". And in fact the older I got, the more specific it got (we talked about how to best guess if someone was REALLY, say, a park ranger or if they weren't, what the signs of someone trying to lure you somewhere were, etc). And all of them were based on actual case precedent dad and uncle worked with.

And in a more every-day-risk sense: cuts, bruises, even broken limbs, fine - head or neck injuries? NOT fine. Most people don't realize how even minor head injuries can have lasting effects, or how little it takes at the neck to wreck the spine. Which again had an impact on what I was allowed to do, and how I was taught to assess risk myself.


And on the developmental stage assessment side, while ages in general are a good broad guide, five year old A and five year old B are NOT necessarily going to be ready to handle the same kinds of things. And you may have a brilliant five year old when it comes to reading books, but who nonetheless is still seriously crap at evaluating cause-and-effect and consequences, and being able to conceptualise the future longer than about five seconds.

And as an example, I'm way, way more firm on "no you will not climb on the things" with 2-3 year olds than I am with 4 year olds (by and large, adjusted for child). This is for a very specific reason: 2-3 year olds are much, much worse at connecting "when I did X thing last time, I fell and hurt myself, so if I do X thing this time, I will probably fall and hurt myself again, so I shouldn't do X thing". They are also utter crap at "so I should avoid X thing, and this bit over here is really SIMILAR looking to X thing, so I'll probably also fall and hurt myself if I do this thing that is very SIMILAR to X thing, so instead I will do Y thing."

Which can be as simple as where to put their foot on a climbing web. Etc. Where a kid is on those real, neurologically grounded cognitive development lines - how well they can conceptualize the future, how well they can project cause and effect, is a huge factor in figuring out where any activity is on the risk scale.

And then, finally: yes, kids used to be a lot more free to run around and do crap. On the other hand, childhood injury, death and abduction really did used to be quite a bit more common. Almost every single person I know who's my dad's age broke an arm or a leg when they were a kid; maybe a handful of my age-peers did, and even fewer of my much-younger-sister's age-peers. Another factor that tends not to get talked about in these cases is, you know: broken limbs cost MONEY, and then they tend to cost extra effort for caretaking adults. Etc.


Which, tl;dr version, in a lot of cases from my pov both sides are wrong, because they're having an argument of emotional ideology, rather than one of concrete risk and capability assessment, and because a significant amount of the risk assessment is done with the nostalgia of the past from the survivors (ie the people who were NOT abducted/suffered traumatic brain injury/etc), rather than clear analysis.

/babble