I’ll go over a refresher of that, some related new anecdotes, and then some other related questions.
People Don’t Let Kids Do Things
As a refresher, here are some quotes and statistics from last time, because I really do think exposure to this type of thing needs to involve spaced repetition to sink in:
1. A third of people, both parents and non-parents, responded in a survey that it is not appropriate to leave a 13 year old at home for an hour or two, as opposed to when we used to be 11 year olds babysitting for other neighborhood kids.
2. A third of people said in that same survey that if a 10-year-old is allowed to play alone in the park, there needs to be an investigation by CPS.Harris Poll: More than half of the kids surveyed have not experienced many real-life experiences on their own. According to the kids surveyed aged 8 to 12 years old:
- 45% have not walked in a different aisle than their parents at a store
- 56% have not talked with a neighbor without their parents
- 61% have not made plans with friends without adults helping them
- 62% have not walked/biked somewhere (a store, park, school) without an adult
- 63% have not built a structure outside (for example, a fort or treehouse)
- 67% have not done work that they’ve been paid for (e.g., mowing lawns, shoveling snow, babysitting)
- 71% have not used a sharp knife
When I asked what constitutes supervision, she said that I had to be visible to my neighbors when the kids were outside, regardless of whether or not I could see the children. I asked where that was found in the Virginia law. She replied that it isn’t in the Virginia law, but that Social Services has its own set of rules.
Bethany: I just sent my 12 year old in to go get a dozen donuts while I waited in the car.
“Mom they will wonder why I’m alone.”
Polimath: My kids used to love walking to Target until the local Target changed their policy to “no unaccompanied kids under 18”
There are 72,000,000 kids in America and about 100 non-governmental kidnappings by strangers a year. If you left your child unattended, the original claim is that they would get kidnapped once every 750,000 years.
Maxwell Tabarrok: 37% of all American children are investigated by CPS. 2 million investigations, 530k substantiated cases, and 200k family separations every year. [...]
Let Your Children Play
Yes, it is actively good for children to learn to entertain themselves, at the earliest age possible. As a bonus, it is also excellent for you the parent, but it’s great for them too.
We used to know this. Now we need to be reminded. Last time I emphasized the general argument, here I will follow up with an example of the paranoia we instill about how this might somehow be bad, actually.
And yet, somehow, even with direct observation many people think you shouldn’t be able to go two doors down.
Yes, it is actively good for children to learn to entertain themselves, at the earliest age possible. As a bonus, it is also excellent for you the parent, but it’s great for them too.
We used to know this. Now we need to be reminded. Last time I emphasized the general argument, here I will follow up with an example of the paranoia we instill about how this might somehow be bad, actually.
Girl about something: Is it ACTUALLY true that it’s good for me to let my baby entertain himself, or is it just selfishness because I can be doing something else while he plays? Tell the truth.Don’t Fear The CPS
Based Sipper Wife | Mrs. Tomasone | Already sipped: It’s good for him! You know how people suffer from short attention spans and always needing to be entertained? Every time you let him play uninterrupted, you’re holding off that problem and helping him sustain focus
shiloh.: it’s so good, please teach your baby to play independently. if he were unhappy or lonely he’d cry & come to you. development of independent play is SO good for them (or course balanced with showing / talking / engaging)
is for baby whisperer: actually, seriously, a fantastic gift you can offer your child.
The problem, of course, is not any threat other than CPS.
And yet, somehow, even with direct observation many people think you shouldn’t be able to go two doors down.
And by shouldn’t, some of them say (I hope she means only if they actually do it, not because they simply think it was okay in theory, but I’m not sure):
MNBonnie: Over 54% of you need a visit from CPS. Holy shit.
Romy: wow yeah the logical conclusion here is that over half of all parents should have their kids taken away.
This behavior is obviously fine except insofar as someone might call CPS, but even if it wasn’t fine, it’s crazy to think about what that call implies.
Kelsey Piper: I don’t think that it’s a good idea to take peoples’ children away because they do a completely safe thing that is slightly different than the completely safe thing you do.
It is a bad outcome when CPS conducts an inspection of a family that is doing a great job raising kids in a lovely home but doing something slightly unusual. It is a way to terrorize those parents into compliance with standards that would never be the law and make no sense.
… I have had friends who have had their homes inspected because of stuff on the scale of ‘toddler fell at the playground and got a bruise’, yes. It was super stressful and probably made them inclined to be more safetyist and terrified of normal childhood falls!
Andrew Rettek: Yep. It sucks.
Romy: the number of people invoking cps every time they hear about a parenting choice that they wouldn’t make is really disturbing.
do you understand what claim you’re making when you say someone should have cps called on them? you’re saying that you believe their child would be better off ripped from the only home they’ve ever known and put in the care of strangers. moreover, you’re saying you believe the median foster parent is a better parent than their current parents.
you’re also saying you think we should dedicate state resources to carrying out this process. social workers already have caseloads too big to manage dealing with kids in homes with serious drug addiction, abuse, neglect and often fail to successfully intervene when it’s desperately needed.
you want these same social workers to spend time taking kids away from parents who leave them in a locked and air conditioned car for 2 minutes while they run into the store, or who watch them on the baby monitor while they catch up with the neighbors? really? if you were in charge of society this is what you’d do?
yep, in every case i’ve ever seen this raised for on twitter it would be infinitely worse than the home the kid is already in, even without accounting for the trauma of the kid being taken from their parents.
Mason: We also don’t actually want a society of traumatized and cowed parents
One function of CPS is to serve as a “wake up call” for bad parents. But you do not want a huge % of good parents making all of their parenting decisions under some abject terror that they may look negligent.
One problem with allowing any idiot to use the state as their cudgel is that a lot of people lack the imagination to anticipate the immediate consequences of their actions for other people, asking them to consider second-order effects is a total lost cause.
This is why a lot of older story arcs involve a “nosy neighbor” character who comes to embody something like the banality of evil or malicious ignorance. There used to be very strong norms against even *suggesting* that you might report people to the state for minor infractions.
Romy: the vast majority of babies ever born were raised by parents who would consider live video monitoring of a sleeping baby so excessive they’d be confused by the concept.
having a baby is hard in a bunch of ways, but a whole lot of parents are making it much harder than it needs to be. they’re doing their best to shame everyone else into having a harder time than necessary too.
by Zvi Mowshowitz, Don't Worry About the Vase | Read more:
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