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Maybe this topic has been covered, probably, but it is on my mind. Yesterday, half day school, picked up DD with dog and plans changed since a buddy was heading to Central Park with Grandmother so we all went.

We went to Belvedere castle where they climbed up, I stayed on the lowere level with dog. Then we were going through the brambles. There is a clearing that I know of and when we hit it, I took dog off the leash and threw the frisbee I had for her. The kids each threw the frisbee for the dog to catch it. We were heading to the paths again and the grandmother asked me to put dog back on leash, which I did. We got lunch and then the kids are climbing trees. Not that high, it was above soft ground. I am not concerned since I climbed many trees in my lifetime. But grandmother wouldn't allow it.

DH has a difficult time when Dd does gymnastics on the furniture, though I notice they have a commerical of gym athlete doing just that. I think it is a Bounty commercial. We are so worried about what our kids do, rightly because of the crazies out there. But how do you negotiate the teaching of taking some risks? And before anyone criticizes me for taking the dog off the leash, I hope you have never speeded or talked on your cell phone while driving, "cast the first stone" etc.

Ren

That is one of the best questions asked here in a long time

It really comes down to realistic risk assessment by the parent ( ie not giving into the media-fed fear), laid out borders to the child with the reward of those borders expanded if expectations of safety, trust, and common sense are met.

Here's a website I recommend:

http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/

also an interesting article kind-of-related to your question

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-462091/How-children-lost-right-roam-generations.html

That's an interesting article Cawdor, and a good question Wren. I think the answer for each of us varies a lot depending on where we live too - my kids free-range in our neighborhood, but where we live the worry is wild animals, not crime.

Another question that is sorta related for our kids is free time - I had so much more free time when I was a child - time to just play, enjoy my friends, let my imagination run wild, just be a child. The free-ranging in our neighborhood today is so great for my kids (jmo)... fun for me too (I love getting to know all the kids as they come in and out of our yard)... but.... also severely impacted by everyone heading to lessons/teams/camps etc. I'm guilty of filling up my children's schedules too - all three of them are at different camps this week that are wonderful camps that they love and that I feel are giving them valuable life experiences (as well as a chance to meet and make new friends). But given the chance, my two daughters would be every bit as happy at home playing with the neighborhood kids doing whatever the heck it is they do when they play all day. DS isn't quite as into it, but the only other boys in the neighborhood anywhere near his age are all about team sports like basketball, ds isn't and the other boys aren't - I don't think - EG, hence they aren't reading Lord of the Rings and taking online chemistry courses for fun this month. I also don't know if it's quirkiness due to giftedness or due to dyspraxia, but ds has a tough time figuring out what to do when just left to do whatever... so he doesn't like just hanging out going from house to house or yard to yard or woods or wherever without a plan.

Gotta run - good question!

polarbear

To me, it's usually a risk-assessment of whether any negative consequences would be life-threatening or merely inconvenient. With something like tree climbing over soft ground at a reasonable height, I would consider the consequences of falling to be inconvenient (e.g., stunned, a bruise or scrape, or even a broken bone), but not life-threatening provided the height wasn't too great. Of course, a broken bone would be more catastrophic at some times than others, too, so it obviously would be on a case-by-case basis.

The thing that I struggle with now is my DS13 walking 45 minutes across town by himself to an activity at his request. I let him do it after reviewing rules with him and I know he's 13 and 6 feet tall so probably not a potential kidnap victim, but it still makes me slightly nervous and I make him text me a couple time along his route and when he arrives. We live in a smaller town, though, and the route isn't full of busy traffic.

I'll let DD10 walk to a neighbors house about 10 mins from ours, but we're in a fairly enclosed neighborhood with very little traffic and I can see her for about half the way. I wouldn't feel comfortable with her going too far outside of our neighborhood unless she had our big dog, though, because she's still small enough to be snatched (although I know it's extremely unlikely to happen). For me, the negative consequence would be life-threatening.

Of course, I make my kids wear helmets when they ride bikes and ride in booster seats until they met the height requirements. Again, to me, a case of possible life-threatening consequences rather than merely inconvenient consequences.

But obviuosly everyone's assessment is different and often affected by accurate and inaccurate risks reported in the media.

We suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI) in our family last year (adult), and I insist on head gear on bikes/skates/scooters/skateboards and general extra safe play because of that, to the point of being a hassle. I was completely shocked by what I learned about TBIs, including:

- TBIs are not like other injuries where there is a recovery and everything is back to the way it was. We don't like to think of the thing that makes us who we are being inside our skull, but I'm afraid it is. Imagine the very thing that gives us the ability to say "I have a brain injury" can be damaged. There is not a backup copy.
- only about 11% of TBIs show up on scans
- serious, life-altering TBIs can occur with no external damage or even bruising (look up coup/contra coup)
- a very common and often devastating injury occurs from smacking the back of the head hard, causing the brain to bounce forward against the bony inside front of the skull. Frontal lobe injuries are common and can be devastating (see )
- At clinics and rehab I saw several people changed forever (physically and mentally disabled) from just falling down stairs, or off short step ladders.
- A major change of personality can occur from frontal lobe injuries. Trust me, this is absolutely devastating. It does not take a bullet or a massive wreck. Minor car wrecks and falls do it all the time, and you can end up with a loved one who is barely like the person you knew and they have no idea that this is the case and would find it offensive for you to suggest. Imagine taking a sandblaster to someone's finely featured personality. You look them in the eye and realize they are not who they were.
- Even when they are not apparently serious, TBIs can affect memory, attention, emtions...and can last a lifetime.

Anyway, I hope that scares others into avoiding TBI.

I used to do Chinese wheelies with my bike into snowbanks when i was young and played baseball with no helmet


I think I did alright considering the knocks I got.

My son and I spend several hours outside every day, but it's hard to find kids for him to play with. They're all at daycare, school, or afterschool activities. It's tempting to fill up our schedule too since he gets kind of lonely when it's just me and him.

ETA: I live in a fairly dangerous city, so I don't think I'll encourage much solo travel. My parents let me take the public buses at 11, but with DS, I'll probably wait till older, if at all...

Pru- I am sorry to hear about the struggles that your family has gone through. You are right, TBI's can be terrible things with catastrophic consequences and taking prudent measures to prevent them is certainly a valid concept. On the other hand, however, I would also ask that those reading this take into consideration the parts of you comments that remind us all of how fragile and short life can be. As you stated, quite correctly, TBI's don't have to come from a major accident or trauma. They can be caused be something as simple as slipping on the stairs or falling from a step ladder. Please, take caution in your life where necessary (i.e. requiring seat belts, booster seats, bike helmets) but don't become so scared as to impact the quality of experience you or child is allowed to have. Life is short and no one among us will ever truly know what lies in store for us five minutes from now so don't forget to live life to its fullest. Try not to be so cowed by the dangers of living that you forget to actually live.

There was an article about this in Family Circle this month, too. I grew up in a very safe small university town but with lots of biking-- so I consider freerangibg vital but helmets don't count as bubblewrap parenting in my book! It's hard to let kids roam here (not hometown) with the suburban sprawl and poor pedestrian routes, but as my kids grow we'll figure some ideas out (the community areas, botanical gardens, etc can be solo spots w friends, even if getting to some takes a car

Oh, and I also try to appreciate we all have different comfort levels about stuff--it's never going to be purely rational risk assessment. I tend to agree w the idea of severe vs inconvenient. But my idea of severe can be different than yours! So a dog I might be comfortable with depending on the dog and owner, or not. And my daughter with heights yes but speed not so much

when I was 11 I walked 45 minutes in one of the worst areas of town to an activity, generally after dark. Mostly this was because my parents couldn't prevent me, but anyway. I got followed once. Another guy got mugged on the same route, but he did a fake karate stance and te guy ran away.

The post-script, though, is that my parents lost controle of me pretty completely by 10 or 11 because one of them was overprotective, and I was Not Impressed.

-Mich

I think it very much depends upon where you live. We have moved several times and have lived in very different neighborhoods. In my last house, I drove or followed my ds on his bike to his friend’s house - it simply was not safe for a number of reasons. Where I live now - he rides by himself all the time. (Helmut is a must and the law where we live. We also have a “family cell phone” that goes in the bike basket. Though, I do have to get him to turn it on.) It also depends upon the child. Is he safety first, fun second or fun first, safety second?

I am fortunate (I think) to run with a group of parents who are very free-range. For this group, I am on the cautious side. I am VERY careful about water and I insist on carseats and helmets for bikes and scooters. Other than that, I am pretty lax. I am really struggling with whether to let DD be more free-range in our neighborhood, which is sort of an edge area to a small city and does have some transients/homeless folks passing through pretty regularly. At the same time, it is a pretty safe family area and I have never heard of ANY assaults.

We have a great climbing tree in the front yard.

I think it's important to note that most kid are abused or killed by someone they know. Not that stranger-danger isn't an issue.

We lost a child two years ago, and trying to forget how random death and tragedy is has become my daily struggle. We can do everything right and still go wrong.

I'm so terribly sorry, Evemomma.

Thank you.

Annette...I believe an underidentified contributor to childhood obesity is leant to the fact most kids don't have the freedom to roam and adventure that we had.

In 1980, when I was a 10-yo free ranger, I was stalked and followed through the mall by an adult male, all the way outside. Had I not been meeting up my mother outside at the time, I'm not sure what would have happened. But seeing her there emboldened me to turn around and ask the guy why he was following me, at which point he left.

I did not have stranger-danger training, so the experience was more awkward than scary.

According to meganslaw.ca.gov, there is one registered sex offender within two miles of our current house. There are 28 within two miles of the house I grew up in. It was a nice neighborhood.

Even in my old slow neighborhood with its wide streets, I remember seeing a girl get hit by a car at the end of my street. Another friend in 6th grade got seriously injured by a car and was out all of 7th, returning in 8th with crutches and slurred speech.

Statistically, cars are my real worry when my children are out. Drunk drivers, texting drivers, angry girlfriends/boyfriends speeding through neighborhoods in 4,000-pound bullets. I let DD8 go around the block now on her scooter and I still can't relax until I see her.

Remember, though, that the threshold for sex offender registration is fairly low (eg, statutory rape--18yo having sex with a 16yo...I think this counts?). I think the website may give at least some details on the crime, however. Also remember that the VAST majority of sex offenders know their victims. Your physical proximity to a sex offender truly may not matter in the slightest if that person has never met your child.

The other thing is...we never hesitate to put our kids in the car and drive them somewhere, right? I have never known ANYone who restricted car travel due to fear of car accidents. But statistically, if we really wanted to keep our kids safe, we would limit car travel with them as much as possible. Car accidents are the #1 cause of accidental death and injury of children and teens.

Now you do . I agree that reducing time spent in a car reduces accidents, and I do keep it in mind. I don't drive to work in the city partly for safety reasons, and I lean toward teaching my children math myself or online with EPGY or AOPS etc. rather than a math school partly for that reason. People may not often articulate safety as a reason not to drive because it sounds gloomy, but the consideration may still be affecting their decisions.

I have put limits on who is allowed to drive my kids..but this of course is a fallicy.

I try to define for myself what is preventable and what is not. Drowings are the number one cause of death in toddlers, and thus I can help prevent this tragedy by never leaving my DD2 alone in baths or outside in proximity to water. Preventing my child from car accidents is much more imposing on our lives, so I accept the risks. Statistics mean nothing on a micro level. My best friend lost her 6 year old son in his sleep 4 years ago due to dometbing called "sudden unexplained deatb in,childhood" (like SIDS for kids/teens). We hVe another great friend who nearly died when an F2 tornado pulled the roof off her bedroom last year. What are the odds that we are all best friends before our tragedies? I probably couldn't
count so high. But we sometimes make the dark joke that we a very dangerous to befriend.

Me too. Car accidents are my top fear for the safety of my kids and my own as well. They also ride in car seats until they're too big for them. So, DS12 is too big, but the 7 and 10 year old still fit.

We don't have much in the way of public rail transportation around here, which stinks. When I lived in Boston, I got around on foot and on the T almost exclusively. I miss that.

I do let my kids move around on their own. Lately, I've been dropping DD7 and DS10 off partway to school and letting them walk the rest of the 100m or so alone. They love it! I've been letting DS12 go places the require crossing the major streets on his own since he was 10 or 11. He's mature enough and I trust him.

As for activities, is anyone else out there tired of having to drive everywhere to get to ballet or soccer or whatever? We work pretty hard at finding stuff the kids can do after school at school, or at a very close location.

Ha--actually, I would not live somewhere where my kids were traveling, for instance, 25+ miles a day in a car. Almost all of our weekday life is lived within a 5-mile radius, although we do take weekend trips. This is also partly because I really hate car travlel and we prioritize environmental concerns.

However, I have always considered myself highly unusual. For the vast majority of America, this would never be a consideration. I think that is okay, btw. Our built environment is incredibly limiting for people who wish to restrict car travel.

Annette, so grateful you were so alert. I've concluded that we are mostly incredibly lucky to cheat accidental death. I do not care to count the dangerous dituations in my youth (picture riding on lawn chairs in the back of my dad's pick-up among others).

If it was up to my DS5, we would walk everywhere. He is extremely concerned with my family's "carbon footprint", LOL.

My husband, son and I moved from a city to a rural area next door to my parents years ago. It seemed the right thing to do, but there are sometimes difficult consequences for doing the right thing.

We have to drive over 15 miles to go to a Walmart and almost 20 miles to go to a library since there isn't one in our small town. My son hates the isolation and I wish there was something I could do about it. I would have loved to see him play more with other kids when he was younger but we live in an area with mostly retired people. He only got to play with other kids when he did plays in musical theater.

Our small town school playground was not a safe place to play because of bullies. He only went to kindergarten there. Recently, a middle school boy had his head dunked in the toilet at school. The school says they are taking bullying seriously but I don't believe it. We homeschool but this still bothers me so much to know that other people are going through this. I became a helicopter parent when I found out about the bullying in our town and felt the criticism of the judgmental people whose religion requires shunning of people who are different from them in some ways. Members of my family that I thought would be nice for my son to grow up around are members of this religion. Luckily, my son is very perceptive and instinctively knew that he needed to watch what he said if he played with their kids. For example, when he saw the movie Avatar he knew that his cousins were forbidden to see it so he didn't mention it but he also had a feeling that he might offend them in some way without knowing it because there were so many things they were against because the preacher had said it was bad. Playing is not much fun when you have to worry so much about offending your playmates.

My 14-year-old car is being repaired now. It will cost over $2000 to fix it which means we will be forced to stay home even more to pay for it. We can't afford new car payments. Gas prices went up so high that we limit going out anywhere.

I have an amazing 14-year-old gifted kid with dysgraphia and low muscle tone and sensory processing issues that affect his endurance. He developed scoliosis at age 11 which requires that he wear a brace, further limiting his activities but he learns more than I ever learned on his own.

Learning is playing to him. He is having fun learning Japanese and reading a lot about the Japanese culture, but when I told a family member about it I had to deal with their bigotry and I realize that my son is right when he tells me not to tell anyone about what he is learning or doing.

Sometimes my son and I really need a break from this place but we will have to persevere. I would love for us to be able to play and enjoy life without other people judging us.

I have just been reading these but when I read Lori H, I thought wow. I cannot imagine. I cannot imagine a lot of stuff about people's attitudes, being from Canada. I come from a small city, 60 miles due north of Detroit. And in the early 70s, one of my Phys Ed teachers lived with this English teacher, both women. It didn't stop the English teacher from becoming head of the dept. Nobody did anything to them. They were living together. A dark skined man became mayor in the 70s, when .01% of the population in our town was dark skinned.

I don't understand the bullying. I don't understand the parents that bring up these children. A head in the toilet?

It is more interesting this year when I see which children my child wants playdates with. I understand she has her buddies, but I also see the cliques starting at this age, in grade 2. I can see her developing to being part of the group at the popular table and I don't care for it. Though in NYC, popular is relative.

A mother told me that her daughter, going to a private school has to deal with these really rich kids. Now this family lives in a $10 million apt. The husband is a hedge fund lawyer. And she is talking about kids that have charge accounts at 12 to buy whatever they want, a la some Disney character but in real life.

I am digressing now but it is interesting where this world is going. How safe are our kids when they venture out? What age can they take the bus or subway alone? This grandmother who I had the adventure with, told me she grew up in Brighton Beach and at 10 she took the subway into Manhattan to see a movie or go to the museum, by herself. I cannot imagine that today.

We are at the beach today and there is construction being done at the house next door. When my daughter was getting chilly on the beach, I wouldn't let her go by herself to get a sweatshirt, one of the "free ranging" allowances at the beach. I kept thinking one of these workers could grab her. In the middle of the day, in front of everyone. My fear factor in this day and age.

Though I probably do things others wouldn't. There is a jetty where the innercoastal starts made of a pile of rocks. Some closer to each other and some not so much. A few years ago, I took her out. It was a journey. It was an ordeal to make it to the end but I promised her. And I am athletic, her father could never have made it so I had to do it. And we had to stop a few times and figure it out and hold her hand to make sure she didn't fall. But at the same time, it was a cool thing to do.

I want DD to be smart about taking risks, but also find out the enjoyment of succeeding. Then you hear about the boy who got grabbed outside his school. Seven years old but he fought the guy off. Can you imagine some guy grabbing a kid as he went into school? My heart drops at the thought.

It was very interesting to hear everyone's "dilmema" on how to deal with these issues.

Ren

I live in a quiet, picturesque suburb at the far edge of a fairly small city with conservative values. Some guy who lives just down the road once tried to talk two young girls (9 and 12) into his truck. This happened right in front of my house. In making inquiries, I'm told he has some rather noticeable psychological problems.

So yeah, don't think that living in a quiet neighborhood is any protection. Sexual predators look just like anyone else, and they live everywhere.

My DD7 and her friends are not even allowed to cross the street without adult supervision.

My wife was stalked several times as a child. She spared herself worse through a finely-honed flight response.

Not allowed to cross the street without adult supervision? At what age, if ever, will this be allowed? Not to start a fight, but note Michaela's comments upthread. At a certain point, especially if you have a smart (obviously) and rebellious (I don't know) child, they are going to start assessing the risk themselves, wrong or right, and possibly start lying to you because they think you are being ridiculous.

Kids need some rope. My DD is asking for a LOT of rope already--more than we can give her, but. It's going to be a dance. When she is upset (often) we now let her walk up and down the block alone. I don't particularly like it, but it cools her off very effectively and it is a very valuable adult privilege to her. Do I stand by the window and watch for her going by? Yes, I do. But she doesn't know I do that.

Reading the book and blog "Free Range Kids" by Lenore Skenazy may help parents better assess risks. Often people worry about vivid bad things such as kidnapping rather than the bad things that are more likely to happen.

I expect that part of the problem today is that you're the odd man out if you let your kids out on their own. Thirty or more years ago, this wasn't the case. Almost all parents told their kids to "go out and play!!" and the kids did. Today, many parents don't even let their kids play alone on the front lawn or go to the local park by themselves when they're ten.

You'd have to ask her mom. It's not my rule.

Then again, I've never had to run through other people's yards to get home because a man in a car was following me.

Smart risk assessment includes moving indoors during a lightning storm or getting out of the water when a shark has been spotted. Sure, the odds of being struck by lightning or bit by a shark are extremely low, but it only has to happen to you once.

Cue me to jump in now because we all actually went outside the other night just to watch the lightening storm because the storm was on the edge of our area for hours and never did move in so it was dry but awesome. (it was the day before the Venus transit- which we didn't see). We'd been checking the weather app to see if it was going to make it this far or not.

I don't have a fear specifically of SIDS, but I occasionally got/get a little anxious going to sleep I guess because if something happens to my kids in the daytime it won't be long before they get a response but during bedtime it's literally half a lifetime before anyone would know anything was wrong to respond to. Of course I recognize it as anxiety and beyond my control, but I actually have to tell myself the phrase, "my kids are fine" when I'm going to sleep.

I'm much more lenient at letting my kids try things/do things/climb things but I'm also quick to tell them if they're not doing it right and I helicopter and I redirect when they're tired because that makes them clumsy. I'm talking about stuff like my 19 month old likes the big slide at the playground, climbs it and puts herself down it. My 4.5 climbs the outside of the tube slide at the playground (allowed by the rules and done by kids a little older). Yes, my kid wears gear to ride his bike. He's got training wheels now but when he gets older and wants to do bike tricks or ride a skateboard it will be too late to introduce helmet rules if he doesn't use one to start with.

Yes, but smart risk assessment does not include staying inside whenever it is cloudy or never swimming in the ocean. The number of kids actually abducted by a stranger is about 200/year, IIRC. Killed by a stranger, 50. Those are pretty small numbers.

(As for shark attacks, boy, THOSE numbers are REALLY tiny! I never worry about sharks, though I don't surf.)

BUT! I am paranoid mom of the year when it comes to water safety. Because drowning happens. A lot. I have seen a couple of close calls with young kids already. Brrr.

As for this, I have been having the safety conversation with my kids since they were....3ish? Don't go with anyone you don't know, if someone approaches you and tries to make you to come with them yell "Stop, you're not my dad/mom," if you're lost, look for a mom with kids and ask her for help, don't let anyone touch you in your private areas unless it's a doctor and I'm there, etc (simplifying here for brevity). I worry a lot less about childhood innocence than lack of information.

My ultimate goal is to raise kids who are confident not reckless, prepared not scared, assertive not assaultive, and resourceful not oblivious. Sigh...if it was only a simple task.

On the personal safety front, I learned the "clean and healthy rule" from another clinician and used it ever since with young kids: that no one should touch or discuss your private parts unless it's to keep you clean or healthy.

Smart posting means thinking about what has already been said before making inflammatory comments.

Go back and read the previous posts and see if you can spot the metaphorical shark sighting.

Dude, I did read your previous post. Was this reported to the police? What was the outcome? Have you spoken directly to the parents of the other children? I certainly see the concern--I would definitely want to have a lot more information in this situation. However, I would still, just for instance, allow my daughter to cross the street to get the mail, as she does every day. I can see her from the kitchen window.

Wren -

I'm coming to this post a bit late but think it is a very good question about how to teach and role model the balance risk taking with learning to use prudence and caution.

When my kids were fairly young, they got into rock climbing and joined a local team with an amazing coach who taught them all of the horrific risks associated with irresponsible behavior. The kids became very good at assessing danger and risks while also learning to push themselves past their own fears to take calculated risks. It has served them well, and it helped teach them things that I don't think I could have. Once they knew how to drive, my two older kids would join up with other kids on the team and travel to remote parts of our state to climb in their favorite spots. When storms approached, they cleaned their equipment off the routes and moved to safety. They religiously checked the safety of their equipment and refused to climb with some who they considered reckless. That balance between risk and freedom flowed over to most other areas of their lives.

My preference would have been to bubble-wrap them and duct tape them to the wall until they metamorphosed into responsible adults, but it doesn't seem to work that way.

See the NYT mag. article about Horace Mann. IMO the real risks are people our kids know. Also the book Protecting the Gift (trusting our instincts and teaching kids to trust theirs). I loved the rock climbing story above--I think that is a wonderful way to learn the balance between risk and freedom.

Yes, I agree.

I just learned about the incident recently, though it happened over a year ago. The targets, along with their younger sister, hang out at my house all the time to play with my DD, and I learned about the incident directly from them. They are both very bright (the younger of the two is identified as gifted) and responsible (the older practically runs her house) kids who would not make this sort of thing up.

Nobody contacted law enforcement at the time the incident occurred. They reported the incident to their mom immediately, and I'm not sure why she didn't report it, though she is noted to have some rather startling memory issues.

I spoke to law enforcement through the grapevine (I have a coworker who is a volunteer reserve deputy, who brought the question to his superiors) and have been advised that they should still be contacted, even though it's been over a year since the incident occurred.

My DW and I disagree on what to do next... she wants to persuade the mom to contact the police herself, where I'm ready to call them and make my own report. She's worried about stepping on her friend's feelings, where I believe our DD's safety (and the safety of all the other little girls on the street) trumps that concern.

We agreed to give DW a chance to talk to the other mom first, but then we went on vacation. I'll be resurrecting this conversation shortly.

Dude - we had a similar incident where we live. A man tried to talk my son's friend and his sister into walking over to his vehicle he'd parked in our cul-de-sac. He did not see the children's mother behind him walking towards her children. When the kids started yelling, the man took off in his car without bothering to close the passenger door he'd opened.

We called the police, it was broadcast on the local news, and the man was eventually arrested trying to do the same thing in another part of town. He was a registered offender. The police really do need to know, because it is the only way they can track incidences of offenders who travel about to different areas or to build a case against someone they're watching.

We still allowed our kids to walk home after that, but they walked in packs, not alone. And if one of them had to stay at school late so that the streets were emptied of parents and other students, one of us went to pick them up.

While we can't protect against everything, being smart about the independence we give is just as important.

One of the things that contributed to my insistence on evalutating risks for myself beginning around 7 or 8 was a series of incidents when I was 7-9. Noteably, a particular car gunned its engine and sped around a particular corner at me repeatedly durring my short (sight of the window) walk to school (I was 9), and I became very affraid of a family member who was babysitting me (and his own daughter) who was drinking a lot (I was 6).

No-one believed me in any of the cases, though in one, the dead guy was later found (heart attack, but several of us told the teachers about a guy slumped in his car). I was often disciplined for lying.

So if you're going to be very protective, I guess make a point of taking the kid seriously!

Add us to the list of people who limit car travel.

We are *not* particuarly interested in using carseats for the absolute longest period of time etc. We have at times had to use dangerous drivers or stand up on busses while carrying babies because transporting carseats was impossible... we'd have been safer in a car with a safe driver and no carseat. I think the incremental improvements in safety with state-of-the-art ideal practice in carseats are often over-represented and miscalculated in the scheme of things (especially with respect to the quality of the driver, especialy when the kid is crying).

**Please note, we do use carseats correctly when we use cars, we just try to see the whole picture. One of the reasons he fussed so much is that we really did do up the straps tight enough, and a lot of people told us "it's because you have the straps too tight!!!" weeeelllllllll.

Anyway. The upshot of the whole thing is that we strongly resist the need to use roads, including choosing walking routs carefully.

Amusingly, a child services worker once strongly advised me to accept a ride without a carseat rather than to walk 30 mins outdoors in the summer carrying my baby. Because apparently summer air is THAT dangerous. It was abut 27 degrees.

-Mich.

Another thing to consider in the OP's situation is that the caretaker of the friend was a grandparent. I was recently at the shore with my kids, my MIL, and 3 nieces/nephews, for whom MIL had primary responsibility on this trip. There were things I was comfortable letting all the kids (my 3 and my niece/nephews) that my MIL didn't allow the kids to do because, in her own words, she was more worried about what could happen to her grandkids than she would have been with her own kids, 30+ years ago. So just another thing to consider.

Lucy

I'll buy that. There were risks people took a generation ago that few would take today. We were shockingly ignorant.

For example, back in the days of bench seats, I remember when my little brother was a toddler, he'd stand up in the front seat of the car, between my parents. If the driver had to make a sudden stop, they'd both throw an arm out in front of him. If you'd have told them that it would be physically impossible for two grown adults to restrain this little guy under the force of a real accident, they'd have laughed.

The real problem with car seats as I see it is that life doesn't always fit into the rigid guidelines that policy makers prefer. A fairy doesn't cast a spell that imparts sufficient neck strength for them to safely face forward on the eve of their first birthday.

We've applied common sense to err on both sides of our local law. We put DD in a forward-facing seat before the law allowed because she'd outgrown the rear-facing seat. Now she's old enough and large enough to legally eschew the booster seat, but she's still in one, because otherwise the shoulder strap is over her neck.

Of course, policy-makers make rigid guidelines because too many people can't be trusted to exercise common sense. I once met a woman who moved her toddler to the front seat because he was fussy. She was cited for it, and she had no idea why. The consequences of an under-height passenger and an airbag deployment were already common knowledge by then.

New rule is age 2, not age 1, just for anyone reading along who may not know and has kids of this age (probably doesn't apply,. but just in case).

Anyway, I've always assumed that when they make guidelines like this, they're going by a 90% rule, or something...90% of kids have sufficient neck strength by age 2, or whatever. Many will have it before and a few will not have it till afterwards. Of course it doesn't magically happen on the eve of the first birthday, but.