Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy more freedom for a ten yr old

I had in mind my son should get more freedom when he turned 10 but haven't found any ideas. He is now 10 and 1/2. I want to do something to help him feel like I believe in him. Any ideas?

Freedom isn't an all-at-once thing (or even a "more at a specific time" thing) - he's not significantly more responsible at 10y0d than he was at 9y354d. It's a tiny-bit-more-every-time thing.

What does he want in the way of freedom? Start off there, because there's no upside and potential downside in giving him freedom he doesn't want.

I'm really not sure what he would like. I was thinking 10 is an age where you start to have better judgement like he could ride his bike a bit further but that wouldn't work. He is a bit too in his head for safety even in parking lots.

I think he could use a boost at home in some way to feel more valued or responsible. Maybe it is somethings like letting him use the toaster. We baked cookies tonight and he was proud of himself.

I think it's things like the toaster, exactly. I don't think you need to make things happen specially - just, when he wants to do something you'd normally help with, think about whether he really needs the help, and if not just say cheerfully "go ahead". For DS7 that has in recent months meant getting his own croissant out of the oven (hot enough that he shouldn't touch the hot sides, not hot enough to cause a serious burn if he did), getting the cheese and grater to grate over his own pasta, that kind of thing. I'd trust him with the toaster now (but he's not wild about toast so it hasn't come up) but I wouldn't trust him to toast bread under the grill unsupervised. Coming up next is boiling his own eggs I think. That kind of thing. Get him to do stuff that's actually useful - bring up a son who can do the laundry, cook and clean!

At 10 is when I began giving my DDs an allowance. Not fun money allowance, but serious learn-to-budget allowance. They had to choose and buy all of their own clothes, school supplies, gifts, toiletries etc and try to still have enough left over for fun stuff. I started this after one of them insisted that the Limited Too $60.00 swimsuit was so superior to the $12.00 Target swimsuit that it was the only option. I don't think they ever shopped at Limited Too again and they even began to embrace hand my down clothes :-).

It was a pretty short learning curve and they really felt like they had serious responsibility.

They also each had a designated night to plan/cook/prepare dinner for the family. Lots of macaroni and cheese, loaded baked potatoes and tomato soup to begin with but they branched out pretty quickly and they took pride in having such a responsible role (also, it cut down on the complaining about whats for dinner as they realized how hard it is to please everyone).

This is where it's easy on a farm. GS11 started showing cattle 3 years ago, that also meant cleaning a lot of poo, washing, brushing, feeding and watering; not just his animal but ours, too, because we all worked together. Last week, hubby and I took 2 head to a national show and were gone 4 days. GS11 didn't want to miss school, so he stayed home and took care of 100 head of cattle after school. We hired someone for the morning chores and to check up on him in the evening. But, GS11 did everything in the evening. Edited to add: He could not have gone from doing nothing with the cattle to doing all the chores in one day, it was a process. There are some things he still can not do, that will come with age and teaching.
He also made it to his band concert, did his homework, practiced his flute, and practiced for his quiz team. I had a sister come watch, feed, and take him to his concert. But he had one day he was on his own for a couple hours, but he usually has one day a week like that anyway.

He can make simple meals, and do laundry. He helps clean the house.

Oh, and after last week he has a new found appreciation for all we do to make sure he can participate in all his activities off the farm.

Giving a child responsibility gives you the chance to give him meaningful praise. It builds character. It also lets you see if he is careful with his chores, he will be careful in expanded freedom to explore the neighborhood on his bike.

http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/

I really like this approach!

In general the approach of giving kids more responsibility is a good one, but in my opinion the Free Range Kids movement is characterized by hyperbole, mischaracterization, and a little too much wide-eyed zeal.

I can tell you that with two front-page reports in the last year of child molesters arrested in my non-urban area for actively soliciting minors, there's no way I'm leaving my seven-year-old alone at the park:
http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/...he-park-leave-them-there-day-are-you-in/

IIRC I've read reports of some free-rangers sending five-year-olds to the park unsupervised, etc. Obviously kids should have as much responsibility as they can handle-- safely.

In our home, freedom is directly tied to responsibility. We live in a city, so our kids were not allowed to ride bikes out of our sight or walk to friends' houses without an adult or older sibling along at ten. It's a far cry from when I was ten, when I had my own paper route and babysat on weekends (I often think back and wonder what insane person thought I was capable of tending to a toddler and newborn at 10!).

So freedom comes in different forms - more autonomy on how to spend mad money earned from chores, more say over what to wear to school and what clothes to purchase from the store from a set budget, more control over how to spend free time once chores and homework are completed, and more power in the decision making processes about what instrument to learn, what sport to play, etc. - that kind of thing.

I have a college student and a senior in high school along with my ten-year-old, and they still don't have the "freedom" they'd have on their own. They are required to let me know where they are at all times, who they are with, what time they will be home, and the right to use our extra vehicle is directly tied to how consistent they are in checking in and being up front. I make sure they understand it is not because I need to know everything about them but because I need to know the last place they were and who else to contact if they don't come home. Sometimes my college student lets me know she's with friends I don't really like or hanging out at a place I'd prefer her not visit, but that is where the freedom comes in - she has the choice to be with those people and at that place as long as she is transparent with me and not getting into trouble.

Your ten-year-old has years upon years ahead of him to gain new freedoms. For now I'd focus on those that still keep him safe while allowing him more autonomy over his choices.

I think a lot of times kids will let you know what they are/are not ready for. There are things that we feel DS10 might be ready to start doing on his own, but if he's very hesitant for some reason, we usually wait because he's not ready. And then there are things that he's really excited about taking responsibility for and doing - weekly cleaning of his bathroom comes to mind, although now he's figured out why I was all too ready to turn that one over to him . I showed him how to properly clean the bathroom, supervised a few times, and now he tries to put off doing does it all on his own. Sometimes I need to point out something missed, but overall he does a great job and *was* excited (not so much anymore ) to have the responsibility.

Anytime DS asks to do something on his own, we evaluate the safety of said something, whether or not he's mature enough, and what can be learned/gained from it, and then we make our decision. Sometimes, the answer is no. Sometimes, it's modified to with supervision, and then sometimes it's "Sure, go ahead. You'll do great!" So far, this has worked well for us.

I'm not a "free range" parent, nor do we live on a farm, so my kids aren't going on the subway alone or milking cows... I think our "more responsibility" for ds10 is in making choices. I try to step back from dictating when he does his homework, or what he has for breakfast. If he has a sleepover, I let him decide on whether he wants to get more sleep or be tired (but not grouchy!) the next day. I do let him walk places alone, or ride his bike, because he's very responsible. I don't let him cook because he's very clumsy. (We've progressed to using the toaster oven and microwave, but that's about it). It's really all baby steps, not some big "now you're ten!" http://www.amphi.com/~psych/responsib.html
I thought that the above link was interesting - there are lots of lists of "chores by age" out there, but this was a very high-level and short overview - things like the difference between being old enough to help out with chores and old enough to evaluate what needs to be done. For our two older dds, learning to think for themselves, helping them to evaluate and process information, was much more important than giving them either responsibility or chores.
Theresa

Me too. I didn't see a lot of hyperbole on her site. Well, except for the news stories quoted there (Pencils banned as 'weapons" by teacher; parents sue school district because child breaks arm falling off swing. School district removes all swingsets from schools...).

I let my two sons (8 & 10) go trick-or-treating alone this year. I've been letting DS10 go to the park with a friend for a while (two years?).

DH and I give the kids more freedom when we're confident that they'll look in every direction before crossing a road. My six-year-old is now allowed to cross our very quiet street to go play with the neighbors.

About 2 1/2 years ago, DS10 was at a birthday party in a park playing hide-and-seek. He walked too far, got lost, and ended up outside the park. He knew he was close to his friend's house but couldn't find it. So he asked a pedestrian if he could borrow his cell phone to call me. Problem solved. I was very proud of him.

I understand that people are concerned about the threat of predators, but the risks are overstated in the media. Here's a paper that discusses the real risk of abduction by a stranger (1:600,000). The paper says that children under age five are actually the least likely ones to be kidnapped by a stranger. But when it happens, the story is broadcast around the country, so everyone remembers the abducted child and not the tens of millions of non-abducted ones. Here's another article that cites a paper saying that over 90% of sexual abuse happens at home, rather than at the hands of strangers.

Alternatively, here are some sobering statistics about childhood deaths and injuries due to car accidents.

I understand that there are bad people out there, but for my husband and I, the risk that one of them will get to our kids is extremely low, and we prefer to let them learn to stretch their wings. YMMV.

Just my two cents.

Val

Currently on the front page of her site:
�What if??� doesn�t take into account probability, or even reality. It just builds big, bright, horrible possibilities and projects them, Power Point-like, into the conversation: �Ha! You tell me not to worry, but LOOK at this! This COULD happen! What if it DOES? Then what, huh? You�re going to say you�re sorry? THAT�S NOT GOING TO MAKE THINGS ANY BETTER! I simply will NOT allow this, that or the other to (possibly) happen to my child!�

Oops! I'd better not worry about anything that could happen to my child, or I'm one of those stupid "what if" parents.

I've seen that site, and even moreso her acolytes, present statistics in misleading ways as well. Nearer to the start of her proselytization, as I remember, she pushed pretty heavily a single statistic about deaths from child abductions, as if that were the only bad result to worry about from implementing idea. IIRC other misleading aggregate statistics that I've seen presented, either by her or her followers, relate to abductions and other subsets of possible bad circumstances, or focusing heavily on the fact that most child rapes occur close to home or are committed by family friends or members-- as if the rest of them are negligible somehow. I also recall aggregate statistics presented regarding the relative accident safety of walking to school vs. driving, which included general highway crash statistics.

In fact, if you review DOJ and other statistics, it becomes apparent that a fair number (about 1/3 IIRC) of all reported child rapes occur when a child is walking through neighborhoods, next to fields, etc. not immediately adjacent to the home. Those are conveniently discarded by free-range advocates. Nor do they discuss the scope of unreported child rapes, etc.

Her basic idea boils down to a sanity check to avoid hysteria, which is nothing original to her AFAIK, and which is of course a good idea. I'm just giving my other 1 cent's worth; we don't need to fully debate the issues here.

Val - we live in one of the safest neighborhoods in our city when it comes to crime rate statistics. Last year an older man tried to lure two neighbor children - 8 and 10 - into his car right on our cul-de-sac as they were walking a few hundred feet to their home. Had the mother not walked out of her house, who knows what would have happened to them. We'd seen the man parked in the neighborhood the day before but thought nothing of it. It was a nice, clean car, and he looked like a grandpa. He wasn't wearing a hat that said predator that would make alarm bells go off.

Satistics may predict probability, but if it happens to your kid, it's 100% and can't be fixed. I'm not willing to bet my kid's need for independence on that kind of risk.

Sorry, I agree with this idea. People consistently overestimate the likelihood of predation and underestimate the danger involved in driving their kids around. Driving is dangerous. Talking on a cell phone while driving is really dangerous, yet people yak away when they drive. Because they're so distracted, they aren't aware of how they're weaving and changing their speed.


I couldn't find these statistics; I'd be grateful if you could point me to them.

But one third is only a disconnected number. You need to know, "One third of how many?" If you don't have this number, you're in danger of misinterpreting statistics.

I found this publication from the US Government that says that 89,500 cases of childhood sexual abuses were substantiated by social services agencies in 2000. This includes abuse in the home, which happens ~93% of the time according to that link I included in my last message.

Double that number (unreported cases) and round it to 180,000. For stranger sex abuse, reduce to 7% of the total: (180,000*0.07)= 12,600 cases of stranger sex abuse. "Sexual abuse" probably includes flashing and inappropriate touching, but I'll go with half of the cases being rape (seems generous to me). That's 6,300 stranger rapes.

There were 72.4 million children aged 17 and under in the US in 2000. So:

6300/72400000 = 0.000087 or a risk of 8.7 per 100,000. This just isn't high enough for me to stop my kids from going to the park.

I know predation happens. But car accidents happen way, way, way more frequently. Yet I don't hear constant newcasts about the dangers of driving with kids in the car. Using the statistics I quoted in the first post, I determined that the risk of a child being injured in the family car is ~2.5 per thousand, or over 100 times higher than the risk that s/he'll be the victim of an unknown predator.

I'm not trying to tell anyone what to do. I'm only saying that it's important to look at the numbers when assessing risk.

But pardon me here; I can't resist: if people are so worried about a risk of 8.7 per 100K, why are they less worried about a risk that's over a hundred times higher?

Val

I liked the "talk, don't stalk" quote. The blog reminded me of 'way back' when ds went basically from breast milk to table-food and MIL worriedly interrupted him While He Was Eating to tell me he was too young to know how to eat real food. I agree with the basic premise that banning isn't the key to safety, education, tools, and experience are. Straight jacket and plastic bubbles are no substitute for good parenting and guidance.
On The Go, I second the suggestion from ABQmom about maybe letting him pick his own clothes in trade for responsible chores duties, or to make sure he still looks good you could keep shopping for clothes togeather but let him choose his own haircut, if he doesn't already.
Quoting spiderman's grandfather and my own bossy mother, "with great freedom comes great responsibility."

Val, it's easy to massage numbers, and I don't have the time at the moment to engage in a full-fledged debate here. I don't accept your number of under 1 in 1,000, based on the opinion piece to which you linked, as being the true number of children who suffer child sexual abuse.

Among the many questions I could ask based on your presented snippets would be, "Why do you assume, based on your chosen opinion piece, that all acquaintance rapes of children happen inside the home?" But like I said, we don't need to get into that here.

I never fail to be amazed when someone puts incidences of child sexual abuse on the same footing as aggregated reports of car accidents, large and small, as if one were no more horrible than the other. Would you go a little further to protect a child from third-degree burns, even if the risk of occurrence were far lower, than you would to protect her from a risk of a paper cut? Also, do you think it's possible that someone could grow up to be an independent, free-thinking, courageous adult without the "free range" approach? Where are those statistics, so we can assess just how unnecessary are the extra risks of predation and other harm caused by that approach, negligible though you may think them to be?

(Trying to resist the urge to put a grand-looking timestamp here. )

About the topic here let's add more respect to more freedom and more responsibilities, they all seem to go togeather. Maybe it shows you trust him more, let's a kid feel more grown up and respected if you start gossiping about the neighbors a little more, or start discussing local news and sports with him.

My mistake. I should have written "in the home or by people who are known and trusted by the child/family."



Not quite sure what you're getting at here; my point was that car accidents are often horrible things, too. They can be lethal, they can result in lifelong injuries, and the emotional scars can last a lifetime. They also happen commonly -- far more commonly than sexual abuse by strangers. I'm not saying stranger sexual abuse is more or less horrible; it's just less common.

All but one of the sites I referenced were reputable: most were .gov and the other was cornell.edu. The remaining one wasn't a great pick, but a google search restricted to .gov sites gave the same kinds of numbers about stranger abuse. Try it yourself.

Sexual predation by strangers is sensationalized by the media. The numbers that I threw out were approximations, but the magnitude was right. This fact is well-established among researchers and government statisticians, but the media doesn't seem to be interested. Put it another way: if kidnappings by strangers are really so common, why do only a handful of stories appear, and why do we hear about kidnappings that happen thousands of miles away? Why do these stories stay in the national spotlight, when a story about a lethal car accident usually doesn't get out of its region, and fades quickly?

All I'm trying to say is that getting the most accurate numbers possible from objective sources is one way to enable informed decision making. I'm not trying to tell others how to raise their kids or advocate on behalf of an Free Range Kids, an organization I only learned about this morning.

Val

Fair enough. I'll try to break it down for you: you can't fairly compare rape of a child to a car accident. I haven't seen risks "overstated in the media", although I certainly have seen the term "helicopter parent" tossed around mighty freely in reference to parents that are simply more cautious than free-range parents. There's no call for excessive hand-wringing over media reports on child sexual abuse compared to car accidents, either. Child rape involves a sensational and heinous crime, whereas few car crashes do. It's simply false to imply that people somehow care less about avoiding car crashes because they watch their kids to avoid, among other things, child sexual abuse, or that their priorities are out of whack. I'm sorry if that paragraph got a little long.

A comparison of child rape to a car accident in this context is especially senseless in light of the huge amount of money poured into preventing and mitigating car crashes, when I would say that the first and best line of defense against child abuse is caring, watchful parents. While some money is spent every year on educating the public about abuse, etc., I'm sure that it doesn't compare to the amount spent on auto safety.

It would be interesting to discover just how many incidents of child abuse are prevented by watchful, nearby parents, as ABQMom seems to have witnessed first-hand; of course those incidents don't, and would never, wind up in any statistics cited by free-rangers. Yet free-rangers feel entitled to spout statistics (often in misleading ways) without consideration given to the preventive effect of watchfulness by mainstream parents. Never is there a discussion of the possible effects if everyone let their kids go without supervision at a young age, just halcyon memories of a bygone time when things were better without those dang helicopter parents.

The Free Range Kids idea, to the extent that it's new at all, boils down to a different choice as to safety levels for kids, coupled with a sneery attitude toward anyone who chooses more safety. It's nothing new, except for its extremity in intentionally skirting the edges of what many consider to be child abandonment or endangerment, and its in-your-face attitude. And in its proponents' attempts to push their movement, they routinely rely on false assumptions and fallacy. Lenore Skenazy sure seems to have hit on a gold mine with her idea, though: capitalize on the "helicopter parent" meme with a catchy new name, and follow up with merchandise.

I'm not out to convince anyone to protect their children to what I consider to be an appropriate level against a horrible, life-changing event such as child rape, as well as other ills of neglect. There aren't enough hours in the day for me to parent my own kids, let alone everyone else's.

Wow! what a hijacketed thread. I might as well chime in.

I keep my kids pretty close with a watchful eye. When my child started in 1st grade, the teacher gave him a big hug for a Apple. If she was actually aware of his expression/feeling, she would not have done this. She would of said, oh that ok how about a hand shake. While I watched this, which was not a big deal, I thought he should of said no to her. I later followed up with him, explaining it's ok to say no and your body belongs to you. The teacher is not incharge of that. It just makes me think how hard situations and judgement can be for kids.

I say each to their own, but I will keep my kids close.

Freedom, responsibility, and training take on a whole new meaning depending on where you live. I never in a million years would have guessed that I will plan on taking my children before they turn five to a shooting range for lessons on gun safety. (skerriffs office at least). Because we are in a small rural ranch town many of the other families hunt deer (with their young kids too) and I have to assume many of the kids he will want to go play with will have guns at their house. I know the neighbors have a rifle in their shed and another family has a pellet gun in their hallway. I'll feel safer if he knows how a gun is supposed to be used and why and to never play with one like a toy or let anyone else. I would never have planned for this when I used to imagine my future as a parent. Also his dad will have to show him at 5,6, or 7 how to drive a four wheeler or dirtbike because many kids have them and ride them unsupervised (not at a track). It's safer than him trying to show off at somebody's ranch when he's 11 or 12 with no experience or training and busting his head open. "Safe", like everything else, depends on the circumstances.