And look what ended up in my inbox this morning but an announcement about family safety forum! Nice one btw Mods - good topic. So anyhoo......
I was writing this morning about getting my kids bikes this weekend and how that related to my own childhood. When I was a kid, from the time I was about 8 or 9 years old I would just get on my bike and be gone for hours. No cell phone, no way to contact me unless I happened to be in earshot of my father's whistle (it was loud and carried far), I was usually traveling in a group of 4 or 5 kids, never at someone's house (no phone another words). We just rode and rode and rode. And no parents, I think, thought a thing about it.
I can't imagine doing that with my kids. I just can't. Maybe when they are teenagers, but certainly not before 12 (which btw is when I stopped riding and riding and riding and got into more girlie preteen things - blech). Will I be doing my children a disservice by being so overprotective?
More importantly people always say "The world has changed". Has it? Has it really? I mean are there statistics out there that support that? Wasn't I a risk for being abducted, injured, molested? Or my children more so at risk because we live in a "world that has changed" and these violent incidences are higher in number? Or is it just that our culture has changed, that we live and control our lives by fear?
I was writing this morning about getting my kids bikes this weekend and how that related to my own childhood. When I was a kid, from the time I was about 8 or 9 years old I would just get on my bike and be gone for hours. No cell phone, no way to contact me unless I happened to be in earshot of my father's whistle (it was loud and carried far), I was usually traveling in a group of 4 or 5 kids, never at someone's house (no phone another words). We just rode and rode and rode. And no parents, I think, thought a thing about it.
I can't imagine doing that with my kids. I just can't. Maybe when they are teenagers, but certainly not before 12 (which btw is when I stopped riding and riding and riding and got into more girlie preteen things - blech). Will I be doing my children a disservice by being so overprotective?
More importantly people always say "The world has changed". Has it? Has it really? I mean are there statistics out there that support that? Wasn't I a risk for being abducted, injured, molested? Or my children more so at risk because we live in a "world that has changed" and these violent incidences are higher in number? Or is it just that our culture has changed, that we live and control our lives by fear?
:
Follow Mothering