Flirting with responsibility: Able the girl.

I've no idea if there is more molestation by strangers going on now than then.

I'm older than even JoeNation and Boomer and after school, weekends, and all summer we inhabited the neighborhood on foot, roller skates, or bicycles (1950-55).

There were mothers at home then, but we - usually four girls - were sometimes ten blocks away or more, mostly closer to home, though not always within sight or earshot. Talking about eight to maybe eleven years old. Our range was limited by our interests as we also liked our own block. Oh, and Mrs. Hennessy's cupcakes.

I can't even say re the press, which I could guess has - if not caused fear, been part of it - since I didn't know about all that when I was 8 - 11, even though I was starting to read press like the Saturday Evening Post, Colliers, New Yorker, Chicago Tribune. And I was also avid about tv back then.

It might be that statistics may be similar, but talking about these things is now much more accepted.

Chicken livers - $2.00
Fishing pole - $14.00
Falling in love with your son all over again -- priceless

Thanks for that story, Joe.



EXACTLY!

That's what I think about Able's parents. Able has tools most kid's don't have and probably can't imagine having.

My supposition is that it is incremental. You don't give a speech one day and expect the child to get it.

I really appreciate JoeNation's routine to convey sense of place.
I know he would have done that for girls too.

I remember a trip in my early twenties with girl friends to, yep, TJ. It was to stay with one girl's family, see a bull fight with El Cordobes, and see Rosarita Beach. I call us girls because that was the word then. One of us had an unerring sense of direction, and the rest of us were confused. (It wasn't me.)

Well, years pass and my sense of direction is not bad. But I remember being dumb about it, although I could navigate my then neighborhood.



Also, now that I know vastly more than I did then about nature, while still being ignorant, I think many of us then were wandering around poorly clued in. And yet, now, people are much more car entrapped.

Well, that is a local comment and not applicable to all.

Joe's story is heartwarming and nice, yet it happened a few years back
and it looks like it was a rural area too.

Osso, you wouldn't like to go to TJ in today's world either. Two weeks
ago they had a shoot-out and 13 people died. The military has rolled
in and the entire town is in a state of emergency. The police is more
corrupt than its citizens. Times change, and unfortunately, not for
the better.

Bottom line is: every parent has to decide how safe it is to let the
little ones loose or hang on tight. There was a time when parents felt
that girls need more protection than boys - today, there are just as many
boys abducted and molested than girls.

Most parents are trying not to be overly protective, but in some areas
one can let them have more freedom in others one cannot. It is difficult
to arrive at a common consensus without knowing the neighborhood
one lives in.

Not arguing, I do know about TJ now, in part thanks to you via past posts, but also sort of following since your posts re recent stuff. Big change from our old visits, and I don't know what happened with that (girl's) family. That girl is now an - eek - 50 year friend. Okay, 49 years.


But, it still happens, that way back then only one of us had a clue re direction, including our friend with the relatives at any given moment.
It was the one with the direction sense that enabled us.




In my, er, middle years, I learned a lot about landscape. And, how much people don't know about it. Of course I include myself, including now.

Cars, cars.

I agree with that, CJ.

Brings me back to Jane Jacobs, who, after all these years has had some tough feedback, but still has some concepts a'going.

Not sure if this is the title, Death and Life of American Cities. Mine became like, torn. Oh, and I leant it to someone, never to be seen again.

The catcher idea was to have life in a city absorb all the ****. Make the neighborhood lively.

Obviously, this simple concept has turned out to have flaws.

I'd love to see that all discussed here.

First read the book.

I remember Mom saying things like "Somebody is going to snatch you up" when we would ask to walk up to the store. It was not even a mile away. Sometimes she would let us and sometimes she wouldn't...must have had something to do with that intuition of hers. That was back in the 80's I guess...I never heard of kids getting snatched - yet it had to happen sometimes I suppose.

I have been amazed at the ease at which some of my letting go has occured. I say that after struggling when they were younger to know when they would be ready to do what. There is such a balance of caution and discernment required in this constant thing of teaching and letting go.

I use to make the twins go into the women's restroom with me. They are 8 now and it has come to a point where they refuse - understandably so. I let them go into the men's room together. I will let my 5 year old go in there with them. I still hesitate to let them go in alone though. You just never know who is waiting in there.

They can cross the street to go to the neighbors on their own as long as they tell me. Though I will say G-baby (5 y.o.) apparently is not ready yet. He walked out in front of a car today just a few yards in front of me. It happened so fast it was frightening - so we have told him he has to hold my hand until he learns to stop and look both ways. Lots of weeping and wailing accompanying this. He wants to be big like his brothers. Until I see him acting in a way that gives me confidence - he will be holding my hand.

I agree with C.J. that this day and age you have to be so very careful. One of the Mom's in my neighborhood had something happen a while back that has made us all quite cautious. She was walking home after walking her two to the bus stop and seeing them off. She is a tiny person. Looks like she could be in high-school. A white truck with a middle age man pulled up and told her she was going to be late and he would give her a ride. She looked over expecting it to be someone she knew - when it wasn't she ran as fast as she could to her house and called the sheriff to report it.

That has made us all scared to let our kids walk anywhere too far on their own. It has also made us look out for the ones that do. There is a lady up the street that is always late picking up her two little ones at the bus stop. We make a point of waiting there until she comes.

I just have to trust that I will know when the right time is to let go. I do not want to be over-protective. I guess I would have to say I am still in the process of figuring it all out.

And Pantalones could tell us more.

You never figure it out, mismi. With every age there are new adventures
they want to embark on and there are new boundaries.

My daughter is 12 years old now, and there was a school dance she wanted
to attend to very badly. No problem, right? Well, I caught some notes she
exchanged with her girlfriends at school, and there it was written, that they
would stay about 30 minutes at the school dance and then sneak out to
a little cafe that is close by. Needless to say, she did not go to the school
dance, and we had a long talk about it.

I am sure, by the time she is 16 years old, we battle other boundaries,
so I anticipate this being a long long process of figuring things out

It was a great story Joe


Yikes CJ...see that gives me great pause...but part of the tools we give them is to teach them that there is more freedom for them - when WE are able to trust them. I hope that is something I can do - teach them they will be able to do more if I can trust them.

That's the question, is this day and age any different?
I don't know. It might be worse, via internet and other news.

I lived a childhood in non fear. Which I now appreciate.

There was one episode, which I've recounted before. It was the year we lived in New York, in apartment 6C (across from the Maras, whom I remember only seeing once.)

I reached home before my mother and I, inventively, went around to the front and asked the doorman to let me in. He did.
My mother then spanked me. I remember not getting it at all, and to this day I think of that guy as a fine person.) Now I see she was afraid of the doorman.

That was the only time she ever spanked me, in my memory.

What?

I guess I see reasonable fear, and fear against that - that might not be any better.

Sure and I'd like to talk with her now.

For the most part, I had the run of my entire town since I was fairly small, but it is a very tiny town, with a lot of mothers that sat on their front porches in the afternoons, and a large part of the day during summer. Air conditioning and cable tv kinda killed that pastime for the mothers, and video games and the like keep many of the kids indoors now, as apposed to all of us being outside whenever possible when I was growing up.

I still live in the same town, and I have three children...but as I said things have shifted somewhat, so I am hesitant about how far they are allowed to roam. My wife, who hails from a "city" 30K pop, would prefer they never got out of her sight, keeping them on a very short leash herself, so my concerns are usually covered by her actions.

-------

Just before my 9th birthday, there was a story on the local news about an eight year old girl that was missing/thought to have been abducted across the river from me in Tennessee. She was from a small town, and of course all the boys over there were scouring the back roads, fields and wooded areas all night, until they finally found her body the next morning, she had been raped then killed.

As if this alone wasn't bad enough, when they caught the killer he confessed, and said that he really wasn't planning on killing her, until she uttered the words "Jesus loves you". That pushed him over the edge...the guilt I suppose...to explain that a bit, I don't know if this is a southern thing or not, but it used to be common when children were scolded, afterward the parent might say something like....now remember, even though you did something bad I still love you, and Jesus does too. I can not count how many times that little girl has popped into my mind during discussions over the years...be it religion, children, capital punishment...or lots of things.

Anyway, this was a fairly high profile case for obvious reasons...the churches really ran with the story, which I had, and still have a great deal of problems with....the story was in the local news quite often, and even made the national news twice that I can remember...so it was always around, even if I would forget about it, there were reminders to keep the memory alive, and it took until I was nearly thirty for it to finally come to an end...21 years later, they put him to sleep.

I have said on a few occasions that the little girl "haunts" me, not literally of course, but just that we were so close in age...a bit over a month apart...and one of my best friends at the time was a girl that was only a few days younger than her....it's just one of those things that stick with a person, or at least a person like me.

Listening. I was protected from that kind of news. I was off on Billy Reedy with polio..

Not to diminish your tale, 2packs,

You heard of that tale. I'm not confident now that I would have., in my sort of equivalent place.

I have somewhat similar feelings, 2Pack. We had a case here in our
town that made national news - 7 year old Danielle van Dam was kidnapped right out of her home and found dead later on. My daughter was also 7 years old at the time, and I was very worried and overly protective for a while.
It just hit too close to home for us, and the publicity and media frenzy around that case didn't help to ease our minds either.

Sonpad is 17 and has a new GF. Gf lives about 2 hours away from us.

GF is 14 and we have only had a small amount of contact with her.

Last week he asked if she could spend the weekend at our home. she would travel by the one daily bus from her home to ours.

Mompad raised her eyebrows at this and promtly stipulated that son move a matteress into the living room for the duration.

We have not met and do not know her parents mum and stepdad.

Mumpad asked if the Gf's mother would like to phone and chat.

No she does not.

I had assumedby this time that the girl probably had a less desirable home life than many kids.

Some more details that emerged over the week end. mom had 8 kids. 17, 14 and the rest under 10.
They are home schooled.
Mum is moving from the city to the country to "run a Dairy Farm.

We have decided mum does not sleep!!!!

The fact that the kids are home schooled reduces my concern about GF's home life. with that many kids the older ones are bound to have personal responsibility thrust upon them.

Oh and step dad came to pick her up but was 2 hours late.

That's a tragic story, 2Packs.

The city Joe is writing about has a population of about 400,000 and he is speaking of the central city where the population is heaviest so not rural at all.

And as 2Packs story points out, rural v. urban doesn't make much difference.

It's complicated deciding what is acceptable risk.

Is it riskier for me to put Mo in a car and drive him to school or to let him walk to school on his own? I think it's probably riskier to drive him. (This isn't a choice I have to make so I don't mean this in a literal sense but in a statistical sense.)

Times have changed.

When my sister and I were 7 & 8 we used to walk a quarter of a mile from the school to the trolley stop, ride downtown to the YWCA for swimming lessons and then walk six city blocks to my father's office for a ride home.

When my mother was 5 she used to walk to the trolley stop with a note for the Notions Lady pinned to her dress. Once in town she'd ask a passer by to cross her to the department store where she and the Notions Lady would decide what my grandmother wanted. Then she'd catch the trolley (on the department store side of the street) and ride home where a stranger would "cross" over the last street.

Times have changed.

Yeah...could not do that today - except in the smallest of towns maybe and even then - there is that fear. Too many scarey movies?

I don't know. Once again - chance is such a huge thing here. Perfectly responsible parents see their kids get abducted (I said every day at first - but I am not sure of the stats there).

Something happened in my neighborhood just a couple of weeks ago - I forgot about it. We had a watermain break at the elementary and middle school They sent the kids home at 9:30am. Some children's parents were not home. Most teachers called the parents to make sure they knew...but for whatever reason my neighbor was not called - not even on her cell. Her 11 year old comes on home on the bus and walks home...as she is walking up the driveway - two men run away from the house...to the back and out of sight...the girl runs to her neighbors and police were called. She did great.

First of all - it is the middle of the day - seems to me in my neighborhood breaking into a house is just a goofy thing to do...too many people are at home during the day...and they were in ski masks...(goofy kids probably) BUT - what if she had walked in on them in the house? What if they had guns and panicked?

The fact is, I have to teach my kids how to handle themselves in different situations. Every step I let go and watch my children set out to independence is just scary. But as I see them succeed - my confidence and theirs is built. Not a whole lot I can do about the bad folks out there...except trust my intuition and make sure I are not putting my children at unnecessary risks.

I read an article not long ago (now I'll have to see if I can find it) where three generations of the same family had lived in the same area. The roaming range of the kids had changed from about 8 miles to about 3 blocks even though not much had really changed about the area over those generations.

I know that times have changed - parents aren't home in the daytime, kids don't play outside, so there are less eyes and ears in the parent spy network. Still we hear about everything. Right here on this thread I'm hearing scary stories that 10 years ago I would have never ever heard.

We make each other afraid based on rare, worst case scenarios. I'm not saying that these fears are illigitimate, I'm not even saying that I disagree with what anyone here has written, but sometimes it seems we're engaged in a global game of telephone.

This may seem off the wall but stick with me a second --

I used to work for a big company traveling around America meeting with business owners and their staffs. At almost every visit I would make someone on the staff would discuss some crazy client they had dealt with and all of the rules they'd put in place in order to prevent it from happening again. Despite the fact that this set of rules punished every other client they had, the person was always proud of their ingenuity. The rule hurt their business but the LOVED it anyway. 3,000 clients didn't have a problem, 1 did so the rules were changed to harm 3,000 to protect them against one.

It never made sense to me and it still doesn't. I'd advise them to give the persons money back and say "I'm sorry this didn't work out for us, would you like a referral to another company?". They would have come out so way ahead in the long run but they never wanted to do that.

A lot of "this" reminds me of "that".

"I am not"...sorry - I corrected to personalize it since I cannot make blanket statements for others and forgot to change the "are" to am. Made me laugh when I read it again...not that I don't really talk like that - would just rather you not think I did.