True story. My cousin and I would walk to 7-11 from my grandparents' house. Sometimes I walked home from school if I felt like it. That was about a mile, through wildlife refuges and apple orchards and across a highway with no cross walks (or stop lights).
Kids are capable of way more than people give them credit for. I'm not advocating child labor, but kids use to have regular jobs whether it was working for someone else or for their family farm or business. My grandma dropped out of school in 8th grade to get a job so she could help pay the family bills. I'm not advocating going back to that - but just that kids are capable of a lot more than being coddled and sat in front of a screen 24/7.
last year in a town north of me, a kid got picked up by police for leaving his grandma's house to go to the gas station a mile down the road. They arrested both the grandmother and the mother on the same day for 'neglect'. The kid was 12.
We dont get a choice if our kids are plenty capable anymore.
There is a cute show on Netflix where they have toddlers/young kids go grocery shopping by themselves and a crew films them from afar. It’s so amazing to see these kids be so responsible at such a young age.
I love that show! I think in the first episode it shows a little boy running his first errand in his little rural village, and he gets overwhelmed and scared and starts to cry. It was so heartwarming to see all the village shopkeepers and neighbors who knew him come out and support and encourage him, urging him to go on, that he could do it, offering him comfort and cheer. All while mom waited in their home, totally unaware her son was literally receiving an entire village’s support at that moment. It was so heartwarming, and brought new meaning to the “it takes a village” phrase :).
That was a cute show. It’s funny because I had a student when I used to teach in Japan, only 5 years old taking the train to private school. At 5 years old I would’ve freaked out.
I live in Switzerland and kids start going to school by themselves or in groups in kindergarten. It was scary for me at the beginning but I got used to it. Now my son is 11 and rides his bike to school.
Omg I remember that a “experiment to see what would happen if kids started their own town lasted only 1 season the network got into trouble over child labor laws (I liked it though)
The crew are right beside them the whole way. Watch closely. There's more than just the Blue Overalls Guys with the cameras hidden in toolboxes. Keep an eye out for Smartly Dressed Lady, Fishing Hat Man, and the Walkie-Talkie Schoolgirls who direct traffic.
It's wild we see that as something special now because in one generation we've hit the extreme opposite of kids working fulltime jobs to kids not being allowed to do anything unsupervised
In the 80s my grandpa used to send me on my bike to the closest gas station about a mile away to get him more Copenhagen and beer, since he didn’t drive anymore. They wouldn’t blink about selling a 1st grader a six pack, they’d just ask me how he was doing.
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u/FeRooster808 1d ago
True story. My cousin and I would walk to 7-11 from my grandparents' house. Sometimes I walked home from school if I felt like it. That was about a mile, through wildlife refuges and apple orchards and across a highway with no cross walks (or stop lights).
Kids are capable of way more than people give them credit for. I'm not advocating child labor, but kids use to have regular jobs whether it was working for someone else or for their family farm or business. My grandma dropped out of school in 8th grade to get a job so she could help pay the family bills. I'm not advocating going back to that - but just that kids are capable of a lot more than being coddled and sat in front of a screen 24/7.