Another story: kid OD on drugs, his mom flew across the country to be by his bedside and paid the school from getting suspended
Another Story: child is depressed because he got a low first exam grade os his parents sent him to Europe to a GPA booster school for a semester to "cheer him up"
These kids are ridiculous their parents coddle them through everything and clap joyously and the slightest acheivement which they totally positioned them for.
They are depressed and completely incapable of navigating the real world. I had to break up with the one I dated because he wanted me to be his mom. Like no kid, I have a life to live do your own laundry and no I'm not going to redo your resume for you and get you a job.
This has GOT to stop. Below is an article from the Former Dean of Stanford on just this very topic: It's embarassing.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/education/wp/2015/10/16/...
If the child was low-key sick, sure, that'd be silly -- a stomach bug or flu keeping you in bed for the weekend doesn't warrant cross-country flights. But a drug overdose? That's a serious health issue.
Fortunately, my boss was[1] fantastic and told that parent to piss off, not-quite-politely explaining that her son is now a grown-ass man, and that if he weren't doing well in the course then it was his own damn fault, and that it's pretty pathetic that as an adult, he was still having his mother fight his battles for him, and furthermore pathetic that his mother was complicit in such. She also put a few kind words toward my abilities as a teacher, which had me feeling pretty chuffed ;)
Seriously, that class was quite likely the single easiest course required by the college of engineering, and anyone who failed it was either too lazy to do the work or they simply didn't have what it takes to be an engineer (either way, most of the failures wound up dropping out of the college of engineering within a year or two; a few came back ready to take it more seriously in round two; one of my students took my class three times, and he failed every time, finally dropping out of engineering after three semesters).
All in all, it was pretty sad.
[1]: She's still fantastic, though she's no longer my boss :)
On the other hand, in major cities, parents are being charged with neglect if their young children walk a a few blocks up the street to go to a park. Not everywhere, but such stories crop up in the news every so often.
Another part of the problem is that communities in America aren't (or seem to not be) quite as tight knit as they once were. There are plenty of explanations, from cultural shifts, family policy, excessively punitive drug policy, economic policy, decline of religion, decline of moral values, rise of the internet and easy access to excessive amounts of televised programming, cell phones and handheld video games, you name it, and someone has probably blamed something for it.
The most important thing to remember about lawn darts is not that handing kids metal stakes is dangerous and stupid, but relatively few kids where actually harmed.
It's not necessarily fear, from the parents, of actual danger, it's fear of being charged with neglect. It, too, may be an unfounded fear, but until being a busybody who needless charges someone with neglect is a crime, crime and accident statistics don't necessarily enter into it.
I think you mean in suburbs. I live in New York and see kids alone all the time. I've even asked a 10 year old for directions.
I have friends raising kids in inner city areas, both gentrified and not, and they are all about getting those kids navigating the city blocks around their homes by eight or nine.
I realize those are anecdotes, but suburbs have been repeatedly indicted for a lot of the post-Baby Boomer social issues. Thus, I'm hardly surprised. Suburbs were a massive mistake: fiscally, socially, and environmentally. We're only now really uncovering the entirety of the negative impacts this sort of development had on the United States.
That's hardly the parents' fault though. In many American cities it's literally a life-threatening journey for a 6-year-old to try to navigate along a road that has no sidewalk, with cars zooming by at 45mph. And then a kid comes to a 6-lane intersection that he needs to cross. With drivers turning right on red and generally not used to any pedestrians at all.
German, confirming.
What I fear is, that like many other cultural things, this will eventually make it's way over the Atlantic and, when I have kids, I will be forced to do this to them, too.
As for school trips, one thing stands out, compared to the UK at least, and that is that they were expected to take a knife with them. Can't sharpen a stick to hold a sausage over a fire otherwise.
There's also the situation where a lot of American towns/cities aren't so crowded that you can walk everywhere. And not everywhere in America is there good public transportation.
But statistically, how often does that happen? Is it enough to be seriously worried about?
> There's also the situation where a lot of American towns/cities aren't so crowded that you can walk everywhere. And not everywhere in America is there good public transportation.
I don't think it's an issue of being crowded. I think it's an issue of how we design our cities. We assume everyone will have a car, so those that don't have a car (kids) have less independence. A lot of Europe was built before cars existed, so they don't assume that everyone will have their own car.
Traffic accidents are a much, much more prevalent threat.
(There are 800,000 children reported missing each year. 90% have misunderstood directions or ran away on their own initiative. 9% are kidnapped by a family member in a custody dispute.
http://www.pollyklaas.org/about/national-child-kidnapping.ht... )
First off, that's by design. Car-centric infrastructure planning really did a number on the American public. The damages ended up being far worse than just economic.
Second, that's an understatement of the century. Public transportation is pretty much non-existent in most of US. It's good in exactly 1 city (NY), and probably decent in another 2 or 3.
I am Norwegian, and little of these descriptions would seem odd to me. My kids go on trips every week with their pre-school, and I have never keep track of where.
My oldest son has walked to school himself since he has been 6 years old. I walked to school when I was a kid from 7 (we started school later). And I had to walk about 30 minutes to get to school crossing many roads.
From early childhood I roamed around all my neighborhood walking into forests or as I got a bit older I'd go with friends to big abandoned ship yards.
When I later emailed a distant American relative of similar age, I was confused when she didn't understand why I didn't have a drivers license. She was like "doesn't your parent's get tired of driving you everywhere?". A question that made no sense to me until I visited the US. I was of course going everywhere and I didn't need parents or a car to do that. I could take the train, bus or subway myself or bike.
In America however it is simply sad how dependent children are on their parents. Parents take them to every sort of activity and thing they got to do. In so many American cities you can't have a life without a car. There is nothing to do without a car.