Allowing your kids to roam around like that these days will get CPS called on you.

Yet another bit of the world ruined by Sun and Daily Mail.

Actively socialize a lot with people in your neighborhood. Including the old lady next door, local cops, teachers and shop owners. And once you know 50 persons around by name and they have your phone number, tell them one by one that you intend to let your child going out more and more out by him/herself to learn autonomy. Ask them to not worry, but to keep an eye open: they will feel important, think you are a wonderful parent and your kids will have 50 people to help them in case of a problem.

In my experience, if you befriend on average one person a week, you get there after one year.

Manichean but works wonder. Learned the trick while working in Africa.

It actually works for many other things: finding a job, getting help to do stuff, getting laid... You usually make real friends on the way, not a bad side effect.

Even in those facebook times, one-to-one human relationship are still ruling everything we do, and living in a community is one of the most rewarding skill to sharpen.

But yeah, we are not in a movie, it's a lot of work. The maintenance part is really time and energy consuming, as not everybody is interesting and worth it.

I do appreciate the method, I just find hard to believe that it can be put in practice in realities like mine.

To find out where to start, ask yourself where your children are more likely to get caught alone and reported to CPS.

It will also require you go to clubs (sport club, book club), events (garage sell, protests, etc) or even to put them in motion.

Eventually, some thing that works very well is talking to people waiting with you. In queues, waiting rooms, at traffic lights or even traffic jams. It's awkward/annoying as hell when you do it wrong, but after a big of practice it's really a great source of networking.

You mention Facebook - I think FB could be leveraged here as well.. perhaps a neighborhood group.

But you can mix both approaches;

You can do one-on-one to create / maintain the relationship, and utilize social networks to organize the community.

But if you want your local baker to go out of his way to get your child out of trouble, you need to look him in the eyes when you ask for it. And you need to do that for each person you recruit. There is no way around it.

I know, because I used to be an introvert geek because Mali kicked my ass.

I think this is a really overblown fear. Yeah, everyone "totally heard about someone" who had CPS called on them because they let their kid roam around, but I think this is mostly an urban legend about as likely as a terrorist attack. CPS usually has way more on their plate than they can handle with actual issues, I don't think they give a damn about free-range children.

However, and I think this is the important thing, CPS totally didn’t care after a quick 15min interview.

The second time they even apologized and said they were mostly showing up because they had to.

It was the same local busy-body calling them both times btw.

Except they are required by law to follow-up on all reports. So you will be interviewed and inconvenienced at the very least.

I can't even imagine how that would play out in current times.

For instance 20 years ago there was public phone booths everywhere. A kid would just need a few coins and the house number to do a call, now you’d need a cell phone, and giving one to a 5~8 year kid is still not practical.

Or I remember shopping at local shops enough to know their faces and names, or ask shop owner if the other kids where nearby. I don’t think my kid knows anyone other than the bakery people, because local shops have nothing for him at this point.

Same with police or church member perception, I think our generation is less OK to just say to a kid “if there’s any problem just trust the police”. It becomes a weird and complex message of what the institution’s goal is, what’s OK and not OK for them to do, what’s the warning signs, what to do in case stuff gets weird etc.

TL;DR: A lot of stuff changed in the last decades, we can’t just blindly do the same as before.

When I was kid, I would get on my bike and wander too far. One time I was out and a thunderstorm came along. A nice lady invited me into her house to call home.

Fast forward to university, a professor objected to me closing his office door with just the 2 of us in there (we're both male and I'm 6ft 200lbs). A colleague of his was falsely accused of being inappropriate to a student, so his policy is to keep the door open.

The change in trust levels has changed pretty swiftly.

I'm of two minds about this.

1) This is a bad thing in that we don't give respect to authority that it really deserves. And that's quite often a bad thing--especially when related to children and teaching. Sorry to break it to you, Mommy, but your little angel is actually a spoiled, shitty little brat and, no, his opinions don't count.

2) This is a good thing in that people in positions of authority who abuse their power over others are not uncommon. Having greater scrutiny helps cut down on these situations. Apparently most women have dealt with a couple of these people as teachers throughout high school and college.

I really don't know how to reconcile these two.

So to be totally fair - not exactly similar situations

I'd go further. We need to get back to: "If you have a problem, pick an adult and ask for help." Really. Most threats to children are people they know. Random strangers are almost always helpful in a situation.

I'm not sure about that; there are phones specifically designed for that market (e.g., Firefly), after all.

Even just the risk of breaking, losing or getting it stolen is not negligeable.

It’s a viable option depending on the kid and the environment , I just feel kids phone are still too clunky to be worth it. I’d prefer to go straight for a regular smartphone once the kid is big enough to properly take care of it.

Or teach the child to approach a stranger; a random stranger is very unlikely to be a threat. (A less random one even better: a woman with young children.)

Not trusting the police for problems a child is likely to encounter seems paranoid.

because she's already at her quota of kidnapped kids for the day?

The most popular ones in the US are, but ones that are fully independent phones with their own SIM have been available for some time.

Just for some examples: https://www.smartgeekwrist.com/standalone-smartwatch-sim-car...

Compared to the Ford Model T, maybe.

Of course, I'm not sure that it has much to do with the speed of the car they are driving.

More recently, I remember Dublin city centre in 1988, when Ireland was still pretty poor, being full of kids; and Marrakech or Fes in Morocco just 10 years ago.