That’s the thing: I’m very tempted to let my kids roam the neighborhood, like I did in Italy in the 80s. Where we live now, streets are pretty tight and have speed bumps, so it’s fairly safe. But if anybody gets nosey and calls child protection, I’m in a world of hurt from which I’ll probably never emerge.

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

There is a (painful, annoying and unfair) way around this.

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.

That would be easy if this were a mediterranean town, rather than northern suburbia. I do know my immediate neighbours, but going knocking farther away would look extremely weird, and possibly considered unwelcome in this brexit age. There are no shops immediately close (a big and very convenient supermarket made sure of that).

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

It's harder in your case, so it will take more time. 2 to 3 years maybe.

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 mean, integrating your children into society makes them safe when they spend time out in society?

His story sounds like it's more about integrating society with the idea of children.

This is a wonderful idea.

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

That's not going to work. Trust and desire to help cannot being batch processed. Well... It can but you need strong leader qualities that few people have.

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.

This is describing normal life before, say, seventy years ago.

Exactly. But you can't tell introvert geeks that. You need to present it like a life hack.

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

> But if anybody gets nosey and calls child protection, I’m in a world of hurt from which I’ll probably never emerge.

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.

It happened to a friend of mine - twice even.

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.

> CPS usually has way more on their plate than they can handle with actual issues

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

Same, my mom would regularly write a note asking the clerk to sell me cigarettes (for her). It worked.

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

I remember being 10 or so and my dad giving me money to ride my bike to the hardware store to buy him propane. Of course, I didn't even know what propane was so he said "just ask the clerk," who of course, had no problem helping me.