Rosa

Hehe, 30 houses in a village to me is massive!

IADad

and people laugh at me when I call 70,000 a city....they demand that's a small town...to me a city is anything over about 15-20,000, and a small town is under 3,000, so anywhere for 5 to 3,000 fall in the same category for me. If your town election for mayor comes down to "let's have Joe do it again, he's done it for the last 20 years..." that's a small town.

AmyBelle

We live in a small town aswell (according to wikipedia, we have a population of 566, as of the 2006 census)

Obviously I dont let my 4yr old and baby run free, but when the girls are older and in school I wouldnt have an issue with them going down to the reserve with their friends and such, or up to the hill, I know every single person who lives in this town, our neighbourhood watch newsletter is printed twice a year because there is nothing to put in it, and all they can come up with is petty vandalism and one time there was a half page spread on the car battery that someone left in Sugarloaf Reserve. Yes, seriously.

Im not at all concearned about my girls running round the town.

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Aunt

I am totally with this woman. I think as a society we have developed a bubble wrap culture. We have phones to call our kids 24/7, we worry about every little thing that they put into their mouth & have all kinds of "lessons" & organized activities which we ferry them to like taxis. This woman is not advocating letting kids roam around the streets at night, just letting them out or our sight for a while. I don't think she was passing judgement on other parents so much as expressing an opinion. Just as there is an argument to be made that neglect is bad, so I think is overprotection in the long run.
I can remember as kid growing up in the suburbs i would come home, take my school clothes off, grab a snack & be out the door to play in the park or at a neighbourhood kid's house till dinnertime. Sometimes it was another kid playing at my house. One thing that makes me sad is that i rarely see in local parks pick up games of ball or kids on bikes in the street just "roaming"

Louise M Parker

Where specifically in Wales do you live, out of curiosity? It sounds lovely.

Father_0f_7

So you've been to my town? AND you know Joe?!?!?!

Small world. lol

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Dane, I'm so proud of you and how much you've changed this year.

Jschneier

I agree with this in the big picture but I have a number of friends who have had run ins with social services over things that were entirely unjustified and getting them off their case was very difficult. For instance, a friend of mine had her 5th child in a hospital and that hospital required a three day stay. Well by day 2 she felt fine and needed to get back to other kids and so they left the hospital. Despite having no medical problems the hospital called social services on them and they had a terrible time getting through it. These are normal people, a dentist and a stay at home mom...I have had an number of friends that have gotten into these kind of scrapes and although it always worked out it was a big hassle to sort it out. Maybe I am too scared of the government

Anyway, I still never let my 8 year old go anywhere alone or without an adult but it is more my 11 1/2 year old that I am beginning to feel like I need to loosen the reigns. My 8 year old still is too young in my opinion but at 11 I feel like maybe it is going to end up being detrimental if I don't step back. KWIM?

starr76

I was always gone as a child from morning to dark although usually with friends and I encourage my son to play at the park across the street if he goes anywhere else he has to tell me first he also takes the city bus to school and this summer i plan on teaching him to take the bus across town to his granparents he knows not to go into houses and not go near cars if he has a question he calls me on his phone and he wont even go into a car with his grandparents and he knows if he is bothered by someone to go to a house and ask the person to call the police figuring a person in a house will be dafer than a stranger trying to get close to him it all depends on what you teach your kids if you dont let them go gradually then when they are 25 they will still be living with you.

Xero

Starr, we appreciate your input but we try to keep from bumping dead threads around here. So basically, when you go to post in a thread, try to make sure the last post date is not any older than 30 days please. This thread ended in August of last year.

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Thank you!!

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