On Sun, 07 Sep 2014 07:42:56 -0400, Ed Pawlowski > wrote:

>On 9/7/2014 6:01 AM, Julie Bove wrote:
>>
>> "MaryL" > wrote in message
>> ...
>
>>> In addition to technology, I think parents today
>>> are so fearful that they drive children everywhere from a very young
>>> age--a real loss of independence, in my opinion. I used to ride my
>>> bicycle or horse to my grandparents' home in the summer, a distance of
>>> about 4 miles each way. Today, many people would claim that it is
>>> "neglect" if my mother did not keep her eyes on each child "every
>>> minute."
>>> MaryL
>>
>
>> I was just reading something in a magazine but can't remember which
>> one. It said that these days kids often reach their teens and have
>> never been away from their parents or some other adult.
>
>>
>> I could get her to go into two businesses where we knew the
>> owners and she would shop in there for presents and such. But if I were
>> to sit outside of the drugstore and tell her to go in and buy something,
>> she would refuse. Terrified of some unknown thing that might possibly
>> happen to her.
>>
>> I was also reading that the world now isn't really all that more
>> dangerous for kids than it was when we were kids but our perceptions of
>> it is.
>
>Kids are over protected in many cases. Recently a mother in NYC was
>taken to task for letting her son take the subway home alone When I was
>8, I'd take a bus, train, then trolly to go to my grandmothers house.
>Couple of years older, we'd take the same route even longer to center
>city Philadelphia.
>
>After school, we'd get on our bikes and be gone until dinner time.
>
>We thought nothing of it yet we are raising a generation of sissies.

At eight years old I rode the NYC subways to wherever I wanted, often
from Brooklyn to the Bronx zoo.... I'd ride my bike everywhere, to
Prospect Park to Rockaway Playland to Central Park, wherever I wanted.