Question for ILX Parents

They will be getting into EVERYTHING.

So, either keep then low (and reachable) and high and secure. Or locked up. Or, like me, in the basement, where I'm not planning to let my daughter scrounge for, oh, five years.

Bahahahahahahahahahaha

My daughter's now able to stand (and, as such, has become quite fond of turning the stereo on....and off and on and off and on and off and on and off and on and off and on and off....if the thing survives this year it'll be a miracle).

http://homepage.mac.com/alexinnyc/.Pictures/Photo%20Album%20Pictures/2005-06-21%2016.35.09%20-0700/Image-99FE8298E2AB11D9.jpg

She's also quite fond of ripping CD's off the bottom shelves (the ones she can reach) and either banging them hard against the floor or using them a sort've de-facto snow shoes. As such, various selections by XTC, X, the Virgin Prunes, the Velvet Underground, Velocity Girl and Van Halen now sport grievous cracks on their jewelboxes. And Dad frowns a lot.

The moral of the story: milkshakes cost money.

Josh OTM re: securing the shelves to the wall.

My solution: store your LPs in your wife's office. Have wife pile several feet of office/personal flotsam in front of LP shelves, rendering them completely inaccessible. Problem solved!!

i did this with my parents' lp collection when i was a toddler.

My mind is boggling at how different you might have become, Nick :)

What do ILX parents think about this TED lecture about the 5 dangerous things you should let your kid do?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-VacaaN75o

cant see it, what are they?

play with fire, play with knives, take apart appliances, break digital copyright law, drive cars

do parents not let children do those things?

my kid will grow up breaking copyright law.

i mean i guess taking apart appliances is annoying and i never did it, i don't think, but the first two are pretty basic 'growing up in the country' (which obv does not at all apply to much of the pop), and the last two are taken for granted here in the US, i'd think

If you live in a place with a Goodwill or a junkyard, you can bring home stuff that already doesn't work and take it apart for free/very cheap! Would be fun to have a little workshop with like old radio and blender parts.

Playing with fire even on a really simple level is super fun. I never set things on fire outside, for instance, but I burned things with matches and candles in the house.

They probably should have thrown me outside with a watering can, tbh.

we have an intensive fire setters program here.

I did all 5 of those things as a kid

often at the same time

play with fire - could light a one match fire before the age of 9
play with knives - not just knives, axes, got to have kindling for the above
take apart appliances - my kindergarten teach brought in an old typewrite for me to dismantle
break digital copyright - it was analogue copyright i was breaking
drive cars - hmm, drove round a field at some point, but don't recall what age.

A pocket-knife, hack saw, a hot glue gun and a bunch of balsa scraps or dowels and some candles and matches and fabric scraps, cotton balls...this stuff was like crack to me. I built complicated "upholstered" doll beds stuffed with cotton balls and glued fabric covers onto them and stuff. My parents were always doing stuff and it seemed magical that completed THINGS would emerge, I longed to really make "real" things too.

obviously this is a generational thing as now a days kids aren't allowed to take a shit without wearing a helmet.

my wife and i try not to coddle our son too much, he's only 2 1/2 and should be getting into things.

Plenty of country kids are still riding ATVs without any safety gear, I have no doubt, and jumping out of trees, and setting things on fire in the woods, and whatever else. gbx always otm on topics like this, my exp was v similar to his.

atm we live in the city and i don't know if we'll still be living here when this becomes relevant but a bunch of things (like letting your kids walk to school / play outside alone) feel like they make more sense in a suburban/rural area than in a city. like i walked the 15 minutes to school everyday (around 11yo) and biked around the neighborhood with friends in the afternoon, but i'm not sure i'd feel comfortable letting a kid do that in the city. but i want to be -- maybe if I got the feeling that my concerns are totally unreasonable i'd be more comfortable with this stuff.

its pretty amazing to see all these kids skateboarding and riding bikes with helmets on...i can't even begin to count how many times i cracked my skull on pavement etc when i was a kid. Im fine....really i am.

Honestly I can't imagine anything in the world that could substitute for "play outside alone." I can think of lots of other worthwhile activities that could take up the same amount of time, yeah, but nothing to compare with those hours of just making shit up and acting things out with no one watching or listening, breathing the air and sometimes just lying on the ground watching and thinking. Whole worlds that seemed more real than the real world half the time. Man.

its amazing the imagination my son has already.

:)

i mean my experience is that of an ex-city kid growing up amidst the idiot youth of rural america, so it def doesn't apply widely---"playing with fire" was getting to light the woodstove and learning how to make campfires. you can't do that in a city apartment, so yr only options are "play with matches" with isn't the best idea (fact: neighbor in HSTNGS had her house burn down when her unattended 5yo bro played with matches...i mean, there IS a reason parents are leery of this stuff). "playing with knives" was chopping wood, and learning to use a chainsaw (prob around 15yo?), and, like, getting pocketknives as xmas gifts.

downloading was something my parents were and remain pretty ignorant of, so w/e. never occurred to me that some households would prohibit it. driving: i am american. also, again, as a country kid i was driving my dad's tractor (lol surgeon waht) at around 12, his truck at around 13, and had an official permit @ 15.

Honestly I can't imagine anything in the world that could substitute for "play outside alone." I can think of lots of other worthwhile activities that could take up the same amount of time, yeah, but nothing to compare with those hours of just making shit up and acting things out with no one watching or listening, breathing the air and sometimes just lying on the ground watching and thinking. Whole worlds that seemed more real than the real world half the time. Man.

bigtime. this was the bulk of my adolescence. all walking around in the woods, thinking about orcs, giving sticks legendary names.

someone find/post that map of generational gaps in "play range" within one family: gramps covered miles, dad a smaller area, kid isn't allowed around the block

i used to steal my parents cars when i was 15 and go for joy rides. Eventually they gave up trying to stop me from doing it and just let me take the cars whenever. Thank god i never got pulled over.

i used to play out in the woods by myself a lot too. or take my GI Joes out there and set up some cool forts and shit.

my fondest memories of growing up and playing were playing pond hockey into the wee hours of the night with nothing to light up our area but a bonfire. Fucking awesome.

and we didn't wear helmets! thats where i first broke my nose and lost my first tooth!

i guess i'm wondering if there are legitimate reasons for that (like maybe more urban spaces?) or whether we're just in the midst of some weird inexplicable process of "dangerism"

i think people these days are all about the dangerism, don't get vaccinated, wear a helmet, dont eat peanut butter, dont let your baby sleep on his/her stomach...people are too scared to do anything with their kids for fear of them dying or getting autism. Mainly because all this shit is pushed down your throat from the day you find out your having a kid. FEAR MONGERS

yeah that's rad.

i love the city and feel like its a great place for children to learn about the world (specifically: other people that are Not Like You), but i still think that i'll be moving to the country if/when i ever children. i guess if it were possible/feasible to do what you wanted, it'd be like

babbies---who cares where you live, they're useless
toddlers---ditto, so you may as well live somewhere that'll be unreasonable later on (jealous of kids i knew that grew up in far-flung exotic locales)
kids---city (teach 'em young that the world is full of all kinds of strange, wonderful, jerks
adolescence---country
teens---take yr pick, i guess.

that's rad: xp to chris stealing cars

Didn't we have a lively thread a while ago about setting things on fire?

pond hockey is also where i had my first drink.

i sometimes think that DANGERISM is played up a bit too much by nostalgic old folks, esp since i think kids wearing helmets is a pretty smart idea. but otoh i don't think ppl are Bad Parents if they dont put a lid on their kid.

i guess i don't know many ppl that are scared of their children doing scary stuff (w/one notable, hilarious exception*), more that they're scared of a possibly-imaginary uptick in wild rapists and pedos on the loose

*my bff and sophomore year roommate has a mom who sent him to college with his very own personal fire ladder, on the off chance that, like, the dorms' fire escapes fell off or something

she is terrified of everything

i suppose if my parents knew of half the shit i was doing at the time they would have been terrified. usually i just waited until they fell asleep, flushed the toilet (it was rather loud) and ran downstairs and snuck out the basement to all hours in the morning.

Re dangerism and city living: the actual chance that your kid gets hit by a car or kidnapped or something is so miniscule that it seems hardly worth thinking about, but then the burden and grief if it DOES happen so outweigh the tiny real chance that you just don't dare.

Otoh my parents used to forbid me to be on the road after 11 because I, who had never had a drink in my life, might be hit by a drunk driver. And somehow 11 was the magic cut-off when drunks got on the road. But they let us fall out of trees and stuff, and dive off things into the lake, and other things that can go wrong. So it's really about the FEELING kids get from you, I guess, more than the reality? That either the world is exciting with a FEW important cautions, or the world is scary with a few freedoms.

yup, p much.

Like, I used to argue that no one we knew had ever been hit by a drunk driver, and yes it could happen, but was the chance really worth living YOUR life differently and never going ANYWHERE that you couldn't be home from by 11pm? And they said, it doesn't matter -- we aren't willing to take the smallest chance of it happening to you, and you're still under our control. I was probably 20 at the time!

But my dad showed us how to use the jigsaw at like age 12 and we bombed sleds down hills and played on the rock retaining walls at the pier and stuff, so...??

these days it seems everyone is "the world is scary with few freedoms" i blame george bush.

my dad was always the master of "i had a friend who died or ruined his life because he rode a motorcycle or didn't eat his breakfast".

My boyfriend is the master of that, too. Usually when it's something he doesn't want me to do anyway, which is probably where your dad was going with it, too.

oh yeah. my mom actually had two ex boyfriends die in motorcycle accidents, so that one was out for life basically. and my dad, being a surgeon, could actually produce pictures/cases of horrible shit virtually at will. this only happened a couple times, though, and all it earned me was a pathological fear of horse ~bites~

Haha my dad rode motorcycles, so that was categorically IN.

Oh yeah, we used to climb around the 2nd storey roof to clean the gutters, I forgot to add that one. I mean it was only probably 12 feet to the ground, but still.

xp well, did you ever put yourself in a position to get bit by a horse? Then it worked, didn't it?

louis ck bit about pony biting his daughter is lol xp

i'm very nervous about being a good parent i guess :/

never stepped foot on a motorcycle, still petrified. But want a harley. my dads other big piece of advice "WEAR A CONDOM WHEN YOU FUCK!"

See, now they don't tell you that in Sunday school -- the advice I got was more like "always wear a bra and don't let boys look up your skirt."

Dirt bikes are suuuper fun. Had a fight with the bf once about hypothetical future children and their access to motor vehicles.

god i wanted a dirt bike so fucking bad. we were the only ppl in the "neighborhood" without motorized fun things (snow mobiles, atvs, dirt bikes) and i'm pretty sure its because my mom kaiboshed that early on

i got kicked out of sunday school for farting. such is life.

i never had a dirtbike/atv or anything.

oh and my mom let me smoke a cigarette that a houseguest left behind when i was 7 years old or something just to teach me a lesson about smoking

it was always "you get a b in every class and we'll consider it"....always ended up with c's.

I pulled someone's chair out from under them so that they fell on the floor when they tried to sit down, in Sunday School. But they didn't kick you out in my church, you were there for good, p much.

My mom got a free pack of cigs from the grocery store (Capris, iirc) as part of a promotion, and before she took them apart to use the tobacco to keep bugs out of the closets, she offered us the chance to smoke one. She didn't know how to inhale, though, so she couldn't tell us how to, and I was the only one who volunteered and of course I coughed up a long at one drag.

Probably stopped me for another 15 years, was worth it I guess.

lung

My nephew has one of those battery-powered kids vehicles that looks like a tractor, my parents bought it used from a neighbor. He calls it his "John John Deer"and will steer it anywhere to be like his dad and his poppa. He and it are so short, he can park it UNDER whatever is lying across the sawhorses in the garage. Adorbs. There's a dirtbike in this kid's future for sure.

granted my fart was during confession. forgive me father for i have...pbbbbbbbt.

when i was a kid i was on a friend's huge dirt bike - like, an adult bike - and i gunned it down a hill and kept going over a cliff - too freaked to hit the brake or something? - and flew 20 feet to the ground and landed between two trees and two huge rocks. my ribs were bruised for weeks. i wasn't wearing a helmet. i just went home and lay down on the couch in horrible pain and NEVER told my parents. could have been bleeding internally big time. my parents didn't care where the hell i went or what i did. i wandered around the woods by myself for hours checking out ponds and all kinds of stuff when i was 6 and 7. coulda died plenty of times. and don't get me started on high school. i'm gonna watch my kids like a hawk!

from early on my son was very interested in records - obsessed, actually - every night he'd shout "FRACKERDS!!" when i got home - and i'd be obliged to play some of them. he was desperate to do everything himself, so now he can turn the record player on, put the record on the spindle (that took the longest), put the needle on the record and hit start. he's still not terrific at holding the record by the edges but aye he's 2. anyway, they're all at knee-height but he never messes with them or pulls them down, possibly because he knows and understands that they're special, that they're delicate, etc..

I'm fine with all these but tbh I realy meet parents who don't let their kids at least do some of these. Only time I can remember recently getting into trouble with this was on bonfire night. I let me son light the fireworks and have down for years (I mean he's 13 now so firestarting is the least of our worries...) but our neightbour wouldn't let their son (who's older than ours) do it so that led to a bit of conflict.

Having said that if I ever see any halfwit letting their kid drive around a campsite (as I have done on a couple of occasions) I'm going to get very cross.

Shit that should be "I rarely meet parents..."

Meanwhile exhibit A - a country park, little kids running around everywhere, people camping, having barbeques, and some bright spark thinks this a good idea...
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2605/3959181761_97e0a968ea.jpg

I have record bins near a desl chair and they won't stop kicking the spines of teh records damet

when i was a kid i was on a friend's huge dirt bike - like, an adult bike - and i gunned it down a hill and kept going over a cliff - too freaked to hit the brake or something? - and flew 20 feet to the ground and landed between two trees and two huge rocks. my ribs were bruised for weeks. i wasn't wearing a helmet. i just went home and lay down on the couch in horrible pain and NEVER told my parents. could have been bleeding internally big time. my parents didn't care where the hell i went or what i did. i wandered around the woods by myself for hours checking out ponds and all kinds of stuff when i was 6 and 7. coulda died plenty of times. and don't get me started on high school. i'm gonna watch my kids like a hawk!

― scott seward, Thursday, 27 January 2011 01:09 (six years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

How did that work out in the end? As a paranoid parent of a one year old I'm keen to know... maybe there is a happy middle ground, although this article leans towards the hands-off approach:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/04/hey-parents-leave-those-kids-alone/358631/

you always hear these tales of "back in the day we let kids wander around outside all day and it was fine" but how often did they report all the drownings and deaths and injuries?

Watch your kids like a hawk! before you know it they are gone flying o their own and going to raves

think of all the children eaten by clowns in sewers back in the day, tell me its not better now

now they will have been sewer-roasted to perfection

think of all the children that ate clwon!