Comment by Swizec | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Swizec | Hacker News Reader

I remember when I was a kid, I was allowed to roam and go on adventures. Especially at my grandma's house because she was next to the woods.

I thought I went so far. I thought I was so adventurous. Turns out the max I ever dared go was about 1km. Maaaaybe 2km. The distances that used to look so far and adventurous, don't even feel like a walk anymore.

Maybe that was just me, but it sounds like even if you give kids freedom to go wherever, they won't really roam that far. So maybe it's pretty safe to give them that freedom? They'll use it age appropriately.

By the time I would have roamed further than the 1 or 2 kilometers, I had discovered books and internet and computers and I was like "lol why would I leave the living room?"

I grew up in a city of 100,000 in the Midwest I was biking to school 4.5 miles at age 12.

I soon figured out I could get detention, miss the bus, but still get home on my bike. Couple that with a habit of getting the mail daily, and I was able to to serve detention without my parents knowledge (I think).

I think it depends upon the kids and how far you have to go for adventure.

I grew up in San Jose and when we were in elementary school, we would take our bikes to the surrounding hills all the time, anywhere from 1-10 miles. One of my brothers, when he was in middle school, would regularly bike to Santa Cruz, which is about 50 miles away.

That, and I think my grandma used a trick. She'd let me out in the wild, but the next meal was never more than 2 or 3 hours away. This limited how far I could roam without feeling like it did.

You wouldn't just skip a meal when you're 6 or 7. Not when everything's so delicious!

At home, in the city, it was similar. Sure I could do whatever I wanted between school and when my parents came home 3 hours later. But there's only so much you can do in 3 hours.

Man, for three months I lived in San Jose and tried to bike commute to my job in Newark. I got screamed at, swerved at, and nearly killed many times. The situation improved remarkably when I moved to Berkeley (and stopped cycling in the south bay).

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