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Comment by micmil | Hacker News Reader

We're not talking about 6 year olds here. We're talking about "children" that are at times not even minors, whose parents are trying to control every aspect of their lives well beyond any reasonable limit.

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Let's talk about a 12 year old then.

Old enough to use technology well, but young enough to require oversight of some manner.

As a 12 year old me and my peers had no mobile phones and most of us went home from school alone, using public transportation in Budapest, a city of 2 million. This was already this century.

Americans seem to have a very strange notion of what children can do at what ages. Kids at age 8 can reasonably go to and from school if it's close enough. This of course relies on living in a walkable area and I guess that's partially where the problem starts in the US. Parents got used to the idea that kids need to be transported by car or a specific, restricted-use school bus, leaving no freedom or agency for the children. Yes, growing up involves making mistakes, doing mischief, testing boundaries, learning what it is like to lie, feeling what a resulting bad conscience feels like, what a secret feels like etc. Yes, it may mean that the kid may skip a class or go somewhere they are not supposed to, but usually these aren't life shaking mistakes, unless there are deeper problems at home and with the parental environment.

What children can do at what age is a direct function of how they are raised. Americans, unfortunately, have been sold on the notion that what a child is capable of is instead somehow a biological limitation. There are some biological limitations, of course, such as the inability for average children before around age 10 to perform abstract reasoning, etc, but they are very few. And those limitations are misunderstood, as well. While the truth is that a child exposed to something 'before they can understand it' will experience confusion (or misunderstanding... 'kid logic' can be amazing in the lengths to which it stretches to attempt to integrate new knowledge), it is assumed they will instead experience intense, damaging trauma. I think there is also a component involved of 'doing something is better than doing nothing' when, in many cases, doing nothing would definitely be the better solution. I don't believe there are hardly any parents who, for instance, could come across a string of 'dead baby' jokes in a group chat their 11 year old is participating in and conclude 'my child is developing a sense of humor and fitting in with a peer group.' They would instead conclude 'my child is uncaring, incapable of empathy, foul-mouthed, and I need to make them understand how serious this is.' A reaction like that, from your parent, would be devastating. They know you better than anyone. If they tell you that you are an uncaring, unkind, vicious person, you are not going to be able to step back and see that your parent is being ridiculous in most cases. You will simply be hurt, and that parent has certainly not prepared you for how to handle emotions like that. It ends up with an immature person (the parent) inflicting distress on another immature person (the child) and no one benefits.

Also, parents overestimate their explicit influence on kids and thereby their importance and responsibility in explicitly teaching them by setting rules and "preaching". Instead, kids brains are very good at filtering out the bullshit, learning by observing actions rather than talk and learning from peers and other adults.

However, a truly dictatorial parental surveillance scheme, as is now possible through tech, may inhibit the information transfer even more. Combined with practices like constant parental transportation, structured extracurriculars every day, no recess at school or homeschooling a very dystopian picture emerges.

I really hope this wave won't hit Europe.

And the effects are already showing: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/02/27/generati...

I grew up in a home where my parents separated when I was in 1st grade.

Mother who gained custody had sever bipolar which led to days where she literally would not get out of bed.

When I was in 6th grade I remember having to pack lunches for my sister who was 4 years younger and make sure we both went to the bus stop and got to school each day.

It was a bit more difficult when I hit the 7th and 8th grades as the school in the area started those grades an hour earlier than K-6 and my sister and I no longer rode the same bus at the same time.

We managed pretty good, and my sister and I are very close to this day because of how we took care of each other growing up.

I also had immense freedom, no curfew/bedtime and freedom to roam unsupervised unless my grades slipped. I enjoyed the freedom so I managed to keep my grades up my entire education.

It helped that cell phones in the hands of every child were still not a thing, just as I turned 18 and moved out on my own is when I remember getting my first cell phone.

> As a 12 year old me and my peers had no mobile phones and most of us went home from school alone

Again that is cherry-picking.

Yes, I walked to school alone when I was 12. Also when I was 7.

But school is a consistent, well-known location with adult supervision at the destination. The amount of maturity required for traveling to school is minimal.

Kids can do a lot more open-ended activities than walking/taking the bus to school.

I used to walk my self to school at 5 - the trend for helicopter parenting has gone to far

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