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Comment by ralfn | Hacker News Reader

Keep in mind that that is an American problem.

Here in the Netherlands and most of Europe kids go to school independently. They are not constant prisoners of adults stuck in american suburbia where one can only safely go from A to B by car.

Here, they just make a sandwich themselves. Grab their bike and go to school when school starts. The schedule of parents might mean the parents are already gone. The schedules do not need to be in sync and mom isn't the kids drive around slave.

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This is how my experience was after about age 10. I was close enough to school that I could choose to ride my bike or take the bus. I would get myself out the door every morning and usually make it home before any parents.

I've recently read that the erosion of free-roaming children has increased exponentially in the years that I've since graduated highschool.

It's because everything in the US is based around car infrastructure. Kids can't drive or cross 6 lane roads to get to school.

Or be expected to bike 5 miles through absurd traffic.

For what it's worth, there are many areas in the U.S. where the infrastructure would reasonably allow for this and it's more a question of whether the parents would allow it. Even where this isn't possible, it's very common for schools to offer buses from extremely near to their homes to the school, which is a process that as you have pointed out, parents do not necessarily need to be involved in.

Looked for this in comments.

Here in SF our kids have some of this independence; but their school is still miles away. I walked to my suburban school in the 70's. SF has density to permit some independence but then undoes the benefit of that with its schooling model and chaos.

Pre-pandemic my kids could take MUNI. I biked with them. The bike ride is not bad but is too dangerous for kids who have not yet developed paranoid city road awareness. So my spouse or I got with them every time..

But this is already an unusual circumstance. Among urban friends in other places I can't think of more than a handful whose kids were independent in this fashion.

Here in the Bay Area places like Fairfax let you live the dream though... it seems plausible that if the ground shift to "hybrid" or full remote is real and sustained, there will be even more reordering of lifestyle and population in pursuit of this.

That would be a silver lining...

When do they gain this independence? Where I live, kids mustn't be left alone before age 10. We moved a few blocks from a school, and look forward to the day when kiddo can do just what you say.

When I was growing up in Serbia, we were going to school alone in about second half of first grade, so about 7 and a half years. Some parents wait till second grade.

It also depends whether you need to hop on a bus, then it’s definitely at second grade.

In Germany, 6 years old are expecred go to school alone. However, I would not expect 6 years old to be able to leave house on time alone. Someone older needs to watch time.

The study is an Australian study on Pediatric Quality of Life and has determined that children aged 11-12 years can benefit from extra sleep and exercise.

It was not about how "Useless American Children are" Many kids in America get up everyday and dutifully and independently handle the process of attending school. There was even a term called "Latch Key Kid", where a child had a key and basically locked the door on the way out and opened when they got home.

Yup. A similar term (Schlüsselkind) was popular in Germany when I went to school in the 90s and had a negative connotation. https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlüsselkind

This is turning into an american problem not just for transportation reasons.

For example, take the general culture of outrage. Over time has permeated into the right to have free-roaming kids.

The US has had high profile cases of parents sent to jail , because of twitter gestapo reporting. When the pendulum swung too hard on this direction, there was also pushback: concerned parents lobbied to pass laws enshrining the right of parents to make the determination of when kids can roam freely.

The answer is more complex, but certainly there is an american angle to it.

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