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Overestimating Threats Against Children
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This is a great essay by a mom who let her 9-year-old son ride the New York City subway alone:
No, I did not give him a cell phone. Didn’t want to lose it. And no, I didn’t trail him, like a mommy private eye. I trusted him to figure out that he should take the Lexington Avenue subway down, and the 34th Street crosstown bus home. If he couldn’t do that, I trusted him to ask a stranger. And then I even trusted that stranger not to think, “Gee, I was about to catch my train home, but now I think I’ll abduct this adorable child instead.”
Long story short: My son got home, ecstatic with independence.
Long story longer, and analyzed, to boot: Half the people I’ve told this episode to now want to turn me in for child abuse. As if keeping kids under lock and key and helmet and cell phone and nanny and surveillance is the right way to rear kids. It’s not. It’s debilitating — for us and for them.
It’s amazing how our fears blind us.
It’s also amazing to worry about the value of a cell phone this much. The things are dirt cheap these days, give one to the kid already.
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Not sure it’s about the price. It’s more like the principle. She gives the phone to the kid. Kid looses phone.
She:
a) admonishes, punishes the kid which in not necessarily a good thing.
b) she does not do anything and just shows the kid that it’s ok to loose a phone. Not necessarily a good thing.
At least, that’s my take on it.
If the kid loses the phone, you turn it into a lesson not to do that - admonishing kids isn’t a bad thing. A punishment isn’t required. Mobile phones are so cheap these days, it’s worth it to lose one or two to teach a lesson.
I don’t know. I know people for whom a mobile phone is not a cheap thing. Even the cheap ones are a lot of money for them.
Although, in the US mobile phones cost about the 3rd of what they cost around here. Well, that was her choice.