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My 10-year-old goes everywhere alone; I want him to have an independe

My 10-year-old goes everywhere alone; I want him to have an independe

  • We let our 10-year-old go alone.
  • He goes alone to the library, a place where he says that children under 10 years must be present with an adult.
  • It all started during a pandemic, but we agreed with other parents to let it work.

Sure, 21 -year -old has its advantages, like 18. But 10 is the first magical number in our family.

When my son was 10 years old in 2024, he came in A new measure of independence. He is now welcome to go alone to places that previously required an adult to accompany him.

Falls on Local YMCAWhere he and his friends can swim, play basketball or participate in board matches, swimming pool or table football (and eat snacks) in the “Teen Center”. The covered reader can ride a bike to the city library, which asks adults to supervise children under 10 years of age. He and his best friend have permission to move to the arcade of video games, which recently opened in the center of our city.

It helps Northampton is small – about 30,000 people – and largely available on foot or a bicycle from our home. School, y, library and arcada are less than nice.

We agreed with other parents to make our children go

Visiting these places without a parent is the latest development of what I call “not knowing where our children are for every second”, a very informal agreement among the family friends of my eldest son.

Allowing our children independence is our conscious but unjustified contrast with the approach to the parenting of the helicopter, which became so common between when we were young, in the 1980s and early 1990s and now. Research supports us – A Research 2018 It has shown that the children of parents who float over every action are more susceptible to anxiety, depression and low self -esteem.

Also below parenting in supervisionChildren last longer to learn how to do it. Near the five universities and universities in the Northampton area is home for professors, including my wife, with lots of stories about students whose parents try to intervene on behalf of their children, from choosing classes to complaining directly on professors and even for administration, about low class. I wonder how or if you manage to make your own laundry without many phone calls at home.

It all started during a pandemic

Our The journey to independence began, contradictory, during a pandemic.

The school in autumn 2020 was limited to Zoom classes, which is a completely ineffective way of cooperation with 5- and 6-year-olds. A handful of families in our neighborhood created a capsule and was lucky to find a teacher about the kindergarten of nature. Our children spent the vast majority of time, which fell and in winter outside, driving like a group of two -wheeled geese and learning how to deal with, with a delicate supervision when they studied the world around them.

Nowadays, as the fourth equators, they may start freely. In this way they have spent afternoons in the last few months.

Instead of participating in structured (and not inexpensive) extracurricular activities, they interact in the playground or play in one of our homes, if the parent is present. Many of us work at home, so someone is usually nearby.

Although we have a difficult idea where they are when they are in the world and when they are at home, we are happy to leave them the rest. Most of them also have other classes, such as sports or music lessons. But when they have their free time, they are now large enough to find out how they want to spend them without organizing adults.

I want my children to have independence appropriate to age

We, parents, are here to answer questions, offer tips and justify doubts – this is part of our work. But giving my children the latitude of making their own decisions, when the rates are low, is the way they learn to make good decisions when it matters. This is part of how they develop confidence to support and manage social and academic requirements as they grow up.

Ultimately, by offering them a sense of independence for age, they will learn to lead their own lives in a way that lasted 10 years for children 10 years older than them.

At least in my home children even put their own washing.