agonyaunt | (no subject)

(no subject)

After school, my granddaughter, 9, walks a quarter of a mile — by herself — from the bus stop to her house while her father works from home. She texts him when she gets on the school bus, and, most days, she is the only child walking in the direction of her house. They live in a fairly safe suburb, but the situation seems dangerous to me. My concern is the constant traffic of gardeners, painters and delivery people through the neighborhood who could harm her. Her father believes the walk is good for her confidence, but I don’t think it’s worth the risk. I’ve offered to pay for someone to meet the bus, walk her home and get her started on homework, but I was refused. My daughter defers to her husband. This situation keeps me up at night! Any suggestions?

GRANDMOTHER

I’m a worrier, too. So, let’s talk this out. There is no magic age at which a child can walk home safely from school or the bus stop. That depends on her maturity and the safety of the neighborhood. Even so, the American Academy of Pediatrics advises that children ages 9 to 11 — who have good judgment — are ready to start.

I know it can be scary to envision a child alone in the world, navigating all kinds of adults she doesn’t know — not just laborers. But rather than torturing yourself with worst-case scenarios that are extremely rare, let’s focus on your granddaughter’s readiness, instead. Does she know the route? Will she keep her eyes on the road (and off her phone)? Will she scream and run if a stranger approaches her too closely?

Her father seems to have decided that the walk is safe and she’s up to the task. I doubt your daughter would defer to him if she disagreed. And they probably know their child better than you do. Psychologists concur with your son-in-law that walking home alone can boost a child’s confidence. So, rather than pressing your case (on which you don’t get a vote, frankly), perhaps observe your granddaughter from a distance one day to see for yourself how she navigates this challenge. I hope it puts your mind at ease.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/11/style/kids-walking-home-alone-appropriate-age.html

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1. It has been my observation that people who drive have absolutely wild ideas of how far "a mile" actually is. So, to clarify, one mile is a 15 - 20 minute walk. This child has a 5 minute walk between the bus stop and home.

2. I have a piece of advice for Grandma, and that's "Take your racist/classist head out of your ass and stop getting into a tizzy about a perfectly normal childhood activity!"

At my old office, a quarter of a mile was the distance I'd walk to the office from where I'd parked. Yeah, three to five minutes depending on speed, stride length, and whether you're an energetic kid.

YUUUP.

Hey fretful LW: the world is not safe. But for every Adrienne Shelley literally thousands of women are killed by their husbands, and these proportions also hold for children. Also, we know who you demographically mean when you cite "gardeners and delivery people." Pfht.

Speaking of husbands, do you mean to imply that your daughter's husband has her under his thumb or are you just annoyed that she agrees with him?

Yeah, the rate of stranger abductions in the US and Canada combined is somewhere under 300 a year, out of an under-18 population in the millions, which probably goes far to explain why when people freak out that *I* am not freaking out over the supposed risk of "stranger danger" they ask me if I remember Adam Walsh. Well, no, I do not remember Adam Walsh because he died 40 years ago and I'm only 40 today, so. Yeah. Maybe there is a *reason* why none of them can think of a more recent case.

I *do* know someone whose kid was abducted and murdered while walking home from a friend's. And I still let my kids walk to friends' houses in our neighborhood, because I'm aware that this terrible event was an incredibly rare one. (Does it give me an extra "ulp" when one of the kids is running late? Yes. But if I want adults, I have to train them up to adult independence.)

It's an awful thing to happen, when it happens. And fair's fair, if *you* told me that you didn't let your kids travel a short distance alone, or if LW had indicated this sort of tragic backstory, I'd be a lot more sympathetic.

But, thankfully, this sort of crime is so rare that most of us will never know anybody who experienced it. As you know, of course.

Especially since, in Australia at least, statistically the biggest threat to children is white men aged between 20 and 50.

Also, far more children get harmed by a parent/a step-parent/an uncle/a grandfather, a teacher, a church minister, a scout master, a sports coach than by a random stranger. Most children who are harmed are harmed by someone who they know and see regularly, not by strangers.

LW is being ridiculous.

Most violent crime is committed by people known to the victim. There's a sort of logic to that.

My concern is the constant traffic of gardeners, painters and delivery people through the neighborhood who could harm her.

If LW's son was overly concerned about the girl's safety, wouldn't he be taking a few minutes out of his schedule to meet her at the bus stop?

Or, LW, have you considered the possibility that maybe those gardeners, painters and delivery people are a) also part of the neighbourhood, b) have noticed your granddaughter walking home from the bus stop, and c) keep an eye on her from a distance to make sure she does get home safely?

No, LW's the child's maternal grandmother. You'll note the handwringing that her daughter just goes along with the SIL, as though she has no agency or say in the parenting choices at all.

You'll also note that LW doesn't even seem to consider the possibility that Granddaughter wants to walk alone. Her wishes aren't even considered.

Yup, it's LW's son-in-law, my mistake. (I swear I know how to read, honest...)

I was almost abducted 40 years ago, and I think LW needs to calm down here. Trying to make a big deal of this will only make things worse.

A quarter of a mile? Seriously? LW is freaking out about her nine-year-old grandchild walking A QUARTER OF A MILE alone? When she has a phone and is texting her dad so he's expecting her? LW needs to take a freaking chill pill.

(Also, painters & gardeners & delivery people = wanna bet LW's worried about those Poor And Possibly NonWhite People Because They Can't Be Trusted?)

If there's really so many of them swarming the neighborhood every afternoon, so much the better - more eyes on the street = more safety.

It's like how I feel much safer walking through downtown late at night on a Saturday when there's lots of people there than on a Tuesday when it's deserted.

Yep, I have $5 on LW's actual demographic worries aka bigotry.

Laborers! Why, they might look upon her with their filthy peasant eyes!

Have you noticed that people who are worried about how public life will put girls in the presence of people who could harm them never have any solution to the problem in mind except removing girls from public life? This grandmother places no weight on the very sensible check-ins that the child makes with her father, nor does she suggest a self-defense class or mention any kind of what-if conversations or roleplays the family might have done to prepare for a missed bus, unfamiliar construction, a fire truck, or whatever. There's no action the girl could take to make herself safer.

Nooo -- instead she has to passively put herself in the hands of someone her grandmother hires to walk her home and "get her started on her homework." In other words, a stranger who's going to come into her house with her. Yeah, lovely.

Have you noticed that people who are worried about how public life will put girls in the presence of people who could harm them never have any solution to the problem in mind except removing girls from public life?

Yes indeed.

There's a famous story: When Golda Meir was asked to place a curfew on women to help end a series of rapes, Meir replied by stating, “But it is the men who are attacking the women. If there is to be a curfew, let the men stay at home.”

You know, I think I remember reading that at some point in (Korean?) history there actually was a men's curfew, so that women could go out and socialize.

And, needless to say, the curfew for men was immediately off the table.

Have you noticed that people who are worried about how public life will put girls in the presence of people who could harm them never have any solution to the problem in mind except removing girls from public life?

Which also has the knock-on effect of removing women from public life, because women are the ones most likely to be supervising children. These people never think that boys and girls should be left home alone either.

If I had a small child who I deemed mature enough to handle a phone and walk alone along a familiar route, you betcha I'd have location sharing turned on in the map app. At least until I was confident with the kid's maturity to go unfamiliar places alone, and until I figured the kid's need for privacy overrode my need to know where they were.

Sure, but that's different from "I must be visible to the people around you."

My teenagers have been known to text me and say "the bus driver is taking a different route, can you keep an eye on me?"

Good grief, she'd have gone over the fence at the the distance I routinely walked home at that age. And yes, stranger abduction is a vanishingly rare crime. My city hasn't had one in over 100 years.

I was a nervous wreck the first time my kids took public transit by themselves. And one of them messed up, got off a stop too early (ignoring their sibling who tried to tell them about the problem, because UGH MY SIBLING IS SO ANNOYING, apparently), walked a quarter-mile in the wrong direction, and then....got back on the next bus and made it to the correct stop, and home, only 15 minutes later than anticipated. Which is exactly the kind of problem-solving and general competence and confidence-building letting kids do things does.

this grandma is a nervous nellie and also i suspect that she's encoding racism in her classism (where I am, gardeners and painters are disproportionately likely to be Latinx; delivery drivers disproportionately likely to be Black).

Something about the advice struck me as downright wrong, and then I realized what it was: "off her phone".

LW, if you're worried about her, ask her to call *you* when she gets off the bus, and stay on the phone with you the whole way home. That way you'll know right away if anything goes wrong, you'll have a better idea of what the walk is really like, and you'll get a chance to talk to your granddaughter for five minutes or so every day. Win/win!

(And on the very small chance that there is a predator watching her while she walks a known route through a safe neighborhood, people who are visibly talking on their phones are safer, because the predator also knows there is someone on the other end who will know immediately that something is wrong.)

(Also, stop being racist. If there *is* a threat, it's most likely to be neighbors or police.)

Edited 2023-02-01 05:23 (UTC)

I'd be more concerned about this girl's safety when crossing streets or passing active driveways. For that, she needs to be paying attention - which means off the phone.

Nah, the poor girl should not be subjected to that.

No. Grandma needs to butt out of her daughter's family's private arrangements for a child to walk from the bus to home.

Okay, it Was A Different Time, but when I was 8-9 years old I was being sent on errands to the shops on my tod, and we had no such things as mobile phones!

If your Different Time was approximately 1970ish to 1990ish then it was probably a more dangerous time.

Earlier than that, English seaside town.

Ah, well, then probably about as safe as it is now. No safer, but no more dangerous either.

Though I *did* double check the stats to make sure that the weird crime bump happened in the UK as well as the USA.

My mother was a world champion worrier, but even so, in 1970, I walked home from school. We lived in Chicago.

As someone who walked to and from school as a kindergartener and in grades 1, 4, 5, and 6 (I was bussed to a different school for integration purposes in grades 2 & 3), this grandmother is completely ridiculous.

It's a 10 minute walk if the child dawdles, and she texts her father when she gets off the bus. And he's there at home! She doesn't have to let herself in! She's learning she can navigate the world and be okay, and that is an important skill.

God knows how this woman would react to the two tween boys I see riding the Metro on my commute every morning. They're riding trains with all sorts of unsavory types like (check notes) construction workers and civil servants.

Oh, but they're boys. They're allowed to be out in the world, visible and making trouble. Girls, the precious flowers, must be protected and hidden away from all that would defile them.

No, there is every chance that this woman would freak out at boys too. In that case, there's more than a slight tinge of homophobia to add to her panic attack.

A quarter of a mile is, like, two blocks. It's fully possible he could see her out the window for most of the time.

In my city, and I think this is common in the US, if you have a fairly regular grid of houses laid out in blocks, then once around an ordinary-sized block is very close to a quarter mile. There are short sides and long sides, so one actual block is either longer or shorter than a sixteenth of a mile, but on average four blocks is a quarter mile. My elementary school was about five blocks from my house. There was one dangerous street, but there were crossing guards. I was walking on my own for sure by eight, possibly seven.

Here in NYC it was very thoroughly drummed into me at a young age that 20 blocks = one mile.

Nevermind that this is only true a. in Manhattan b. when you're on the gridded part c. heading uptown or downtown, rather than crosstown. Twenty blocks is a mile.

I really don't have anything to add to this beyond what everyone else has said. LW can take her overprotective, racist, classist, misogynist self and butt out.

Maybe I should ask my 15 year old what they think about this, regularly taking public transit to school a few miles away through, :gasp: OAKLAND.

Please time how long the 15 year old spends laughing. :)

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