Brewster Rockit by Tim Rickard for August 01, 2016

Is there no middle ground between helicopter parenting and free range parenting? Seems to me I was raised in that in-between area…

I contend that kids and everybody else are in no more danger now than they have ever been. There is just better reporting, more coverage and more awareness about such things…Almost all the best videos of tornadoes come after the advent of everybody having a video cam…The number of tornadoes didn’t increase, the number of videos did….All the rules still apply, though….Be home when the street lights come on, look both ways when you cross the street, stay away from strangers, be nice and polite………

But, fear Trumps logic these days……..Sorry, I couldn’t resist!

A better question is who’s going to protect everyone else from those kids?

“Whatever will Dromeiceiomimus and Utahraptor do without T rex? Send him back right now!”

what has changed since growing up in the ’50’s is the amount of fear that has been injected by organizations with causes to garner headlines and money. With the advent of personal, pocket sized cameras it is now easier to “document” actions that can be used to fuel these fears. They have not become more prevalent, as another poster pointed out, just more reported and sensationalized. Our current society lives in fear about everything. In the ’50’s we only worried about nuclear bombs.

I’m 70. I grew up free range. Aside from that, my parents had no business being parents.

Injecting a little history here. The wonderful freedom we had as children was really only that one generation. Historically, children either were hard at work from the time they could walk or in wealthier families, supervised by Mary Poppins. Helicopter parenting is nothing new except it used to be done by a hired servant who was paid to be with the child 24/7. That had the bad result of children who grew up narrow and dependent and very conformist. There were exceptions, but rare. I’m just saying we’re not seeing something new but a return to a past that wasn’t so great. I personally am all in favor of free-range parenting for all the reasons given up this thread.

Ok, but who’s going to constantly monitor Dr. Mel?

The guy is in the suit was eaten first; the dinosaur thought he was a lawyer.

They could have found a killbot.

My brother had pretty free range of San Francisco in the 40s as long as he didn’t go south of Market Street.

I was a free-range kid and I didn’t almost get killed that many times.