Harriet Vane Posted February 13, 2008 Share Posted February 13, 2008 At what age (or perhaps I should say, at what stage of maturity) do you give your children more independence? What does that independence look like at various stages? I am thinking of things like biking to the library or friends' houses alone, email/internet use, roaming the mall or other places alone with friends, that sort of thing. Please share not only what you allow/don't allow, but also WHY. I am just trying to think and pray this through. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PariSarah Posted February 13, 2008 Share Posted February 13, 2008 I'm seriously starting to wonder about this too. I've got an almost-10yo that is starting to want to spread his wings a bit. It's currently coming out as smart-mouthiness and even occasional belligerence. I'm sensing that he needs some more "I get to be in charge of this!" areas, but I don't know what those should be. Hope people here have some good ideas about slowly granting independence. . . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mom2legomaniacs Posted February 13, 2008 Share Posted February 13, 2008 My almost 10 yr ds falls in that category a bit. He is really wanting to do more so that he feels more mature. A couple of things I have loosened up on are: walking to a friend's house (about 20 houses down -- 1 1/2 blocks?) alone or in charge of his little brother and they walk a neighbor's dog when she is unable to. I feel they are able to handle this well. The younger one is 6 1/2. He is required to stay with his brother. They are very responsible. The older one is a real stickler for following the rules, especially with things like that. We also know a lot of our neighbors. There are many elderly in our area and I feel they keep an eye out for the kids too. It is really hard to let go. I trust my child, but he is a child and there are so many ways that unexpected danger can crop up. I just try to weigh it with the situation at hand and hope I made the right call. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jean in Newcastle Posted February 13, 2008 Share Posted February 13, 2008 My ds10 does 1/2 of my grocery shopping for me. I consider this a step toward independence because not only is he learning to shop which will help him later in life, but I am not by his side while he finishes the job (I'm in the other half of the store doing the other 1/2 of my grocery shopping). He also has his own bread-baking business. He takes his own orders, is responsible for writing them down on the calendar, buying the main ingredients, making change and calling his customers to apologize if he messes up. I monitored heavily (ie. helped teach him all the steps and supervised every step at first - at age 8; now I do "surprise inspections" and give him subtle reminders only). Why? He was bored and needed to flex his wings a bit. He wanted some spending money and saving money and he is very capable and we wanted to challenge him. He just recently bought his own computer with his bread money. He just recently started to walk/jog about 2 miles a day. This was his idea and I am glad to let him start a good habit as well as flex his wings a bit more. He takes a 2-way radio with him. I have the other one. He usually calls me half-way or whenever he gets bored or lonely! Sometimes he will bike the 2 mile route down to our grocery store for items for his bread business. He takes the radio then too. He does his own banking (custodial account). It took the tellers a couple of times to start taking him seriously but now they treat him like any customer (I wait in the car or do my banking with another teller). I have let him go to a friend's house (within biking distance). He calls when he arrives to let me know he got there safely. He has proved himself responsible by calling me if his friend wants to do any t.v./video/computer games (we don't allow this at anyone else's home after I found a neighborhood mom was letting him play "M" labeled games - she thought it was just fine.) We've solved the peer pressure problem by having him hand the phone to his friend - his friend has to talk to me directly about the media and we've had no problems with that sort of thing since! He has one friend that he e-mails. I give him about a 1/2 hour to spend on composing and sending an e-mail. I do not read it over his shoulder but I do go to the sent file later (when he's not around) and I do read it on occasion. I trust my son but I do not 100% trust the friend (this is the friend who does the "M" video/computer games and who had been a bad influence before he moved away). I've found no problems but I do want to monitor for my son's safety & well-being. He may only go to website that I've been to first. His computer is password protected (and I have not given him the password). I log on for him. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jean in Newcastle Posted February 13, 2008 Share Posted February 13, 2008 BTW sorry for the dense-ness of my above post. I am having some trouble with this forum lately - it won't let me use the quick reply and now I can't put spaces between the lines! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RoughCollie Posted February 13, 2008 Share Posted February 13, 2008 We always use the buddy system. No child of mine ever goes anywhere alone. If they leave the house without me or DH, they take my cell phone with them so they call me any time. I have dropped my children off at the library starting this year. I'm always back in the library within an hour. It is only 1.5 miles away, but there is a law here that kids cannot ride their bikes on sidewalks and there are no bike paths. I am not willing to take the chance that they will be hit by a car if they ride in the street. I will allow my DD to walk to a playground 1/2 mile from home, if she has a buddy with her because she does not have to cross a main road to get there and the road she crosses has a stop sign and a crosswalk. My kids will not be allowed to roam a mall with their friends. I may take my kids shopping at a mall with a friend and allow them to split up and meet me somewhere an hour later, if it ever comes up, but freely roaming a mall with a pack of teenagers (which I've seen every time I go to a mall) ... never. My kids can go to their friends' houses alone if their friends live on one of the two streets in our subdivision and if their friends' parents are home. They have to call me if they go into a friend's house, and I speak to the parent. Otherwise, I drive them to and fro. (To go outside our neighborhood to their friends' houses, they would have to cross a busy road which does not have a traffic light or a crosswalk.) My kids are not allowed to have accounts at My Space or similar sites. They are allowed to have email. They have to give me the password and I check every so often to make sure that things are on the up-and-up and that they have not changed their passwords to deny me access. They also participate in a few message boards. I'm a member at those boards too, and I read what my kids say and what the other posters are saying on those boards. The boards are well-monitored by adults (usually college students) with whom I am in email contact so they know I am a parent who is monitoring my children. I also have Net Nanny on my computer. My kids do not spend the night at other people's houses unless we know the family very well. However, they can have their friends spend the night here any time. If one of their friends misbehaves (lying, failing to follow safety rules and so forth), that friend is no longer welcome. That has only happened once. In the kitchen, my kids can cook anything they wish, but they must not use the stove or oven unless I am home unless they have earned the privilege by proving they will stay in the kitchen while the stove is on, and they will set the timer and respond to it promptly when the oven is on. One of my DS has full kitchen privileges, to date. They have been allowed to use the microwave since they were around 8 years old, without supervision. Two of my kids can do the grocery shopping by themselves. I provide transportation, of course. They are good at making the grocery lists and meal planning, too. All of my kids, when they reach age 14, will receive a clothing allowance each season, so they can gradually learn to select their own wardrobes within a budget. I started this by letting them select their own clothes a couple of years ago, with my final approval. I still have to teach them how to figure out which articles of clothing they *need*, but that's fairly simple, and we'll start that this summer. My kids do not feel stifled. If any of them do, I'm sure they will tell me about it and DH and I will consider the situation carefully. At what age (or perhaps I should say, at what stage of maturity) do you give your children more independence? What does that independence look like at various stages? I am thinking of things like biking to the library or friends' houses alone, email/internet use, roaming the mall or other places alone with friends, that sort of thing. Please share not only what you allow/don't allow, but also WHY. I am just trying to think and pray this through. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jenny in Atl Posted February 13, 2008 Share Posted February 13, 2008 It's so sad how different things are now compared to just 30 years ago (I guess that is a long time). The freedom I had compared to what my daughters have is like night and day. I walked to school by myself from the age of six. By eleven, I went to local shops, movies, etc with friends w/o an adult. My friends and I walked all over our area (Larchmont NY) without fear of, speeding cars or bad men/women popping out to take us away. Where I live now, it's unsafe to walk even in our own neighborhood without being run off the road by a speeder. I'm often uncomfortable letting my seven yr-old dd get the mail on her own! Ugh. And I would not dream of dropping off my 12 yr-old dd at a local mail with friends for the afternoon w/o an adult, or even the movies. So, I guess I'm right there with many today, unsure of how to let my kids become more independent. I don't even like them using the bathroom at our local library alone. I think I'm nutz :eek: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ria Posted February 13, 2008 Share Posted February 13, 2008 I'll let my pre-teens go to the local park if they are in a group of 4 or more (they are boys, btw). I'll let two of them walk around the block together. I will not let a single child walk alone until he looks like a man. So, my 15-year old can walk 1/2 mile to work, because he's a 2nd degree black belt and is full grown (lol...full grown makes him sound like a grown pup!). But my 8th grader? No way. Ria Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
6packofun Posted February 13, 2008 Share Posted February 13, 2008 to *continuously* give our kids more independence from the age of about 2 or 3 until they graduate. Obviously that looks different at every age and for each child. I have to be very purposeful about it because I tend to be a very protective mom and also one who would sometimes rather just do it myself! lol At the pre-teen level it's very difficult because a LOT of their friends are allowed to have MySpace accounts even though they aren't supposed to until age 14 and many are left alone for good portions of the day, so the "rules" are just automatically different for them. Independence and responsibility at our house includes things like being responsible for their own time management in many more areas like school work and even the time allowed for video/computer games. They are being trained to be trustworthy with the privileges that I've overseen until now. Also, one thing that has been very helpful for my ds is allowing him to start projects of his own with little or no supervision, including building things, changing his room around, starting a little side "business", choosing and buying his own wardrobe (with our money! LOL) and other things like that which help him to feel independent as a person but which don't run into the "Well, my friends get to do this and this..." scenario. So even though our preteens aren't roaming around the neighborhood a whole lot more (although they get to ride in the street and cross it without asking now) or being dropped off at the mall, they are allowed to DO a lot of things that require them to BE more independent in order to succeed. Does that make sense? We teach our kids much more in the way of internet safety and computer skills, html, etc. and yet don't give them a ton more freedom to do those things on their own quite yet. That comes in the teen years. We give them more of their own time to manage and things like that. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harriet Vane Posted February 14, 2008 Author Share Posted February 14, 2008 Thanks for your input--I find this really helpful. Keep it coming! :-D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lvbnhome Posted February 14, 2008 Share Posted February 14, 2008 It wouldn't have appealed to me when I had "little"ones, but now that they are teens, and preteens.. it is essential. lacy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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