Apr 11th 2008 Trust your kids
I came across this article on Stumble! today and it got me thinking about when I was a kid. If my parents ever thought twice about letting me and my brothers (all together or singularly) go “out to play” they didn’t show it. We knew that when it was time for dinner we needed to be home. My wife and I both share memories of playing with our friends in our neighborhoods unsupervised by parents. Things are different than they were when I was a child, but I’m not afraid of my neighborhood (the same one my brothers and I rode our bicycles in when we were kids) and I certainly don’t think it is dangerous. There are a few people I would consider to be shady characters roaming around the place but not in a ratio greater than I encounter when I show up to work everyday. We certainly shouldn’t trust everyone to be guardians of our children, but we should trust our children to take the tools we have given them to make good decisions about the people and situations they encounter. If we don’t let our kids use the tools we give them and sharpen those tools, then we aren’t keeping them safe, we are ensuring that they leave the home with shoddy equipment.
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