The Good Old Days are truly gone

I was reading the Washington Post and I came across this article and it made me sad.  Growing up in a small town on Long Island, one of the great things was having free range of the town.  My parents had their set of rules and one was to be home by dark.  That meant that if I wanted to walk or bike  to a friend's after I finished my homework or on the weekends and if it meant leaving our block to do it, all I would have to is leave a note or call to say where I was.  If I was going to be late I called. 

In the summer, my friends and I would be out and about all day.  Sometimes we were at each others' house, sometimes at the pool clear across town and sometimes at the high school playing tennis.  It didn't really matter we were all over the place and that was ok.  When I got into High School my parents would joke that they couldn't remember what I looked like  because I was never home.

The bottom line was that we were not homebound couch potatoes.  We were outdoors and moving around town.  It was great.  Even as a kid I appreciated the ability to come and go.

Now a day's kids don't have that luxury and that is almost ok until I read this article why-are-we-criminalizing-childhood-independence and that is when I became sad. Not only can kids not have some independence to venture out anymore,  but parents are being told that they are neglecting their children.  This determination is being made by some of the counties here in the state of Maryland and Virginia.  All I can say is our kids are the ones who are suffering. While we learned how to survive and live independently when we are young they are learning these skills so much later.  Aside from financial reason, maybe this is why they don't leave home until they are in their mid to late twenties.