Active shooter?

[pErvinalia]

Ok Seth.

[Scot Dutchy]

You have got it wrong. I am 42 here apparently and I am full of shit as well. [MrsBrown] "That's NICE" [/MrsBrown]

[laklak]

I am Spartacus.

[Scot Dutchy]

That's nice for you. Not too painful.

[Forty Two]

I wouldn't want to be a high school kid these days, and I'm gladder than shit that my kids are grown. Not just the school shooting stuff, but the constant social media pressure. FFS nobody ate laundry detergent when I were lad, though there was usually some kid who ate boogers.

I'm with you on this, although I have two young 'uns headed to school age. The pressures are enormous, I think.

[Forty Two]

I think it must be pretty awful being in one's teens too these days. Besides all the doom laden news and the fostering of 'future anxiety' (not to be underestimated), the pressures, as you say, of social media are I think also under-estimated by those of us who remember the days before it came along. The level of pressure to conform and the degree of scrutiny these days would have paralysed me as a kid. I would have dumped my phone or tried to anyway by now.

One thing though - there isn't a kid - not one - in the UK, who worries they might be the victim of a mass shooting on their way into school in the morning.

I wonder about the worries the kids have these days. I can remember as a really young child actually worrying that the rumbling thunder in the distance were the nuclear bombs finally coming down. I'd seen news and TV snippets about them, and as a really young kid, I would sometimes be actually fearful of it happening. I can imagine nowadays small children going to sleep with a fear that tomorrow something horrible might happen at school. That's a terrible shame, and we really do need to stop it.

[Brian Peacock]

Those engaged in personal slights and name-calling settle the fuck down. And no, that doesn't mean posting a reply to this notice about how totally justified you are in being an arse. OK?

[Scot Dutchy]

"Itwas him sir". "Itwas him sir". "Itwas him sir". Honest...

[Rum]

I think it must be pretty awful being in one's teens too these days. Besides all the doom laden news and the fostering of 'future anxiety' (not to be underestimated), the pressures, as you say, of social media are I think also under-estimated by those of us who remember the days before it came along. The level of pressure to conform and the degree of scrutiny these days would have paralysed me as a kid. I would have dumped my phone or tried to anyway by now.

One thing though - there isn't a kid - not one - in the UK, who worries they might be the victim of a mass shooting on their way into school in the morning.

I wonder about the worries the kids have these days. I can remember as a really young child actually worrying that the rumbling thunder in the distance were the nuclear bombs finally coming down. I'd seen news and TV snippets about them, and as a really young kid, I would sometimes be actually fearful of it happening. I can imagine nowadays small children going to sleep with a fear that tomorrow something horrible might happen at school. That's a terrible shame, and we really do need to stop it.

I had the same fear. I was at just the 'right' age when the Cuban Missile Crisis happened - 12. I remember wondering why we were not having the day off when we approached what could have been nuclear war day. And I remember the sense of dread I felt then and often after that. In my late teens I stopped watching or listening to the news because any mention of even a proxy war between the West and the USSR mqde that dread return. I actually became phobic about the news for a while. That lasted quite a long time.

Today with issues like climate change, over population and of course war too ever present I suspect life it tough if you are a sensitive kid. You can't escape it either and hide in your own little cocoon.

[Forty Two]

There is, too, a certain loss of innocence, I think. My recollections of childhood involve a lot of "going out and playing." Parents (moms) stayed in the house during the day and kicked the kids outside. From about age 6 on, you'd run through the neighbors' yards to various friends' houses, meet up, and go on adventures. Through the woods to the creek. Up to the old dirt bike trail with our bikes. Snowball fights, or in the summer dirtball fights. Unsupervised play, and then home when it "starts getting dark" or when you hear mom yelling from the house to come home. Not sure I'll be able to let me kids do that kind of thing.

[Sean Hayden]

Not sure I'll be able to let me kids do that kind of thing.

Why not? I do think we may have become overprotective e.g. the bike rack at my son's school can fit maybe 6 bikes, whereas my elementary school had a bike lot. We all rode bikes to school.

[Forty Two]

Not sure I'll be able to let me kids do that kind of thing.

Why not? I do think we may have become overprotective e.g. the bike rack at my son's school can fit maybe 6 bikes, whereas my elementary school had a bike lot. We all rode bikes to school.

Indeed, and I wish it were otherwise. However, I think part of it is that the culture has already become one of supervised play and "play dates" as opposed to free play. So, there just aren't that many neighborhood kids regularly playing outside by themselves with a parent regularly at home with the door open loosely listening for the normal sounds of kids at play.

So, if I let a 7 year old out to play, there just isn't any neighbor kid out there already tossing a ball around. Back when I was that age, if I went out any day, odds were that there would be someone here or there that I would track down. I am not sure that's there anymore.

[Rum]

Not sure I'll be able to let me kids do that kind of thing.

Why not? I do think we may have become overprotective e.g. the bike rack at my son's school can fit maybe 6 bikes, whereas my elementary school had a bike lot. We all rode bikes to school.

I agree. The fear of something happening to kids far outweighs the likelihood and if anything the odds have gone down. 'Child snatching' and the like are actually pretty rare events - here in the UK anyway. Fear and paranoia have of course increased a fair bit. I suppose there was an element of trusting the average person to do the right thing a a few decades ago. Not so much now - in some countries anyway.

We let my daughter run free and wild. We lived in the Oxfordshire countryside and she had a wonderful childhood with fields, woods and a stream and no road for half a mile. I loved it there and so did she.

And here where we live now in our small city kids play on the streets and the back lanes. Not so much in bigger urban areas I guess.

[Forty Two]

The difficulty in the logical analysis as a parent is that even a tiny chance of something happening carries with it a very high level of damage. I.e., there may be a .01% chance of a snatching, but if a snatching happens, it's a snatching. If you don't take that chance, it definitely won't happen. So, have a play date instead of free play.

Part of it, too, is the culture of turning in one's neighbors which is arising of late here in the US. Report after report shows up on the news of some parent or other letting their kid play in a playground or walk to the store and getting child protective services and/or the police called on them by a neighbor. As a parent, that is one road I do NOT wish to go down. A visit from the cops? "Mr Two, we have a report that your daughter was outside unsupervised walking a 1/4 mile to the playground." https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nat ... /25700823/ (here is a report of parents who let their kids play at a park two blocks from their house).

So, as a parent, the "chilling effect" is easy to see. There is no way I'm risking my kids being put through that. The damage to them of having to sit in a police cruiser for hours, and then being dropped off at CPS among officials and strangers is far greater than being allowed to play at a park alone. I and they run no risk of being put through that if we don't let them walk two blocks to the playground.

[Scot Dutchy]

This how Dutch kids come to school: