Underlying all this discussion of regulation around parenting is a national relationship with a definition of risk.
Risk is part of life and cannot be completely avoided. And yet, we create regulation every time some tragic accident happens "so that this never happens again." We need to stop doing that. And undo a lot of the regulation that has come about because of tragic accidents.
Safe co-sleeping is a great example. Most parents in human history around the world coslept with their babies. But in America, when an accident happens, people want to legislate *something* or require *something* so this never happens again.
My first baby didn't sleep well, so I didn't sleep, and I was so exhausted I went into Post Partum Anxiety (which I didn't know was a thing at the time), where I hallucinated multiple times a day and night that I had thrown my baby down the stairs. When I would fall asleep briefly, I'd wake back up even if she wasn't crying and I'd check the stairs first, to see if she was at the bottom, before I checked the crib. I was out of my mind. I imagined just walking out of the house and leaving. Eventually, after several months, I got more sleep and became less crazy, but my postpartum time was rough physically and mentally. I'm so glad my mom was with me most days, and my husband worked from home at the time, I can't imagine going through that and being home alone without help.
With my second child, I researched safe co-sleeping. Co-sleepy on Instagram was very helpful; she broke down the infant deaths "from co-sleeping" in different states, many were on soft couches or armchairs, many involved parents who smoked or where drugs were used in the home, they weren't in safe co-sleeping conditions (flat mattress, no pillow or blanket, parent in C shaped position so they can't roll one way).
Doctors telling tired parents "don't ever do this or your baby will die" in many cases sets parents up for less safe sleeping conditions (like falling asleep on a couch or soft recliner with the baby), vs telling them "every choice involves risk, if you lay down with your baby, here are the factors that make it safer (flat mattress, no pillow or cover, no smoking or drugs, etc)." My sleep was SO MUCH BETTER with my second baby. He had a good postpartum and I had a good postpartum and our overall experience was just night and day compared to my first. But people look at me like I'm insane when I say I'm a safe co-sleeping advocate. They all say, "But my doctor said..." 🙃
So many states are making it harder and harder to parent with so many regulations and with a societal expectation that children will not be seen ever without a hovering parent (which is especially impossible for big families!). My friends had CPS called on them for their own children playing in their own yard, because Dad took the youngest in to the bathroom. It's insane.
As someone with training in operational risk management, the idea behind hammering campaigns behind things like safe sleep isn't to say "someone will die the first time there's an oversight," but over-training to reduce the impact of oversights when they occur. The higher the overall standard/climate of safety is, the less likely the inevitable slip-ups are to lead to tragedy because they're (1) rarer, reducing statistical likelihood and (2) less severe when the overall operational setting is rigorous. So if you overall emphasize safe sleep, the time when you do pass out on the couch with the baby and it's fine will likely not be tragic. But if you go in with the attitude of "meh, what do doctors know? cavemen did it and they were fine" and do not see it as a safety concern, the risk will go up because the number of potential incidents will go up. That's like saying "I had a cigarette once/smoked in college and didn't get addicted and didn't get cancer, so what do doctors know?"
A lot of this comes down to a fundamental misunderstanding of statistics for binary outcomes. It's very abstract to say "increases the chance of ___ by ___ percent" because the only two outcomes are dead/not dead (or for something like natural family planning, pregnant/not pregnant) so it's easy to write off the risk when the bad outcome does not occur. Population outcomes don't happen to individuals. That's why another part of ORM is low likelihood/high risk. If an outcome is sufficiently bad, you take measures even if the likelihood is low. A suffocated baby is pretty much the worst possible outcome of any operational scenario. The likelihood is low until it happens. It's not really comparable to the risks of older children playing in their own fenced yard. Safe sleep is not pathologically risk-averse helicopter parenting culture.
There’s adverse selection here though. Cosleeping is very low risk when parents are not drinking/using drugs and higher risk when they do. When you give a strong blanket warning you deter conscientious low risk parents but don’t catch many high risk ones.
What's telling is that cosleeping advocates often move the goalposts from the concrete risks of airway blockage to the supposed emotional risks related to "attachment." The real risk to counterbalance is the risk of consistent sleep deprivation from trying to implement the guidelines, which is also nonzero and important to consider. Someone who has slept inadequately for 3 days or so has comparable reflexes to a drunk person, iirc, which is also a safety concern. But still, an overall commitment to the maximum safety possible without adding unnecessary risk has to come from comprehensive evidence-based information, not just throwing up hands. The safe sleep campaign is evidence-based. We keep adding evidence (i.e. the new findings about a possible metabolic risk for suffocation), but it's still evidence.
Ugh, I remember the nanny paperwork when we needed full-time care when our oldest was born. In addition to being incredibly labor-intensive, a lot of the time the necessary forms weren’t available from states at certain times of year, so things during tax prep season always felt crunched. The whole thing is also kind of classist-it presumes you have the knowledge and the time to report everything correctly, which a lot of lower income families definitely do not.
I would like to see a change in laws about when kids can be left in a car outside a store. Here it is age 16, meaning you can't legally leave even a teenager who is learning to drive alone in the car outside the drugstore while you run in for a gallon of milk. This often makes errands logistically challenging/exhausting.
The rules restricting passengers for new learning drivers also complicates things for families with multiple children. Because a parent is presumably in the car when teens accumulate their required practice road hours, this requires childcare (if another parent or family member isn’t at home), and also means the lion’s share of the daily driving that could be incidentally used as practice (dropping off younger kids at school or activities) is off limits, which squeezes families to find completely dedicated separate times for this. It’s a noble intent of trying to reduce accidental injury by inexperienced drivers, but it’s a bit ridiculous.
My unorthodox approach to this is to send the oldest available kid IN to the store for the milk (or whatever small thing) and stay out with everyone else. Small, friendly stores only (Trader Joe's for us).
I just showed some fourth graders Old Enough, curious what American children think of it! Hope their parents don’t get upset. It is among my favorite ever TV shows.
Will see what they say tomorrow! While I'm at it though another thought about kids having experience to be relatively free-range:
I was chatting with a friend who's in her 70s now about how formative it was for her to go away one summer for 6 weeks on "Teen Tours" (still exists today) riding a greyhound with 60 other kids in ~10th grade exploring the east coast of the US and Canada, sleeping in hotels, but also on gym floors and camping. She was later a chaperone and the program had cleaned up, no camping or gym floors.
This came up conversation after another friend mentioned sending her son off on his first trip alone (flying to visit extended family and get foreign language immersion). The subject of how young to let children fly by themselves, visit family, have experiences independent from home, is one I love hearing different parents discuss. I was raised by an overprotective single immigrant mother and not allowed to go away on overnight school trips in a way that I think did harm to the speed and smoothness with which I could come into my own, so I'm always happy when I hear parents talking about thoughtful and safe ways of allowing their children for more and more independence. I think it helps prevent a lot of rebellion, too.
There are also so many fabulous programs! Another parent I know was talking about sending her son on a scuba trip.
The question in keeping with the theme here though is how to keep costs, financial and energetic, low so that this is more accessible for most parents, and kids grow up with the benefit of feeling capable of handling themselves more and more in the world at large. I wonder about getting creative within local communities, friend groups, etc., about affording kids those tastes of responsibility and autonomy, boredom while in transit, openness to new people, and self-reflection.
I graduated HS in 2007, and that year I went to a national science fair with other kids from my region. A few of us missed the bus that was supposed to take us back from an outing, so I said we should call a cab and split the cost (it was pre-Uber).
The other girls were (from my POV) bizarrely scared of doing this / wanted to get help from an adult instead of solving it tidily ourselves. I was the most oriented to action so we did it and it was fine (and it wasn't clear we were missed) but I was genuinely surprised that my peers weren't ready to solve that problem ourselves.
I think your life experience as a teen affects what you would feel comfortable handling on your own. I grew up in a small town in a rural area. I would not have felt competent to handle that situation because calling a taxi was something we never did. I don’t think my town even had one. My husband grew up in the city and he probably would have reacted like you did. Yet if you threw a house work or babysitting issue I at me I would have had no trouble knowing how to handle it.
Great story—that must have felt really satisfying as a teen, knowing what to do! (As for the adults all that time… well, um, Mary lost Jesus for three days?)
Do you credit that quick thinking to your temperament, or to being raised with opportunities to problem-solve and feel independent? Does it matter, ultimately, since the point is what’s in one person’s nature can nevertheless be taught to others not as quick to catch onto it?
I sometimes talk to teachers about how fewer and fewer kids, older and older know their address or a parent’s phone number from memory.
Later today I did get a chance to talk to some kids about Old Enough again. Most dismissed the idea of running an errand alone as foreign, saying, “That only works in Japan.” I heard a lot of “when I’m a teen” and “when I get a phone.” I even heard something like, “I’m not allowed, so I can’t think about it.” And honestly, that kind of mental guardrail might be good.
One girl said that boys could do errands at 12 but girls at 16 because “no one wants to steal boys,” and a friend added, “plus boys are faster.” (To run away from danger?)
I’m also reminded of a Nate Bargatze stand-up bit: about 13, at a sleepover, friends start a movie when he pauses and says, guys, I’m not allowed to watch this (say a PG-13/R rated horror movie). He was surprised that his friend’s mom, clearly worried he’d be bullied, told him, don’t worry, you don’t have to tell your parents. The joke goes, “I already did. They’re on their way.” I love that and don’t think it has to be a joke. Bargatze tells this in the context of how growing up Evangelical Christian in the 80s was as absurd and strict as it gets.
The common thread in all these anecdotes is that kids don’t always have a good imagination for what options are available to them (I guess neither do adults, but I’m consistently surprised with how literal kids are, how quick to say “that doesn’t make sense” when told something silly. Pop culture made me expect them to initiate all kinds of nonsense, but that has not been my experience. Even pre-schoolers need scaffolding for pretend play, etc.) Sometimes that’s actually good, as with the Bargatze joke about how he “didn’t know he had the option to lie.” Sometimes that’s neutral as in the kids I work with telling me they can’t think about something hypothetically because it breaks a rule so it is not worth thinking about. And sometimes that’s learned helplessness as in the case of the girls with you on the trip who wouldn’t dare problem-solve alone.
Sorry to be long-winded! Love the topic and hope to someday raise creative kids who nevertheless would never entertain the idea of a white lie.
I've always had a pretty high degree of self-efficacy, and I find it pretty thrilling to prove myself by solving a new problem. (I also read Ender's Game pretty young, haha).
I'm a little like this xckd (https://xkcd.com/337/) except instead of idly fantasizing about fighting people, I've mentally ordered e.g. people in my subway car by whom would need the most help evacuating and how I'd pair people based on capacity and needs.
I love your story of deciding to hire a taxi as a kid, to solve the problem before you.
My dad wanted us to be experienced problem solvers. I flew as an unaccompanied minor at 8 to visit family and again at 9 to visit other family. It was super fun! Parents could go to the gate, the pilot let me see the controls of the plane and I got to sit in the first row of the plane, everyone was really pleasant to me.
Then, after 9/11, I flew once by myself at 16 and a half and the experience was entirely different. Even though relatives could get permission to come to the gate, and my relatives were right there when I got off the plane, I was driven in a golf cart to the other side of the airport to a locked room to be signed in and out (the golf cart being humorously chased by my relatives). The experience was like I was incapable and didn't speak English. Everything was process and flow chart and "I can't do that."
So much of life in America is becoming more and more process and flow chart and "I can only follow the rules" (even when the rules are conflicting or stupid) and less trust that people are reasoning adults and allowance of use of judgement.
There are so many regulations, I think it's impossible to strike down all of them that would allow parents to live with was acceptable risk in my childhood. The only hope I can imagine is neighborhoods like the Orthodox Jews have or the Mormons in Utah, where "in this neighborhood" kids are allowed to ride their bike a block to their friends' house and no one will call CPS on them.
Oooh, I have a counterpoint to the How To Pay Your Nanny question! (Please don't let me find out we did this entirely wrong for six years and get audited) We did not use a payroll company. We looked up the withholding tables and withheld the required amount of state and federal taxes from our nanny's biweekly pay checks. Her pay stubs were essentially a PDF of an Excel spreadsheet showing how much we paid her and how much we withheld from each check. We sent these PDFs to our tax preparer, who reported it to the state and the feds as required. If my memory is correct we basically had to write a quarterly check to the state for the amount we withheld from her and I think the federal tax was paid annually as part of our income tax filing? I can confirm with my husband if anyone wants more details. Our tax preparer also prepared a W2 for our nanny to use in her taxes for a small fee. Our tax preparer probably would have done the withholding calculations for us for a fee, but given that we only had one employee and it was generally a consistent withholding we opted to save a few hundred bucks and do it ourselves. We did pay unemployment as well, but I'm pretty sure that was an annual check to the state of a few hundred bucks because I think the income brackets are pretty wide and she was always in the same one. I feel pretty strongly about not paying care workers cash under the table and when people say, "But taking out taxes is HARD" I basically tell them if you file your own taxes you're capable of doing this, and if you have someone file your taxes for you then you already have the infrastructure in place to do it. That being said, I also agree with Jordan that the limit is absurdly low and I wholeheartedly endorse her recommendation to raise it to $10k.
Also I find it interesting that people are expecting parks to have fences around them! I live in a first ring suburb (so maybe not strictly "urban") but I can't think of a single park I've ever taken my kids to that has been fully fenced. Even the pocket park right down the street from my (very urban) office which mostly serves as a dog walking area for residents of the nearby condos has a tiny playground and it is not fenced, though now that I think about it there are planters and benches that serve as a de facto Aesthetically Pleasing Runaway Toddler Barrier.
Fair enough! I also have heard that Care.com has that service built in, though I didn't use it (and in fact was steered away from it by another mom of twins who found it unworkable, though they may have improved the UI in the past decade since I was told that). Whatever works!
"there are planters and benches that serve as a de facto Aesthetically Pleasing Runaway Toddler Barrier."
These aren't useless, but mainly work as landmarks caregivers can tell their kids not to go beyond, since it's very normal for children to be attracted to crawling and climbing that's just their size. Learning to respect a barrier you can easily get past just because it's an agreed-upon barrier *is* a vital life skill, but not one it makes sense to trust that kids have fully mastered.
Agreed, but this raises another question; is your (and other people who want to see fences around parks) goal to keep your kids IN? Or to keep other potentially dangerous things (unleashed dogs, speeding scooters, etc.) OUT? This is a sincere question and I am truly interested in your answer; I have three kids 10 and under and at one point I regularly took 3 kids under 4 to several neighborhood parks/playgrounds alone, but I have never even thought about or expected to see fencing at parks. Before this conversation I would have said that was because none of the ones I go to regularly have it and you don't miss what you've never had, but now I'm wondering if they should have it to make them more friendly to young families?
For me it's definitely *IN* (my kids are 5, 3, and 1). I'm much less worried about a person coming in (they can... open a gate) and a dog could be worrying but no more so than encountering one off lease and away from it's owner while out for a walk (which has happened to us, sigh).
The advantage of relatively child-resistant (nothing is ever child-proof) fencing around a park built with young children in mind is keeping the kids in.
Surrounding traffic in the streets is likely the biggest danger – that pedestrians technically have right of way even on roads can't change that drivers usually don't expect them and that kids can be pedestrians who are especially hard to see (they're short, they might be crawling in the street, and so on).
Moreover, caregivers have a responsibility to keep their charges within eye- and ear-shot, and fencing makes that easier to do while not crowding the kids with intrusive supervision.
Most parks have rules regarding dogs, bikes, scooters, etc, and if the rules are reasonable, and observed, I wouldn't worry much? My husband does worry somewhat more, especially about dog owners. I tend to think having dogs around, with responsible owners, and teaching kids how to safely and respectfully ask permission to interact with someone's pet is A Good Thing. But I've arguably absorbed a bit too much of what I've heard called the "toxic dog positivity" of US culture :-)
1) In a mixed-use park (picture a ~2 acre park that has picnic areas, walking trails, and a playground) would you want fencing only around the playground? Or around the entire property? Which one would be more likely to make you use the park and feel your needs were being accommodated?
2) Do you feel the same about fencing at a popular/crowded park vs. a sparsely used park? Would you be more interested in fencing at a park where your kid(s) might get "lost in the crowd" or does it not make a difference, a fence is valuable even if you're the only family there at the time you are using it?
I can't imagine planning that doesn't take into account the park's surroundings.
One mixed-use park near me abuts a major thoroughfare, and has community gardens and several soccer fields' worth of unmarked lawn for multipurpose use. In that park, such fencing as there is surrounds the whole park, not just the playground, which in context makes sense: the major thoroughfare is a hazard for all users.
A mixed-use park with different traffic patterns might fence just the playground, depending on use.
A playground spang in the middle of several soccer fields in a neighborhood where there's no heavy traffic might reasonably go unfenced – lines of sight all around the playground are clear enough that wandering tots are easy to spot. I grew up near a park like that, though our route to the park was blocked by a major thoroughfare we weren't permitted to cross by ourselves at a young age.
I'm thinking of a park I took my kids to on Monday that has over a 1,000 feet of Mississippi River frontage, with a walking trail along the river, a ~ 10 foot drop from the shoreline to the river, and not an inch of fence anywhere, except around the dog run. Dogs can't mix with the kids, but kids could fall in the river! (Theoretically at least; it's probably 30 yards from the playground to the walking trail and there's a buffer strip between the trail and the river that has high, thick grasses which discourages walking on the river side) And yet if this was my neighborhood park (it isn't, it's a larger regional park we only visit occasionally), before this conversation I would have advocated against fencing the park! Now I think I'd rather fence the park than the playground, though fencing an entire park of this size would be cost-prohibitive (high five figures certainly, maybe more), though maybe a wrought iron fence around only the playground would be OK. So, so interesting. Thanks for the replies!
1) Fencing just around the playground area. If there are limited entrances / exits, then I can let the kids roam within the space without being on top of them or having to do a spot check every five minutes. I just have to stand by the gate.
2) I think a fence is valuable all the time, but my kids are less likely to give me breathing space if they are the only ones there. I have been to the park in my home city where every parent there was playing WITH their kid. I don’t go to the park to play with my kid. I go to the park so I can get a break from their incessant need for attention at home. At that park, which was intended but had a healthy gap before the street, I got a ton of side eye from other parents who clearly thought I’d abandoned my children when I was sitting on the grass reading maybe 100 yards away. Eventually after 20 minutes, my youngest decided to run for the street and I had to sprint after him. It’s really hard to be a non-helicopter parent when everyone else is helicoptering.
The under seven playground in one of our parks is fenced with a gate. I thought that was really smart. The age limit might be an issue though since I have two under two and a seven year old.
It’s an issue in more urban parks where the play area is quite close to the street. I haven’t seen it and it doesn’t feel as necessary in some of the larger suburban parks I’ve seen.
OK, update to note that I just returned from a walk and the urban pocket park that I referenced does have a playground that is entirely fenced! Mea maxima culpa!
Love music literacy. Many a music critic sight the poverty of today’s music to a lack of this fact. Listening to piano Sonata 32 of B. It is a joy to listen to great music. I hope your kids find a good teacher to inspire them.
I can at least give you a good recommendation to compensate for the intimidation. We have had a wonderful experience with HomePay. I just realized as we re-hired that they also file with the EDD.
We also learned we have to have worker’s comp this time around and are paying an extra $504 a year to our home insurance company for the privilege. (In our state, this is required for any in home employee working 20 hours / week.)
Whatever you do, do not work with SurePayroll- they were an absolute nightmare.
We used SurePayroll which was fine until there was an issue and we needed customer service and then it was terrible.
I don't remember if it was my state or it's a federal thing, but I was able to put $5000 of pre-tax money from my paychecks into a nanny account and then save my receipts (I just made a receipt template on Word with dates, amount paid, and a place for the nanny to sign and me to sign each week) and scan them in and get reimbursed. That worked fine, but then at tax time, I told the HR Block guy how to enter that and he didn't listen to me and did it wrong and we had three amendments that year because he messed that part up so badly and didn't correct it right in the first amendment. Such a headache.
Your employer has to offer the dependent care FSA (now up to $7500 after reconcilliation this year) and boy howdy do I keep bugging my employer to do it.
Underlying all this discussion of regulation around parenting is a national relationship with a definition of risk.
Risk is part of life and cannot be completely avoided. And yet, we create regulation every time some tragic accident happens "so that this never happens again." We need to stop doing that. And undo a lot of the regulation that has come about because of tragic accidents.
Safe co-sleeping is a great example. Most parents in human history around the world coslept with their babies. But in America, when an accident happens, people want to legislate *something* or require *something* so this never happens again.
My first baby didn't sleep well, so I didn't sleep, and I was so exhausted I went into Post Partum Anxiety (which I didn't know was a thing at the time), where I hallucinated multiple times a day and night that I had thrown my baby down the stairs. When I would fall asleep briefly, I'd wake back up even if she wasn't crying and I'd check the stairs first, to see if she was at the bottom, before I checked the crib. I was out of my mind. I imagined just walking out of the house and leaving. Eventually, after several months, I got more sleep and became less crazy, but my postpartum time was rough physically and mentally. I'm so glad my mom was with me most days, and my husband worked from home at the time, I can't imagine going through that and being home alone without help.
With my second child, I researched safe co-sleeping. Co-sleepy on Instagram was very helpful; she broke down the infant deaths "from co-sleeping" in different states, many were on soft couches or armchairs, many involved parents who smoked or where drugs were used in the home, they weren't in safe co-sleeping conditions (flat mattress, no pillow or blanket, parent in C shaped position so they can't roll one way).
Doctors telling tired parents "don't ever do this or your baby will die" in many cases sets parents up for less safe sleeping conditions (like falling asleep on a couch or soft recliner with the baby), vs telling them "every choice involves risk, if you lay down with your baby, here are the factors that make it safer (flat mattress, no pillow or cover, no smoking or drugs, etc)." My sleep was SO MUCH BETTER with my second baby. He had a good postpartum and I had a good postpartum and our overall experience was just night and day compared to my first. But people look at me like I'm insane when I say I'm a safe co-sleeping advocate. They all say, "But my doctor said..." 🙃
So many states are making it harder and harder to parent with so many regulations and with a societal expectation that children will not be seen ever without a hovering parent (which is especially impossible for big families!). My friends had CPS called on them for their own children playing in their own yard, because Dad took the youngest in to the bathroom. It's insane.
As someone with training in operational risk management, the idea behind hammering campaigns behind things like safe sleep isn't to say "someone will die the first time there's an oversight," but over-training to reduce the impact of oversights when they occur. The higher the overall standard/climate of safety is, the less likely the inevitable slip-ups are to lead to tragedy because they're (1) rarer, reducing statistical likelihood and (2) less severe when the overall operational setting is rigorous. So if you overall emphasize safe sleep, the time when you do pass out on the couch with the baby and it's fine will likely not be tragic. But if you go in with the attitude of "meh, what do doctors know? cavemen did it and they were fine" and do not see it as a safety concern, the risk will go up because the number of potential incidents will go up. That's like saying "I had a cigarette once/smoked in college and didn't get addicted and didn't get cancer, so what do doctors know?"
A lot of this comes down to a fundamental misunderstanding of statistics for binary outcomes. It's very abstract to say "increases the chance of ___ by ___ percent" because the only two outcomes are dead/not dead (or for something like natural family planning, pregnant/not pregnant) so it's easy to write off the risk when the bad outcome does not occur. Population outcomes don't happen to individuals. That's why another part of ORM is low likelihood/high risk. If an outcome is sufficiently bad, you take measures even if the likelihood is low. A suffocated baby is pretty much the worst possible outcome of any operational scenario. The likelihood is low until it happens. It's not really comparable to the risks of older children playing in their own fenced yard. Safe sleep is not pathologically risk-averse helicopter parenting culture.
There’s adverse selection here though. Cosleeping is very low risk when parents are not drinking/using drugs and higher risk when they do. When you give a strong blanket warning you deter conscientious low risk parents but don’t catch many high risk ones.
What's telling is that cosleeping advocates often move the goalposts from the concrete risks of airway blockage to the supposed emotional risks related to "attachment." The real risk to counterbalance is the risk of consistent sleep deprivation from trying to implement the guidelines, which is also nonzero and important to consider. Someone who has slept inadequately for 3 days or so has comparable reflexes to a drunk person, iirc, which is also a safety concern. But still, an overall commitment to the maximum safety possible without adding unnecessary risk has to come from comprehensive evidence-based information, not just throwing up hands. The safe sleep campaign is evidence-based. We keep adding evidence (i.e. the new findings about a possible metabolic risk for suffocation), but it's still evidence.
Ugh, I remember the nanny paperwork when we needed full-time care when our oldest was born. In addition to being incredibly labor-intensive, a lot of the time the necessary forms weren’t available from states at certain times of year, so things during tax prep season always felt crunched. The whole thing is also kind of classist-it presumes you have the knowledge and the time to report everything correctly, which a lot of lower income families definitely do not.
I would like to see a change in laws about when kids can be left in a car outside a store. Here it is age 16, meaning you can't legally leave even a teenager who is learning to drive alone in the car outside the drugstore while you run in for a gallon of milk. This often makes errands logistically challenging/exhausting.
The rules restricting passengers for new learning drivers also complicates things for families with multiple children. Because a parent is presumably in the car when teens accumulate their required practice road hours, this requires childcare (if another parent or family member isn’t at home), and also means the lion’s share of the daily driving that could be incidentally used as practice (dropping off younger kids at school or activities) is off limits, which squeezes families to find completely dedicated separate times for this. It’s a noble intent of trying to reduce accidental injury by inexperienced drivers, but it’s a bit ridiculous.
This is a problem for *me* who doesn't know how to drive and needs childcare to learn.
Yes!
My unorthodox approach to this is to send the oldest available kid IN to the store for the milk (or whatever small thing) and stay out with everyone else. Small, friendly stores only (Trader Joe's for us).
Brilliant!
16?!?!?!?!?!
What. The. F@£#.
I just showed some fourth graders Old Enough, curious what American children think of it! Hope their parents don’t get upset. It is among my favorite ever TV shows.
I want to hear their reactions! Including whether they think they do/could do what the preschoolers do
Will see what they say tomorrow! While I'm at it though another thought about kids having experience to be relatively free-range:
I was chatting with a friend who's in her 70s now about how formative it was for her to go away one summer for 6 weeks on "Teen Tours" (still exists today) riding a greyhound with 60 other kids in ~10th grade exploring the east coast of the US and Canada, sleeping in hotels, but also on gym floors and camping. She was later a chaperone and the program had cleaned up, no camping or gym floors.
This came up conversation after another friend mentioned sending her son off on his first trip alone (flying to visit extended family and get foreign language immersion). The subject of how young to let children fly by themselves, visit family, have experiences independent from home, is one I love hearing different parents discuss. I was raised by an overprotective single immigrant mother and not allowed to go away on overnight school trips in a way that I think did harm to the speed and smoothness with which I could come into my own, so I'm always happy when I hear parents talking about thoughtful and safe ways of allowing their children for more and more independence. I think it helps prevent a lot of rebellion, too.
There are also so many fabulous programs! Another parent I know was talking about sending her son on a scuba trip.
The question in keeping with the theme here though is how to keep costs, financial and energetic, low so that this is more accessible for most parents, and kids grow up with the benefit of feeling capable of handling themselves more and more in the world at large. I wonder about getting creative within local communities, friend groups, etc., about affording kids those tastes of responsibility and autonomy, boredom while in transit, openness to new people, and self-reflection.
I graduated HS in 2007, and that year I went to a national science fair with other kids from my region. A few of us missed the bus that was supposed to take us back from an outing, so I said we should call a cab and split the cost (it was pre-Uber).
The other girls were (from my POV) bizarrely scared of doing this / wanted to get help from an adult instead of solving it tidily ourselves. I was the most oriented to action so we did it and it was fine (and it wasn't clear we were missed) but I was genuinely surprised that my peers weren't ready to solve that problem ourselves.
I think your life experience as a teen affects what you would feel comfortable handling on your own. I grew up in a small town in a rural area. I would not have felt competent to handle that situation because calling a taxi was something we never did. I don’t think my town even had one. My husband grew up in the city and he probably would have reacted like you did. Yet if you threw a house work or babysitting issue I at me I would have had no trouble knowing how to handle it.
Great story—that must have felt really satisfying as a teen, knowing what to do! (As for the adults all that time… well, um, Mary lost Jesus for three days?)
Do you credit that quick thinking to your temperament, or to being raised with opportunities to problem-solve and feel independent? Does it matter, ultimately, since the point is what’s in one person’s nature can nevertheless be taught to others not as quick to catch onto it?
I sometimes talk to teachers about how fewer and fewer kids, older and older know their address or a parent’s phone number from memory.
Later today I did get a chance to talk to some kids about Old Enough again. Most dismissed the idea of running an errand alone as foreign, saying, “That only works in Japan.” I heard a lot of “when I’m a teen” and “when I get a phone.” I even heard something like, “I’m not allowed, so I can’t think about it.” And honestly, that kind of mental guardrail might be good.
One girl said that boys could do errands at 12 but girls at 16 because “no one wants to steal boys,” and a friend added, “plus boys are faster.” (To run away from danger?)
I’m also reminded of a Nate Bargatze stand-up bit: about 13, at a sleepover, friends start a movie when he pauses and says, guys, I’m not allowed to watch this (say a PG-13/R rated horror movie). He was surprised that his friend’s mom, clearly worried he’d be bullied, told him, don’t worry, you don’t have to tell your parents. The joke goes, “I already did. They’re on their way.” I love that and don’t think it has to be a joke. Bargatze tells this in the context of how growing up Evangelical Christian in the 80s was as absurd and strict as it gets.
The common thread in all these anecdotes is that kids don’t always have a good imagination for what options are available to them (I guess neither do adults, but I’m consistently surprised with how literal kids are, how quick to say “that doesn’t make sense” when told something silly. Pop culture made me expect them to initiate all kinds of nonsense, but that has not been my experience. Even pre-schoolers need scaffolding for pretend play, etc.) Sometimes that’s actually good, as with the Bargatze joke about how he “didn’t know he had the option to lie.” Sometimes that’s neutral as in the kids I work with telling me they can’t think about something hypothetically because it breaks a rule so it is not worth thinking about. And sometimes that’s learned helplessness as in the case of the girls with you on the trip who wouldn’t dare problem-solve alone.
Sorry to be long-winded! Love the topic and hope to someday raise creative kids who nevertheless would never entertain the idea of a white lie.
I've always had a pretty high degree of self-efficacy, and I find it pretty thrilling to prove myself by solving a new problem. (I also read Ender's Game pretty young, haha).
I'm a little like this xckd (https://xkcd.com/337/) except instead of idly fantasizing about fighting people, I've mentally ordered e.g. people in my subway car by whom would need the most help evacuating and how I'd pair people based on capacity and needs.
I love your story of deciding to hire a taxi as a kid, to solve the problem before you.
My dad wanted us to be experienced problem solvers. I flew as an unaccompanied minor at 8 to visit family and again at 9 to visit other family. It was super fun! Parents could go to the gate, the pilot let me see the controls of the plane and I got to sit in the first row of the plane, everyone was really pleasant to me.
Then, after 9/11, I flew once by myself at 16 and a half and the experience was entirely different. Even though relatives could get permission to come to the gate, and my relatives were right there when I got off the plane, I was driven in a golf cart to the other side of the airport to a locked room to be signed in and out (the golf cart being humorously chased by my relatives). The experience was like I was incapable and didn't speak English. Everything was process and flow chart and "I can't do that."
So much of life in America is becoming more and more process and flow chart and "I can only follow the rules" (even when the rules are conflicting or stupid) and less trust that people are reasoning adults and allowance of use of judgement.
There are so many regulations, I think it's impossible to strike down all of them that would allow parents to live with was acceptable risk in my childhood. The only hope I can imagine is neighborhoods like the Orthodox Jews have or the Mormons in Utah, where "in this neighborhood" kids are allowed to ride their bike a block to their friends' house and no one will call CPS on them.
Oooh, I have a counterpoint to the How To Pay Your Nanny question! (Please don't let me find out we did this entirely wrong for six years and get audited) We did not use a payroll company. We looked up the withholding tables and withheld the required amount of state and federal taxes from our nanny's biweekly pay checks. Her pay stubs were essentially a PDF of an Excel spreadsheet showing how much we paid her and how much we withheld from each check. We sent these PDFs to our tax preparer, who reported it to the state and the feds as required. If my memory is correct we basically had to write a quarterly check to the state for the amount we withheld from her and I think the federal tax was paid annually as part of our income tax filing? I can confirm with my husband if anyone wants more details. Our tax preparer also prepared a W2 for our nanny to use in her taxes for a small fee. Our tax preparer probably would have done the withholding calculations for us for a fee, but given that we only had one employee and it was generally a consistent withholding we opted to save a few hundred bucks and do it ourselves. We did pay unemployment as well, but I'm pretty sure that was an annual check to the state of a few hundred bucks because I think the income brackets are pretty wide and she was always in the same one. I feel pretty strongly about not paying care workers cash under the table and when people say, "But taking out taxes is HARD" I basically tell them if you file your own taxes you're capable of doing this, and if you have someone file your taxes for you then you already have the infrastructure in place to do it. That being said, I also agree with Jordan that the limit is absurdly low and I wholeheartedly endorse her recommendation to raise it to $10k.
Also I find it interesting that people are expecting parks to have fences around them! I live in a first ring suburb (so maybe not strictly "urban") but I can't think of a single park I've ever taken my kids to that has been fully fenced. Even the pocket park right down the street from my (very urban) office which mostly serves as a dog walking area for residents of the nearby condos has a tiny playground and it is not fenced, though now that I think about it there are planters and benches that serve as a de facto Aesthetically Pleasing Runaway Toddler Barrier.
I feel like it's a 90% chance I just use Gusto's service, tbh: https://gusto.com/product/solutions/industry/nanny-household
Fair enough! I also have heard that Care.com has that service built in, though I didn't use it (and in fact was steered away from it by another mom of twins who found it unworkable, though they may have improved the UI in the past decade since I was told that). Whatever works!
Care dot com certainly advertises that service very aggressively to me! I used to run HR for a remittance company and I loved Gusto.
"there are planters and benches that serve as a de facto Aesthetically Pleasing Runaway Toddler Barrier."
These aren't useless, but mainly work as landmarks caregivers can tell their kids not to go beyond, since it's very normal for children to be attracted to crawling and climbing that's just their size. Learning to respect a barrier you can easily get past just because it's an agreed-upon barrier *is* a vital life skill, but not one it makes sense to trust that kids have fully mastered.
A thousand percent this.
Agreed, but this raises another question; is your (and other people who want to see fences around parks) goal to keep your kids IN? Or to keep other potentially dangerous things (unleashed dogs, speeding scooters, etc.) OUT? This is a sincere question and I am truly interested in your answer; I have three kids 10 and under and at one point I regularly took 3 kids under 4 to several neighborhood parks/playgrounds alone, but I have never even thought about or expected to see fencing at parks. Before this conversation I would have said that was because none of the ones I go to regularly have it and you don't miss what you've never had, but now I'm wondering if they should have it to make them more friendly to young families?
For me it's definitely *IN* (my kids are 5, 3, and 1). I'm much less worried about a person coming in (they can... open a gate) and a dog could be worrying but no more so than encountering one off lease and away from it's owner while out for a walk (which has happened to us, sigh).
The advantage of relatively child-resistant (nothing is ever child-proof) fencing around a park built with young children in mind is keeping the kids in.
Surrounding traffic in the streets is likely the biggest danger – that pedestrians technically have right of way even on roads can't change that drivers usually don't expect them and that kids can be pedestrians who are especially hard to see (they're short, they might be crawling in the street, and so on).
Moreover, caregivers have a responsibility to keep their charges within eye- and ear-shot, and fencing makes that easier to do while not crowding the kids with intrusive supervision.
Most parks have rules regarding dogs, bikes, scooters, etc, and if the rules are reasonable, and observed, I wouldn't worry much? My husband does worry somewhat more, especially about dog owners. I tend to think having dogs around, with responsible owners, and teaching kids how to safely and respectfully ask permission to interact with someone's pet is A Good Thing. But I've arguably absorbed a bit too much of what I've heard called the "toxic dog positivity" of US culture :-)
This is fascinating. OK, two more questions;
1) In a mixed-use park (picture a ~2 acre park that has picnic areas, walking trails, and a playground) would you want fencing only around the playground? Or around the entire property? Which one would be more likely to make you use the park and feel your needs were being accommodated?
2) Do you feel the same about fencing at a popular/crowded park vs. a sparsely used park? Would you be more interested in fencing at a park where your kid(s) might get "lost in the crowd" or does it not make a difference, a fence is valuable even if you're the only family there at the time you are using it?
I can't imagine planning that doesn't take into account the park's surroundings.
One mixed-use park near me abuts a major thoroughfare, and has community gardens and several soccer fields' worth of unmarked lawn for multipurpose use. In that park, such fencing as there is surrounds the whole park, not just the playground, which in context makes sense: the major thoroughfare is a hazard for all users.
A mixed-use park with different traffic patterns might fence just the playground, depending on use.
A playground spang in the middle of several soccer fields in a neighborhood where there's no heavy traffic might reasonably go unfenced – lines of sight all around the playground are clear enough that wandering tots are easy to spot. I grew up near a park like that, though our route to the park was blocked by a major thoroughfare we weren't permitted to cross by ourselves at a young age.
I'm thinking of a park I took my kids to on Monday that has over a 1,000 feet of Mississippi River frontage, with a walking trail along the river, a ~ 10 foot drop from the shoreline to the river, and not an inch of fence anywhere, except around the dog run. Dogs can't mix with the kids, but kids could fall in the river! (Theoretically at least; it's probably 30 yards from the playground to the walking trail and there's a buffer strip between the trail and the river that has high, thick grasses which discourages walking on the river side) And yet if this was my neighborhood park (it isn't, it's a larger regional park we only visit occasionally), before this conversation I would have advocated against fencing the park! Now I think I'd rather fence the park than the playground, though fencing an entire park of this size would be cost-prohibitive (high five figures certainly, maybe more), though maybe a wrought iron fence around only the playground would be OK. So, so interesting. Thanks for the replies!
1) Fencing just around the playground area. If there are limited entrances / exits, then I can let the kids roam within the space without being on top of them or having to do a spot check every five minutes. I just have to stand by the gate.
2) I think a fence is valuable all the time, but my kids are less likely to give me breathing space if they are the only ones there. I have been to the park in my home city where every parent there was playing WITH their kid. I don’t go to the park to play with my kid. I go to the park so I can get a break from their incessant need for attention at home. At that park, which was intended but had a healthy gap before the street, I got a ton of side eye from other parents who clearly thought I’d abandoned my children when I was sitting on the grass reading maybe 100 yards away. Eventually after 20 minutes, my youngest decided to run for the street and I had to sprint after him. It’s really hard to be a non-helicopter parent when everyone else is helicoptering.
The under seven playground in one of our parks is fenced with a gate. I thought that was really smart. The age limit might be an issue though since I have two under two and a seven year old.
Definitely in.
It’s an issue in more urban parks where the play area is quite close to the street. I haven’t seen it and it doesn’t feel as necessary in some of the larger suburban parks I’ve seen.
OK, update to note that I just returned from a walk and the urban pocket park that I referenced does have a playground that is entirely fenced! Mea maxima culpa!
Love music literacy. Many a music critic sight the poverty of today’s music to a lack of this fact. Listening to piano Sonata 32 of B. It is a joy to listen to great music. I hope your kids find a good teacher to inspire them.
I can at least give you a good recommendation to compensate for the intimidation. We have had a wonderful experience with HomePay. I just realized as we re-hired that they also file with the EDD.
We also learned we have to have worker’s comp this time around and are paying an extra $504 a year to our home insurance company for the privilege. (In our state, this is required for any in home employee working 20 hours / week.)
Whatever you do, do not work with SurePayroll- they were an absolute nightmare.
Thank you!
We used SurePayroll which was fine until there was an issue and we needed customer service and then it was terrible.
I don't remember if it was my state or it's a federal thing, but I was able to put $5000 of pre-tax money from my paychecks into a nanny account and then save my receipts (I just made a receipt template on Word with dates, amount paid, and a place for the nanny to sign and me to sign each week) and scan them in and get reimbursed. That worked fine, but then at tax time, I told the HR Block guy how to enter that and he didn't listen to me and did it wrong and we had three amendments that year because he messed that part up so badly and didn't correct it right in the first amendment. Such a headache.
Your employer has to offer the dependent care FSA (now up to $7500 after reconcilliation this year) and boy howdy do I keep bugging my employer to do it.
Great ideas and comments. Hope you can change some things for the better with your influence.