poor kids

[csm]

just saw this that the Saratoga Springs school district has banned walking and riding to school. This must be the next hot topic as there was a cover article in a recent edition of the Sunday NYT about parental and district officials paranoia. I live about 2 blocks from our elementary school and one of the more enjoyable moments for me is walking my 4th grader to school. it is amazing the things we talk about in those few moments. I am dismayed daily at the idlng cars and parents that drive less distance than I walk. the ironic thing is there is a sign that says no commercial vehicle idling.... school busses, delivery trucks, etc yet everyday there is a fleet of mini vans, suvs and other heaps sitting there with the windows up, the a/c on and the engines running. it will only get worse as the weather gets chillier.
and we wonder why our kids are getting fat.

[veloduffer]

My town in NJ is going in the opposite (positive) direction of trying to get more kids to walk and ride! It surprised me as I wouldn't typify the town as being the most progressive, plus it is hilly terrain.

[fiamme red]

This must be the next hot topic as there was a cover article in a recent edition of the Sunday NYT about parental and district officials paranoia.Here it is: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/fashion/13kids.html?_r=1&adxnnlx=1253030447-5mG%20HhMHm%20HvqVOvLjJB0Q&pagewanted=all

Funny that we posted this at the exact same time. :)

[Ti Designs]

Yes, humans have been without any sort of preditor threat for far too long, the result is that we're getting too fat and stupid. So, for the future of the species they have decided to add some danger to our surroundings. How does this happen you ask? It's simple, we overprotect them up to a certain age, then set them free and watch the weak (slow, stupid, on the cell phone crossing the street...) get picked off.

I'm not a parent, but it all seems to be going in the wrong direction. If a child is never exposed to a danger (real or protected without their knowledge) they never learn how to protect themselves. Their own surroundings become toxic to them - can someone please explain to me how this is a good thing? I know a few people who use anti-bacterial everything - soap, wipes, spray... And yet they get sick all the time, and then they confuse cause and effect! It's all going very wrong and it's starting to turn ugly. Examples - how many traffic accidents have there been involving a pedestrian or driver texting? Look at the statistics, it's not just the population getting fat, they're getting stupid too.



Fat, drunk and stupid is no way of going thru life...

[Ti Designs]

Speaking of making your surroundings toxic to you, what do y'all make of the increase in nut alergies? An 800% increase in two years seems very high and the knee jerk reaction has me even more worried. one school system took a bus out of service for a few days because a peanut was found. Many of the alergies are based on both peanuts and tree nuts, which last I checked were seeds. If this knee jerk reaction goes as it often does, we're about to wipe out most of the plant kingdom in the name of keeping our kids safe...

[fiamme red]

one school system took a bus out of service for a few days because a peanut was found.A determined peanut terrorist could shut down entire airports or even cities. ;)

[Steve in SLO]

There's a similar style of 'dropping off the kids' here in sunny, warm California. Our kids' school is in a pretty affluent area and I am disappointed at the number of moms in SUVs waiting in dropoff queue with a cellphone stuck (illegally) to their ear that sometimes don't even turn around to say good bye as their kids unload. Sad. We try and ride our bikes the mile+ to school whenever possible, and if I am driving/dropping off at the school, at least I park the car and walk to the gate with them and give them a hug to start their day.

[Steve in SLO]

just saw this that the Saratoga Springs school district has banned walking and riding to school..

[Blue Jays]

Ti Designs, you're 100% accurate with your observations. Rising to challenges and overcoming them is what makes us stronger. An occasional scare further sharpens our capabilities.
Cycling helpfully introduces us to a certain amount of danger and hopefully we all find intelligent ways to manage to it.
As an aside, college roomates once visited me and we had to chat outside because I responded I had an unopened jar of peanut butter in my food pantry when asked. Their sickly boys were with them.

[kong79]

One of the morning talk show doctors (don't remember which one) stated a theory that sounded pretty reasonable to me. He stated that our genetics and immune systems have evolved to fight off major diseases like small pox, etc. that used to ravage the human race. Now, in the absence of these major bugs the immune system is in a sense, looking for something to do. So it has begun to morph, causing overreaction and an increase in sensitivity to things that in the past were minor, like food allergies.

[Ti Designs]

One of the morning talk show doctors (don't remember which one) stated a theory that sounded pretty reasonable to me. He stated that our genetics and immune systems have evolved to fight off major diseases like small pox, etc. that used to ravage the human race. Now, in the absence of these major bugs the immune system is in a sense, looking for something to do. So it has begun to morph, causing overreaction and an increase in sensitivity to things that in the past were minor, like food allergies.

I'm not buying it. One of my riders had a nut alergy and a number of them have tolorance issues with gluten. My reaction to this is to dive into PubMed and read and understand every study and paper I can get my hands on. There are definitions of classes of alergies, if that were the case there would be a threshold, which there isn't. The body is over reacting as if peanut oil was a know toxin. It's a genetic mutation which is passed down. Our inability to react to our surroundings are getting passed down to the next generation in a much more serious way. I'm just not sure which one is worse, nut alergies or the inability to function without a cell phone...

[merlinmurph]

Arrgghh, this subject hit a nerve with me. :crap:

There's a pretty affluent town outside Boston called Wellesley that was trying to figure out how to get more kids to use the bus. Here's an excerpt from the Boston Globe (http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2009/03/15/pushing_the_bus_option/) with some ridership statistics:

According to a traffic study presented last year, 20 percent of Wellesley High students have passes enabling them to ride on town school buses, but only 7 percent actually do so.

Roughly 14 percent of the students drive or ride in another student's car to school. Most students - 71 percent - are dropped off by a parent. Only 5 percent walk or ride a bike to school, and 3 percent are transported by Metco.

71% are dropped off by a parent. Wow. I find it truly amazing that so many parents get sucked into that by their kids merely because it's not cool to ride the bus.


Along with parents driving kids to school, another thing that drives me nuts is parents driving their kids to the bus stop. I tend to take my bike rides around noon for 1-2 hours, and I'll see parents hanging out waiting for the bus. Sometimes they are at the end of a street, and sometimes they are at the end of a longer driveway. Huh? Now, picture a gorgeous, 80-degree day, the sun is out, there's a gentle breeze - and they can't walk a 1/4 mile to meet their kid, and walk back with them? What does this teach the kids?

Somday, I know I'm going to stop and let a mother know what I think about it. Maybe you'll read about it. ;)

[Ahneida Ride]

In KINDERGARDEN...

Many times I walked about 2 miles to school !!!!

The world is getting sick :butt:

[Blue Jays]

My kindergarten walk was about a half-mile each way...perhaps a few steps more.
The number of modern parents that would permit a child to walk a tenth of a mile roundtrip is a distinct minority.

[GregL]

A big chunk of the problem is the suburbanization of the US. Most suburbs built from the 60's to the present do not have sidewalks. Kids who walk to school have to do it on the roadway or shoulder. My daughter's school is less than 1 mile from our home, but there is not one inch of sidewalk along the route. She cannot safely get there on foot. She does take the school bus and is allowed to ride a bike if her parents allow her to. Sadly, the main road to the school has lots of commuter traffic (including far too may of the aforementioned parents in SUVs...) making it unsafe for her to ride, IMO. A sad state of affairs...

Regards,
Greg

[Ti Designs]

There's a pretty affluent town outside Boston called Wellesley that was trying to figure out how to get more kids to use the bus. Here's an excerpt from the Boston Globe (http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2009/03/15/pushing_the_bus_option/) with some ridership statistics:


What the study about Wellesley doesn't show is the total divergence of schools of thought. While most of the town folk drive around in luxury SUVs and wait for a parking spot to open up near where they are going rather than walking the half block, there is a subculture that laughs at them. If you show up in Wellesley center just before 6:00AM, bring a bike. There is a group that leaves from Starbucks, another group that leaves from Peet's, a fixed gear ride that leaves from Brugers, and the Crack of Dawn ride goes right up Rt 16 around that time. It's the oddest thing, for an hour it's nothing but cyclists, the other 23 hours it's nothing but car traffic. Clearly, these are adults on the bikes, they ride at that hour because they need to get to work during the day. But they share my views on how kids get to school - I know this 'cause we often get stuck in SUV traffic by the school.

I've been trying to figure out what makes these rides work. There are rides like this all over, there is no organization to point at, just a group of friends who like to ride and have found the time while most others sleep. If I am to change the way the towns see cycling, it's going to be with the help of these groups. Otherwise town meetings and the powers that make decisions about how kids get to school are made up of non cyclists who assume that riding a bike is so simple, they must know everything there is to know. Having a group of people who know cycling from the saddle of a bike is the only way of changing things.

Example: the reason my town doesn't allow bikes on school grounds is a report done almost a decade ago about traffic flow on Mass Ave. It stated that riding a bike on Mass ave would be considered dangerous. I checked, the guy who signed off on that study hasn't been on a bike in over 20 years and fears hitting one of them in traffic.

I think 90M ski jumpers are all crazy. I don't make it a habit of showing up at town meetings in Lake Placid and insisting on shutting down the jump because it's dangerous because I don't know squat about ski jumping - and I know that I don't know squat about it. Try telling a town meeting they don't know anything about cycling some time - good luck with that.

[mister]

crazy about not being able to walk or ride to school. i never got a ride to school, had to walk or ride almost everyday...

also, this food allergy thing is interesting to me. my gf talks about how she's allergic to avacado and thinks maybe she's gluten sensitive too. i can't really understand it though. i'm not allergic to anything i know of.

[Ti Designs]

A big chunk of the problem is the suburbanization of the US. Most suburbs built from the 60's to the present do not have sidewalks. Kids who walk to school have to do it on the roadway or shoulder.

Yeh, I guess there is that. I grew up in Wayne NJ, rode my bike everywhere back then. Last time I visited my parents I noticed that all of the major roads are death on a bike. My parents only ride on the bike path. It's good that they ride, but sad that it's so limited. I don't see how people learning to ride on a bike path gets them ready for the outside world on the bike, and the town planers never saw bikes as anything but bike path vehicles.

[fiamme red]

Yeh, I guess there is that. I grew up in Wayne NJ, rode my bike everywhere back then.Remember the great descent on Skyline Drive down to Greenwood Lake Turnpike? The county permanently milled the road because there were too many bad drivers getting into accidents during the winter. :crap:

http://www.northjersey.com/news/transportation/roads/Milled_Skyline_Drive_stretch_to_remain_as_is.html

[Climb01742]

in just my lifetime, the parent-child dynamic has changed dramatically. in a million years, i could never imagine asking my parents to drive me to school. if i missed the bus, well, i had better put my running shoes on. today, as a parent, i'm often flabbergasted (love that word) at how child-centric parents have become--not in a loving sense, but in a i'll-take-you-anywhere, sign-you-up-for-anything, buy-you-anything, rearrange-my-life-for-anything sort of way. i had a much for independent childhood. now, kids seem far more dependent. all in a few decades. strange. and not terribly healthy, i don't think.

[Ti Designs]

Remember the great descent on Skyline Drive down to Greenwood Lake Turnpike?

I haven't been back for years, but that was the hill that put NJ on the results for Mt Washington.

[csm]

in just my lifetime, the parent-child dynamic has changed dramatically. in a million years, i could never imagine asking my parents to drive me to school. if i missed the bus, well, i had better put my running shoes on. today, as a parent, i'm often flabbergasted (love that word) at how child-centric parents have become--not in a loving sense, but in a i'll-take-you-anywhere, sign-you-up-for-anything, buy-you-anything, rearrange-my-life-for-anything sort of way. i had a much for independent childhood. now, kids seem far more dependent. all in a few decades. strange. and not terribly healthy, i don't think.

this is so true. and it goes thru the college years in some cases.

[veloduffer]

in just my lifetime, the parent-child dynamic has changed dramatically. in a million years, i could never imagine asking my parents to drive me to school. if i missed the bus, well, i had better put my running shoes on. today, as a parent, i'm often flabbergasted (love that word) at how child-centric parents have become--not in a loving sense, but in a i'll-take-you-anywhere, sign-you-up-for-anything, buy-you-anything, rearrange-my-life-for-anything sort of way. i had a much for independent childhood. now, kids seem far more dependent. all in a few decades. strange. and not terribly healthy, i don't think.

This "parental helicoptering" stems from a few changes in our culture IMHO:

1) No unorganized child play. With the larger homes and sprawl, it is hard for kids to run outside and call on a neighbor to play. When I was growing up in a subdivision, kids of all ages played together for football and tag or hide & seek. Now kids only play with the kids of the same age and it is usually in a structured activity. This is also due to the increase in structured activities, which are full fledged businesses. When I grew up, there was only Little League and Pee Wee football. Now there's a camp and league for all sports - soccer, lacrosse, hockey, softball.

2) Smaller families. More families only have one or two kids and parents are more involved, especially fathers. In part, it is a desire to be involved in your kid's life but also to help nurture and train them for a more competitive environment. Everyone has a desire to see their kid succeed and trying to do that with their idea of a good foundation at an early age. I was surprised when my kid had homework for kindergarten - that wasn't so when I was growing up.

3) Real or perceived threat of kidnapping or abduction. Some may argue that the threat hasn't increased on a relative basis. But it has on a nominal basis. I think the s*x trade is much more active, global AND lucrative- the numbers of offenders is increasing and amazing how pervasive in all parts of society. This is in part due to society becoming more impulsive and showing less restraint. I'm not a prude but society has become more vulgar and aggressive than when I grew up 30 yrs ago.

[daker13]

3) Real or perceived threat of kidnapping or abduction. Some may argue that the threat hasn't increased on a relative basis. But it has on a nominal basis. I think the s*x trade is much more active, global AND lucrative- the numbers of offenders is increasing and amazing how pervasive in all parts of society. This is in part due to society becoming more impulsive and showing less restraint. I'm not a prude but society has become more vulgar and aggressive than when I grew up 30 yrs ago.

TV and movies play a big role in this. It's unbelievable how many tv shows deal with the most horrific scenarios involving child molestation, incest, child murder, etc. And then there's the news, which is endlessly fascinated with stories like that poor girl in CA who was discovered last summer. I don't know whether these problems are worse than when I was a kid either--I grew up in northern NH walking two miles to school no matter the weather--but I do think the average joe must be fascinated/repulsed by the scenario or there wouldn't be so many shows about it (Law & order, etc.). I do know I wouldn't let my daughter walk to school alone because I could never forgive myself if anything happened to her. It's one thing to talk about it in the abstract but another thing when it's your kid.

[Ti Designs]

I do know I wouldn't let my daughter walk to school alone because I could never forgive myself if anything happened to her. It's one thing to talk about it in the abstract but another thing when it's your kid.

At what point do you let your child start taking responsibility, and how is that transition made. I probably wouldn't let my daughter walk to school alone for the same reason, but at some point that protection goes away - that's where the real danger is. Any hard transition from being supervised to not being is inviting trouble. Most parents are strict about alcohol when the kids are home, then they go off to school and...

As for TV making a huge deal of some danger, child abduction gets a lot of press, car accidents seem to slip under the radar. There is no harder transition of responsibility than handing a kid the keys to the car. The towns and state try to scare new drivers into thinking that someone is always watching - any moving violation for a junior operator is a loss of license for 6 months. That doesn't seem to stop kids from killing themselves every year.

The transition is to sudden. You can't drink at home, then you're off to school and there's a liquor store right near your dorm. Kids get driven right to school, then all of the sudden they're crossing busy streets while texting their friends. Or the worst, take a month of driving lessons, pass a test and the car is yours.

I say start sooner, force kids to make decisions on their own. Given the choise, your daughter should WANT you to walk her to school - that's her decision (with a little background help). My brother raced cars, so I lapped at Lime Rock before I could drive on the street. I learned that going fast was for the track, always in control was for the street. No accidents, no tickets ever - and that's always seemed normal to me...