My children are eight and five. Zane, in fact, turns nine in about six weeks. One of my neighbours is convinced that we neglect them, because I don’t have an eye on them at all times. Now, I’m quite sure that, if you asked her, she’d also tell you that kids today don’t show enough independence and so forth. Still, it’s unmistakable that my kids are given considerably less freedom than my generation was—less than hers, too, since she’s older than my mom. Now, we currently live far from most things—I’m not sure there’s anywhere I’d send the kids within walking distance other than my son’s friends’ houses, but that’s not the point. When we lived on a street near things, people would probably have been less okay with my letting the kids go about on their own, because it was a busy street.
Yes, I, too, have been hypnotized by Old Enough, the Japanese sensation that’s gotten Americans talking about the freedoms we permit our own children in the US. For those not yet suckered into this, the show has been airing in Japan for decades now. It’s the story of small children—usually somewhere between three and six—who are sent into The World for their first errands unaccompanied. Their parents give them directions. The road is carefully monitored, with one of the games of the show being spotting the people who work for the show and their cameras, and the children set off.
The children do not always succeed. They routinely forget bits of what they’re supposed to do and get distracted by things and have minor freak-outs. Sometimes, things can be a bit too hard for them, and they need help. Sometimes, they don’t want to do the work. Either they’re scared of being alone or else they’re having too much fun doing their own thing. In short, they continue to act like children. Sometimes, they spot the camera and have to be distracted to keep going. One child is actually sent on a bus trip and manages to successfully take a bus between his dad’s job and home, then back again.
However, they are allowed to try. Encouraged to try. Sometimes, I feel as though the job is a bit too much for them; there’s one little boy who is asked to carry a cooler of fish, and the string breaks. His mother calls from the apartment window and tells him to tie it himself, and he basically can’t because he doesn’t really know how to tie knots yet. A kindly old man helps him out. I personally would’ve come downstairs to do the job myself, however, because that’s to do with his physical abilities. Later, his groceries seem too heavy for him, and I worry about that, too.
Minor considerations like that aside, the children feel proud and accomplished. One child delightedly announced, upon being sent on her errand, that it was just like Old Enough! (I believe that’s one of the children who spotted the cameras.) Often, the parents are working a family farm or similar, or the parent is keeping the business going while the other is taking care of a baby, or something like that. The children are helping out because it’s really just easier to have the kid run to the dad’s restaurant with his apron than have Mom get the baby dressed and ready and so forth to go three blocks.
Most of what happens on this show would get CPS called on you in the US, and we all know it. Sure, the children have flags when they’re going to cross a street, but I’ve reassured any number of people that I never would’ve let my daughter cross the busy street we used to live on unaccompanied, because there’s simply no way that would’ve been considered acceptable. Oh, I’d never send my kids to the nearest store from our house, because they’d have to pass under a railroad trestle I just don’t think is safe to walk under for adults, but I don’t even think they’d sell to my kid without demanding to know where his adult is.
Because of course the kids are exhaustively supervised for this airing, but the kids’ second errands will not be full of grown-ups with cleverly disguised cameras and everyone aware that they were coming. Next time, the kids will really be on their own, but it will be expected that they’ll know how to do it then. The person at the fish market or on the supermarket bus will take them as just ordinary kids doing ordinary things. It will not be treated as out of the ordinary for them to buy curry or bring the priest to say the blessing on the anniversary of Grandpa’s death.
At the beginning of lockdown, I started experimenting with how much independence I could give the kids. We’d moved to a new, quiet neighbourhood. Zane’s got a couple of friends less than a block away, and I let him go there by himself without much worrying about it. There’s not a lot of traffic around here, so he’s probably fine. And . . . not everyone was okay with it. Imagine the reaction if I sent his sister walking a mile and a half by herself—and she’s older than some of the kids who walk that far on this show.
I’m trying to raise my kids to be strong and independent. I’m trying to develop a sense of responsibility in them. It seems to me as though what is acceptable in the US is limiting them. As long as they were old enough to have the conversation, we’ve explained to them that they have rights and responsibilities as members of this family, and one of their responsibilities is helping to keep the household going. If I could send my kid in to the store to pick up milk while I waited in the car on days when my knees were particularly bad—I do not do this—that might give me the energy to be a better parent over more important things. And he’d know how to buy milk, surely something he’ll need to know as an adult.
There’s a spectrum of parenting, from child abandonment to basically doing everything for them. By the standards of much of the world, I’m still far closer to the latter than they think is healthy for my kids. I still walk Zane to the bus in the morning—though that’s mostly so we’ll have time together, just the two of us, and he’s fully capable of getting to the bus on his own. There’s also a documentary on Netflix about extremely poor children around the world, and children in the slums of Dhaka, Bangladesh, are walking barefoot in filth, picking up scraps that can be sold to keep their family going. My kids are lucky, and I know that—poor in the US isn’t even close to poor in a lot of other countries. Still, it would be nice to let them have the freedom I did as a kid without worrying it will end with them in foster care.
Still, I am poor in the US, and it would be nice if you’d support my Patreon or Ko-fi?