SNIP
>Okay, now I see what you're getting at. If that were the case, then wouldn't you expect the kids from the neighborhood where I grew up (where lots of kids had lots of personal freedom--the neighborhood leaned pretty far left and actually, still does) to have turned out badly on the whole? That's certainly not the case.
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>IAC, no, I actually think responsible parenting means increasing a child's independence and responsibility as he or she grows. The challenge of parenting is figuring out what's appropriate for a given child at a given age. We allowed our younger son to stay home alone overnight younger than we did his older brother because he was better equipped to handle it. He got his learner's permit for driving younger, too.
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>There's such a thing as too much supervision and control. If the goal is to produce an adult who can make wise choices, you have to start letting kids make choices when they're young. You start with a restricted set of choices when they're very young ("do you want to wear the red shirt or the blue shirt today?"), and you sometimes let them make bad choices, and suffer the consequences. ("It's pretty cold out. I really think you should wear a warmer coat, but it's up to you.")
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>By doing these things, you help them learn how to make decisions. Obviously, you don't let them make their choices in a vacuum, but make sure they understand your values and expectations (I think my kids could go on at length about the expectations with which they were raise <s>).
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>Of course, you also have to provide kids with good things to do, and that is one place where strong communities come into play. They tend to have lots of things for kids to do that won't get them in trouble.
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>A strong community also comes into play by supporting other people's kids. Things like not being afraid to let another parent know when you see their kid doing something wrong, or for that matter, not being afraid to correct someone else's kid when you see something going on.
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>I could go on, but I'm sure you get the idea.
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>Tamar

I agree with everything you wrote, and those are the same principles I've practiced in raising my daughter. Where I differ is in the age where she was allowed to go on her own, alone. It was never a question of my daugther making good choices, it was a question of her being old enough to defend herself if the need arose.

She will turn 17 in a couple of weeks. Today, no matter how good a driver she is, there will always be times when someone else drives in a manner that might leave her no options to avoid a collision. It happened to me 2 years ago. I was sitting at a red light when a senior citizen was talking on a cell phone and didn't notice the light was red and didn't see me sitting at the light and plowed into me at 45mph. The same holds true when out on your own in public. Young girls are targets and even with knowledge of self-defense, at 13, she was very small and slight and not capable of defending herself against everything and everyone. I guess because I have personal experience with abductions that I see it differently. I didn't want to put her into a position where she might need to defend herself at that age. In every town I have lived in recently, there have been abductions, knifings, and shootings either in or outside the mall. If she and a friend were together, then I would allow them to walk around together without me. It was an agreement I reached with the other girl's parents. Two girls make less of a target than one on her own. Not ideal, but they would have a better chance together. Riding the bus or walking to the mall was never an option because I have not lived where there was a public bus service for almost 20 years and the mall is too far away to walk to. When she was 14 she and her friend walked to the drugstore which was only a mile away at most and enroute they received so many catcalls they never did it again.