>>What Your Neighborhood List-Serv Tells You About The Demise of America
>>http://thefederalist.com/2013/09/20/what-your-neighborhood-list-serv-tells-you-about-the-demise-of-america/
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>>I read the subject line for the latest message on my neighborhood listserv with interest: “Kids Cutting Grass?”
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>>A few years ago I’d used a post with a similar headline to find someone to do some yard work. My husband and I hired a neighborhood kid whose Dad had died the year prior after a long illness. Maybe 13 years old, he’d taken to doing yard work to raise much-needed money and have something to do.
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>>But this email was very different. It read:
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>>“We just had a group of adorable and entrepreneurial kids (young, maybe 9-11 years old) offer to mow our grass. Not to be Scrooges in the neighborhood, but what is the general consensus on this around [the neighborhood] re: safety? They looked pretty young, and we didn’t see a parent with them supervising. I realize kids want to earn spending money, but I was interested in getting the pulse on this sort of thing. Teenagers, maybe. But these kids looked like they may be older elementary school aged (guess). We had a family member lose a couple of toes mowing while a young kid, so maybe I’m just overly sensitive.”
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>I think 9 is too young to use a lawnmower, even a push mower. Maybe a responsible 11-year-old, but I'd want supervision for that. My family growing up had gas-powered mowers. I don't remember exactly how old I was before my dad let me use it. I do remember having to put on long pants and hard shoes (instead of my summer "uniform" of shorts and sandals).
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>I started babysitting for money when I was 11. In retrospect, I'm astonished anyone would have left their kids with me then, though people generally thought I was older than I actually was. (By 11, I was two grades ahead in school.) At first, my mother would only let me sit if she was going to be at home.
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>I think one of the biggest challenges of parenting is properly loosening the harness on your kids, and letting them have age-appropriate independence. We worked hard to do that with both responsibility and freedom. Things like allowing a kid and friends to go to a movie without an adult. At 11 or 12, that meant dropping them off at the theater and picking them up outside. By 13 or 14, they could ride the bus to do that. But I knew parents who were appalled that I'd do this. (FWIW, pretty sure I was less than 10 when my folks let me ride a bus 20 minutes to the Y for swimming lessons.)
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Well stated.

It was a more innocent time, that's true. I had the run of the city on my bicycle and so did my friends. Now a parent would be hung in effigy for such a laissez faire attitude. I realize there is an element of prudence, which I have tried to exercise, but our kids have lost something in the era of helicopter parents and agencies.