Quite a few friends on facebook posted a link to an extract from Jay Griffith's new book,
Kith: the Riddle of the Childscape. The book was also the subject of yesterday's very interesting Start the Week.
Responses to the posting inevitably talked about excessive fear of stranger danger and more realistic fears of road danger in letting children play wild. I realised one of my inhibitions is not fear of the very tiny minority of strangers who could want to harm a child, but of the very large number of people afraid to help or take any responsibility for other people's children, like the crowd of visitors to Reading museum who simply parted to allow my escapee two year old to run out into the road (through doors that would not have opened were it not for their adult presence activating the sensors). Nonetheless, I believe she is absolutely right that we have to find a way to let our children spend time unsupervised in the wild.
No comments:
Post a Comment