For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for June 19, 2015

And as some parents are finding out the hard way. If you do that kind of thing for your kids now it is considered neglect and abuse. Not providing opportunities for responsibility and exploration.

As early as eight I could roam just about wherever I wanted, and stay gone until dusk.

A lunch would have been nice, though.

Parents nowadays are afraid to send their kids out to explore for a day

Since this is a old strip from the past I can see how this strip would have been fine when first presented..I wonder trhe year..how long ago…today the comments against would have been over whelming…how times change…

My son in law told me a stiory..a few years ago his boy..{ my grandson..} told his Dad that his friends were going to get together and play Basketball after school and such..a while later he asked him how the games were going..Son told him it didn’t work out..couldn’t get anyone to Ref the games and these kids today..in his area anyway..not use to just calling fouls and such on them selves..always have been in organized sports..soccer, baseball, Hockey.. with some one reffing the games…Kinda sad really..or is just that I am to old….

Free-range kids if given proper parental guidance grow up to be self-reliant.

Oh no. Free range parenting. The kids and their parents are about to have an encounter with the police and Child Protective Services.

Dad, 66, once called his Grandma from the ranger station in the nearby woods- they’d hiked up there and were too tired to make it home. That was fine. I’m 36, and Dad was considered overprotective. My friend lived 2 blocks away, times when I could walk there were restricted even when I was 12. There was a park nearby and a few times we went there- you turned left instead of right when you got to the street she lived on. And we lived on street x, my great-aunt on the next street, Menlo, actually accessible through a gate at the back of our fence, and Sharol on the street after that- we could go there by ourselves.. When I was 14 there was a big to-do in the house… the high school was 2 blocks straight ahead of us, and after the first block I didn’t see other students walking home. I said I was going to stay after school for a self-defense seminar, 1 hour. I’d still be light out at 4. But Dad was worried about me walking home when the others weren’t. He insisted on us being only a few stores apart at the mall until I finished high school. I have Aspergers (undiagnosed, so that wasn’t the reason) and didn’t question it. It wasn’t until I was about 24 and a college grad that he would do the “we’ll just meet at 5 for supper at the food court” thing- the year we got cell phones. He never got that there was a huge disconnect between what he did and me (he explained we were in the city, etc). my aunt moved in, she was in her late 50s and had lived alone since she was 18. He never got that no, her reporting in where she was wasn’t courtesy, as long as she said if she’d be there for meals or at night past the time we were used to seeing herHe’s finally started to relax a bit about people from my church group picking me up for events. I did call him when we left a church thing and went to a bar because you don’t expect a prayer service to last until 11… but he was much like parents today, even worse because he never realized I could have legally driven if not for a physical impairment, that I could vote, that I could drink, that I was a college grad… and me being autistic and not interested in the things the kids at school went out to do I didn’t question for way too long

I am SO fortunate that I have the memories of ‘free-ranging’ as a kid AND my daughter grew up in a neighborhood who all still believed in free-ranging their kids. I don’t know what ‘normal’ is anymore.

Normal is now big government trying to squelch all traces of personal individuality & responsibility so that the young generation gets used to being monitored at all times with no concept of privacy. Future slaves for the state. The family unit has truly been destroyed by design so that no backup for people is available when they need a helping hand, except for government. The world has gone mad, I tell you!

I saw a story last week about parents who were arrested for letting their son play alone in the backyard. He got home early, found the house locked, so he just played basketball until his parents got home. A nosy neighbor called the police and now the kid and his brother are in a foster home while the parents are being investigated. http://bit.ly/1BlAyed

If you did that today, they’d lock you up and throw away the key

“Calvin and Hobbs” would have no adventure in the world of today. Pretty sad state of affairs.

Join the movement:http://www.freerangekids.com/.(Don’t for a moment agree with doofus Starcandles above. It’s not "big government. It’s us. Not being slaves to government, but being slaves to media where scaring you is considered conducive to good ratings. And we can change. Children are in no more danger than they ever were. Abductions by strangers have happened at the same rate all the way back to when numbers were kept, and the number is miniscule. They’re in more danger in the home. Don’t be a dope. Let your kids learn to cope.)

My parents would be in prison. Many the time I, the first up sometimes before day light, would be in the woods or “back at the creek” more than a mile from home. At a minimum on the back streets with my buddies

In this day and age, mom is going to find herself in deep trouble! In my day my mom would have done exactly the same thing, with extra cookies for my friends! We called it Freedom and boy, it sure was!

I lived in Frankfurt, Germany when I was a kid (military) in the 70s…I went all sorts of places by myself or with my sisters. My parents to this day have no idea some of the places I went or how far I roamed, as long as I was home before them. It’s sad that kids just don’t have that kind of freedom these days.

Geez, I’m 55 now and my parents would STILL be in prison if the paranoia that exists today was in place when I was a kid. I used to walk about a half-mile to school as far back as second grade and sometimes I’d cut through the woods along the way (the same woods my grade school buddies and I would spend hours in during the summer).

What really caught my eye was Michael’s comment about fishing, swimming and camping. Kids today would never do anything like that…they might have to turn off the computer or set down their cell phone.

The “family unit” started crumbling after World War II, when we became a nation on wheels, traveling anywhere, moving to pursue college or jobs.Before then, families lived for generations in the same area, and knew each other, so after a while, you knew who you could and couldn’t trust, where you should and shouldn’t go, and who should and shouldn’t be there.Parenting was a shared responsibility with grandparents, aunts and uncles, and neighbors; you know, “it takes a village…” kind of thing.Now we move so often that few of us know our neighbors, and fewer know who to trust.Being a “free ranger kid” these days would include carrying a cell phone and pepper spray.

Grew up in a small town, mom and dad both worked, and in the summer, the county was my playground. Bicycled to whichever stream or lake I was fishing that day, Played whichever sport was in season with the neighborhood team against other neighborhood teams, and as long as I was home at 5-ish when Dad got home for supper, all was good. Those days are gone however—at least it is for my granddaughter. My son had lots of freedoms, but nothing Iike I had.

Todays helicopter parents and lawnmower parents drive me nuts.

With the kids gone, a day vacation for the parents.

Be careful what you wish for Michael, you just got it!