What is the risk really? I mean put in numbers.
When it comes to your own children the only number that matters is 1. The 1 time it happens their lives, your life, is over.
My kid walks home from his friend's houses in the woods at night alone all the time. He has never once been eaten or kidnapped.
Statistically your children are more likely to be victimized by you than a stranger. So by your logic, you should probably keep them away from you. Right?
The chances of getting kidnapped are and always were far, far, far less than automobile related injuries and deaths, yet we just see that as a normal risk of modern life.
I have been wondering if the fact that the current generation of 20-somethings isn't going out as much is because of this "over parenting" that they received. I'm sure it's also TikTok, living costs, and avoiding other vice related behaviour (drinking, sex) at such high rates, but it does make me think...
It's just a zero insight use of numbers.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/10/31/violent-c...
The summary is that the risk of a CPS investigation of a kid playing or walking independently is probably 10-100x that of suffering a car accident. And the average car accident is way less traumatic than being ripped away from your family, tossed in a foster home, and feeling like your parents have abandoned you forever because they could not protect you from the state.
When I started, the top three reasons for students leaving the institution were a) family priorities (work), b) transportation, and c) grades (overall GPA less than 1.5).
For the 2024-25 academic year, the reasons were a) anxiety, b) grades (overall GPA between 2.5 and 3, with less than 2 'd' or 'f' grades for the final semester), and c) unstated reason related to interactions with faculty or staff (difficult conversations about study habits, or realistic major/timeline conversations).
In other words, they hit one small barrier, or have to shift gears even slightly, and everything goes to pieces.
We don't let them make decisions when they're kids and the stakes are low, and then don't understand why they can't make decisions when they're adults. . . Or, there are a minority of parents that seem to enjoy making every decision for their kids. It's not great.
As a parent, a cancer survivor, and the child of a high anxiety parent, Yes, yes you should wait and see. Every doctor's visit is a chance to catch something worse.
That said, if you're a chill parent reading this, you should probably be more proactive about it. There is a middle ground, overreacting is usually worse than under reacting, but it is important that you react.
