If the girls were 17, and Te Fahn came over to visit her friend Selkie, Todd would not think anything at all about her coming by herself. And she could stay until Todd told her that she had to leave because it was time for them to go to bed. Perfectly fine.
But because she’s a nine-year-old girl — “Your mother didn’t bring you? You came by yourself?? Oh my God!!” “Your mother is not coming to pick you up? You’re going to go home in the dark by yourself?? OH MY GODDD!!!!!”
Because in our culture you could not do that. You would not do that. You wouldn’t let your elementary School age kid go off by themselves. And you certainly wouldn’t let her come home after dark by herself. The very idea!!!
But these people aren’t human. And even if they were human, they’re not American. They have a totally different culture. It’s like with her cutting meat in the butcher shop – “Your parents let you use a knife?” “Why wouldn’t they?”
Maybe they figure she’s big enough to go four or five miles by herself.
I pity the poor mugger that attacks a little girl with fangs and claws and poison spit.
While the average joy might have a hard time with her (hard to say if a gun is involved) I would get a bit worried about kidnapping. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is some insane rich person out there that wouldn’t mind having a Sarnothi (alive or dead) as a curio in their collection. There is also the option of some drunk or high idiot with a gun getting scared and shooting her.
Provided, I don’t recall how light it is outside or whether she is taking the bus or walking there. Taking a singular bus (without waiting to change buses) and not having much of a walk to her bus stop (or having someone waiting for her there) during daylight hours wouldn’t be too bad compared to a long walk in the dark. I grew up in a rural area, where kids that lived close together would have paths through the woods to each other that were sometimes a long walk. Even then, there were still areas you didn’t go to, like where the idiots did drugs and road dirt bikes, hunting season, or the swamp, but it wasn’t the same as a more urban area. People are normally more dangerous than ehat you can encounter in nature provided the child is ‘nature-literate’ (as in knows what to do and what not to do and won’t try stupid stuff). When you have 20 acres of forested swampy land, the probability that some unknown wacko is going to brave the ticks and mosquitoes and the poison ivy to muck through the swamp and cause trouble is low except during hunting season. There are easier places to go have fun where you don’t end up accidentally sacrificing yourself to the mosquito or deer fly gods as a blood offering for their offspring.
Probably not, but it might make a difference in what people think they can get away with. Would someone be willing to pick a fight that could escalate if there was an adult there compared to a child that they would think that they could intimidate? If someone tries to rob her, and her reaction is to immediately screech or try to bite in response, the robber could shoot if far enough away. More eyes are always better than just one set, as people can be aware of more stuff happening around them. Doesn’t work well if you are distracted in conversation, bur bigger groups are generally less considered a target.
Contrary to what the News and Soial media would like you to believe, children ride the bus/walk to school by themselves *all the time* and the vast majority make it there just fine. es, there are bad folks out there, but there are also sensible practices that kids learn easily and well.
Also, I agree with the cultural thing. out here in The Actual Midwest, i.e. Nebraska, Kansas, Douth Dakota. It is still pretty accepted for kids in the ssummer to be gone all day riding bikes, etc. At least in the Summer and on weekends.
That *should* be the norm — in places where the kids are not near too much traffic, leastwise. But now we’ve got incidents of parents being arrested and having their kids confiscated because they dared to think they were old enough, at 10 IIRC, to go to the park by themself.
Compare that to the Norwegian forest kindergarten, where they let six-year-olds climb trees and whittle, and don’t even have a fence (the kids just have the rule to not cross the paved road). Kids growing up in that environment get a much better view of the risks and the use of their own bodies, and the ability to handle problems, than kids who are told “you’re far too young to Do Things” until they’re like 15.
If I ever had a kid, I’d try to make use of Montessori principles to give them an early window into doing things for themself. For example, cleaning up, and portioning out food: I’ve long wanted to have a little kitchenette that’s kid-sized, adjacent to the regular kitchen, with a low-flow facet, a roll of paper towels, some cleaning rags and such, and a mini fridge where they’d have their snacks for the day. As opposed to always needing Mom to get the snacks, always needing Mom to help them reach the sink or get the cleaning supplies ready, etc. Help them learn basic skills for themselves early on and with less risk of falling etc.
Some things used to be the norm before places got busier. My great aunt used to take vacation bible school kids across the street to a park to have fun running around during part of the time. That street is way too busy for that now as it is one of the major roads in the city. Also, even if there is a 99.99% chance of nothing bad happening, no one wants to be the caretaker that had that 0.01% chance and something bad happened to someone else’s child.
In defense of safety rules, a lot of those were put in place because something bad happened and most people don’t want that to happen to their child. There is a difference between taking necessary precautions and going overboard (like giving your child a cell phone or whistle if they are playing in the forest in case something happens vs not letting them play there at all). https://www.nber.org/digest/dec99/reducing-accidents-key-lower-child-mortality for some information on how things have changed. Unicef also has some information on that front.
My daughter was watching Daniel Tiger recently, and the dad told Daniel that screwdrivers and hammers were for adults only. I thought (and still think) that those are odd objects to demarcate as adult-only compared to, say, a knife or a drill. The screwdriver was the oddest part. They were installing a toy doorbell on Daniel’s playhouse, and he couldn’t help because…it was a grownup tool? I ended up using it as a lesson for her on how different houses have different rules about safety depending on how comfortable a grownup is with a tool (conveniently ignoring that Daniel’s dad uses tools to work on clocks) and how good the kid is at following directions and being safe.
When she was 3, she climbed an 8′ ladder with my level and was checking my roof joist-thingies on the shed I was building and I just…took pictures. Thought it was cute. I helped her use the drill to put some of the screws into the siding down on the ground level, hand-in-hand. She had to have her safety glasses and gloves to help use certain tools, and seeing the different precautions that we adults took with certain items I think gave her a better appreciation for tool safety.
But then again, back when she was still 2ish, she was already helping me in the kitchen with hand-in-hand cutting of vegetables (with real knives) or stirring food on the stove. Helping in the kitchen was a reward/encouragement for good behavior. Can’t be in the kitchen if you haven’t been showing good listening because it’s not safe. 😉 And knives were only to be used if my hand was on her hand. She wasn’t allowed to unload them from the dishwasher until she was older. Getting popped with sausage grease while making breakfast was probably the BEST way for her to learn about the dangers of the kitchen because it showed her that you can still get hurt even if you’re being safe.
More recently at 5 (not long after she’d seen that episode, hilariously enough), I showed her how to use a palm sander and just handed it to her and let her try. Granted, the sander’s sounds are way scarier than it actually is. If it catches your finger, it doesn’t even do any damage. Husband demonstrated that to me back when I was nervous about using it because one of my hands has murderous intentions towards the other hand. It’s probably safer than a screwdriver and definitely safer than a hammer. She wasn’t a fan of it, but when she got to feel the wood afterwards, she was proud of how she’d made it smooth.
From a cursory look up of the character online, I feel like that’s more of a precaution against him taking apart things he shouldn’t than his own safety. Also he is a tiger, with paws, he probably has a good deal less dexterity.
True! Might also be (in universe at least, im sure in reality the show creators just didn’t want an influx of overprotective parent letters) in Daniel’s case specifically the fact his dad fixes clocks, bc you give a kid a tool, they’re gonna use it to figure stuff out and personally I’d hate to see my painstakingly done work undone by toddler engineering hour
I think its really cool you trust and have taught your kid safety rules well enough to do stuff like that! My dad works with kids doing technical theatre and theres definitely always a moment of aghast horror about the younger ones using more serious tools, but theyre pretty dang capable!! Where I work (also with kids) we talk a lot about “risky play” and how it helps teach kids their limits and confidence and how to recognize both and I think its really important so bravo!!
Thanks! She’s also just a great kid in general who loves learning new skills, and we try to encourage that at home. I think probably the most important thing she’s learned/is learning though is that even when you plan things out, mistakes still happen and projects don’t always go to plan. Sometimes we have to stop in the middle and think for awhile and replan before we can get back to work! For a toddler/preschooler, that’s a big struggle–not getting the desired result–and I think it’s helped her to be more confident when trying something new!
There are some kids you can trusr with activities like that because they don’t get too curious or reckless with it. There are others that you do not. I had a friend who had a younger sister who was one of those. She was the type that couldn’t have red dye and I believe was ADHD. Her two older sisters were very calm and well behaved while she (the youngest) was just everywhere. She couldn’t always process the consequences of her actions. She bit me once when I was tasked with keeping an eye on her because she didn’t like me saying that we had to stay there for the moment. I believe she was around Selkie’s age at the time, and obviously it wasn’t an appropriate response.
Obviously there is a difference in between supervised and unsupervised actions. You can let a child do things themselves while watching. That is a whole lot different than letting a child who likes to show off unsupervised access to a knife. In the general sense, if there is an accidental major injury to someone else due to something you gave your child, would your child be consider old enough by the general public to understand the consequences of fooling around with that thing? Most people are going to be understanding if there is an accident involving unsupervised pencil use and a nine year old child. They are probably going to be less understanding if it involved a knife instead of a pencil. Kids are curious, and are going to do things without fully understanding the consequences of what could happen, which is partially how they learn what happens. It is your job as a guardian to make sure that they are competent enough to understand what could go horribly wrong with certain things and how to prevent that (ie: cooking) or do not have unsupervised access to things that they are not yet ready to handle (eg: firecrackers). “I didn’t think that they were dumb enough to do that with it” is a poor excuse if something does go horribly wrong. There is also a difference between having semi unsupervised access doing a specific activity in a designated area vs just giving them an object to use anywhere. If your 9 year old wants to help you make salsa and dice up vegetables, and is competent enough to do so without issues (as in they have done it many times before while supervised without any problems) , you don’t have to hover over them. That is not like just giving you child a pocket knife for their 9th birthday and letting them run around everywhere with it. Even adults can easily slice their hand while cooking, but they are generally considered competent enough to handle the responsibility and consequences of their actions, while children are not.
I get that. With my two nephews, I’d be cool with showing the older one how to do some of the things my daughter gets to do. His little brother (a year younger than my daughter), not a chance. Not even with things she did years ago. He…gets away with a lot. My sister says he’s autistic, but apparently his doctors and school say he’s not. Whether he is or he isn’t, the bigger issue is that because of this, anytime he does anything negative, she writes it off as him just having different needs and doesn’t actually try to correct any behaviors. There’s a lot of parentifying of the older boy to “clean up” after his little brother. So the younger boy takes extra effort to convince to listen because he’s used to consequences not actually being followed through on, doubly so when we see them like 1-3 times a year tops.
But all of the things we allow the kiddo to do have to be done with adult supervision. The knife block is actually kept on top of the fridge to reduce the odds of her getting to them. Tools are kept separate from their batteries. And above all, getting to do these things is considered a “big kid” privilege. Much like Grandpa Theo in-comic, if safety isn’t being prioritized, those privileges get revoked.
There is an online story – actually it’s about seven novels. Smart girls has been running for a while. But we have Terri and Rachel. They are nine. They have designed and built a robot. And a new girl shows up. Vicky is seven. And Terri and Rachel are doing something with the robot, and Vicky is just astounded – “They let you use tools???”
And Terri tells her, “Of course. Bot Bot (that’s the name of the robot) is ours. We built him. We use tools. This is a screwdriver. It works like this.”, and she shows Vicky how to use the tool.
But Vicky was just so stunned – they let you use tools???
Don’t tell me we are at the runaway arc.
I think this is more a cultural difference.
If the girls were 17, and Te Fahn came over to visit her friend Selkie, Todd would not think anything at all about her coming by herself. And she could stay until Todd told her that she had to leave because it was time for them to go to bed. Perfectly fine.
But because she’s a nine-year-old girl — “Your mother didn’t bring you? You came by yourself?? Oh my God!!” “Your mother is not coming to pick you up? You’re going to go home in the dark by yourself?? OH MY GODDD!!!!!”
Because in our culture you could not do that. You would not do that. You wouldn’t let your elementary School age kid go off by themselves. And you certainly wouldn’t let her come home after dark by herself. The very idea!!!
But these people aren’t human. And even if they were human, they’re not American. They have a totally different culture. It’s like with her cutting meat in the butcher shop – “Your parents let you use a knife?” “Why wouldn’t they?”
Maybe they figure she’s big enough to go four or five miles by herself.
I pity the poor mugger that attacks a little girl with fangs and claws and poison spit.
While the average joy might have a hard time with her (hard to say if a gun is involved) I would get a bit worried about kidnapping. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is some insane rich person out there that wouldn’t mind having a Sarnothi (alive or dead) as a curio in their collection. There is also the option of some drunk or high idiot with a gun getting scared and shooting her.
Provided, I don’t recall how light it is outside or whether she is taking the bus or walking there. Taking a singular bus (without waiting to change buses) and not having much of a walk to her bus stop (or having someone waiting for her there) during daylight hours wouldn’t be too bad compared to a long walk in the dark. I grew up in a rural area, where kids that lived close together would have paths through the woods to each other that were sometimes a long walk. Even then, there were still areas you didn’t go to, like where the idiots did drugs and road dirt bikes, hunting season, or the swamp, but it wasn’t the same as a more urban area. People are normally more dangerous than ehat you can encounter in nature provided the child is ‘nature-literate’ (as in knows what to do and what not to do and won’t try stupid stuff). When you have 20 acres of forested swampy land, the probability that some unknown wacko is going to brave the ticks and mosquitoes and the poison ivy to muck through the swamp and cause trouble is low except during hunting season. There are easier places to go have fun where you don’t end up accidentally sacrificing yourself to the mosquito or deer fly gods as a blood offering for their offspring.
Would having an adult along prevent an idiot from shooting her?
Adults are not immune to bullets.
Probably not, but it might make a difference in what people think they can get away with. Would someone be willing to pick a fight that could escalate if there was an adult there compared to a child that they would think that they could intimidate? If someone tries to rob her, and her reaction is to immediately screech or try to bite in response, the robber could shoot if far enough away. More eyes are always better than just one set, as people can be aware of more stuff happening around them. Doesn’t work well if you are distracted in conversation, bur bigger groups are generally less considered a target.
Optimistic explanation: her parents trust her as well as Selkie’s family enough to just wait for her to contact them about coming home.
Pessimistic/Cynical explanation: something bad happened to her parents, so they’re not able to pick her up.
Contrary to what the News and Soial media would like you to believe, children ride the bus/walk to school by themselves *all the time* and the vast majority make it there just fine. es, there are bad folks out there, but there are also sensible practices that kids learn easily and well.
Also, I agree with the cultural thing. out here in The Actual Midwest, i.e. Nebraska, Kansas, Douth Dakota. It is still pretty accepted for kids in the ssummer to be gone all day riding bikes, etc. At least in the Summer and on weekends.
That *should* be the norm — in places where the kids are not near too much traffic, leastwise. But now we’ve got incidents of parents being arrested and having their kids confiscated because they dared to think they were old enough, at 10 IIRC, to go to the park by themself.
Compare that to the Norwegian forest kindergarten, where they let six-year-olds climb trees and whittle, and don’t even have a fence (the kids just have the rule to not cross the paved road). Kids growing up in that environment get a much better view of the risks and the use of their own bodies, and the ability to handle problems, than kids who are told “you’re far too young to Do Things” until they’re like 15.
If I ever had a kid, I’d try to make use of Montessori principles to give them an early window into doing things for themself. For example, cleaning up, and portioning out food: I’ve long wanted to have a little kitchenette that’s kid-sized, adjacent to the regular kitchen, with a low-flow facet, a roll of paper towels, some cleaning rags and such, and a mini fridge where they’d have their snacks for the day. As opposed to always needing Mom to get the snacks, always needing Mom to help them reach the sink or get the cleaning supplies ready, etc. Help them learn basic skills for themselves early on and with less risk of falling etc.
Some things used to be the norm before places got busier. My great aunt used to take vacation bible school kids across the street to a park to have fun running around during part of the time. That street is way too busy for that now as it is one of the major roads in the city. Also, even if there is a 99.99% chance of nothing bad happening, no one wants to be the caretaker that had that 0.01% chance and something bad happened to someone else’s child.
In defense of safety rules, a lot of those were put in place because something bad happened and most people don’t want that to happen to their child. There is a difference between taking necessary precautions and going overboard (like giving your child a cell phone or whistle if they are playing in the forest in case something happens vs not letting them play there at all). https://www.nber.org/digest/dec99/reducing-accidents-key-lower-child-mortality for some information on how things have changed. Unicef also has some information on that front.
My daughter was watching Daniel Tiger recently, and the dad told Daniel that screwdrivers and hammers were for adults only. I thought (and still think) that those are odd objects to demarcate as adult-only compared to, say, a knife or a drill. The screwdriver was the oddest part. They were installing a toy doorbell on Daniel’s playhouse, and he couldn’t help because…it was a grownup tool? I ended up using it as a lesson for her on how different houses have different rules about safety depending on how comfortable a grownup is with a tool (conveniently ignoring that Daniel’s dad uses tools to work on clocks) and how good the kid is at following directions and being safe.
When she was 3, she climbed an 8′ ladder with my level and was checking my roof joist-thingies on the shed I was building and I just…took pictures. Thought it was cute. I helped her use the drill to put some of the screws into the siding down on the ground level, hand-in-hand. She had to have her safety glasses and gloves to help use certain tools, and seeing the different precautions that we adults took with certain items I think gave her a better appreciation for tool safety.
But then again, back when she was still 2ish, she was already helping me in the kitchen with hand-in-hand cutting of vegetables (with real knives) or stirring food on the stove. Helping in the kitchen was a reward/encouragement for good behavior. Can’t be in the kitchen if you haven’t been showing good listening because it’s not safe. 😉 And knives were only to be used if my hand was on her hand. She wasn’t allowed to unload them from the dishwasher until she was older. Getting popped with sausage grease while making breakfast was probably the BEST way for her to learn about the dangers of the kitchen because it showed her that you can still get hurt even if you’re being safe.
More recently at 5 (not long after she’d seen that episode, hilariously enough), I showed her how to use a palm sander and just handed it to her and let her try. Granted, the sander’s sounds are way scarier than it actually is. If it catches your finger, it doesn’t even do any damage. Husband demonstrated that to me back when I was nervous about using it because one of my hands has murderous intentions towards the other hand. It’s probably safer than a screwdriver and definitely safer than a hammer. She wasn’t a fan of it, but when she got to feel the wood afterwards, she was proud of how she’d made it smooth.
From a cursory look up of the character online, I feel like that’s more of a precaution against him taking apart things he shouldn’t than his own safety. Also he is a tiger, with paws, he probably has a good deal less dexterity.
True! Might also be (in universe at least, im sure in reality the show creators just didn’t want an influx of overprotective parent letters) in Daniel’s case specifically the fact his dad fixes clocks, bc you give a kid a tool, they’re gonna use it to figure stuff out and personally I’d hate to see my painstakingly done work undone by toddler engineering hour
I think its really cool you trust and have taught your kid safety rules well enough to do stuff like that! My dad works with kids doing technical theatre and theres definitely always a moment of aghast horror about the younger ones using more serious tools, but theyre pretty dang capable!! Where I work (also with kids) we talk a lot about “risky play” and how it helps teach kids their limits and confidence and how to recognize both and I think its really important so bravo!!
Thanks! She’s also just a great kid in general who loves learning new skills, and we try to encourage that at home. I think probably the most important thing she’s learned/is learning though is that even when you plan things out, mistakes still happen and projects don’t always go to plan. Sometimes we have to stop in the middle and think for awhile and replan before we can get back to work! For a toddler/preschooler, that’s a big struggle–not getting the desired result–and I think it’s helped her to be more confident when trying something new!
Twisting a lesson you disagree with into a lesson on how you shouldn’t believe everything you’re told 🙂
That’s the best approach!
There are some kids you can trusr with activities like that because they don’t get too curious or reckless with it. There are others that you do not. I had a friend who had a younger sister who was one of those. She was the type that couldn’t have red dye and I believe was ADHD. Her two older sisters were very calm and well behaved while she (the youngest) was just everywhere. She couldn’t always process the consequences of her actions. She bit me once when I was tasked with keeping an eye on her because she didn’t like me saying that we had to stay there for the moment. I believe she was around Selkie’s age at the time, and obviously it wasn’t an appropriate response.
Obviously there is a difference in between supervised and unsupervised actions. You can let a child do things themselves while watching. That is a whole lot different than letting a child who likes to show off unsupervised access to a knife. In the general sense, if there is an accidental major injury to someone else due to something you gave your child, would your child be consider old enough by the general public to understand the consequences of fooling around with that thing? Most people are going to be understanding if there is an accident involving unsupervised pencil use and a nine year old child. They are probably going to be less understanding if it involved a knife instead of a pencil. Kids are curious, and are going to do things without fully understanding the consequences of what could happen, which is partially how they learn what happens. It is your job as a guardian to make sure that they are competent enough to understand what could go horribly wrong with certain things and how to prevent that (ie: cooking) or do not have unsupervised access to things that they are not yet ready to handle (eg: firecrackers). “I didn’t think that they were dumb enough to do that with it” is a poor excuse if something does go horribly wrong. There is also a difference between having semi unsupervised access doing a specific activity in a designated area vs just giving them an object to use anywhere. If your 9 year old wants to help you make salsa and dice up vegetables, and is competent enough to do so without issues (as in they have done it many times before while supervised without any problems) , you don’t have to hover over them. That is not like just giving you child a pocket knife for their 9th birthday and letting them run around everywhere with it. Even adults can easily slice their hand while cooking, but they are generally considered competent enough to handle the responsibility and consequences of their actions, while children are not.
I get that. With my two nephews, I’d be cool with showing the older one how to do some of the things my daughter gets to do. His little brother (a year younger than my daughter), not a chance. Not even with things she did years ago. He…gets away with a lot. My sister says he’s autistic, but apparently his doctors and school say he’s not. Whether he is or he isn’t, the bigger issue is that because of this, anytime he does anything negative, she writes it off as him just having different needs and doesn’t actually try to correct any behaviors. There’s a lot of parentifying of the older boy to “clean up” after his little brother. So the younger boy takes extra effort to convince to listen because he’s used to consequences not actually being followed through on, doubly so when we see them like 1-3 times a year tops.
But all of the things we allow the kiddo to do have to be done with adult supervision. The knife block is actually kept on top of the fridge to reduce the odds of her getting to them. Tools are kept separate from their batteries. And above all, getting to do these things is considered a “big kid” privilege. Much like Grandpa Theo in-comic, if safety isn’t being prioritized, those privileges get revoked.
There is an online story – actually it’s about seven novels. Smart girls has been running for a while. But we have Terri and Rachel. They are nine. They have designed and built a robot. And a new girl shows up. Vicky is seven. And Terri and Rachel are doing something with the robot, and Vicky is just astounded – “They let you use tools???”
And Terri tells her, “Of course. Bot Bot (that’s the name of the robot) is ours. We built him. We use tools. This is a screwdriver. It works like this.”, and she shows Vicky how to use the tool.
But Vicky was just so stunned – they let you use tools???