The town where I do a lot of my shopping has some jackass that has made a sign in his yard (along a wide residential avenue) that says "Drive as if it Were Your Kids Playing in the Street." My thoughts were "Why not keep your kids out of the damn street so it can be used for its intended purpose?" We have this thing called a yard with grass and a fence for ours, and it is perfectly suitable for playing in. Dear Prudence had a LW the other day who was huffy that her neighbors had threatened to call Child Protective Services because she let her 3 and 5 year old play unsupervised in the cul-de-sac they lived on. 3 and 5 is much too young to be outside unsupervised, whether they be in the street or the front yard.

Dear Prudence had a LW the other day who was huffy that her neighbors had threatened to call Child Protective Services because she let her 3 and 5 year old play unsupervised in the cul-de-sac they lived on.

I read that, too, and thought the same thing you and Prudie did. I'm all for kids being allowed to play outside without Mommy and Daddy hovering, but really, three years old? There's free-range-kid-ing and then there's just stupid.

And free-range stupid.

Eh, I keep a better eye when I see those "blind pedestrian" signs, so I think these may have some effect too. They don't change my driving as I drive like a snail in neighborhoods, period. Hell if I'm hitting some kid that sprints out right in front of me.

Kids play in streets. Especially ball. I'd hate for that to have to end because adults can't drive appropriately. We have enough fat kids sitting on their butts as it is in this country. The afternoon street football game is an institution around here. I'm glad for it.

"And free-range stupid."

Does free-range stupid cost more, sort of like free range chicken?

I'm glad to be old enough that I don't need to worry about child protective services enforcing the opinions of neighborhood busybodies.

OK, what is the age at which kids can play outside without mom hovering? Be left alone for a half hour in the house?

For a bunch of freedom lovers, I sense a real love of making rules for others to follow.

Yeah, I know. It's for the children.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh2sWSVRrmo

Part of the problem seems to be that kids are taught that they are the center of all things. They do not look for traffic, or consider that a car may not see them. They walk right in front of moving vehicles and just know that the car will stop.

I see it all too often.

And I am all for fences to keep kids and dogs out of the road. I'm also for parents and neighbors keeping an eye out.

Five is not too young to be unsurpervised outside...
but if you live in a neighborhood where people speed past your house, then keep the kids in the back yard or take them to the park.

Five is too young to supervise a 3 yr old sibling. This mom (on Dear Prudence) was letting them play in the street while she worked inside. Her neighbor almost drove over one of them backing out.

I don't think kids should really be taught to play IN the street. But they do play in their front yards, and occassionally run into the street to go after a ball, etc.

The signs do remind me to keep it especially slow and be on alert when passing those households. Of course, only an idiot would presume they should totally protect their kids without supervision. They're more like "caution" signs, which must work to make people more alert or we wouldn't have them.

I consider myself a free-range parent (to a certain extent - the oldest is only 5), but I actually like the signs (however obnoxious the wording may be.)

I'd rather have the signs alleviate some fears of fellow parents than have my kids' friends locked inside playing video games.

MarkD, calling CPS on a freeroaming 3 year old is not absurd. Let's repeat that-a THREE year old. 3 year olds are barely potty training and may not talk clearly and don't have a large vocabulary. Having just had 2 five year olds 2 years ago, and a 3 yr old one year ago, I can assure you they can not supervise any other kid, 3 or not.

The parent referred to was working from home while letting her 3 and 5 year old wander the neighborhood at will. The neighbor threatened to call CPS. I would ahve actually done so. In fact, I DID call CPS on a neighbor in my old neighborhood for letting her 3 year old roam unsupervised and stinking of old urine. Guess what-big bad CPS didin't take her kid, and the 3 year old wasn't unsupervised any more when out.

If you can't be bothered to watch your preschoolers, DON'T HAVE KIDS or hire a sitter. Simple.

From the article:
"It's also not uncommon to see "Children at Play" signs in the presence of 35 mph speed-limit signs, which is roughly akin to trying to put out fire with gasoline."
Yes. Well, not gasoline- since the sign isn't neccessarily making the problem worse- it's just not going to do anything.

(And no, I don't condone letting a toddler roam the neighborhood unsupervised, no matter where you live.)

I asked a question that calls for a numerical answer. What's the number?

MarkD, it can depend on how mature your child is, but I think age 7 would be my starting point. Even then, I'd want to be checking out the window often, though not hovering. And I may be wrong about that age, as my kids are older, so I forget maturity levels.

As far as leaving them in the house alone, states have certain age limits under which this may be illegal. Leaving them while you're outside gardening or walking around the neighborhood is one thing, but driving off and leaving them home alone isn't usually legal until age 11 or 12.

My parents left my brothers and I home alone when older brother turned 13. I started babysitting for some of the neighborhood kids when I was 12. We all played outside from about the age of 5 on, but this was back in the day where you actually could play outside all day and there were moms at home that would keep an eye out for all the kids that were playing, whether in someone's yard or in the street. But in my neighborhood, which was fairly close to the beach, there wasn't a lot of traffic. And during the summer, we were all at the beach anyway.

MarkD:

My 3 and 5 year old play in our (very, very small) back yard alone. We accompany them to the park, but we let them roam the park/playground areas to a certain extent once we're there. They're in sight, but 100+ yards away.

AB,

Not to be alarmist, but that puts you at least 10 seconds by foot away from your kids. Many things can happen in 10 seconds...

Mark: Outside? My kids started in the (privacy-fenced, locked gate, dogless) backyard with the door open and me right near the door in the kitchen at maybe 2 for a few minutes? Out front, for short periods, again with door open and me in and out, at 5. My 7 year olds go a block down the street to the school park now.

Alone inside? I started leaving mine while I walked a block to the mailbox or walked the dog down the block to pee, at 6.

Is that a good numerical answer for you? I think it does depend on your kid-some older kids simply can't be left alone, but I think no one under 5 possibly could be left responsibly. I think that strongly enough I will intervene with others who do leave that young.

In general, I pay attention to street signs. I find them useful.

"They're more like "caution" signs, which must work to make people more alert or we wouldn't have them."

Not demonstrated.

I work at possibly the safest industrial site on Earth. Our construction guys have gone 20 million man-hours repeatedly without losing a day off for injury.

Yet our people routinely pass armed guards, barbed-wire fence and a dictionary-full of warning signs, placards, notices and whatnot (it got so bad at one point that drivers coming onto the site couldn't drive and read the signs) these people think they are "safe".

This condition does not exist. It's an absolute term, regularly fudged to mean what the speaker wants.

Signs may or may not have an influence, but the only way to tell is to make that single change of taking it down and testing the idea.

Well, like I and a few others have said, these signs do get our attention. I imagine for every one of us though, there are others who don't even pay attention to a stop sign. You can't do much about those idiots, but that doesn't mean the signs shouldn't be there!

There are a lot of hispanic families where I live, and for some reason, they almost always congregate in the front yard, not the back. They open their garages, sit on the lawn and socialize, as the kids ride those electric cars or bikes around on the sidewalk. They are supervising the kids, but one wrong move and somebody could fall into the road too fast for a parent to reach.

A few of them have the signs out, and it does remind me, at least, that this is a home where children are playing. I slow practically to a crawl in front of those houses, whereas I would probably go a bit faster in front of other homes. I don't see how it hurts to have the signs. Why do people find it so offensive?

Ashland, Oregon is home to Southern Oregon University, and SOU sits along Siskiyou Boulevard, which is pretty much the main street through town. It has something like a twenty-five MPH limit, maybe thirty, I'm forgetting just now, but it's not very high. There are a few stop lights along the road until you reach the city limits.

One fine evening one of the students at SOU was crossing the street while texting or talking on a phone, or maybe she just had her head up her ass, I don't know. In any case, she was hit and killed. It was a sorrowful thing, and a tragedy for her friends and family, as one would expect.

The City of Ashland responded by painting new crosswalks on the street with paint that gets slippery when wet, and the rumors about rain in Oregon are true. But what they also did was install Big! Bright! Signs! at the crosswalks, complete with Flashing! Yellow! Lights!

All of this visual overload is so distracting that it is actually harder now to notice people in the road. Congratulations, guys. You've actually spent a lot of money and made it more, not less, dangerous to be a pedestrian on that stretch of street.

When did we stop teaching people to look out for traffic, and when did we replace that wisdom with the notion that people afoot have zero responsibility for their own safety while placing all of their security into the hands of a driver that may be half drunk, on a cell phone, having a fight with his wife? Crosswalks are just paint. Paint is not a magic force field that protects you from any and all hard shiny things moving at thirty miles an hour.

Remember those 'Baby on board' signs? They used to really piss me off. Sometimes I want to swerve and knock down those little bright green A frame children at play signs people put in front of their yards. But I don't have a chrome bumper. Maybe I should take a more passive aggressive approach and start reporting these code violations, they're nearly all in the Right of Way, surely a code violation.

The elementary school by my house has about a 1 mile long 15 mph zone. Every time I slog through it I think the same thing, "How about the school takes responsibility for these kids in their charge and keep them the fuck out of the street." And like steveD says, I'm staring at my speedo in a 15 zone, not scanning for hazards.

"Her neighbor almost drove over one of them backing out. " That's why I want to install a backup alarm on my civic. So if I back over your kid, it'll be her fault.

As a driver, the signs don't bother me, although I'm concerned about the false sense of security parents might have (there are a lot of stupid parents out there).

As a child, I was always taught to look both ways, etc., and I was actually one of those overly cautious kids that parents loved because they knew I was not likely to get their kids into trouble. That said, one day I was super-excited about my new roller skates, and ran across the street to show my best-friend. Whoops. Forgot to look both ways and was hit by a car.

As an adult driver, I try to keep in mind that even the most responsible kids can get caught up in a moment and completely forget to follow basic safety instructions. So I always drive no more than the speed limit in residential areas and slow to a crawl when I actually see them nearby. I just assume the little buggers are going to dart out in front of me, like obstacles in a video game.

Oddly enough, I've noticed that many of the speed-demon offenders in children-heavy areas are actually parents themselves.

@Steve Daniels: "When did we stop teaching people to look out for traffic, and when did we replace that wisdom with the notion that people afoot have zero responsibility for their own safety..."

Did we ever stop doing that? Maybe. I'll add: did we ever quit teaching drivers how bad it sucks to run over somebody, even if it was the pedestrian's fault? Maybe we should remind people that driving under the speed limit is perfectly okay in the neighborhoods, that there's no prize for arriving first, that the phone call can wait, etc.

Smurfy: A mile? That's a long school zone!

Meloni: "So I always drive no more than the speed limit in residential areas and slow to a crawl when I actually see them nearby. I just assume the little buggers are going to dart out in front of me, like obstacles in a video game."

Agree -- that's probably the best way to do it.

I live in a relatively decent neighborhood and the worst drivers are the parents. Dropping off my son in the morning and/or picking them up in the evening is one of the worst parts of my day. Parents making U-turns in small areas, not slowing for the crossing guard, and acting like their child is the only one that needs to get to school on time. A friend had a parent literally tap her with their car to "hurry" her up.

I understand why the school doesn't get involved outside and off-school grounds. People like to sue. And if the school starts taking on the responsibility of getting the children into the school safely, they will also open themselves up to the liability of protecting the children. Even if the school isn't at fault, they will be sued and they will have to defend themselves, even if it's ultimately the dismissal. It costs all of the taxpayers additional money.

If I can't trust my child walking to school with the other parents, how can I trust them in front of my house. I purposefully chose a house with a large backyard in order to keep my child "protected" since I live pretty close to a main street.

And MarkD's right, there is a wide range of reasonable approaches to managing these risks. I'm a smidge more free-range than Mo4. I'll leave the kid in the front yard for 30 seconds or so while I grab another beer from the fridge. And that's what a good parent SHOULD do. A bad parent would yell at the kid to get them a goddamn beer.

That's why it scares me that we have entrusted CPS to come out and prosecute me on behalf of the "I hate to sound alarmist, but don't you know your kid could be attacked by a raccoon in the 10 seconds you were out of reach," crowd.

Yeah that was a bit of hyperbole. I just measured, it's an 1800 foot 15mph zone. a third of mile, but it sure seems long.

Nikki, as a single parent, I have to second the importance of having a backyard, Other than TV it's the only way I ever get a minute to myself. But now that I've considered all the terrible things that could happen in the 10 seconds it would take me to run out there, maybe I should choose TV?

OK, what is the age at which kids can play outside without mom hovering? Be left alone for a half hour in the house?

I wouldn't have had a problem with the mom in the letter letting her five-year-old play outside by himself, but, as lovelysoul says, he shouldn't be responsible for his three-year-old sibling. Leaving a kid alone in the house for a half our is different than letting him play outside unsupervised, depending on what the street is like. I'm with AB: backyards are better for them running around unsupervised. I bet this mom is one of those I used to run into at my store that let her kids do whatever they wanted while Mommy was shopping. Going inside for a little while and leaving the kids outside alone is different than leaving the kids outside while you work.

Would you really let a toddler play alone (or supervised by a five-year-old, which is near enough) near the street, MarkD? Or is yours just the all-freedoms-or-none argument?

You still didn't commit to the question, 6. At what age should a parent be able to tell CPS, "stuff it, the kid is over X?" I'll bet CPS puts that number at about twice what you would.

"That's why it scares me that we have entrusted CPS to come out and prosecute me on behalf of the "I hate to sound alarmist, but don't you know your kid could be attacked by a raccoon in the 10 seconds you were out of reach," crowd."

That's not what CPS does. I doubt they'd prosecute anyone for allowing a 5 yr old to play in the front yard, or especially, the back yard. They might talk to the parents and suggest it's unwise for such a young child to be near the street.

However, a 5 yr old entrusted to watch a 3 yr old sibling is clearly dangerous. Still, I doubt CPS would remove children from a home based solely on this (unless it happened multiple times or there was a clear incident where a child was injured or almost injured). In the case of the Prudence letter, the child was almost run over, and the neighbor was furious because he was left to supervise these kids (as he was outside watching his own - who were older), and it was also his wife that almost hit the child.

The mother was clearly too lax and relied on the fact she was in a cul-de-sac to convince herself that these young kids didn't need her direct supervision. That's just crazy. A 5 yr old may (barely) be able to watch out for himself, but he/she isn't qualified to be a babysitter.

So many points to make.

1. I drive slowly in neighborhoods where I know there are children. As a matter of fact, I was once stopped for "cruising for drugs" because of this. The police office could not understand why I was driving under the speed limit even though I had to sharply brake the previous day to avoid a baby in diapers who was crawling in the street. The previous week, I saw another toddler in diapers wandering alone on the sidewalk. Thus, I would not mind a warning sign and I would take it to heart.

2. I get very irritated at the slow school speed-limits. The speed limit in front of my elementary school was 55 mph. You had better believe that we stayed out of the street and looked both ways. The speed limit here is 20 mph even for college students. Therefore, students tend to take over the streets by walking slowly and stopping to chit-chat and kiss, etc. When I worked on campus it might take me 10 minutes to go 1/4 mile across campus. Irritating!

3. As far as free-range children go, my 5 year old was one - to a certain extent. He was very bright (reading at the age of 2)and quite obedient. I set the timer to check on him every three minutes. Our rule was that if he saw anyone, he was to come in the house and tell me. Then if he had my permission, he could talk to them. He was not allowed in the street or where I could not see him. He only got in trouble once, when he spoke to our next-door neighborhood without getting permission first. Not every five year old is ready for that kind of responsibility and no five year old can be responsible for babysitting!

You still didn't commit to the question, 6

I wasn't trying to. That's because I don't think there is a definite age where it's okay for any kid to be allowed to be outside alone. I'm not CPS, so I don't have to say definitively that by age whatever, a kid should be okay being outside alone near the street. Does CPS have a set age limit, or do they take into consideration the surroundings and circumstances? I do think a toddler is too young, no matter how responsible the three-year-old. Beyond that, it's hard to issue a blanket statement on when it's okay. Jen's five-year-old would probably be okay by himself, but Jen wouldn't just let the kid run around outside while she was working inside. Some seven-year-olds would be fine playing outside while some wouldn't. And a responsible kid playing outside unsupervised in a slow-traffic neighborhood is different than a responsible kid playing outside unsupervised in a heavy-traffic neighborhood or near a busy street.

There are many factors at play other than simply age. If your kid can't play outside alone without consistently almost being backed over by a car, age is not the only issue there. If your twelve-year-old kept getting into near misses with cars, you should do something other than say, "He's twelve, so he's old enough to be outside alone." Parental responsibility is the major issue with the mom in question.

Signs do not modify behavior on roadways, long term. When a sign goes up, people notice it. For a while. Then it becomes normal, and hence unnoticed and unheeded.

The only time signs have any power is when they are regulatory signs (black on white, or Special shape like STOP and YIELD) and they are enforced. This is very expensive and must be done regularly for the signs to have any impact (and even if they do, is the sign or the enforcement having the impact?).

If you think putting a sign up that says "Children at Play" makes your children any safer, then you should buy this rock I have, it keeps tigers away. If you want safer roads in a community (slower speeds, less non-local traffic, more attention paid), then the streets must be less comfortable. Narrower, cars parked on them, turns, maybe even features like Curb Extensions to make drivers uncomfortable.

"How does it work?"

"It doesnt work."

"Uh huh."

"Its just a stupid rock."

"Uh huh."

"But I dont see any tigers around here, do you?"

"Lisa I'd wanna buy your rock."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdBn5G7Y2RA

"If you think putting a sign up that says "Children at Play" makes your children any safer, then you should buy this rock I have..."

It does keep them safer with drivers like me, who slow to a crawl past those homes. Some of us don't need the threat of fines - only the reminder of the horror we would experience if we hit a child who darted into the street.

And I'm not the only one who has said he/she notices the signs and responds with greater alertness. So, how can anyone contend that it's such a stupid idea? At worst, it's innocuous. At best, maybe it's saved a kid or two.

If you want to ignore the signs, or be pissed off at them, that's your right, but it seems to only prove that you DO notice them, or they wouldn't annoy you.

It's kind of like arguing that kids aren't safer riding with the reflective gear on their bikes because we all become immune to seeing that and therefore it makes no difference. But, of course, it does because we notice it, and that's the whole point.