父母们，不要害怕这个世界!

父母们，不要害怕这个世界!

Letting kids venture out alone could be the best thing you do for them.

让孩子独自出去冒险可能是你为他们做的最好的事情。

©. K Martinko

Ontario's public school teachers have been on strike for weeks, which means kids are missing 1-2 days of class each week until the dispute gets resolved. My own children are delighted by the turn of events, but I am less impressed. Working from home with energetic kids tearing around is hardly conducive to in-depth writing, so one day I decided to arrange a playdate. Adding a kid to the mix would distract the other three. This has worked in the past.

安大略公立学校的教师已经罢工数周了，这意味着孩子们每周要缺课1-2天，直到纠纷得到解决。我自己的孩子对事态的变化都很高兴，但我就没那么感动了。带着精力充沛的孩子们在家工作，很难对深度写作有所帮助，所以有一天我决定安排一次玩伴。加入一个孩子会分散其他三个孩子的注意力。这在过去是有效的。

I reached out to a parent with an invitation, but it was turned down. Why? Both parents work full-time and were unable to arrange a ride to drop the child off. I suggested that he walk to our house, considering that it's less than a kilometre away and takes 10 minutes walking along a single street, according to Google Maps. The parent was insistent and said, "I am reluctant to let him go out alone," despite the fact that he is old enough to stay home alone all day while they are at work.

我向一位家长发出了邀请，但被拒绝了。为什么?父母都是全职工作，无法安排接送孩子的车。根据谷歌的地图，我们家离这里不到一公里，走一条街要花10分钟，考虑到这一点，我建议他步行到我家。这位家长坚持说:“我不愿意让他一个人出去，”尽管他已经大到可以在他们工作的时候独自待在家里了。

This comment initially stunned me, and then made me feel incredibly sad. This is a child with whom my kids have played many times and whose parents I know and respect. He is polite and poised, multilingual, well-traveled, athletically gifted and academically brilliant. He is nearly legal babysitting age, a pre-teen, and yet he cannot leave the house without supervision. It was shocking to hear, and it got me thinking about how parents, even within the same community, can have such radically different perceptions of danger.

这句话一开始让我感到震惊，然后让我感到难以置信的悲伤。我的孩子和他一起玩过很多次，我认识他的父母，也很尊敬他。他彬彬有礼、泰然自若、精通多种语言、游历四方、运动天赋和学术才华横溢。他几乎到了法定的保姆年龄，不到十岁，但他不能在没有监护的情况下离开家。听到这个消息我很震惊，这让我开始思考，即使是在同一个社区的父母，怎么会对危险有如此截然不同的看法。

What's actually dangerous?

真正危险的是什么?

To my perspective, that is a far greater risk. Giving children unlimited, unsupervised access to video games, not to mention the entire online world, is statistically more dangerous and more psychologically damaging than allowing them to stroll alone through a busy town. And yet, we two parents, despite living in the same town with our kids attending the same school and with similar education levels, see the world in two totally different ways.

在我看来，这是一个更大的风险。让孩子无限制地、不受监督地玩电子游戏，更不用说整个网络世界，据统计，这比让他们独自在繁忙的城镇里闲逛更危险，对心理也更有伤害。然而，作为父母的我们，尽管住在同一个城镇，我们的孩子上同一所学校，受教育程度也差不多，但我们看世界的方式却完全不同。

'What's your long-term strategy?'

你们的长期战略是什么?

Child abduction is statistically negligible, no matter what the true crime shows and podcasts and the newspaper headlines might try to make you believe. It happens to 1 in 1.5 million children. In Lenore Skenazy's words, author of Free Range Kids, that fear bears no relation to reality.

无论真正的犯罪节目、播客和报纸头条试图让你相信什么，儿童诱拐在统计上都是微不足道的。这种情况发生在150万儿童中就有一个。用《放养孩子》的作者Lenore Skenazy的话来说，这种恐惧与现实毫无关系。

Back to my story, I am assuming that the parent's reluctance to let her child out alone is due to kidnapping; that seems to be a commonly cited fear among parents I know, often mentioned in nervous Facebook posts about 'near-kidnappings'. Of course, I could be wrong; she might be afraid of cars, which are admittedly a serious threat, arguably the greatest. But somehow I don't think that's the real issue here.

回到我的故事，我假设父母不愿意让她的孩子单独出来是因为怕被绑架;这似乎是我所知道的父母中经常提到的一种恐惧，在Facebook上关于“近乎绑架”的紧张帖子中经常提到。当然，我可能错了;她可能害怕汽车，这是公认的严重威胁，可以说是最大的。但我不认为这是真正的问题。

Stop treating kids like 'delicate morons'.

不要把孩子当成“脆弱的白痴”。

The problem is North America's culture of misplaced priorities, of unfounded fears, of media-propagating paranoia that is legitimized and rarely challenged. Parents are genuinely paralyzed by fear, but they have little reason to be; and unfortunately their fear is stunting children's wellbeing. We have to stop treating children like 'delicate morons' and cooping them up in ways that would be considered cruel and negligent even for animals. We must stop crushing children's natural inclination for independence. We must acknowledge that children are entitled to learn to navigate the world, step by step, without their parents' irrationality holding them back.

问题在于北美的文化中存在着错误的优先次序，毫无根据的恐惧，以及被合法化且很少受到挑战的媒体宣传偏执狂。父母们真的被恐惧麻痹了，但他们没有理由这样做;不幸的是，他们的恐惧阻碍了孩子们的健康。我们必须停止像对待“脆弱的白痴”一样对待孩子，并以即使对动物来说也会被认为是残忍和疏忽的方式把他们关起来。我们必须停止压制孩子天生的独立倾向。我们必须承认，孩子们有权一步一步地学习如何驾驭世界，而不会被父母的非理性所阻碍。