父母們，不要害怕這個世界!

父母們，不要害怕這個世界!

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

讓孩子獨自出去冒險可能是你為他們做的最好的事情。

©. 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.

安大略公立學(xué)校的教師已經(jīng)罷工數(shù)周了，這意味著孩子們每周要缺課1-2天，直到糾紛得到解決。我自己的孩子對事態(tài)的變化都很高興，但我就沒那么感動了。帶著精力充沛的孩子們在家工作，很難對深度寫作有所幫助，所以有一天我決定安排一次玩伴。加入一個孩子會分散其他三個孩子的注意力。這在過去是有效的。

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.

我向一位家長發(fā)出了邀請，但被拒絕了。為什么?父母都是全職工作，無法安排接送孩子的車。根據(jù)谷歌的地圖，我們家離這里不到一公里，走一條街要花10分鐘，考慮到這一點，我建議他步行到我家。這位家長堅持說:“我不愿意讓他一個人出去，”盡管他已經(jīng)大到可以在他們工作的時候獨自待在家里了。

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.

這句話一開始讓我感到震驚，然后讓我感到難以置信的悲傷。我的孩子和他一起玩過很多次，我認識他的父母，也很尊敬他。他彬彬有禮、泰然自若、精通多種語言、游歷四方、運動天賦和學(xué)術(shù)才華橫溢。他幾乎到了法定的保姆年齡，不到十歲，但他不能在沒有監(jiān)護的情況下離開家。聽到這個消息我很震驚，這讓我開始思考，即使是在同一個社區(qū)的父母，怎么會對危險有如此截然不同的看法。

What's actually dangerous?

真正危險的是什么?

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.

在我看來，這是一個更大的風(fēng)險。讓孩子無限制地、不受監(jiān)督地玩電子游戲，更不用說整個網(wǎng)絡(luò)世界，據(jù)統(tǒng)計，這比讓他們獨自在繁忙的城鎮(zhèn)里閑逛更危險，對心理也更有傷害。然而，作為父母的我們，盡管住在同一個城鎮(zhèn)，我們的孩子上同一所學(xué)校，受教育程度也差不多，但我們看世界的方式卻完全不同。

'What's your long-term strategy?'

你們的長期戰(zhàn)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.

無論真正的犯罪節(jié)目、播客和報紙頭條試圖讓你相信什么，兒童誘拐在統(tǒng)計上都是微不足道的。這種情況發(fā)生在150萬兒童中就有一個。用《放養(yǎng)孩子》的作者Lenore Skenazy的話來說，這種恐懼與現(xiàn)實毫無關(guān)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，我假設(shè)父母不愿意讓她的孩子單獨出來是因為怕被綁架;這似乎是我所知道的父母中經(jīng)常提到的一種恐懼，在Facebook上關(guān)于“近乎綁架”的緊張?zhí)又薪?jīng)常提到。當(dāng)然，我可能錯了;她可能害怕汽車，這是公認的嚴重威脅，可以說是最大的。但我不認為這是真正的問題。

Stop treating kids like 'delicate morons'.

不要把孩子當(dāng)成“脆弱的白癡”。

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.

問題在于北美的文化中存在著錯誤的優(yōu)先次序，毫無根據(jù)的恐懼，以及被合法化且很少受到挑戰(zhàn)的媒體宣傳偏執(zhí)狂。父母們真的被恐懼麻痹了，但他們沒有理由這樣做;不幸的是，他們的恐懼阻礙了孩子們的健康。我們必須停止像對待“脆弱的白癡”一樣對待孩子，并以即使對動物來說也會被認為是殘忍和疏忽的方式把他們關(guān)起來。我們必須停止壓制孩子天生的獨立傾向。我們必須承認，孩子們有權(quán)一步一步地學(xué)習(xí)如何駕馭世界，而不會被父母的非理性所阻礙。