Unleash our kids: Crime is at a 40-year low, but nervous parents are limiting their kids' freedom

[Patiod]

4. It's a tough call

but I worry for kids who are spending so much time sitting on their butts playing video games or watching TV inside, and not being shoo-ed out of the house like we were, and being told "go out and play".

There's stranger danger, but there's also a danger of type II diabetes and passivity.

The kids next door to me are not allowed to walk home 3 blocks from school alone from the little elementary school in the middle of a very safe suburban neighborhood near our house. Three blocks of almost zero traffic, through a safe neighborhood, at a time when lots of other kids would be around them. Not a lone 5-year-old, but three kids who would all walk together. I attended that school, and walked these three blocks myself for 6 years. No one has ever been snatched from our neighborhood then or now. I just don't understand this.

But as for buses - I'm with you 100% on that. I wasn't bullied any more then any other kid, but when I was bullied, it was almost always on the bus! They are nasty places.