when do your children first play outside by themselves

[Chestertonian]

my older son is friends with a boy who lives downstairs.  My wife and I know the family.. he's gone with my son on fishing trips with my brother and his dad and sometimes we walk both of them to the pier and they like to "fish" although they rarely catch anything.. I warned them to watch out for 3 headed mutant  bass because it's the East River

My son has a flip phone we give him for when he leaves for school and he can go hang out with the other kids in our building as long as he takes the phone and stays in touch

My mom was overprotective and I had more freedom than he has cut I also had a bunch of older cousins and everybody know each other.  But at the same time it's dumb that they have to wait until his friend's dad gets home to go "fishing" and with daylight savings time in effect it's already dark

[diaduit]

I live rurally so upto 11/ 12 yrs old they do not venture pass the front gate, we have 3/4 of an acre plus a mini pitch beside that again.
Many considerations for me:

Age and maturity
Safe area
Passing traffic, is a main road with plenty of traffic or is it just local traffic
Are there boundary walls, pick a point they don't go past
Can you see them from a window
Are there friends in the area and are they well behaved
Have you neighbours, the village rearing a kid kind?

Bottom line for me is that while they are safe and should have free reign to explore, there ARE way more perverts and paedos due to online porn, no moral compass anymore and a lack of supervision from the 'village'.  So I wouldn't let mine out to play unless I had peace of mind regards their safety....call me a helicopter mom if you want, I don't want my kids buggered.

[Traditionallyruralmom]

 there ARE way more perverts and paedos due to online porn...

call me a helicopter mom if you want, I don't want my kids buggered.

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