I said NO to carnival rides - the type that show up at the local fair, rodeo etc.
Want to go to an amusement park? I’m good, want to ride the Ferris wheel that some guy with no teeth and the nickname of Carnie just assembled, that was 200 miles away in another parking lot the day before…Nope, Nada, Not Happening.
I’m 17 reading these (because I had nothing better to do lol)
Anyway, my parents have always been really cool about letting me do stuff. If I’m going to a party, they never give me a curfew, ask for the parent’s phone numbers, or say I can’t go. They trust that I won’t engage in drugs or alcohol because I have good enough judgement not to. They let me ride in cars driven by sixteen-year-olds, knowing that I wouldn’t get into a car with someone I’m uncomfortable with. Growing up, they NEVER accompanied me to birthday parties, pool or no pool. Heck, it was a free couple hours for them!
My elementary and middle schools are about half a mile from my house, a really short walk. When I was in third grade and my sister was in first grade, my parents decided to let us walk home together every day, and had house keys made for us so that we could let ourselves in. We would stay home alone like that for an hour or two until our parents would come home. This got A LOT of parent complaints, and a couple times the principal would stop us and call our parents to make sure that they were okay with us walking home like that. My parents got mean phone calls and emails about it too.
I know that I’m not a parent, and by no means am I judging any other parent on this thread. I just personally believe that my parents’ hands-off approach to parenting made me a lot more independent, and made my childhood a lot more fun.
We say no to sleep overs but allow the DDs do fake sleepovers - put on PJs, watch movies and we pick them up around 10-11pm. I was mad when our young DD was invited to a classmate’s sleepover party at a hotel. When I went to pick her up since she wasn’t sleeping over, I met the mother’s boyfriend coming out of the room… They had said no men were present.
No TVs in bedrooms, except DS as moved one in to his room. I’m not fussing since he is a HS grad waiting to head to college. 
No to going places without adults. I’ve told our children they can always feel free to blame us if someone wants them to do something stupid.
No to DS going out of the country with a friend’s family in middle school. I just couldn’t get comfortable although they are nice people.
Things I did say yes to: timid DD and a friend going to a concert, only to figure out later that is was metalcore music. (oops) Same DD will be allowed to go to NYC on a school trip later this year as a HS junior because she is just afraid enough to not let the teacher out of her sight.
This is sort of a different spin on the original post, but it goes to my being very cautious and asking a lot of questions.
For at least 5-6 years when my kids were young there was a very popular summer volunteer program for middle and high school students in my area. A large local church had the teens sleep in the church gym (boys separated from girls) one week from Monday - Friday. During the day the kids were bused to various low-income areas to do service work and at the end of the day they came back to the church for dinner/devotionals/socializing and (presumably) some sleep. It was always well-attended and I knew many families whose kids loved the experience.
When my DD was finally around the age that the program allowed, I called the church in the early spring to get the dates and some more information about what exactly kind of volunteer work the kids were doing. It turns out that the kids - all middle and high school age – were repairing roofs on the homes of needy elderly people. All of the kids. Up on roofs. Not painting, doing yard work, or cleaning up community parks but ROOFING.
The person at the church I spoke to was surprised at my concern and said that no parent had ever objected to the dangerousness of the work.
I called a friend who’s on the same parenting page as I am to see if she thought I was being overprotective and who at the time was serving on the finance committee of that church. I mentioned my surprise and speculated about the church’s liability. Long story short, the program was discontinued. Somehow no one who had been running the roofing program had ever exactly told the higher-ups that the kids were performing roofing work, and no one in the church office with risk management responsibility had thought to ask exactly what the kids were doing during their days of service.
Still SMH years later!
@nyuhopeful44 your parents style sounds like mine except I have an issue with teenage drivers.
My DD has great judgment however, she has no experience to know if her friends are good drivers or not.
I was pretty careful with drivers that she could be in a car with when she was 16/17. She is now 18 and has a much better understanding as she also now drives.
Her brother is 10 years older than she is, when he was in high school our Booster club bought plaques for kids who didn’t live to see graduation. We bought way too many plaques due to car accidents, this was not a risk I was willing to take.
My son’s driving instructor (and family friend) constantly was telling him “There’s stupid people everywhere JB!” It annoyed my son until he had his license for all of two weeks and someone backed into him in the school parking lot. He saw that it was going to happen but couldn’t move his car because of the line ahead of him. The kid who hit him wasn’t paying attention - that’s when it sunk in that “THERE’S STUPID PEOPLE EVERYWHERE!” means you have to assume no one else in the cars around you is paying attention and so you must pay extra attention. The story and the lesson have been passed down to our other kids. Also I remind them to help their friends be good drivers by helping with directions, the radio and not letting them text.
Pretty sure my kids were part of the program GnocchiB said no to. Loved the program, didn’t worry a bit about risk and was very sad for the kids and the community when it was discontinued.
“Pretty sure my kids were part of the program GnocchiB said no to. Loved the program, didn’t worry a bit about risk and was very sad for the kids and the community when it was discontinued”
And I’m pretty sure that as soon as the Church’s insurance company heard about this they ordered the stop. Insurance industry data shows that roofing is one of the the most dangerous things you can do. In order to be insured companies must engage is both extensive OSHA safety training and measures for employees. . Having a bunch of volunteers doing this was idiotic.
I said no to a lot of pop culture when my children were small. I was very restrictive about the TV shows and movies they saw and very careful, if less restrictive, about the books and music they encountered. I think people’s minds and spirits are shaped by such things. Now I’m only restrictive about physical safety, but I’m learning to let go (after I’ve instilled my fears in the kids, of course!).
I wouldn’t let my daughters get on the roof. They really wanted to. I did let them do sports. Sports probably cause many more injuries. Of course, sports also have many redeeming factors. I’m glad I didn’t say “no” to gymnastics or horseback riding, even though the latter resulted in two very painful injuries to D1: a bite on the arm and a kick in the groin.
I was in charge of the TV so I didn’t see any reason to tune in Barney.
@SnowflakeDogMom My husband has that same exact worry about carnival rides. Church festivals are big around here, and they always have those rides that look like theres one screw holding the whole rusty contraption together. Pretty much no one else around here questions them, and everyone thought we were nuts for not letting our kids go on them when they were young enough to be interested in riding them.
Very interesting reading. I can’t remember saying no very often - my daughter never wanted to sleep over (we usually picked her up before everybody went to bed), wasn’t interested in the after prom shore weekend, didn’t get any invites to parties which were unchaperoned, never wanted to do unsafe stuff (carnival rides, etc.), wouldn’t get in a car as an illegal passenger with a friend driving, and had zero interest in make-up, nail polish, colored hair, piercings, or tattoos.
She did however play tons of video games (usually with her father), typically got the latest game system when it came out, got a cell phone once she was in 6th grade (and needed to call to get a ride home), went to chuck e cheese (and yes - horror I had one of her birthday parties there), watched R and PG-13 movies before being the appropriate age (we usually went as a family to see them - things like star wars), and she went on the 8th grade school trip (Boston).
No “Senior Week” beach trip. I might have relented if Happykid’s gang of friends had coordinated a plan on their own, and then come to the parents with clear evidence that they wanted this for themselves. The planner was a mom who, emailed all the girls’ parents with details, and asked for commitment and money several months in advance. Which does make sense if you are trying to coordinate for 8 or 10 kids.
“They let me ride in cars driven by sixteen-year-olds, knowing that I wouldn’t get into a car with someone I’m uncomfortable with”
The reason a lot of states restrict new drivers under a certain age from driving with other teens in the car is all about distractions. Someone can be a fairly decent driver under normal conditions but as a new driver they lack the experience that only comes with that experience of driving under different conditions. Add in a carful of buddies and its not a good mix.
Of course we say NO and fairly often. I find it hard to believe that Americans could even think that many parents never do.
Well, I do know a handful of parents who have been raising their kids in the “unparenting” style (the label covers a lot of different things, but here meaning the “kids, not parents, know best” style), so yes, it exists—but I agree that it’s the exception, not the rule. It just can seem like the rule when you discover your own boundaries on some particular issue are (even slightly!) stricter than those of most of your friends.
I said no to yoga pants (outside of gym and home) through middle school and up to 10th grade when the trend took on new strength and I succumbed. LOL
No to too short shorts.
I think we have to adjust to the temperament of our kids. Ours have done things that would horrify many parents here, including going to parties with alcohol and no adults. But D and S2 seem to be oddly immune to peer pressure, neither drinks or uses drugs, and if the party is happening anyway all the other kids will be better off if we allow ours to go. S2 drove himself home at 3 am from the after-prom party when the pot smoke got too thick.
Some things we didn’t allow: no screen time on school nights, none on the weekends until chores are done. We have never owned a gaming system. We would stop movies if they got too sexual or cruelly violent but they have been watching PG movies since pretty early, around kindergarten, and R movies since age 16. No dating until HS. We have never taken them to fast food burger places mostly because we won’t eat it.
Yes to: off-road motorcycles, cliff jumping, mountain climbing and tree climbing, skiing OOB, walking themselves to school if we needed them to, carnival rides. Our kids are capable and adventurous and understand their own limitations. We are more concerned with backyard zip lines than professionally designed and maintained rides. It’s not for everyone.
On another topic, S2 had to go to the principal’s office because he was sitting on a 4 foot tall pole. The principal tried reasoning with him, “what would your brother and sister say if you were in the hospital, how would your parents feel if you fell off and died.” She then threatened to call us. He got in more trouble for telling her that we would laugh at her than he did for sitting on the pole.