Not how you solve that problem...

You know how people going woezering about kidz these days being stuck to their screens and not playing out Like Wot They Useter?

Turns out that actually, No, Not Like That: people don't like kidz these days doing Ye Trad Thing of playing in the streets.

UK families tell of threats and police warnings over children playing in street: Readers say they are afraid to let children outside after warnings from authorities and neighbours’ threats

Cars, dog poo, and delivery drivers: why children don’t play out anymore: Guardian readers lament their kids’ loss of freedom and the contrast with their own childhoods

Okay, while reading may have been my preferred pursuit as a child there were times I also liked riding my scooter up and down the street - and we could go to nearby green spaces, or walk down to the sands, and no-one got into a panic. Fewer cars, though, even if there was certainly dog poo.

***

Do we feel that this guy has possibly been brought up without contact with other human beings while being exposed to a lot of rom-coms? Because this is Not The Problem that needs solving: The Pear ring: will this social experiment really disrupt dating? A new startup is hoping to eliminate the need for dating apps by encouraging singles all over the world to wear a small green ring.

Given that women who find themselves in positions where they are likely to get hit on by hopeful blokes actually wear fake wedding rings....

Now, if this was something like a mood ring that would reflect the wearer's feelings...

Not, we think, that that would necessarily deter the kind of bloke that thinks single = looking for Ro-mance, no?

I can't help feeling that sometime, years ago, I read some sff story with this horrid dystopian premise.

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From:

lilysea

My feelings about kids playing in streets very much depend on which part of the street, and how busy the street -

kids have a right to play in public space

but should be discouraged from playing in places where there is a high risk of car vs pedestrian casualties.

I once lived in a block of flats where two sets of parents constantly let their very young (one was age 2 or age 3 - non verbal, only just taller than my knees) kids play in the carpark unsupervised, and it was TERRIFYING for me, because I had to reverse my car out of my car parking spot [we had assigned spots] very very slowly, knowing that if the 2/3 year old darted behind my car suddenly without warning, ***she was too little for me to see her in my rear view mirrors*** [for context, I had a tiny car, a Toyota Yaris hatchback]

I am genuinely amazed that neither child was ever injured.

It caused me massive anxiety.

I should probably have confronted the parents about it, but I didn't know how - and while the parents of larger child spoke English, the parents of the 2-3 year old that I was most worried about had zero English.

From:

oursin

Yes, with respect to what the street is like (we lived in a very quiet street well away from main roads), and being mindful of any actual dangers. But a lot of this sounds terribly curtain-twitching 'go and see what they're up to and tell them not to'.

From:

lilysea

I would like to see a sensible combination of:

lower speed limits for cars on residential streets;

increased small green parks for kids;

and people minding their own business if there is no genuine safety issue.

I also support some of the smaller residential streets being closed to cars as long as there are provisions for eg people with arthritis or broken legs or late pregnancy who can't walk far being able to drive through the street - I'm picturing a gate that opens if you have an electronic remote fob.

From:

davidgillon

I can't help feeling that sometime, years ago, I read some sff story with this horrid dystopian premise.

There's Bujold's A Civil Campaign where Kareen arrives back on Barrayar and immediately takes off her Betan earrings because she's worried her mother has hung around Cordelia Vorkosigan enough to decode their message as "Consenting adult, with contraceptive implant, but currently in an exclusive relation so please don't embarrass both of us by asking". (It literally fell open at the right page when I pulled it off the shelf!)

From:

oursin

No, it wasn't Bujold's Betan system, which has all sorts of safeguards and nuances built in, it was something much grimmer.

From:

lilysea

One thing I would really like to see is 50 kilometre per hour / 30 miles per hour (or lower) speed limits on all residential streets (noncommuting streets).

It makes such a difference to driver's ability to react in time and also to the impact if there is a car vs pedestrian accident.

Once, when I was taking driving lessons [in a completely different city from the one with the children playing in the unit carpark], I got massively yelled at by my female driving instructor for taking a corner at 25 km/hour when the speed limit was 60 km/hour. I said "It's a blind corner, parked cars everywhere, I can't see what's around the corner, I don't feel safe driving faster than 25km/hr round a blind corner"

It was bloody lucky that I did refuse to speed up despite being yelled at, because there was a small child, maybe 2 or 3 or 4 years old, standing stock still right in the middle of the street, and if I'd been doing more than 25km/hr I would never have been able to react in time and physically stop the car in time.

It turned out that he had gotten out of his car seat while his mother was putting groceries in the car boot, and his mother hadn't realised that he wasn't still in the car.

He and his Mum were INCREDIBLY lucky, because articulated/hinged (double length) public transport buses go round that blind corner every 15 minutes to every 30 minutes at 60km/hour, and a bus like that simply would not have been able to stop in time because of physics.

His Mum was blase about it, and my driving instructor yelled at her, and told her that our car was staying smack in the middle of the road and not budging again until the child was back in his car seat, buckled in, and his car doors locked. The Mum grumbled a lot, but eventually did it.

I don't know if she didn't realise how close she came to losing her child; or if she was in denial because the reality of the situation was too horrifying.

From:

oursin

30 mph is standard urban speed limit in UK.

From:

arkessian

20 mph most places around me (not in rural villages alas).

From:

azurelunatic

My area has recently dropped down to 20mph and it feels a lot more appropriate for a lot of the residential streets. And, I hope, will result in a speeding ticket for the asshole who likes to go 40mph+ down one particular street about 3pm every day.

From:

mrissa

The legal limit in our area is 25 mph on most residential streets, but you will see signs in people's yards/gardens near the street that say "20 IS PLENTY," sometimes with a little explainer beneath about how they would really appreciate you remembering that there are kids and dogs and wheelchair users trying to use the public thoroughfare with you so maybe you don't have to take your car absolutely as fast as the law would allow.

From:

arkessian

We were turfed out of the house as soon as Dad arrived home (he worked nights, and days were sacrosanct for him to sleep). On school days, we legged it to school (unaccompanied -- about 1 mile) and loitered outside until the gates opened; after school or in the holidays we headed for the Dingles, a wild park along the river at the bottom of our garden, now part of the Shire Country Park. Rain or shine, we are only allowed back in the house when Mum stood at the end of the garden and shouted that tea was ready. And no neighbour was going to shop us, because their children were out there as well.

In later years, I got a pass to stay indoors reading quietly, plus going to a school 5 miles and 3 buses away was the perfect excuse to not be at home.

From:

liseuse

I used to be on a Town Council, for my sins, and the town I was living in at the time had two bits of open ground with play equipment and football goals, with houses around them. Every single full council meeting had at least one complaint to be addressed from people who had, in full knowledge of this open space and its amenities, bought their house and had now decided they Did Not Like the fact that The Youths were *gasp* hanging out. We had a standard reply to them, which we eventually amended to include a reference to Article 31 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Do I, in my current house, particularly enjoy the sound of the kids running up and down the street, screeching with happiness at playing with their friends? No. It annoys me. But I'm never going to say anything because this area of Home City is incredibly open space deprived (as is the whole of Home City), so there genuinely isn't anywhere else for them to go nearby. I live in a terrace, the backyards are small, you can't play football in them, or use a scooter. The contrast to where I grew up in the middle of a small village in the middle of nowhere is immense. There were considerable dangers (quarries, a very strong running river, old mines, open moor) near where I grew up, but we didn't need to encounter them because we had open spaces and quiet lanes to cycle around.

From:

lilysea

We had a standard reply to them, which we eventually amended to include a reference to Article 31 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child

I like your style! ^_^

I don't enjoy the sound of children yelling/screaming (I find it stressful, bad for my PTSD, and at certain frequencies it can be a migraine trigger)

but what kind of arsehole complains about children/teens playing in A PUBLIC PARK?????? What do they think public parks are FOR????

Where would they prefer the children/teens play? A freeway? A supermarket?

Incidentally, I live directly opposite the road from a small/medium public park which has a small playground with equipment, and the noise levels from it are actually quite modest.

The noise which is actually distressing near my house is all the building/construction/demolition work going on nearby...

and all the BEEP BEEP BEEP of reversing earth moving equipment, trucks etc

From:

liseuse

They always seemed to want us to ban children from playing anywhere near their houses and we got bored of explaining that the children were, in fact, the people this space was designed for. And seeing as we couldn't pointedly remark that they'd bought houses in full knowledge and view of a playspace, we went for the option we could use! It didn't work particularly, but we enjoyed it!

Of course they also got up in arms at the idea that children were staying inside playing too many video games. So I'm not sure what solution would have satisfied them.

Someone on my street has a baby with a deeply inconsolable sounding wail. It's a very frustrating noise! But I'd take that over the unexpected chainsaw noise that happens on summer weekends, or the person who used to live next door who tuned their motorbike endlessly in the backyard.

From:

mrissa

There is a woman who lives between my mother's place and my grandmother's, who bought a house that backs onto a public tennis court, and she is ABSOLUTELY LIVID that people play tennis on it in the posted hours (usually 800-2000). Who could ever have imagined that buying a house directly next to a tennis court would mean that you would hear people playing tennis during daylight hours. It's unconscionable, what are those people thinking with their pock-pock-pock and their calling out the score just like they were on a [checks notes] public tennis court.

She has gone so far as to call the police to lie about some of my mother's friends, claiming that they were fighting and screaming obscenities on the tennis court, to get the police sent out to stop them playing tennis. When the police arrived and found four sets of people in their late 60s and 70s, unbruised, no screaming, playing tennis, the woman was fined for making a false report to the police, so that taught her not to do it that way, but she still goes to every city council meeting to tell the city council how terrible it is and try to get the tennis court shut down.

Teenagers also play on these courts, so in some ways my mother and her friends felt very lucky that it was them and not the teenagers when she tried calling the police, because they would get more benefit of the doubt on the "fighting and screaming obscenities" front.

From:

liseuse

People are so bizarre. I grew up in a tiny village in the middle of nowhere, which is incredibly picturesque. A couple moved to the village from a nearby city and then started complaining to the parish council and the local council about things like tractors using the lanes, the church bells ringing, and the smell of muck spreading. If you don't want to be surrounded by the business of the countryside, don't move to the countryside.

There's a lovely live music and comedy venue in Home City, which is in the middle of a primarily residential street; it's soundproofed to the max, the hours are restricted by licensing conditions and they do everything possible to not be a disruptive neighbour. A developer bought the building next to it, and was renovating it. Because everyone knew how this was going to turn out, the council basically put a planning requirement on it that anyone who bought one of these properties was not allowed to make complaints about the noise and disruption unless certain conditions were met. No one wants this wonderful venue to close, but you absolutely know that the people who buy one of those flats will try and get it closed despite knowing it was Right There when they bought their flat. I was very surprised that my local council were that proactive about it, but I think they're just bored of being contacted by people who chose to move into the centre of the city about things that come with living in the centre of the city.

From:

mrissa

Our small city had an old administrative building that sat empty for five years. The city had no use for it but had to pay to make sure the pipes didn't explode etc.--you can't just not maintain a building. So finally a local arts group wanted to buy it, after five years of no one wanting to buy it, and the people on the next street lost their minds. What if it was noisy? (It's primarily gallery and workspace.) What if there was food waste in the dumpsters that drew raccoons? What if people parked on the street next to it?

It is legal to park on the street next to it, and we were really tempted to ask people to do so before the arts deal went through, just to demonstrate that people are allowed to park on that kind of public thoroughfare really at any time.

But it just boggled me, because an arts group is one of the most positive neighbors I could imagine, but it became clear that what the people who lived in that small neighborhood wanted was to have the city maintain it as an empty building, blocking that space out as completely dead space for their dubious benefit. Tearing it down and having it be a park wouldn't do because people use parks. They wanted there to be literally nothing there.

I'm so glad they lost that fight, but it was a horrifying insight.

From:

liseuse

I've given up on trying to work out exactly what people want, because it's always so counterintuitive. People in my city seem to want outdoor seating for cafes, but not too late in the night, and they don't want there to be any noise, but they also don't want any nightlife to be available, but they will complain about having to go to our nearby Big City to go to a gig. They definitely want tourists, but not hotels, but they will complain about there being too many AirBnBs (which there definitely are, but without planning permission being granted for hotels, I'm not sure that the solution is), they want the universities to exist because the students bring money into the local economy, but they don't want there to be planning permission granted for student accommodation despite the fact that it would ease pressure on the local housing market. Oh, and they don't want a big carpark building for the local hospital, because it would be an eyesore, and simultaneously want the people who work at the hospital to be banned from parking on the streets by the hospital. Make it make sense, people!

From:

kathmandu

The rural back-water I grew up in had problems with that too. People From Away think that the countryside is a Hollywood backdrop, and are shocked and angry to discover the countryside has on-going activities. They move to Charming Fishing Village with the quaintly preserved architecture, and then complain because the refrigerated trucks drive through, moving fish from the harbor to the processing plants, at five am when the boats come in. Or they move to Charming Dairy-Farming Area and sue because they object to the smell of manure.

Dude. You knew there were cows within sight when you originally viewed the property.

From:

oursin

What, you mean those weren't Hallmark Property Cows???!!!! Infamy, infamy!

From:

liseuse

Yes, I think they expected All Creatures Great And Small, and what they got was the setting of some of that, but with actual farming and people and quad bikes. Oh the complaining about the quad bikes!

From:

sartorias

I used to wear a fake wedding ring when I was a beer barmaid in a rough harbor joint. It didn't stop the hassling, but it did cut it down.

From:

oursin

Yeah, well, quite.

Terribly poor stuff....

From:

azurelunatic

Given the trend in safety conscious silicone wedding bands, presented in a number of lovely modern colors that could match your designer workout pants, I'm curious to know the false positive rate in the wild.

(Generally advertised as a supplement to the real wedding band, but for occasions where a solid metal band could present a safety hazard.)

Edited Date: 2023-04-15 09:26 pm (UTC)

From:

oursin

Heh. Hijinx ensue....

From:

conuly

My anecdotal American experience is that if you want to have your kids play outside in an urban or suburban environment, you need to move to a poorer neighborhood where nobody has time to get in your business. Also, all their kids play outside too.

From:

silveradept

It seems the common complaint these days is that children are not kept out of sight until they have learned how to behave exactly according to the expectations of the most fundamentally conservative person in the neighborhood. And then they complain that this should happen not just in the streets and sidewalks, but everywhere in public.

I feel like the person with the Pear ring idea has failed to remember the disparity between "men fear women will laugh at them, women fear men will kill them" and also that most of us have a much better time finding neat people to hang out with and possibly date by being up front and going to places, events, and apps that proclaim they are for people who are compatible with their tastes. Just saying "I'm single" doesn't provide any help for what someone is looking for.

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It's Always More Complicated

The wandering thoughts of a wandering hedgehog