Being a parent presents some problems. Irrespective of what you want, your children are going to take actions or be exposed to things that you may not relish. There is the ever-present possibility that they will experience things that you want to actively protect them from. The web provides some salient examples, like pornography. I really don\u27t want my eight-year-old seeing pornography. However, when my eight-year-old asks me an important Dungeons & Dragons question like,  Dad, can a paladin do magic and wear armour?  or he wants to know how solar panels operate, I always encourage him to look on the web. I\u27ve taught him to search on Google, to follow his curiosity, and I sometimes do it with him. Ultimately, I want him to be able to seek answers to the questions that are interesting to him independently. He is guaranteed to run into something dodgy on the web and my wife and I can take ordinary precautions. To our way of thinking, however, more extreme precautions - prohibiting unsupervised internet use and high level parental control - start to present their own risks. One might ask, at what age should I allow my child to use the web unsupervised

de Rosnay, Marc

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University of Wollongong Research Online Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers Faculty of Arts, Social Sciences & Humanities 2015 Milestones: what is the 'right' age for kids to travel alone, surf the web, learn about war? Marc de Rosnay University of Wollongong, marcd@uow.edu.au Follow this and additional works at: https://ro.uow.edu.au/sspapers  Part of the Education Commons, and the Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons Recommended Citation de Rosnay, Marc, "Milestones: what is the 'right' age for kids to travel alone, surf the web, learn about war?" (2015). Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers. 1416. https://ro.uow.edu.au/sspapers/1416 Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library: research-pubs@uow.edu.au Milestones: what is the 'right' age for kids to travel alone, surf the web, learn about war? Abstract Being a parent presents some problems. Irrespective of what you want, your children are going to take actions or be exposed to things that you may not relish. There is the ever-present possibility that they will experience things that you want to actively protect them from. The web provides some salient examples, like pornography. I really don't want my eight-year-old seeing pornography. However, when my eight-year-old asks me an important Dungeons & Dragons question like, "Dad, can a paladin do magic and wear armour?" or he wants to know how solar panels operate, I always encourage him to look on the web. I've taught him to search on Google, to follow his curiosity, and I sometimes do it with him. Ultimately, I want him to be able to seek answers to the questions that are interesting to him independently. He is guaranteed to run into something dodgy on the web and my wife and I can take ordinary precautions. To our way of thinking, however, more extreme precautions - prohibiting unsupervised internet use and high level parental control - start to present their own risks. One might ask, at what age should I allow my child to use the web unsupervised? Keywords milestones, learn, web, surf, alone, travel, war, kids, about, age, right Disciplines Education | Social and Behavioral Sciences Publication Details de Rosnay, M. (2015). Milestones: what is the 'right' age for kids to travel alone, surf the web, learn about war?. The Conversation, 5 January 1-4. This journal article is available at Research Online: https://ro.uow.edu.au/sspapers/1416 Marc de Rosnay5 January 2015, 6.09am AEDTAUT HO RProfessor and Head ofEarly Start, School ofEducation at University ofWollongongBeing a parent presents some problems. Irrespective of what you want, your children aregoing to take actions or be exposed to things that you may not relish. There is theever-present possibility that they will experience things that you want to actively protect themfrom. The web provides some salient examples, like pornography. I really don’t want my eight-year-old seeing pornography.However, when my eight-year-old asks me an important Dungeons & Dragons question like,“Dad, can a paladin do magic and wear armour?” or he wants to know how solar panelsoperate, I always encourage him to look on the web. I’ve taught him to search on Google, tofollow his curiosity, and I sometimes do it with him.Ultimately, I want him to be able to seek answers to the questions that are interesting to himindependently. He is guaranteed to run into something dodgy on the web and my wife and Ican take ordinary precautions.To our way of thinking, however, more extreme precautions – prohibiting unsupervised internetuse and high level parental control – start to present their own risks.One might ask, at what age should I allow my child to use the web unsupervised?At what age should I let my kids get to school on their own?Age-appropriate milestones vary for all children, but there aresome important things to think about… Flickr/Hector DePereda, CC BY-SAMilestones: what is the 'right' age for kids to travel alone, surf the web,... https://theconversation.com/milestones-what-is-the-right-age-for-kids-t...1 of 4 22/04/2015 10:32 AMFrom the perspective of developmental and educational psychology, this is a slightly oddquestion. Let me explain. Most parents are familiar with the idea that certain developmentalachievements happen at specific ages. Thus, infants become more wary of strangers at aboutnine months of age (stranger wariness) and they start to point communicatively by about 12months of age (declarative pointing). These kinds developments in the child’s capacity are tobe expected in all children given a typical environment; we call them developmentalmilestones.But at what age should a childride a bike? At what ageshould a child go to the shopsalone, or stay at home alone?When should we start to talkto children/adolescents abouttheir emerging sexuality? Andwhen do we tell them aboutthe Holocaust? Thesequestions don’t have simpleanswers. This is where thecomplex issue of bringing upa child becomes … well,complex.To put it bluntly, there is noriding-a-bicycledevelopmental milestone.Some people don’t ride bikes, others start when they are two years old, like the Dutch.Strange though it may sound, as well as being a physical accomplishment, riding a bicycle isalso a cultural accomplishment (again, think of the Dutch).Recently, a great deal has been learnt about the ways in which children acquire culturalknowledge. Riding a bicycle illustrates some of these principles. First, children see othersriding a bike and that may motivate them to imitate the behaviour. In early social learningtheories this was a process called modelling, the process of learning a behaviour viaobservation.But imitation is potentially more than just modeling; it seems that human children are highlymotivated to copy others’ behaviour especially when demonstrators are providing signals thatthis is how you do something; human infants and children seem to understand that sometimesinformation or skills are being conveyed, and this requires a different kind of learning. Second,riding a bike is a highly scaffolded experience, as any parent will attest, you have to provide abike, encouragement, training wheels, and so on.Largely physical accomplishments like bike riding don’t do justice to the transmission ofcultural knowledge. When we are raising our children we know there are all sorts of thingsthey cannot do that they will ultimately have to do, and we know that there are all sorts ofthings they don’t understand that they will have to understand.We often drive a wedge between skills and understanding, between action and thought, butthe falseness of this is quickly evident. I spoke recently to a friend who wanted herten-year-old daughter to be able to get to school, in the city, on public transport from theinner-west by herself. This particular young girl is very intelligent and responsible, I’m surethat she could have gotten herself to school at seven years of age. But there is no way herparents would have felt comfortable about that.Why? For her parents to give her the independence to travel to school alone they need to besatisfied not just that she can present her ticket, change trains and get on the right bus, theyAt what age can a child independently surf the web?Flickr/Heather Durnin, CC BYClick to enlargeMilestones: what is the 'right' age for kids to travel alone, surf the web,... https://theconversation.com/milestones-what-is-the-right-age-for-kids-t...2 of 4 22/04/2015 10:32 AMneed to be confident that sheunderstands the importanceof staying on the path, likeLittle Red Riding Hood.This understanding is largelyderived from countlessconversations in which theparents have been able toconvey important informationabout the world and the risksit presents to their daughter.We know that children seekinformation from the peoplethey trust, and from peoplewho have a good record atproviding useful information; actually, these two things are not unconnected. Between earlychildhood and mid-adolescence children have to understand all sort of things for which theyneed information from people they trust.The information we convey to our children, and the manner in which we do it, helps preparethem for life. For most things, like knowledge about their bodies and sexuality, there is noparticular moment at which children are ready for specific knowledge or experience, and muchof this we can’t control anyway.But what we can do is answer their questions honestly in a manner that is appropriate for theirage, and conveys our values. The risks of overprotection are simple: children will grow upanyway but they won’t have access to good information from people that they trust.So what age is a good age?It is very difficult to put an age on when a child should or shouldn’t be able to grasp a newdomain of independence. Your decisions will depend on specific circumstances; in someneighbourhoods you might be comfortable sending your child to the shops alone at ten years,in others you may wait until they are 14. Traffic is also a big issue. Managing risk is critical.The web provides a salient example. By year five or six today’s children should have somefreedom to search for the information they need independently. They can do this in a familyspace rather than in their bedroom. Talk to them honestly about the unsavoury content on theweb, this will give them a framework for managing troubling or embarrassing content with you.Independent action is alsovery important for children.Think back to your ownchildhood, there is a goodchance that some of yourfondest memories don’tinvolve adults. Sometimes,children can walk to theshops before they are 12years old, and around thistime they should be able tostay in the house for a littlewhile as well.The law on leaving childrenThe age at which learning about sensitive topics like war andwatching the news can vary from child to child Flickr/SarahHorrigan, CC BYClick to enlargeHow old is too young to ride a bike? Flickr/Travis Swan, CCBYClick to enlargeMilestones: what is the 'right' age for kids to travel alone, surf the web,... https://theconversation.com/milestones-what-is-the-right-age-for-kids-t...3 of 4 22/04/2015 10:32 AMalone isn’t simple, and this is a good thing too because it tacitly recognises that there is noage at which it becomes appropriate to leave your child alone. Six is too young, 16 is too old.By 11 years you should be thinking about it.Watching the news is an interesting challenge. Children need to make sense of what they see,and that isn’t always simple because it involves an understanding of society, history, andhuman behaviour. I introduced my own children to upsetting ideas in a staggered way. A visitto the war memorial with my six- and eight-year-old was very important. We were able tospeak about war and death in the context of remembrance, and that felt good.Now, two years later, when I watch the news with my ten-year-old, she already has apsychological framework to understand war and the tragedy it brings. One or two news itemsare enough though, and they usually involve a history lesson or a discussion of humanbehaviour. I would hope to watch the news or read the newspaper more often with mydaughter by the time she is in year seven, and certainly on a regular basis by year nine.Independence is linked to responsibility and much can be done to build responsibility inchildren before they undertake fully independent actions. But when you give your childrenindependence you provide them with evidence that you trust them, and that trust fortifiesresponsibility in a way that supervised activity cannot.Milestones: what is the 'right' age for kids to travel alone, surf the web,... https://theconversation.com/milestones-what-is-the-right-age-for-kids-t...4 of 4 22/04/2015 10:32 AM

Milestones: what is the \u27right\u27 age for kids to travel alone, surf the web, learn about war?

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Milestones: what is the \u27right\u27 age for kids to travel alone, surf the web, learn about war?

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