I sent my 9 year old and 8 year old to the store together to grab some milk. I could literally lean over my fence and see them the whole way there and back again. The 9 year old in particular has been chafing and asking for a bit more independence and responsibility, and by all accounts he's quite responsible. They did a quick and good job (I didn't want them to know I was watching for them, but peeking over the fence it was so cute seeing them running side-by-side, in-time with the shopping bag between them.)

Several people were like, "you sent your children to the store By tHeMSelVEs?!?"

Like, what part is this is so fucking ludicrous. It was two blocks. I'm like, "Do we have a problem with people running over children with their vehicles in this town? How many in the last year? 10 years? How about abductions? Lots of those? You know someone that had their children kidnapped recently?" I mean, I get that there's always a possibility, but at what point are we damaging kids by coddling them and stifling them? I even gave them explicit instructions on what to do if an adult is being weird, tries to take them, or get them in their vehicle. Ironically, I can't remember the last time someone freaked out because I put them in a steel box and zoomed down a winter highway at 100km/hr. I don't want to be flippant, but I'd be surprised if the chance of being abducted was higher than the chance of choking to death eating candy. Probably more likely to get run over outside the school by some strung-out parent late to drop their kid off.

Educate me if I'm wrong, but sometimes certain risks just seem to be disproportionately weighted.