Hello fellow parents, I suppose it's all situational. Maturity of child, safety of neighbourhood, understanding of stranger danger. My daughter turned 7 in January, we currently live in a typical middle class HOA subdivision filled with old folks and families. Since turning seven, my daughter is really trying to be more big girl like. She has struggled in her speech and behaviour up to this recent year when she was diagnosed ADHD and we started her on 10 mg of Ritalin a day. This isn't a subject about medicine, personally I weighed it heavily and decided to go with it, she's thriving incredibly and hasn't had any sign of "turned them into a zombie." Still her wonderful nurturing silly active self. The medicine though has helped her focus tremendously, and therefore instilling life and safety lessons in her has really shown progress. So my question is, if I deem her understanding of safety and stranger danger, can I ease off the reigns and allow her to start riding her bike up and down the street or to play at friends houses without me? Due to my past, I am on high alert for sexual abuse, but also wonder if I'm being more of a helicopter parent. I see lots of kids on our particular road riding their bikes, skating, running around without their parents in easy eye sight (inside their homes or in garage) and I'm thinking that I'm keeping my kid isolated due to my lack of comfort for our neighbourhood. The neighbourhood is great for average families in a good school district located across a local park and grocery shopping only 5 minutes up the road, but I have never felt like we fit in to the suburban mold. I often feel lacking as a woman of class, I feel white trashy and too aggressive, too stupid, too ugly to befriend the local moms around me. We are also younger than most the parents on the street, if only by a handful of years. I feel this lack of confidence has confided us more inside or in our own backyard, while my daughter has a school friend that is about 7 houses down from us. At this point, if I swallow my initial fear of being seen as white trash pos person who doesn't rake their leaves or hedge their bushes enough, to introduce myself to the school friends parents, see they too are normal and let my daughter start playing without me over top of her? Today I let her ride her bike a few times up and down the sidewalk, but in the opposite direction of her friends house. I would like to allow her to play with these kids without putting myself in other people's homes or lives. I accept an initial introduction and conversation just so my kid isn't some random child walking up to play. I see the parents and their daughters are the cool popular adults of the block with constant bbqs and kids over to play. I am not that parent but I have been when I lived in a more rural neighbourhood with woods and an acre of land between us. Also on a last note, is it acceptable to leave your child at a birthday party at this age? Or is that considered irresponsible and/or rude for me to also bot stay during and mingle. I will most likely stay because I've never met these people or their child, but curious to know if dropping her off for 2-3 hours is something I can begin to do after initial meetings with the parents of my kids friends. Please let me know what yall think or would do, if I can relax now or continue to have my supervision on her at (almost) all times. via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/2MuLmCS
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