I think my and my husbands generation might have been the last generation of Belgian children who were able to roam free. And roaming free we did. I remember taking my bike when I was about 11 and driving around far far from home. No cell phones, no maps. Once me and my girlfriend drove away so far and got lost. We stopped at a restaurant to call my parents if they could come and pick us up. We were at a 20 minute car drive away from our house. Yet this was never a problem.
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Sometimes we would leave just after lunch, only to come back for dinner. I remember another time, my brother, my neighbors and me were having so much fun playing in the fields behind our block, we only arrived after dark. My mom got angry at us because she didn’t know where we were. But that was it. She still allowed us to go where we wanted, as long as we came back before dark.
But even after dark, our parents didn’t fear. We have this tradition that is quite similar to trick or treating. Kids get dressed up and go from door to door. We used to do that unsupervised, and we’d stay away for hours. That was just my brother, me and a neighbors’ kid. My brother could have been no more then 12, which means I was not yet ten years old.
But when I was about 13, we had the Dutroux case. Young girls started disappearing and turned up dead. Fear of pedophiles got embedded into people’s minds, and children were no longer safe on the streets. Not even in small towns or in broad daylight.
Another attack at the free range child came from a totally different angle. Noise! Suddenly out of the blue, class actions started appearing resulting in playgrounds being closed down, on account of being a nuisance.
Two more factors eroded the child’s roaming freedom: open space is becoming scarce. New