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| - Generally, in some societies, children usually don't stray too far from home without some sort of older guidance. Children that do go off by themselves usually don't go very far, perhaps just down the street to visit a friend, a nearby venue that helps children use their services, or to school if it’s nearby. If the child were to wander a farther distance, the guardians or the parents would (usually) be quite worried and would probably even punish the child when he or she came back. Examples of Free-Range Children include:
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| abstract
| - Generally, in some societies, children usually don't stray too far from home without some sort of older guidance. Children that do go off by themselves usually don't go very far, perhaps just down the street to visit a friend, a nearby venue that helps children use their services, or to school if it’s nearby. If the child were to wander a farther distance, the guardians or the parents would (usually) be quite worried and would probably even punish the child when he or she came back. In fiction, this is usually ignored. A good deal of fiction features children who are between the ages of 7 and 9, perhaps in order to help them relate to their younger audience. At this age, such children should fall under the situation mentioned above; however, in fiction, they will wander about their town, the country, or even the world with little adult supervision or even concern. They'll ride down to their friend's house on the other side of town and go to local venues that aren't anywhere close to their own house. Hell, if plot calls for it, sometimes they'll go down to the next town by themselves, or even the next state or country, with little to no outcry from parents, guardians, or child protection services. This trope is often justified up until the mid-eighties, when media-promoted fears of kidnapping and strangers caused parents and society to clamp down on the freedom of children to wander unsupervised. Before then, kids were commonly allowed much more latitude, particularly in the summer months, concerning what they did and where they went, often taking off on their bikes to local shopping centers, swimming pools, libraries, or woods. Particularly in a Close Knit Community where other adults would notice and intervene in cases of danger. In periods after the onset of these fears, these children will have Open Minded Parents who practice Hands-Off Parenting. Other times the parents will seem to be just like typical parents, reflecting the fact that Most Writers Are Adults who are writing from the experience of their youth, when children going off alone wasn’t anything remarkable. When taken to extremes, like long distance travel to other states or communities, or remarkable freedom in more recent times, this is an Acceptable Break From Reality. A show involving Timmy and Sally being driven everywhere by their parents and going out only with their family (or their friends with parents in close tow), with them ending their day in their rooms, only to repeat the process the next day wouldn't be very exciting. Audiences want to see their cast do something different, and there is only so much one can do about the home. Particularly in animation it can happen over time as an inversion of Not Allowed to Grow Up, with the characters remaining the canonical age they were conceived at, being drawn as they always were, but being given more adolescent storylines as the writers run out of child-appropriate ideas to put them through and take the next logical step. Compare Adults Are Useless, which shows up in this Trope for some works and compare with Toy Ship, which is when kids have relationships that wouldn't happen until they were several years older. Sometimes overlaps with Parental Abandonment and Wise Beyond Their Years, and frequently with low-age instances of the Competence Zone. May involve Kid Heroes. See also Staying with Friends. If the reason for this is that adults don't exist, that's a Teenage Wasteland. When combined with Dawson Casting, can lead viewers to thinking the kids are older than the production team intended. In modern years this is beginning to return, thanks to widely-available Cell Phones which permit children to be in touch even when they're off by themselves. Examples of Free-Range Children include:
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