Ready yourselves for Old Enough!, a decades-old Japanese reality show newly streaming on Netflix that puts toddlers front and center in a somewhat bonkers way (depending on your definition). The premise is that children between the ages of 2 and 5 are capable of doing much more than most adults are ready to admit. Okay, fair enough. But in these 10-minute episodes, very small children are given Herculean tasks, ranging from a 2-year-old running to the grocery store about a half-mile away to a 4-year-old making a multi-stop journey at dusk. Intrigued? Horrified? Maybe a little jealous? Come sit next to me.
Who here would feel comfortable sending their diaper-clad toddler across five lanes of traffic to get to the market? Bueller? Bueller? Well, that’s exactly what happened in the very first episode. Mind-boggling, yes. The child was armed with nothing but instructions, a little yellow flag to wave at cars, and determination (or, perhaps fear that he would let down his entire family if he failed in front of all those strangers with cameras). Forget the five lanes of traffic. Would anyone reading this send their tiny human across five grocery aisles to retrieve a box of cereal? Guessing that’s a no.
In both cases, wild safety concerns abound (hello, kidnappers). But at the end of the day, this is a reality show like any other. The families selected to be on Old Enough! are fully vetted by producers, and the kids are selected for coachability, direction-following, and temperament (except maybe the dude in Episode 2 on Netflix… he did not want to make that damn tangerine juice, despite making it out of the fields and to his home safely). Nothing truly bad is going to happen. And admittedly, it’s pretty dang fun to watch these tikes scoot around town on their own, saying adult expressions like, “You’ll have to excuse me now” and “Can you point me to the udon, please?”
But the show does expose a massive difference in how societies do or don’t safely set kids up for independence. In Japan, there is a cultural identity that emphasizes the village and taking responsibility for those who are part of the community. It’s a culture that extends to how they plan their city streets (see: extremely pedestrian-friendly) and how they help one another’s children. As parents—and particularly as moms—we know how important our tribe is. But our circles have become unbelievably small. Maybe we can extend them back out to our communities in some way—whether it be a neighborhood or a section of town where you feel like you have enough eyes on the ground to call around and get the scoop on what your progeny is up to.
As it stands, I don’t plan to let my 4-year old head out to the cabbage patch at dusk to wrench a bok choy from the ground with her bare, chubby hands like Hinako, 4, did, exclaiming, “It’s going to be hard getting this home!” But that doesn’t mean she couldn’t tackle a few more responsibilities at home. If my children can work a remote, surely they can be trusted to start a load of laundry, right? And as Slate put it, “A city that frees children also frees their parents.” That, I can get behind.
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