Mom Lets Her Kids Walk to the Bakery Down the Block. CPS Chastises Her • Hacker News Board

Re: Mom Lets Her Kids Walk to the Bakery Down the Block. CPS Chastises Her

#21

Post by chrisseaton » Tue, Dec 25, 2018, 5:57 PM UTC

21 wrote: post #6

usaphp wrote: post #4

It is kind of dangerous for a 3 year old to go, 3 year olds like to run especially when they are with siblings, and they can easily end up running on a road, and then someone who hit them on a car will have to live their whole life with that tragedy...

Maybe, but according to the article until they are 12 it's not legal. In some countries, you need to drive you kid to school until they are 14.

> you need to drive you kid to school until they are 14

As in you aren't even allowed to walk with them to school, you have to drive them in a car? Why's that?

Re: Mom Lets Her Kids Walk to the Bakery Down the Block. CPS Chastises Her

#22

Post by klyrs » Tue, Dec 25, 2018, 5:57 PM UTC

usaphp wrote: post #4

It is kind of dangerous for a 3 year old to go, 3 year olds like to run especially when they are with siblings, and they can easily end up running on a road, and then someone who hit them on a car will have to live their whole life with that tragedy...

It really depends on the 3 year-old. Some kids are more cautious and attentive than others; and families with multiple children often have a decent "chain of responsibility" where a 3 year-old will look to a 7 year-old for leadership and guidance. Many kids recognize when they're being granted extra leeway, and they're accordingly extra careful. And some kids are utterly out of control and won't mind the simplest instructions. I wouldn't let my 3yo out on a journey with any 7yo, no matter how responsible they seem. Responsible parents will accurately evaluate their kids' readiness and maturity, and should give opportunities to practice independence where it's safe.

It also depends a lot on the local environment, time of day, day of year. And it doesn't sound like the kids even needed to cross a street. This parent didn't let their child run free: they stood out on the street and watched the kids on the "dangerous" part of their journey.

The biggest risk these days is that a busybody will call CPS, break up your family and traumatize your kids in foster care. Stop the fear-mongering.

Re: Mom Lets Her Kids Walk to the Bakery Down the Block. CPS Chastises Her

#23

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Dec 25, 2018, 5:58 PM UTC

bradenb wrote: post #8

I wonder how we got to this. I'm all for parents being protective over children that aren't theirs, but when did we develop the entitlement that we should police the parents of other children? Obligatory "When I grew up...": When I grew up (I'm 32), there were still murderers, kidnappers, drug dealers, gangs, etc. My parents and the parents of all my friends let us roam free from the minute we finished our chores unt…

[deleted]

Re: Mom Lets Her Kids Walk to the Bakery Down the Block. CPS Chastises Her

#24

Post by CorvusCrypto » Tue, Dec 25, 2018, 5:59 PM UTC

This is kind of a grey area it seems. Manitoba IS one province that specifies a legal minimum age of supervision (12) but it applies only to being left at home or in a car (edit: I was wrong about these specifics. They leave it more generalized in the actual law) and is still left with a clause about "unless reasonable situations exist". Meanwhile the age to allow kids to walk to school, while unofficial and no limit exists across canafa, seems to be 9 years by majority opinion agreements.

Sounds like this social worker stepped out of bounds. If Canadian government is by and large okay with kids walking to school themselves at 9, surely walking a block with a 9 year old is reasonable enough. It's clear the parent was still aware of where they were so I'd say it's an arguable case, but IANAL.

Tbh I don't know if this is just one isolated case, but it kinda sounds like it.

Edit: here is the law and I linked the subsection that is relevant. It more clearly states what I paraphrased above. https://web2.gov.mb.ca/laws/statutes/ccsm/c080e.php#17(2)

Re: Mom Lets Her Kids Walk to the Bakery Down the Block. CPS Chastises Her

#25

Post by icelancer » Tue, Dec 25, 2018, 5:59 PM UTC

bradenb wrote: post #8

I wonder how we got to this. I'm all for parents being protective over children that aren't theirs, but when did we develop the entitlement that we should police the parents of other children? Obligatory "When I grew up...": When I grew up (I'm 32), there were still murderers, kidnappers, drug dealers, gangs, etc. My parents and the parents of all my friends let us roam free from the minute we finished our chores unt…

Greater access to television and the evening news ritual did us in. Watching constant daily reports on murders and robberies in your city tends to cause people to think that the sky is falling, when of course, crime has been collapsing since the 1990s. [0]

In fairness to the current generation of parents in their late 30s to early 50s, violent crime spiked dramatically in the 1990s and has only recently returned to 1960s levels, and people cement their worldviews in their teenage / early 20s and rarely change their minds afterwards. So as faulty of a process as their reasoning is, they did grow up in a generation of the most violent crime our nation has dealt with in recent history; add that to the media frenzy (and that weird obsession / fear of satanism in the late 90s too) and you get a generation of overprotective parents.

[0]: https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/dec...

Re: Mom Lets Her Kids Walk to the Bakery Down the Block. CPS Chastises Her

#26

Post by raverbashing » Tue, Dec 25, 2018, 5:59 PM UTC

sys_64738 wrote: post #9

The busy body who was "following closely behind them" sounds like she could have been a kidnapper. The parent should have called the police on that person.

Yeah, maybe they should consider legal action against this person as well.

(Not surprising this is Canada t.b.h. this is the country where it seems people can't follow common sense in place of procedures and where people are too worried about anything that "might be dangerous")

And of course kids die because of such stupidity https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ontario-mom-urges-scho...

Re: Mom Lets Her Kids Walk to the Bakery Down the Block. CPS Chastises Her

#27

Post by upofadown » Tue, Dec 25, 2018, 6:01 PM UTC

This was a pretty big story at the time here in Winnipeg. The context is that CPS has a bad rep here. Note that they took a whole month even to follow up on the complaint.

Re: Mom Lets Her Kids Walk to the Bakery Down the Block. CPS Chastises Her

#28

Post by icelancer » Tue, Dec 25, 2018, 6:01 PM UTC

petermcneeley wrote: post #10

You can see the social erosion when you compare to a more coherent society like say japan. https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2015/09/why-are-littl...

These posts rarely point out incredibly strict immigration policies and the stark racial makeup of the countries that rely on group dynamics for rather inconvenient reasons. When you have a largely homogenous population that has been stable over decades - centuries in the case of Japan - then these types of relationships evolve.

Re: Mom Lets Her Kids Walk to the Bakery Down the Block. CPS Chastises Her

#29

Post by sverige » Tue, Dec 25, 2018, 6:03 PM UTC

ams6110 wrote: post #12

I biked all over my Midwest USA neighborhood, to and from school, and beyond from the time I was about 8, maybe even younger. This was in the 1970s. It would have been unthinkable for anyone to be overly worried about it, much less report it to the authorities, because that's what almost all the kids did.

Not only did we go all over our little town by ourselves, if we did something we weren't supposed to be doing, someone would call our parents. Not the cops, not CPS, our parents -- which was far worse.

Re: Mom Lets Her Kids Walk to the Bakery Down the Block. CPS Chastises Her

#30

Post by hashr8064 » Tue, Dec 25, 2018, 6:03 PM UTC

bradenb wrote: post #8

I wonder how we got to this. I'm all for parents being protective over children that aren't theirs, but when did we develop the entitlement that we should police the parents of other children? Obligatory "When I grew up...": When I grew up (I'm 32), there were still murderers, kidnappers, drug dealers, gangs, etc. My parents and the parents of all my friends let us roam free from the minute we finished our chores unt…

completely agree. I'm roughly same age as you, same experience. When we were kids we literally ran all over the place until dark with no adult supervision. Man I still remember coming home, having cuts and bruises all over me, having a pencil stuck out of my arm, bleeding, covered in poison ivy, the works. But I loved it! Those were some of the best memories of my life, exploring the woods, building tree forts and swinging from tree to tree with garden hoses we strung up in the trees, finding lizards, swimming with tadpoles, catching carp with my hands, building fish traps. Playing football in the mud on those perfect autumn days.

We used to build spears from old broomsticks and shields from rusty trash can lids and ride our bikes down hills at one another jousting each other off the bikes. I remember one hot summer day we actually figured out how to make our own fires by rubbing sticks, sparking rocks and using a lot of very dry pine needles. We then cooked ourselves some random veggies we stole from a neighbors garden. It tasted absolutely disgusting but of course everyone said it was delicious.

I don't get why so many people in our generation turned into complete snowflakes with their kids (don't forget our generation is also responsible for "gender neutral parenting").