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

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

#31

Post by ramblerman »

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…

I agree 100% but I think you are putting the blame in the wrong place. When the system is bad, people will abuse it - always. i.e you will always get busybodys and idiots.

I think CPS has too much power here, to intervene in a case where there was no obvious harm.

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

#32

Post by paulddraper »

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…

> I wonder how we got to this

Here's my hypothesis

1. Paradoxically, because life is safer. You're less likely to die of a disease, starvation, birth condition, injury, etc. which makes your safety and health more controllable. So it gets controlled.

2. Fewer people have kids. After having kids, most people get more lax because they realize that children are remarkabley robust and also impossible to control 100% of the time.

3. People that do have kids have fewer of them. There's the cynical "we've got backups" angle, but also the "we can't monitor every single minute for every single kid". My wife is the oldest of 10 children. The dynamics of that family are very different than a 1 or 2 child family. There's a lot more compromise, by necessity.

4. Media exposure has increased the sense of danger. Each seat belt lapse, kidnapping, SIDS incident, etc. has 100 times the reach it used to, while the unexpectional cases are obviously not reported on.

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

#33

Post by eftychis »

Two comments:

i) The term reasonable, I wishfully think, covers this particular incident. I don't think the average family in Canada worries about kidnappings, robberies etc.

ii) How are you expecting kids to grow, and what is the lesson, if you are the watchful un-trusting guardian for even simple tasks for a big fraction of their non-adult life?

(P.S. I remember everyone walked back from elementary school, we ran errands for our parents, ... Any different experience?)

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

#34

Post by jnbiche »

quaunaut wrote: post #3

It's worth noting, this is in Canada. Laws are different everywhere. I know that in most of the US, CPS will not come out for a single complaint, not ever. It has to be multiple, repeated complaints, and the vast majority of the time, it needs to be more than a kid walking down the street- generally, CPS has more than enough real child abuse cases to deal with that they don't have time to pick up the odd stuff. Not s…

This is not true. CPS comes out all the time for ridiculous things like 8-year-olds walking alone in a neighborhood (first time). Read any parenting blog.

We really need a law like Utah's in every state.

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

#35

Post by harshreality »

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…

Parents (or other adults by proxy) seem to think they have to do everything possible to ensure that low-probability harm doesn't befall kids. Maybe it's lower birth rates making each child relatively more important. Maybe it's an overall cultural intolerance of risk. In any case, these adults fail to consider what that hypervigilance does in terms of developmental psychology. Not to mention the amount of time and mental energy it takes on the part of the parents or neighbors to be constantly monitoring kids that way.

The mass media and entertainment may play a role. Everyone can probably name several scenes or news events where a parent takes their eyes off a kid for 5 seconds and the kid is missing and it becomes a disaster. Those have major emotional impact and may influence real-life parent and neighbor behavior.

The paranoia has extended so far that Amber Alerts, which are almost always people known to the kid or the kid's family taking the kid (not really forcefully abducting, and not intending harm, many times just custody disputes or relatives who think they know better), are broadcast region-wide. I remember some idiotic website over a decade ago actually emailing their entire national customer list to notify them about an Amber Alert. And this was a long time ago. This paranoia has been creeping up for a long, long time, and it's not doing any favors for today's youth.

For every kid this level of vigilance saves from serious harm, I suspect it emotionally and psychologically cripples many more.

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

#36

Post by traderjane »

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…

It's not just the attitude of some people that they should punish the parents for not meeting some bar of parenting, it's that this attitude connects with a state instrument with an easily triggered process. Without this easily triggered process you'd just have judgmental neighbors.

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

#37

Post by jnbiche »

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 entirely depends on the child.

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

#38

Post by otoburb »

raverbashing wrote: post #26
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...

The Ontario law preventing children from carrying and administering their own medication was changed in 2015[1].

[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-law-passes-to...

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

#40

Post by toofy »

Do we have any studies done yet which show whether or not this is a growing trend or just random isolated incidents in countries with millions and millions of families containing children?

In my region and places I travel I see children walking around everywhere and there don’t seem to be armies of CPS workers stalking them.

I guess I’m just wondering if this is an actual trend or just more outrage_porn attempting to get people riled up about how the millennials are killing childhood or whatever.

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