When I was 8? I think, I used to take a bus to go get a VHS tape from the local rental shop. It's important for kids to have autonomy. In Japan, its pretty common to send even younger kids out on errands.
They even made a whole TV show about it!
Mom jailed for letting 10-year-old walk alone to town
181–190 of 203 posts
Re: Mom jailed for letting 10-year-old walk alone to town
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
And (to complete that picture) as soon as they turn 18, they get the boot to the street to fend for themselves!
you might have gotten the boot at 18 but many get a job or go to college and still live at home. where are you getting your numbers from?
Ah! Thank you for your question.
It was an addition to the previous post, although it might still happen here and there.
Re: Mom jailed for letting 10-year-old walk alone to town
#183Here in Copenhagen, Denmark (I'm American), it is very common for kids at around 8 to start walking or biking to school and we are in a (somewhat) big city. Even taking the metro at 9/10 by themselves is quite common.
Re: Mom jailed for letting 10-year-old walk alone to town
#184At 10 the state insists to protect you against being hit by a car on dangerous roads, at 15 it gives you a license so you you can drive one along the very same roads! Education in Georgia must be excellent if they make responsible driver out of kids not to be left unsupervised in only 5 years.
Although to be honest, 5 years as a child / teen feel like an eternity! :)
Re: Mom jailed for letting 10-year-old walk alone to town
#185Thankfully, it sounds like the child's mother won't be required to go to prison for a year - as long as she agrees to always have someone physically watch her son, and additionally surveil her son 24/7 using an app installed on their phone. I wonder how many people these days think that they're going too light on her, and are thirsting for stricter penalties?
The damage for the kid is also considerable. I mean, he learns that he needs to be surveilled 24/7.
Re: Mom jailed for letting 10-year-old walk alone to town
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don’t know what is up with the USA and its obsession that kids cannot have autonomy. This is a news story and a controversy because it's a weird thing that happened. The US is a big place. Societal norms and law enforcement practices vary widely from location to location. This appears to be one sheriff pushing a personal agenda.
> This is a news story and a controversy because it's a weird thing that happened. This kind of thing has been going on for decades now, e.g. Florida mom arrested after allowing 7-year-old son to walk to park alone (2014): https://fox4kc.com/news/florida-mom-arrested-after-allowing-... Maryland family under investigation for letting their kids walk home alone (2015): https://www.fox43.com/article/news/local/contests/…
And the parent's statement is still true:
>This is a news story and a controversy because it's a weird thing that happened.
How often do you read a news story that says "sun rose in the morning"? The news doesn't report it if it's a normal, non-controversial thing.
That's not to say that this proves anything one way or the other - just that the existence of n=5 cases where this happened over 10 years is not proof of a wider phenomenon.
Re: Mom jailed for letting 10-year-old walk alone to town
#187In the land of the freedom
Re: Mom jailed for letting 10-year-old walk alone to town
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
USA is actually way more dangerous than Europe.
Can you provide a source for that claim? Mine says the total crime rate in Europe is actually much higher: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Evolution-of-crime-rates...
Have you considered that the US has giant vehicles and a critical lack of sidewalks and other pedestrian coded cat infrastructure?
Re: Mom jailed for letting 10-year-old walk alone to town
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please use Google street view in any small town around the world and notice the prevalence of foot traffic. Even on roads with no shoulder, bike lane, sidewalk or similar. I've walked to school since I was 6 on roads not too dissimilar.
No, use the one for Mineral Bluffs: 1. Study the width of the oversize vehicle here[1]. 2. Study the lack of shoulder next to this guard rail[2]. No parent in their right mind is going to be comfortable letting a six year-old walk that, in any decade. And no municipality is going to let school buses drop kids at arbitrary parts of that highway, unless the driver is dumping them into a residential side-street. I'm gla…
That would definitely not been unusual in Germany in the 80s. Actually many rural German roads didn't even have that small shoulder, you really had to walk either on the street or on the grass. Kids learned how to handle this. There are even popular children's songs from that decade about how to do this, which is to walk on the left side of the road (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=La129TFxCGE).
Re: Mom jailed for letting 10-year-old walk alone to town
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
yep, we're old fogies now. at age 9 my best friend and i would ride our bikes about 5 miles to the beach. no cell phones. no arrests. no problems. we'd ride our gas-powered scooters to the gas station for slushies. we too played in the woods. i don't understand what changed or why kids today can't do anything on their own. it does not seem good for their development, which in turn does not seem good for the future of…
It could be that mass perception of crime levels is higher than it actually is (statistics say it has only gotten better over the years), possibly due to the number of negative media stories produced all day every day. Keep in mind that the "majority of people" are not informed skeptics like you and me, they can barely use a computer and largely believe what biased mass media tells them to believe. At least that's ho…
I feel the same. Constatnt agenda of fear in news slowly changes our trust in society, even though statistically criminality lowering.
I was kid in 90’s which was quite crazy in our country. I went to school with mine parents just once - first day. I cannot imagine mine kids with same approach today.