Letting a 5yo wander off unsupervised to a large body of water is pretty dumb.
Mom gets 6-month suspended sentence for letting 5-year-old walk to the pond
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Re: Mom gets 6-month suspended sentence for letting 5-year-old walk to the pond
#32my dad and mom grew up in Peru and they tell me that at that age they were basically outside all day, getting lost in the woods, taking buses to the soccer stadium, etc etc. IDK - my son is about to turn 5 and we do helicopter him a bit, ... there needs to be a healthy balance.
Re: Mom gets 6-month suspended sentence for letting 5-year-old walk to the pond
#33I don’t think this should be a criminal charge but 5 seems a bit young to walk that far while crossing streets. At 7 I would be more comfortable
Here's the thing: It doesn't matter how comfortable you are, you're not the child's parent.
Re: Mom gets 6-month suspended sentence for letting 5-year-old walk to the pond
#34In China, I would see kids who must have been 7 years old running around the streets or on public transit without adult supervision. It seems like a much healthier way to live than in constant fear.
depends. my kids school in china didn't allow me to let my kids bike to school without supervision. (well, actually, they couldn't stop me from sending them to school alone, but they would not let them out unless i was there to pick them up. (there was only one crossing on the route, and that was close to the school and didn't have a lot of traffic)
in germany on the other hand, there was a case where parents demanded a school bus for a 7yr old, but the court said the kids could take the public train to school on their own.
Re: Mom gets 6-month suspended sentence for letting 5-year-old walk to the pond
#35I don’t think this should be a criminal charge but 5 seems a bit young to walk that far while crossing streets. At 7 I would be more comfortable
I walked to school alone when I was 4, crossing several streets. I bicycled when I was 5. This was typical of the time.
Re: Mom gets 6-month suspended sentence for letting 5-year-old walk to the pond
#36Letting a 5yo wander off unsupervised to a large body of water is pretty dumb.
I wonder if people who are down-voting you actually have children. I even know someone who's kid just died in a pool when no one was watching... My kids almost drowned themselves multiple times when they were below 5 yr old and they are trained to swim... My brother fell into a pool when he was little, and had to be saved... the list goes on and on... edit: Apparently it's the leading cause of death for 1-4 year olds...
Re: Mom gets 6-month suspended sentence for letting 5-year-old walk to the pond
#37Here in Switzerland children start walking to school at around 5-years. Parents aren't allowed to bring them to school. If a parent escorts their children to school they'll be told not to. If they keep doing it they'll get a letter from the school and probably a police visit. And if they continue (I never heard of it getting to this stage) they may be fined. It's funny in the morning. One child walks to another child…
This is the way.
Re: Mom gets 6-month suspended sentence for letting 5-year-old walk to the pond
#38This is so sad. America is really messed up. In other countries it is normal for a child to be allowed to walk on their own
Re: Mom gets 6-month suspended sentence for letting 5-year-old walk to the pond
#39How does this happen? There’s no silver lining which makes this conviction reasonable. If they can’t appeal, I hope they use Streisand to get the town or state of Virginia to vacate everything.
I'm not sure if this just bias from news stories but in general it feels like absurd things which would be avoided with just common sense from authorities tend to happen in the US.
Re: Mom gets 6-month suspended sentence for letting 5-year-old walk to the pond
#40People should watch the Netflix version of Old Enough! - it is a Japanese show where young (!) children 3-5 year old walk around the neighborhood doing chores. The one scene I recall was where a child was supposed to carry a fish to the butcher and was being followed by hungry cats.