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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

#51

Post by alasano »

comrade1234 wrote: post #29

Here 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…

That's lovely. Also all the heartwarming ways things work in Japan where kids get a lot of autonomy and live their own little lives on the way to school, among other things.

Re: Mom gets 6-month suspended sentence for letting 5-year-old walk to the pond

#52

Post by dataflow »

That sounds awful. This kind of case doesn't seem like something you should let a single person decide on their own, judge or not. Is she not entitled to a jury trial because it's a misdemeanor or something? If she can find the funds/support somehow it totally seems worth appealing all the way to the supreme court.

Re: Mom gets 6-month suspended sentence for letting 5-year-old walk to the pond

#53

Post by triceratops »

daxuak wrote: post #5

And to add more nonsense, iirc collecting (possessing) bird feathers, that they shed naturally, is illegal in the US under the name of protecting migratory birds.

How do you prove that feathers were shed naturally, without harming a bird?

Re: Mom gets 6-month suspended sentence for letting 5-year-old walk to the pond

#54

Post by softwaredoug »

unethical_ban wrote: post #20

>CPS responded, he recounts, that "a 5-year-old child can never be unsupervised." I would immediately move from that neighborhood and that city, if they do not have roots with neighbors or kids' friends. These are people who see her as a bad parent for letting their child outside the house. >The James City County family services specialist assigned to Parkinson's case declined to comment, citing confidentiality requi…

I feel even if CPS or cops got involved, they can just take the kid home, no need to escalate things to charging the mom.

That said, there may be details we don't know here. This particular article is written from one bent, and the officials didn't comment on the case as is common in child-related prosecutions.

Re: Mom gets 6-month suspended sentence for letting 5-year-old walk to the pond

#55

Post by ortusdux »

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Enough!

Old Enough! is a Japanese reality show that has been aired irregularly since 1991 on Nippon Television. The program depicts, in a documentary manner, the efforts of toddlers going on an errand on their own, buying groceries and delivering packages, accompanied by the camera crew.

The American version - https://youtu.be/VhGTtWsW9F8

Re: Mom gets 6-month suspended sentence for letting 5-year-old walk to the pond

#57

Post by Foobar8568 »

comrade1234 wrote: post #29

Here 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…

> If they keep doing it they'll get a letter from the school and probably a police visit.

It depends of the town/location and region. In our town, police had to be involved several times due to different issues with creeps targeting 12yo or less.

Edit:And I forgot, as it's Switzerland, police moved only because parents were accompanying their kids and almost done justice by themselves. Protecting creeps is a national sport here too.

Re: Mom gets 6-month suspended sentence for letting 5-year-old walk to the pond

#58

Post by chmod775 »

KPGv2 wrote: post #14
ragazzina wrote: post #6

In the US a kid cannot walk half a mile on their own inside a gated community patrolled by security guards? This sounds more dystopian than all the AI talk. "I told [the authorities] that kids need to be able to take reasonable risks," he says, "in order to grow up non-anxious." I guess the system prefers to breed anxiety.

The article really glosses over the fact that the kid was 5yo walking to a pond. It mentions it at the very start and then never brings it up again. That's the part that got me: the mom gave her 5yo permission to go to a large body of water unsupervised. I'm a parent of three and strongly believe in letting your kids roam around (indeed, I live on acreage and taught my kids about the venomous snakes and spiders in ou…

That depends? My first swimming lessons were in Kindergarten when I was 4-5. We were visiting public baths "unsupervised" (they still had lifeguards of course) by the time I was 8.

Assuming the kid wasn't even planning to enter the water, I see no inherent problem here. We seem to be operating on the assumption that unsupervised children will immediately succumb to sudden and irrational urges to kill themselves in creative ways.

Re: Mom gets 6-month suspended sentence for letting 5-year-old walk to the pond

#60

Post by jenniferhooley »

KPGv2 wrote: post #14
ragazzina wrote: post #6

In the US a kid cannot walk half a mile on their own inside a gated community patrolled by security guards? This sounds more dystopian than all the AI talk. "I told [the authorities] that kids need to be able to take reasonable risks," he says, "in order to grow up non-anxious." I guess the system prefers to breed anxiety.

The article really glosses over the fact that the kid was 5yo walking to a pond. It mentions it at the very start and then never brings it up again. That's the part that got me: the mom gave her 5yo permission to go to a large body of water unsupervised. I'm a parent of three and strongly believe in letting your kids roam around (indeed, I live on acreage and taught my kids about the venomous snakes and spiders in ou…

Myself and my siblings all lived on a fairly large rural farm with 2 large bodies of water that we always hung around unsupervised from about 4 y/o onwards. We loved catching bullfrogs and watching the fishes and stuff. Our mom gave us very strict/scary warnings about never going in and being careful, but other than that we were pretty free thankfully. 5 y/o with a good warning seems totally fine.
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