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

reason.com

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

#71

Post by stego-tech »

I hate this comes from Reason (along with an opinion piece at the bottom about regulation is always bad), but the story itself is disgusting and a complete government overreach.

On the one hand, we tell parents they’re accountable for their kids, which is fair and reasonable. Then we build a society where parents cannot dedicate themselves to being effective parents because they both must work, unless they have enough wealth and privilege to afford (and find) child care services or can have one parent stay at home full-time. Then if said lucky-ass parent decides in their wisdom that their kid is mature enough to roam a secured neighborhood with active security patrols on their own, they get prosecuted criminally for daring to let their child develop confidence and independence.

It’s nauseating, and I’m tired of this “stranger danger” bullshit along with the societal hostility towards adults and children alike. We can - and must - do better than this shit.

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

#72

Post by thewillowcat »

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…

Even if we concede that it is irresponsible, which would very much depend on the individual child, it should not be a crime.

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

#73

Post by VBprogrammer »

dionian wrote: post #17

a 5 yo walking around in a neighborhood without a guardian or supervisor doesnt sound like a great idea to me.

You should check out a Japanese show called "Old Enough!".

I have a 7 year old and a 4 year old. The 7 year old started back at school after the summer holidays and some of her friends had to be taken into class early, showed signs of having anxiety attacks and distress. While I'm slightly hypocritical here, we live on a busy road so it's not really suitable for them to go wandering alone, we do try to give them as much autonomy as we can.

I'm pretty sure the societal pressure to helicopter around children constantly is a net negative to their well-being.

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

#74

Post by cmiles8 »

Honestly by modern “standards” all parents from probably the 90s and earlier would be just be thrown in jail.

Pre cell phones kids of all ages would just disappear for the whole day and show up back home for dinner. Nobody knew where they were. Nobody cared. Could be in the woods somewhere, off at the mall. And it was fine. Kids built bike ramps in the woods and jumped off them, sometimes someone broke an arm. Nobody sued.

The nanny state stuff is out of control.

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

#75

Post by tolerance »

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…

> 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.

Can't help but think that this is just swinging things in the opposite direction.

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

#76

Post by xattt »

jeffbee wrote: post #43
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…

Pedibus. So civilized. People in California don't believe half the things I tell them about life in Switzerland, such as "if you try to drive your kid to school the cops will chastise you" and "if you drive 40 in a school zone you'll automatically get a year in jail" and, of course, "gas is nine bucks".

Our school started a chaperoned bicycle bus, and it’s enabled a number of kids who live 3-5 km away to engage in active transportation once a week that would have otherwise been unable to.

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

#77

Post by r_lee »

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…

CPS type agencies all around the world wield immense power and are staffed by power hungry narcissists who get off on threatening to take parents' kids and coming up with demands they must follow

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

#78

Post by mikeyouse »

chmod775 wrote: post #58
KPGv2 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cr…

> 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.

That’s like 90% of parenting until kids age out of it. That being said, my 2.5yo kid can swim well enough today that I’d have no qualms at all about them being at a neighborhood pond by themselves in a few years.

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

#80

Post by tsunamifury »

jeffbee wrote: post #43
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…

Pedibus. So civilized. People in California don't believe half the things I tell them about life in Switzerland, such as "if you try to drive your kid to school the cops will chastise you" and "if you drive 40 in a school zone you'll automatically get a year in jail" and, of course, "gas is nine bucks".

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