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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

#81

Post by Polizeiposaune »

thewillowcat wrote: post #48
armchairhacker wrote: post #16

How 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.

It happened because a neighbor was so disturbed by a child walking alone to report it, the police thought it was serious enough to refer for prosecution, and a prosecutor decided it needed to be charged using their office's limited resources. All insane. The part that really gets to me is that the neighbor was so "concerned" about the child's safety that they called the police, but for some reason, in their urgent co…

Perhaps the neighbor who called it in thought that if they approached the child themselves, they might be seen as a potential child molester.

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

#82

Post by cataphract »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #23

I 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

Really depends on the kind of upbringing of the child. In Mongolia 5 year olds are teaching their younger siblings how to ride a reindeer.

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

#83

Post by OtomotO »

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…

When I was a kid, about 3 decades ago, walking to school was a blast.

I had so much fun going there and going back on foot.

So much that when I was a teenager and my mother drove by my school one day and decided to pick me up, I was super unhappy, because I wanted to walk the 20 or so minutes with my friends to the bus.

When I had 9 hour school, I would need to wait 50 Minutes for a bus... or I walked the 5 kilometers home.

I always choose to walk, even when it rained, because I was faster and I loved it!

I am curious how it will be with my daughter, once she goes to school.

Because today this is totally frowned upon. But I will not play taxi for her all the time. Occasionally, sure. But CERTAINLY not every day.

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

#84

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#85

Post by djtango »

"they" like to gaslight us that cities are safer than ever. That it's social media scaring us into thinking our cities are less safe.

But in actually safe countries (Japan, Switzerland, Singapore) kids are already taking themselves to school around 5 years old and parents aren't getting criminal records for letting their children explore their independence.

Food for thought...

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

#86

Post by WA »

tolerance wrote: post #75
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.

No, it’s to counteract the desire of parents dropping of their kids in front of school with their car and causing traffic jams.

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

#87

Post by WhatIsDukkha »

teekert wrote: post #61
jeffbee wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

The US is extremely car focused, which they often don't really realize. Things that are normal here (like everybody has a bike) conflicts with their cyclers vs drivers culture. Such a distinction simply does not exist here. Instead we have roads that are red with signs "Cars are guests". Or indeed city centers where cars aren't allowed. When I go to the US I'm often surprised that you can't get to things that are onl…

The US has very low standards for its lifestyle.

We're told we are number ONE in everything but in fact its usually 40 or 20 when you actually go look at things that matter.

We never really notice because we think filling a big house in the suburbs with garbage from Costco is living the dream.

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

#88

Post by basisword »

>> A mom of five was convicted last week of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Her offense: allowing her 5-year-old son to walk about a half-mile by himself in their gated community.

Surely allowing your children to roam freely would be a major benefit of a gated community?

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

#89

Post by profsummergig »

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…

It's a high trust homogenous society without lots of different groups with all kinds of grievances about the past, present and the future. And it's probably rural, where everyone knows each other.

When I read the headline, I sided with the mother. But a five-year old having to cross four roads in total to and from (with vehicles going up 25 mph legally, and who knows how fast illegally) is a bit much.

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

#90

Post by NoGravitas »

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…

> One child walks to another child's home then they walk to another child's home and so on until you have a big group of kids walking to school together.

That's what I did when I was in first grade. Suburban US, late 70s. Lived at the end of a cul-de-sac. Met with the other kid who lived at the end of the cul-de-sac, walked to the house of a kid who lived at the other end of the street. Then the three of us got on the sidewalk of the main road and walked to the school.

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