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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

#91
post #2

This is one of those frustrating things. You're just not allowed to not be scared with kids. If you aren't scared of letting your kid walk to a pond, you get punished for it. If you're not scared of the kidnappers, you have to be scared of the police. None of it is rational, it's different how many of us were raised, yet if you try to opt out the law gets involved.

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[deleted]

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

#92

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

I don't know how old you are, so maybe you've forgot how it's like to be that old, but by 7 you're way past that age... crossing streets is not like going to war..

I think this is probably the reason why these cases come up

people age and then they think that a 10 year old is a toddler, and then they enforce that belief upon them

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

#93
post #14

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…

> So of course a reasonable judicial system tried to find a way to stop this wild behavior perpetrated by a woman with self-dealing political sway.

Wow that's a lot of assumptions baked into one sentence.

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

#94

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

Here's the thing: It doesn't matter how comfortable you are, you're not the child's parent.

Yeah, and? Being a parent doesn't entitle someone to do anything they want

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

#95
post #2

This is one of those frustrating things. You're just not allowed to not be scared with kids. If you aren't scared of letting your kid walk to a pond, you get punished for it. If you're not scared of the kidnappers, you have to be scared of the police. None of it is rational, it's different how many of us were raised, yet if you try to opt out the law gets involved.

[flagged]

Your attempt at sarcasm really fell on its face. It is not reasonable to be categorically afraid of dogs.

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

#99
post #61
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 last time I was in the US - a couple of decades ago, I admit - people were aghast that we walked to a store just a few hundred meters away.

3 people stopped and asked whether they can drive us somewhere... I mean, super friendly people, but... it's just a few hundred meters, come on!

You were the wild west, once!

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

#100
post #61
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…

On holiday in the Florida we walked to the gated entrance to the community to ask whether delivery drivers got access or we needed to pick it up at the gate. The way they looked at us, you would think we had two heads for arriving on foot.
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