One of the worst aspects of modern life. The most paranoid person decides what the right thing to do is.
The person who thought they cared about the child's welfare turned out to be the actual danger, and made the child's life much worse.
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
#132Re: Mom gets 6-month suspended sentence for letting 5-year-old walk to the pond
#133[flagged]
Nice outrage bait, but completely unfactual. If she avoids conviction, it will be because she was mentally not competent at the time of the murders, not because anyone approves of murder.
Re: Mom gets 6-month suspended sentence for letting 5-year-old walk to the pond
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
Virginia also has a free range kid law. And in particular, the conviction here was delinquency of a minor. That's usually used to convict parents of teenagers whose kids do serious crimes. I caveat to say, we don't know the full details. But it all seems pretty weak sauce.
I hate to to say it but way to often "outrage" stories like this are written for engagement, not assessment. The boy could have been spotted walking along a highway median, or similar detail that would kind of spoil the outrage effect. Lord knows the pedestrian hostile nature of modern infrastructure.
That’s possible
Though in this case the kid was walking all in a gated community.
Re: Mom gets 6-month suspended sentence for letting 5-year-old walk to the pond
#135What seems odd to me whenever this debate comes up is the failure to differentiate between: - the child must never be unsupervised - I/we think the child should never be unsupervised We have less and less space between an opinion or recommendation and legal requirement. On a wide range of subjects people go straight to “require”, unwilling to simply express their opinion and move on.
I agree. It's one thing to think her action was riskier than you would like for your own child. It's another to think it should be a crime.
Re: Mom gets 6-month suspended sentence for letting 5-year-old walk to the pond
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Exactly. It’s a collective action problem — every car dropping off a kid incrementally endangers the kids walking to school, so if there is no enforcement whatsoever, we’d end up with everybody driving, and a situation worse than in US schools (because Swiss schools were largely not constructed with drop off zones in mind, and retrofitting them would be difficult with our land use patterns).
Re: Mom gets 6-month suspended sentence for letting 5-year-old walk to the pond
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I'm in Zurich which is far from rural. Not really very homogenous either - it's 50% non-Swiss.
I'm sorry that you have to be around Germans, Austrians, Italians, Spaniards, and—worst of all—the French. Nobody should ever go through that.
Re: Mom gets 6-month suspended sentence for letting 5-year-old walk to the pond
#138[flagged]
I think you're looking for newsmax dot com, not news dot ycombinator dot com.
Re: Mom gets 6-month suspended sentence for letting 5-year-old walk to the pond
#139I started walking to school alone once I started 1st grade (at around age 7) and did it for about 5 years until my parents moved our family to a place outside of town where it was impractical to do so. I just checked Google Maps to be sure and it is about a 1.2Km / 0.75 miles, so a short walk for either an adult or a 7-year old.
A few months ago I had a heated argument with my father, stepmother and wife because I (half-joking/serious) told my almost 8-year daugher that next year we will start practicing her going to school by herself. You would not believe the stink all of them raised telling me I was irresponsible, yadda, yadda, what about child molesters/ kidnappers, yadda, yadda, too many cars and the usual non-sense you usually hear about this.
Again I went and checked on Google Maps just to be precise and the walk between our house and my daughters school is... 500 meters / 0.31 miles.
In a single generation we went from "your starting school for the first time? time to fend for yourself, you will do fine" to "you are a snowflake that needs to be protected at all times and must not be allowed to alone in any circunstances".
PS: To give more context, I don't live in the US but in a small EU country with a low crime rate, on a town that indeed is busy but very safe.
Re: Mom gets 6-month suspended sentence for letting 5-year-old walk to the pond
#140Here 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.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with a five-year-old crossing small roads like that.