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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

#151

Post by gogobio »

Aurornis wrote: post #128
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…

Young children also walk to the elementary schools near me. When I’m at the park with my kids, it’s common to see other very young kids show up alone on their bikes or on foot to play in the park. This is in the US. I think international readers see these headlines and assume the entire US is like this, but the reason the story is a headline is because it’s a dumb sentence. This is going to get appealed. The US is a…

I'm also in the US, in a city in a populous state and I've never seen that, as a matter of fact it counts as child abuse in my state as well. Why don't you mention where you live and what state you see this within? Is it because what you're seeing is anecdotal in some particularly rich area? I can assure you leaving children under 16 unsupervised is illegal in most states.

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

#152

Post by greedo »

GJim wrote: post #123
Polizeiposaune wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If you automatically assume somebody approaching a child is a kidde fiddler (!) then your society has problems.

Yes. As a father of two (grown) children in the US, this is the default assumption for most men.

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

#153

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

#154

Post by gogobio »

qwerpy wrote: post #68
victorbjorklund wrote: post #38

This is so sad. America is really messed up. In other countries it is normal for a child to be allowed to walk on their own

American here, it seems to vary by location. I walked to school as a grade school student (Midwest) and where I live now (Orange county, California) I regularly see swarms of kids biking to school. This particular situation seems ridiculous. I’d be furious if I lived there.

The average income of Orange county California is over double the national. Safe to say this kind of lifestyle is reserved for the rich and not for the people.

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

#155

Post by tedggh »

There’s plenty of ways to trust your very young kids and raise them to be independent. Allowing them to walk alone for half a mile crossing roads is not one of the them. Kids can behave very differently when they are with their parents or other adults. So you can’t assume because they do something with you all the time they will stick to the same behavior and rules without supervision. At 5 years old their brains are still way too mature, they lack any judgement and impulse control, it doesn’t matter how smart you think your child is. Once they reach 9-10, that’s a different story.

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

#156

Post by account42 »

Aurornis wrote: post #128
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…

Young children also walk to the elementary schools near me. When I’m at the park with my kids, it’s common to see other very young kids show up alone on their bikes or on foot to play in the park. This is in the US. I think international readers see these headlines and assume the entire US is like this, but the reason the story is a headline is because it’s a dumb sentence. This is going to get appealed. The US is a…

> I think international readers see these headlines and assume the entire US is like this, but the reason the story is a headline is because it’s a dumb sentence. This is going to get appealed.

That would still be pretty bad though. An absurd sentence like this should not end with the sentence being reverted but in changes that prevent it in the future, e.g. by updating laws or disciplining those that did not apply them correctly. This isn't just one person fucking up this is the security guard fucking up, the police fucking up, CPS fucking up and then the judge fucking up.

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

#157

Post by profsummergig »

fouc wrote: post #104
profsummergig wrote: post #89

Earlier 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.

> It's a short walk, along a sidewalk separated from the street by 10 feet of grass. Sam would have to cross two streets with crosswalks, which she'd seen him do safely hundreds of times—including six times that morning

She was always with him when he did that. Not the same as him doing it alone.

Regardless, there are local laws against this.

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

#158

Post by fwn »

MattDaEskimo wrote: post #110
tolerance wrote: post #75

Earlier 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.

It'd be nice if you could back up your feelings with some reasoning. The neighborhood is safe enough and the community is cohesive enough that kids can congregate along their way to school: go to their friend's house, meet at a park, etc. It's researched enough that you can go and learn about it and challenge your feelings.

(Not the patent) I'm very much pro letting children roam freely, but police intervention for walking or driving with your own child is clearly overreach. The good intention does not change that.

And even as a German who already spent a lot of time in Switzerland, I've never heard of anything like that.

To join in on the therapy speak: it is very good to challenge one's feelings, let go, and then, by the merit of reason, realize that police intervention for spending commute time with your children is bonkers.

It is just a very unreasonable extension of a very reasonable position.

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

#160

Post by kxrm »

gogobio wrote: post #151
Aurornis wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Young children also walk to the elementary schools near me. When I’m at the park with my kids, it’s common to see other very young kids show up alone on their bikes or on foot to play in the park. This is in the US. I think international readers see these headlines and assume the entire US is like this, but the reason the story is a headline is because it’s a dumb sentence. This is going to get appealed. The US is a…

I'm also in the US, in a city in a populous state and I've never seen that, as a matter of fact it counts as child abuse in my state as well. Why don't you mention where you live and what state you see this within? Is it because what you're seeing is anecdotal in some particularly rich area? I can assure you leaving children under 16 unsupervised is illegal in most states.

> I can assure you leaving children under 16 unsupervised is illegal in most states.

This is absolutely untrue. Only 3 states have an age specific standard. Most states set no specific limits by age. The bigger problem is the vagueness of the laws we do have in place around child neglect which allows a cop or neighbor to be the biggest determining factor of whether you get a knock on your door.

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