Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

reason.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 306 posts

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

#251

Post by estearum »

nxm wrote: post #227
sh-run wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Colorado, we have a "free-range" law that protects parents allowing their children to play outside unattended. It's a bit sad that such a law needs to exist, but I'm glad we have it here. In our neighborhood it's very common to see kids (including mine!) outside doing things by themselves. We bike with our oldest son to school (he's 7), but plenty of other parents let their kids bike to school on their own.…

Why was the law added in the first place? Just not creating a stupid law that prevents such restrictions is enough by default (it's legal unless it's formally illegal)

> Just not creating a stupid law that prevents such restrictions is enough by default (it's legal unless it's formally illegal)

Not practically true at all. Everywhere has child endangerment laws, and I would bet that the vast majority of them can be readily used to prosecute the types of behaviors the free-range laws are meant to protect.

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

#252

Post by OkayPhysicist »

jollyllama wrote: post #189
dataflow wrote: post #52

That sounds awful. This kind of case doesn't seem like something you should let a single person decide on their own, judge or not. Is she not entitled to a jury trial because it's a misdemeanor or something? If she can find the funds/support somehow it totally seems worth appealing all the way to the supreme court.

Yeah, it's not really clear from the article. Wild that you can get on some list of abusers without a jury trial. Maybe she waived her rights? Can that even happen?

You can waive your right to a jury trial, and it's sometimes a good idea in cases where either A) you're definitely guilty, and the trial is mostly going to be about sentencing or B) your defense is more complicated than "I didn't do the thing", because jurors are not good at making decisions based on complexities of the law.

Additionally, you don't have the right to a jury trial for minor offenses that carry a maximum sentence of less than 6 months in prison. Contributing to the delinquency of a minor in Virginia carries a maximum 12 months, but to my understanding it is possible for the prosecution to waive any greater sentencing in order to avoid a jury trial.

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

#253

Post by bushwart »

jeffbee wrote: post #196
zetanor wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Imagine implying that Swiss Germans and German Germans look upon each other with familiarity instead of wariness or even suspicion.

Wait til they hear about East German Germans and West German Germans.

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

#254

Post by OkayPhysicist »

softwaredoug wrote: post #63
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.

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.

IMO, this whole case has a smell of politically motivated prosecution. The fact that the mom worked for Senator Jill Holtzman Vogel that pushed Virginia's free-range child law, which the judge allowed the prosecution to present a wild legal theory in direct contradiction to is just rather convenient.

It's far from improbable that a family court judge would have a bone to pick. Law enforcement gets a weird lens about public safety because of selection bias.

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

#255

Post by comrade1234 »

jjav wrote: post #248
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. Huh? So if they live 10 miles away they must walk 10 miles? Surely not, but then how does it work?

The example I know of like that is in Zermatt. The children go to school in Visp. They take the train down by themselves and live at school for the week and come back home on the weekend.

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

#256

Post by zaptheimpaler »

I think the logic behind most of this trash is law enforcement gradually ridding themselves of all responsibility or accountability. They don’t handle theft or burglary anymore, they dismiss stalking or harassment even when people end up in danger, they stand by afraid in school shootings, they take reports of whatever happens and then do nothing about them. Every crime is either too big or too small for them. Kidnapping is a serious sensational crime that would make the news, and they’ve learned they don’t have to deal with that either if they just force children to be indoors or supervised all day.

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

#257

Post by ElijahLynn »

"I told [the authorities] that kids need to be able to take reasonable risks," he says, "in order to grow up non-anxious

Who would have thought that the actual anxious inducing situation came from trusted authorities, although well intentioned, causing harm to their community.

Very sad story. I hope this gets appealed.

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

#258

Post by jolmg »

estearum wrote: post #250
jolmg wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. What's the rationale for the parent being punished? I would understand the government employing programs to encourage parents to develop their child's autonomy, but forcing them…

I'm sure they have systems to deal with the edge conditions like medical conditions. One can instantly figure out why it's pretty smart to have the school assert a policy here based on your following ideas that it "should ultimately be the parent's judgment" and what if "they see something sus." The current child-, parent-, and civilization-damaging child management system in the US is the direct consequence of simpl…

It's not a school policy if the police get involved. It seems like it's law.

It's kind of funny that the post is about a parent being punished for giving their kid some autonomy and how that punishment reflects something being wrong with the US. Someone from Switzerland shares how they punish parents for not giving their kid autonomy in a certain way, and you come saying "it's pretty smart" and "civilization-damaging child management system in the US is the direct consequence of simply [...] 'I'm the parent so I know what's best.'", defending punishing parents for parenting...

I see that as the constant in both cases, and what seems backwards. The problem of the post isn't about whether or not the kid walks outside on their own; it's about people not respecting the parent's judgment in how they raise their kid. That problem also seems present in Switzerland by what's being shared and it's apparently what you'd like the US to switch to, which ultimately wouldn't be a switch.

You'd then have a post about a parent being punished for taking their kid to school under a given set of circumstances that makes the punishment unfair, the exact parallel of the current post.

> it's pretty smart to have the school assert a policy here based on your following ideas that it "should ultimately be the parent's judgment"

This is the same busybody mentality that leads to what happened to the mom of the post.

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

#259

Post by lern_too_spel »

I'd take this story with a grain of salt. Judges aren't heartless automatons. There's another side of the story that Ms. Parkinson hasn't told the ever-gullible Reason, and Ms. Parkinson herself is a known agitator: https://thefederalist.com/2025/08/01/immigration-crackdown-p...

Look up her law firm, Holtzman Vogel. It's infamous.

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

#260

Post by jenniferhooley »

smallerize wrote: post #246
jenniferhooley wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Myself and my siblings all lived on a fairly large rural farm with 2 large bodies of water that we always hung around unsupervised from about 4 y/o onwards. We loved catching bullfrogs and watching the fishes and stuff. Our mom gave us very strict/scary warnings about never going in and being careful, but other than that we were pretty free thankfully. 5 y/o with a good warning seems totally fine.

Survivorship bias. More children ages 1–4 die from drowning than any other cause of death. For children ages 5–14, drowning is the second leading cause of unintentional injury death after motor vehicle crashes. https://www.cdc.gov/drowning/data-research/facts/index.html

Do you think young children should never be in a car either? There is always a chance of death, and at some point you have to let your kids enjoy life, some of my best memories are at that pond watching dragonflies and listening to the water splash. It just seems so sad to not allow a child to be free to enjoy the natural world, yes a very scary speech about the dangers is important, but at some point it's important to let children learn on their own I think... I don't know... I'm just really glad I had the freedom and always remember my childhood alone in the woods and at the farm with deep happiness that I never felt locked up in a house or classroom despite those being super safe.
Post reply on HN