MOre "Free Range" parents in trouble

[Lace Neil Singer]

What kills me about this is actual random child abduction by a stranger is insanely rare. Your child quite literally has a much better chance of being struck by lightning than kidnapped/attacked by a stranger.

This. Many parents might not like this, but the fact is that the vast majority of children who are raped, abused or molested have this done to them by a family member or a friend of the family. Often, it's the actual parents, but can also be an uncle or a close friend of Mum or Dad. So while these parents are patting themselves on the back about keeping their kids safe at home, pervy old Uncle Dave could be abusing the kids.

[mathnerd]

So, at least to some extent, I am willing to defer to the judgment of individual parents. They know their children, and sometimes they might have legitimate reasons for exercising greater caution with a particular child.

I have three kids. They are currently 15, 13 and 12, though within a few days to a few weeks of their birthdays.

My older two kids have public transit passes and roam around San Diego county pretty much at will. They tell me where they're going and who they'll be with. They tell me if plans change, and are reliably home at their curfew time. They also carry iPhones and are not allowed to turn off the Find my iPhone app so I can geo-track their happy butts. Now, when I say roam around the county, I mean the southern half of the county. I live in one of the closer suburbs of the city itself almost due east. They jump on the trolley and go downtown to their favorite library. Come summer they'll take a combination of trolley and buses to get to the beach. There's parks and malls and movie theaters and whatnot that they enjoy going to. It's all good.

My youngest does not get the same freedom, even though he's only 11 months younger than his next-older brother, and said brother has had this kind of freedom for almost a year. My youngest is vastly more immature than his older brothers and has physical disabilities that limit his ability to navigate his way around town safely. He lacks the street sense of his older brothers. It's not safe for him to have the same freedom that his older brothers have.

I am quite clearly a free-range parent, but, as any decent parent does, I base my decisions on the individual child. My older two are allowed to travel 20-30 miles from home, but my youngest can't leave the block. Different rules for different kids due to their own needs, personalities and maturity levels.

On another topic, for those who are saying there's a difference between urban and small town environments, I call hogwash. There's a different set of issues, but neither set of issues is better or worse than the other. They're just different. While traffic and crowds might be a problem in larger cities, transportation and cell phone coverage* is an issue in smaller towns.

*When I was a kid the issue was the availability of pay phones in small towns vs. large cities. The issue at hand here is really availability of a convenient means to call home in case of an emergency.

[Aragarthiel]

While traffic and crowds might be a problem in larger cities, transportation and cell phone coverage* is an issue in smaller towns.

I live in a rural area where you have a choice between two cell phone providers that provide better than spotty coverage, and even then they don't work everywhere. Combine that with hunters (or idiot neighbors just shooting off into the woods), wild animals, and any number of possible redneck idiocies, and you understand why most teens around here travel 5 or more in a group when going farther than a few hundred feet from home. Not to mention, we have our share of crazies (including some unknown person leaving mutilated animals on the side of the road in one area).

[mathnerd]

That's exactly my point. It's not that dangers don't exist, but that the dangers that do exist are different. Being a city girl*, I'll take my chances with crowds and pickpockets over wild animals and hunters any day.

*I grew up in Miami during the days of the Cocaine Cowboys. I was allowed to roam quite a bit, though not nearly as far as my boys can today. That, however, has everything to do with public transportation. Miami's public transportation, which is still pathetic today, was even more pathetic back then. I could really only go as far as my bike would take me, where my boys can hop on a trolley and get anywhere in the county. Heck, if they planned it right and had a little bit of extra money, they could get themselves all the way to Los Angeles using only buses and trains. I wouldn't let them go quite that far, but they could do it if they needed to.

[Racket_Man]

Update:

Maryland "Clarifies" CPS rules:

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/aft...PuG?li=BBieTUX

[protege]

Fourteen before you're allowed to be home alone in Illinois? Some 14 year olds are sophomores in high school. Are you kidding me?! The McCallisters would have been imprisoned along with the wet bandits if the movie were accurate. :P

Uh, good luck trying to enforce that. Are the cops going to knock on every door in town?

I know if I was home alone--long before 14 BTW--I'd simply refuse to answer the door. Both of my parents worked when I was in school, and I had no choice but to be home alone. Also, I had a paper route when I was 10. That route was a 5-mile circle around the neighborhood, and I was usually carrying a lot of cash, because I'd sometimes collect monies owed. Did I ever get robbed or kidnapped? Fuck no.

Back then, I'm sure nasty things went on--there were constant reports about the "white van" (it was always some asshole in a plain-Jane cargo van) trying to lure kids into the vehicle. Still, we didn't go around being scared of shadows.

[TheHuckster]

Uh, good luck trying to enforce that. Are the cops going to knock on every door in town?

No, but having the law on the books invites some neighbors with too much time on their hands to call the police because some high school student got home in the afternoon by themselves because their parents work a 9-5.

[NecCat]

Maryland "Clarifies" CPS rules:

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/aft...PuG?li=BBieTUX

That's exciting. Children my kids age are more likely to die from obesity related causes than just about anything else, yet my kids school has banned soccer-baseball because one kid tripped an sprained her wrist, and they've banned skipping because another kid tripped and broke her nose, to keep them safe. I'm afraid to let my kid go to the park with his friends, not because he doesn't know and follow the traffic rules, and not because I think something bad is going to happen to him, but because I'm afraid of someone calling CAS on me - again. I hope more things like this hit the news and make people reconsider how much harm we are doing to kids in the name of protection. A local news story (a huge time suck, each link leads to so many others, I would just take the story for face vale if I was you):
http://www.rock95.com/news/news/all-...sical-activity