MOre "Free Range" parents in trouble

[Racket_Man]

Those who are old enough to remember when, you as a child, could take off out of the house and only come back for lunch or supper especially during the summer off of school months?


WEll obviously those days are long gone. NOW there is the perception there are pedo;s and perv';s behind every single telephone pole, bush, trashcan, car, shadow, door, house, dog house, curb side library box, leaf, piece of dog crap,etc.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/the...ids/ar-AAb9m6M


To add further
I was listening to the public radio a couple of months ago. The segment was about this smallish Illinois town. They interviewed people who stayed in the town after reaching adulthood. The ages of the people were between 30 and 40 (so these people were children in the town in the late 70's to the mid 80's.

As youngsters ALL of the them were what is now being called Free Range children as described in my first sentence of this post. They went anywhere and everywhere with NO care NO adult supervision.

YEs I know that I have ranted about this before and yes my parents would have been lifers and so would I if this kind of paranoia was in place 45 years (me as a child) ago 20 years (my daughter as a child)

Now as parents THEY themselves have become so paranoid, have bought into my second sentence and have drunk the Kool-Aid so deeply they have bought into the notion of a pedo or perv behind every shadow. The even ADMIT that this perception is NOT reality but still buy into it hook line and sinker.

[Greenday]

I think it all depends on where you live. If you are in some small town area where crime is low, let them be kids. If you live in the middle of NYC, probably shouldn't let your kids wander free.

[TheHuckster]

I think it all depends on where you live. If you are in some small town area where crime is low, let them be kids. If you live in the middle of NYC, probably shouldn't let your kids wander free.

Yeah, it's all about common sense, really. And it's not just stranger-danger at that point. There are a lot of other perils in densely populated areas, like traffic, you have to worry about for at least younger children.

I was a free-range kid growing up. I lived in an exurb and my parents' only concern was there was a very busy street nearby. They simply told me to never get too close to the traffic and be back before dark. Now, it wasn't until I was about 10 years old that they gave me that kind of free-range, and I was often with a friend or small group, but my parents rarely worried about me wandering about. I typically rode my bike across the entire town with my friends. The worst that ever happened was my bike got stolen once or twice while I was in some arcade or whatever.

This quote from the article boggles my mind, though:

A few states have laws stipulating the minimum age when a child can be left home alone. In Illinois it is 14

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

[Aragarthiel]

I was raised on "Hey, I'm going over to Jessica's house!" "Okay, have fun, come home when the streetlights come on!"

As for my daughter, I want to be the same way. Let me know where you're going first.

I was always allowed to walk home from school, too, with my sisters. In fact, most other students did.

[Rageaholic]

What kills me about this particular instance is that the kids were basically kidnapped by the police. He said he'd take them home, but then took them to CPS where they weren't even fed properly. All while the parents were worried sick that something much worse was happening (which it very well could have been had the cop not been who he said he was).

Epic fail all around.

[Gravekeeper]

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.

[Aragarthiel]

What kills me about this particular instance is that the kids were basically kidnapped by the police. He said he'd take them home, but then took them to CPS where they weren't even fed properly.

I wonder, what if they had been lost, not just on their way home? Getting taken to CPS isn't something any child wants to experience, especially if they're lost (most kids don't know more about it than CPS puts children in new homes). Not feeding them would have just made that worse.

[Andara Bledin]

I think it all depends on where you live. If you are in some small town area where crime is low, let them be kids. If you live in the middle of NYC, probably shouldn't let your kids wander free.

Most of the time, places like Compton, CA are not especially more dangerous than Podunk BFE.

There there are more people means that there is a higher probability of running into that infinitessimal number of sick pervs that are out there, but -as xkcd has so elloquently pointed out- a multiplication of an very small risk remains a very small risk.

[wolfie]

What kills me about this particular instance is that the kids were basically kidnapped by the police. He said he'd take them home, but then took them to CPS where they weren't even fed properly.

Great job by the police - they taught the kids that the police are a hostile entity who will lie to you in order to gain compliance, rather than a resource available in case you have problems.

[AccountingDrone]

What kills me about this particular instance is that the kids were basically kidnapped by the police. He said he'd take them home, but then took them to CPS where they weren't even fed properly. All while the parents were worried sick that something much worse was happening (which it very well could have been had the cop not been who he said he was).

Epic fail all around.

Now imagine the fun if one of those kids had been type 1 diabetic ... here have a cookie and a hot cocoa kid .... one ambulance run later hopefully you would have a live kid.

Though I would be willing to bet if one of the kids did kick off because of something like that, they would charge the parents for killing off the kid.

We were free range kids. In the summer we would bail after breakfast and be home at dark. Lunches were wherever we could scrounge them. I had cousins scattered around the lake or had no problem with swiping veggies out of gardens if I wasn't near anybody I could mooch off of.

[Lindsay B.]

There are a lot of other perils in densely populated areas, like traffic, you have to worry about for at least younger children.

This is a good point. I have known a few parents who wouldn't let their children go out unsupervised. But it wasn't because of strangers. It was because their children were often careless about things like traffic. Despite repeated warnings, these kids would blindly run out into the street to retrieve a ball, run across an intersection against the light or without checking for oncoming cars, and more. The parents finally said enough and refused to let their children leave the house without an adult. When the kids protested, the parents told them that they'd change the rules when the kids started being more responsible.

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.

My husband and I don't have any children yet. We're only a few years out of college, and we've decided to wait until we're on firmer financial ground. I'm honestly not sure how we're going to handle this. I think this is another one of those situations where you can't know for sure until it's actually happening. You can plan for it, but I have always been told that the moment you're really holding that baby in your arms, everything changes. So, time will tell.

[Mr Hero]

I grew up in the 80's and 90's and we could generally go certain places without adult supervision. There were some rules however. We weren't allowed to cross certain streets. These tended to be the closest major street in each cardinal direction. Surprisingly, I adhered to this quite strictly, and my friends never tried to test me on this. I was allowed to stay out, but had to be home before the streetlights came on. As I got older, I was trusted with a bit more freedom because I knew how not to abuse it.

[Racket_Man]

Heard about this situation on the CBC's As It Happens tonight

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/...lone-1.3054331

Here I kind of agree with the store as many parents DO use stores like this as a "babysitter". BUT the rub is that the 11 year old had done this allegedly many times before and was NEVER stopped or detained by store security in the past.

[Greenday]

Heard about this situation on the CBC's As It Happens tonight

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/...lone-1.3054331

Here I kind of agree with the store as many parents DO use stores like this as a "babysitter". BUT the rub is that the 11 year old had done this allegedly many times before and was NEVER stopped or detained by store security in the past.

He's 11 years old. I don't get what the problem is. 11 years old is old enough to browse a toy store by yourself. If he was a toddler, that'd be different.

[Aragarthiel]

My issue with that is that he wasn't misbehaving. He had been in there for an hour, minding his own business, so it's not like management didn't want to be babysitting. Plus, an 11-year-old behaving that well won't be at much of a risk of choking on anything.

Anyone want to bet they've had adults act worse than this kid?