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The Latest Battle Over When and Where Kids Can Walk to School

130 points by jcater 11y ago

Afton 11y ago
The closing of this article is actually the key for me. I've been trying to teach my kids that if they have a problem, and I'm not around, they should pick an adult and ask for help. The odds that they will pick an adult that has malicious intention is astronomically small. The odds that things will get worse because they can't bring themselves to ask someone for help seem much higher.
- Someone1234 11y ago
  Exactly. "Stranger kidnappings" (where someone the child doesn't know kidnaps them) are incredibly rare, a child is at much more risk from traffic, guns, cancer, or swimming pools. The reason why child kidnappings (non-stranger) are seemingly common is because the vast majority of these are by family members (e.g. parents during a custody dispute, grandparents, etc). Child molesters are also very rare (although you can make them seem more common by massaging the statistics, as some charities/politicians/media like to do), and on average in a large retailer there won't even be a single one. There are stories where kids have literally died both because they were scared to approach a stranger, or a stranger was scared to approach them. I have a kid. I am going to teach them to approach any adult, with a slight bias towards people who work there (simply because they are more likely to know the procedure for lost child, not because they're inherently safer/less safe).
  - hitekker 11y ago
    To add to what you're saying: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stranger_danger#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stranger_danger#Criticism
  - imglorp 11y ago
    Also a slight bias towards an adult accompanying children and also bias towards female: ie mommies with strollers are generally okay.
    - Someone1234 11y ago
      I won't be teaching my kids that men are inherently dangerous/child molesters. But you're welcome to bring them up that way. Any adult is fine. The chance of them being dangerous is incredibly low, regardless of gender. Plus the whole "men are bad" thing just mixes a simple message up, what if they spot a member of staff somewhere but they're male. Do they approach or do they not? What if a man is the only adult around? To be honest the whole "men are dangerous" thing is very much a large part of the core problem. It is stranger danger all over again.
      - rayiner 11y ago
        Right. It's basic math. Even if 0.1% of men are going to molest a random kid and it's 0.01% for women, there is a 99.9% chance a random man is not a child molester. It's noise. Similar reasoning applies to why you should ignore all the "X doubles the risk of [some rare Y]" stuff you read in the media.
        pbhjpbhj 11y ago
        So you're buying a lottery ticket - if you buy it from the female cashier you get a 10x chance of winning. Which cashier do you choose?
        rmxt 11y ago
        No matter who you choose, when you inevitably lose the lottery, you will still only have lost one dollar either way. When a child chooses to not go to an adult at all because only men are around, they might be facing more dire consequences than simply losing a dollar. A valid response to playing the lottery is "don't play the lotto, 10x chance or not"... for a child, there are some things that only adults are equipped to handle, and a valid response isn't to tell a 5 year old "don't go to a man, but do go to a woman". How might that work out at a football/soccer game?
        pbhjpbhj 11y ago
  - rdtsc 11y ago
    > "Stranger kidnappings" (where someone the child doesn't know kidnaps them) are incredibly rare, a child is at much more risk from traffic, guns, cancer, or swimming pools. Agreed, I am a parent as well. But a word of warning, you'll get mean looks and talk behind your back from playground parents if you take that attitude. I've seen moms and dads on playground who are way out there in assessing what is threatening and what is not. They'd see a man walking by the playground going by their business and start calling their children closer to them acting all scared. Or make comments about "hmm what are they doing, we haven't seen this person before". Mind you we were not in a crime ridden neighborhood, this is a quiet suburban area. Was going to say "lay of the news people, take it easy" but of course couldn't they'd think I am crazy. Oh and co-worker's neighbor called CPS (child protective services) on them because they were playing by themselves in the cul-de-sac while the parents watched from inside the house. They of course don't know who did it, and even if they knew there no repercussion they could take against that person. They can always claim "they thought of the children", nobody can argue with that...
    - Osiris 11y ago
      I allow my kids to play in our cul-de-sac by themselves all the time. I've never really been worried about them. When I was a kid I'd hop on my bike and my friends and I would ride into town, buy pizza, come home a few hours later. It was normal. This trend toward having to stay within arms reach of your children at all times is, in my opinion, very unhealthy for a child as they don't have opportunities to build confidence and independence.
    - unethical_ban 11y ago
      My parents let me play in the cul-de-sac all the time. It's why we moved to one! One time as an adult, I got a cop called because my music was too loud. The next day, I went to all my adjacent neighbors and said, without malice, "If there are any issues, I'm receptive to being a good neighbor, let me know if I can help". I would have done the same thing in the instance of CPS called on my kids. "Hello, I watch my children and they know how to handle themselves on our home street. If you see a dangerous situation, let me know immediately and we'll work to fix it." Then, if they have any issue with that, we can have it out.
  - knodi123 11y ago
    This is not the interesting point of his comment, though. The interesting part is, even in a world where stranger kidnappings were more common - letting the child pick an adult to ask for help is extremely safe. It's letting an adult choose to approach the kid first where the stranger kidnapping even becomes a statistical possibility.
    - paulddraper 11y ago
      Exactly. It's like asking someone to watch your stuff while you go to the bathroom. The chances of picking a thief are low compared to the chances of a thief picking you.
- far33d 11y ago
  P(adult evil | talk to them) < .0001 P(stranger evil | they talk to you) > .0001
  - tgb 11y ago
    In the US there's about 100 child kidnappings by strangers every year [1]. So you're claiming that each year, there are fewer than 10000*100 = 1 million times in the US that a stranger talks to a child. There are 50 million children in the US under age 12 [2], so only one in fifty children would be approached by a stranger in each year. How many times did a stranger talk to you as a child? More than none? Were you kidnapped? [1] http://www.pollyklaas.org/about/national-child-kidnapping.html http://www.pollyklaas.org/about/national-child-kidnapping.ht... [2] http://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/tables/pop1.asp http://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/tables/pop1.asp
    - slavik81 11y ago
      > How many times did a stranger talk to you as a child? More than none? Were you kidnapped? Just to share anecdotes, I had a few memorable experiences as a kid (and probably many more that I don't remember). A very nice person helped fix my bike chain when it slipped off the gears and got wedged against the frame. Without them, I'd have a long walk home with a stuck back wheel. On another occasion, while I was playing outside my house, a man came by and invited me to attend his church. My parents weren't keen on that, and I was rather uninterested so we never took him up on the offer. I presume he was a Jehova's Witness or a Mormon.
- Nelson69 11y ago
  Is your spouse cool with that line of thinking? It's legit, odds are nothing bad will happen but we live in a fear based society anymore... I live in a fairly well-to-do bedroom community, it's a rural area a short drive from some bigger cities in Colorado. The neighborhood nextdoor.com info is an interesting read. The sheriff (we don't have town police, it's a small place, 5000ish people) is called for ringing and running, that's like the main offense. It seems like there are fears when there are work men of color in the area doing things (building new houses, etc..) it appears that their presence correlates to the crime of breaking in to cars in neighboring cities, at least in the minds of some. I can confess there is a slight feeling of isolation at times, like if you had a problem you couldn't solve, it could take 15-30minutes for a police officer to help you but in 8 years I'm unaware of such a problem happening in the town. For the most part it is insanely safe, like you could leave your doors unlocked and expect no issues. When my son get's on the school bus, he has to swipe a badge. They can track where he get's on a bus and where he get's off. That's what we've come to. They have 4 different kinds of "drills." There is the fire drill we all grew up with. There is "lock down" where they all stay in their class rooms and lock the doors. There is a harder form of that where they stay in the class rooms, lock all the doors and windows and the try to hide. Then there is a drill where they go in the school basement, being that there are tornados in the area from time to time that's not too unreasonable but the staff is open with parents that it's for the event that there is some sort of a disturbance that is used to draw kids outside to attack in the open. The school itself (this is K-5) has locks on all doors, you have to buzz in, or swipe a badge at any time of day. It's all in how you look at it, I guess. The technology is fairly inexpensive and if it helps with anything, then maybe it seems worth it. It's definitely playing in to the culture of fear that exists though. What's really shocking, at least to me, is how cool everyone seems to be with everything. We got emails from the school when the did some of the drills, just to let us know our kids might tell us about something odd that they did. I can't imagine how they'd possibly let middle-school or younger kids on public transportation around here.
  - Afton 11y ago
    My spouse agrees with my logic, but occasionally has pangs of visceral concern. We discuss these issues like adults. :)
rayiner 11y ago
I hate people calling normal parenting a "free range parenting movement." It's not. When I was a little kid in the early 1990's, even my overprotective asian parents let me walk to and from school. And I think even today the majority of parents would think nothing of it. Legislation like this is a response to a vocal minority of psychotic millenials. Because few of their peers have kids, and they've moved far from home in pursuit of their careers, they have no frame of reference for normal parenting.
- asift 11y ago
  Norms are not static and based on your experiences as a child. It's labeled "free range parenting" because it is no longer the norm. Edit: I should have been more careful in my wording. Whether it is "the norm" is obviously very location dependent. The US is a large country with all sorts of different norms at the community level. I happen to have grown up in a suburban Midwest community (incredibly safe) with large residential areas directly across the street from many schools. However, walking to school was prohibited. Any students caught walking were subject to suspension and the school threatened to report parents to law enforcement. Obviously my particular anecdote doesn't apply to everyone, but there are some communities with insane policies in the US.
  - Retric 11y ago
    As far as I can tell it's still the norm. It's just not actively defended.
  - horsecaptin 11y ago
    It is still quite normal. Just because calling it "free range parenting" is becoming fashionable doesn't mean that most parents aren't "free range". It seems that the more secure our society becomes, the more paranoid and risk averse people are.
    - jandrese 11y ago
      Maybe it is the Amiga effect? All of the reasonable people are no longer complaining so the only voices you hear are the extremist ones?
xyzzy4 11y ago
Preventing kids from walking down a public street is nearly as stupid as preventing mature women from doing so. Reminds me of Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia.
- dudul 11y ago
  I'm a strong proponent of what is now called 'free-range' parenting (I just call it "normal parenting"), and think that kids should be allowed to walk around. But your comparison is ludicrous.
  - zardo 11y ago
    Is it? I wouldn't think so if I got picked up by police on the way home from school, and they arrested my Mom for letting me walk on my own. It would be a gross overreach by the state into the lives of its people.
  - x1798DE 11y ago
    Both are oppressive, both are ostensibly done to protect the oppressed target (from rape and violence), both undercut the decisions of mature adults (women, parents). Seems like it's valid on at least a few dimensions. The major difference is that children grow up to be adults and are freed from the restrictions. If that is the most salient issue, then it's a bad analogy, but I don't think it's a "ludicrous" comparison.
    - dudul 11y ago
      The problem is mature women do not compare to children. It's like saying "forbidding children to vote is as stupid as forbidding women to vote". Children do not have the same legal status as grown ups. They can't drive, should they drive because mature women can drive? They can't watch porn, should they be allowed to watch porn because mature women can? Yes, kids not being allowed to walk down the street is stupid, but using the argument that mature women can do it so kids should be allowed to do it is not valid.
- ambrice 11y ago
FussyZeus 11y ago
I was a latchkey kid for most of school post 6th grade or so because both parents needed to work to keep us fed. I regularly made my own dinners (boxed macaroni, but still) and had to help out around the house too. I credit this for giving me a solid work ethic and my self-reliance. I don't know what I would've turned out as without a lot of responsibilities as a kid (A lot by american kid standards anyways.)
- tn13 11y ago
  I was raised in India. I walked half a mile till 4th grade and 2 miles from 5th grade to 10th grade. I remember I had to deal with a madman on the way who would keep running after the kids and throw stones on them. I remember once I slipped and fell into a small ravine where there was this huge f python (goosebumps on my hand right now just remembering that incident), once I was chased by a fox. I never even bothered complaining to my parents because in one way it was fun. We ventured deep into woods, caught crabs, put traps for birds and squirrels etc. etc. It was a wonderful part of my childhood, my kids may not experience the same but I dont want the government to restrict their experience either.
kqr2 11y ago
In Japan, kids are quite independent. It's a bigger issue in the US because of the lack of social trust. http://www.citylab.com/commute/2015/09/why-are-little-kids-in-japan-so-independent/407590/ http://www.citylab.com/commute/2015/09/why-are-little-kids-i...
jrcii 11y ago
This is a very interesting article that relates to this topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_childhood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_childhood Remarkably, "During the 1600s, a shift in philosophical and social attitudes toward children and the notion of 'childhood' began in Europe." This seems to imply that the notion of childhood didn't even exist. Prior to this it explains that, "Children were often temporarily sent off as servants to relatives in need of help." I know in my own family, my great-grandfather's many sisters and brothers (13 in total) had tremendous work responsibilities as children. We appear to have gone from one extreme to the other.
- david-given 11y ago
  Don't forget that a couple of hundred years later, the teenager was invented. Prior to that, then pretty much at puberty you were deemed to be an adult, and you'd go off to work/marriage/both. (But it's important to remember that puberty now is way earlier than it was then, mostly due to better health and diet, IIRC.) I do find myself wondering what the next social step will be, as social maturity diverges even further from physical maturity...
  - e40 11y ago
    My understanding is that puberty is earlier due to additives in food. Tofu, for example, has compounds that mimic female hormones. Compounds in soft plastics are thought to disrupt the hormones of young children, too.
    - snowwrestler 11y ago
      This is an unproven and somewhat controversial hypothesis.
    - fishtoaster 11y ago
      That's an interesting theory- I don't think I've heard anyone claim that before. Do you have any sources off-hand? It kinda sounds pseudosciency, but I haven't looked into it at all.
ilyaeck 11y ago
There mere fact that there are legal battles around this issue in a country that calls itself "free" is mind-boggling and unsettling. More like, police state cum Idiocracy, with some avenues from venting.
JustSomeNobody 11y ago
My parents, and those of all my friends growing up, must have been complete and utter failures as parents because the ONLY restriction of our travels was be home before the streetlights came on.
- duderific 11y ago
  Yep, that's how it was in the 70's. At 9 or 10 years old I was roaming the city on my BMX bike without a care in the world. No helmets of course. My mom would come out and yell for us when it was time for dinner.
kogus 11y ago
This article (from 2007) has a map that stuck with me. It shows the decreasing range of permissible movement over the past century in Sheffield, England. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-462091/How-children-lost-right-roam-generations.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-462091/How-children-... It would be very interesting to have a similar map across different countries and compare. The thing is, most parents I know would agree this is troubling, but few of them actually allow their children to roam with anything close to actual freedom until high school age.
tn13 11y ago
I feel that the battle is kind of lost when you have ventured into this level of detail. If you have to discuss "legitimate way to give permission" to a child it has reached outside the realms of parenting common sense. I think lot of these issues tie-in very closely to the fact that government is trying to control our lives with the assumption that government knows better than us. As an Indian immigrant to India I am extremely concerned to about my child here because I simply can not exercise my inherited parenting judgement anymore. One thing liberty loving individuals could do here is learn a thing or two from NRA and completely deny any legislative space to the law makers on this issue. These small bills will not deter the government from what they are already doing.
dahart 11y ago
My first gut reaction was, like many, that policing whether children can walk to school is effing retarded. But, I remember when we had no seat belt laws or child seats, and that was a dumb idea, and got solved by government intrusion. My parents moved me and my siblings to Mexico for a year, and used to send us walking through the city on own. I was the oldest, at 7, my sister was 6, my brother 4. One time my brother was kicked in the head by a horse while we were wandering in a field petting the horses. In retrospect, my parents were lucky he lived, and a little more supervision may have been called for. I have children, and usually encourage them to walk to school, a little under a mile. But, I'd never let them loose on their own in a foreign country. I'm also white and have lived only in at least middle class, ridiculously safe neighborhoods, except for my year in Mexico, my whole life. I realize I've been really lucky, and that there are a wide variety of people and places and standards and ways kids can and do get hurt. So, who am I to judge? I think I could accept policing being reasonable, if it turned out that it did on average prevent injuries or deaths, and that my feelings about what's too intrusive might be irrelevant, biased, or lacking data.
- jim-greer 11y ago
  > I remember when we had no seat belt laws or child seats There's really no downside to putting on a seat belt, or using a child seat. There's a big downside for being overly protective of children - both for their development and for busy parents.
  - dahart 11y ago
    I'd wager my personal preferences align with yours, but I'm playing devil's advocate as an exercise in trying to be open minded before deciding what I think about the new laws. There was a lot of uproar about the downsides of seat belt laws when they were proposed. It took government action in the face of industry and some public opposition to make it happen. It doesn't seem like there are downsides now, but in fact there was a fight, and hindsight is 20/20. Do we have proof and data that being over-protective has big downsides? Do we have proof that driving kids to school amounts to being overly protective? Is it really clear cut? Is it possible to be protective about physical safety and lax about social development? I don't know that, even if I suspect it. I'm personally afraid of being over-protective of my children. And, like I said, I send my kids to school on foot. But I might be able to withhold my own incredulity toward the idea of this kind of policing until more evidence has stacked up. ;)
ps4fanboy 11y ago
I am 14 years older than my sister, when I was in grade 3 I was walking myself to school, however as my parents got older and had my sister they became incredibly paranoid and she wasnt allowed to walk to school ever.
- duderific 11y ago
  It all shifted in the 80's due to the kidnapped children on the milk cartons, among other things. I wonder did your 14 year difference span the 80's?
cafard 11y ago
About 1967 I was one of seven or eight cousins in a Midwestern suburban park when one of the younger ones tripped and hit her head against a bench. She was not gravely hurt, but it tore the skin on her temple, and it bled a lot. A couple of utter strangers, a man and a women of probably 45 to 50, drove her and an older sister to the emergency room while the rest of us waited for my mother to get us. It all worked out. We rounded up the cousins at the ER. The one who fell had no visible scar. Sometimes I think about this and how odd it seems in the context of the last 25 years. If my wife and I showed up at the ER with two girls from a town 200 miles away I think that the staff would call the police. I also wonder what would be required in the way of release forms, payment assurance, and so on.

130 points by jcater 11y ago

Afton 11y ago

The closing of this article is actually the key for me. I've been trying to teach my kids that if they have a problem, and I'm not around, they should pick an adult and ask for help. The odds that they will pick an adult that has malicious intention is astronomically small. The odds that things will get worse because they can't bring themselves to ask someone for help seem much higher.

Someone1234 11y ago
Exactly. "Stranger kidnappings" (where someone the child doesn't know kidnaps them) are incredibly rare, a child is at much more risk from traffic, guns, cancer, or swimming pools. The reason why child kidnappings (non-stranger) are seemingly common is because the vast majority of these are by family members (e.g. parents during a custody dispute, grandparents, etc). Child molesters are also very rare (although you can make them seem more common by massaging the statistics, as some charities/politicians/media like to do), and on average in a large retailer there won't even be a single one. There are stories where kids have literally died both because they were scared to approach a stranger, or a stranger was scared to approach them. I have a kid. I am going to teach them to approach any adult, with a slight bias towards people who work there (simply because they are more likely to know the procedure for lost child, not because they're inherently safer/less safe).
- hitekker 11y ago
  To add to what you're saying: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stranger_danger#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stranger_danger#Criticism
- imglorp 11y ago
  Also a slight bias towards an adult accompanying children and also bias towards female: ie mommies with strollers are generally okay.
  - Someone1234 11y ago
    I won't be teaching my kids that men are inherently dangerous/child molesters. But you're welcome to bring them up that way. Any adult is fine. The chance of them being dangerous is incredibly low, regardless of gender. Plus the whole "men are bad" thing just mixes a simple message up, what if they spot a member of staff somewhere but they're male. Do they approach or do they not? What if a man is the only adult around? To be honest the whole "men are dangerous" thing is very much a large part of the core problem. It is stranger danger all over again.
    - rayiner 11y ago
      Right. It's basic math. Even if 0.1% of men are going to molest a random kid and it's 0.01% for women, there is a 99.9% chance a random man is not a child molester. It's noise. Similar reasoning applies to why you should ignore all the "X doubles the risk of [some rare Y]" stuff you read in the media.
      - pbhjpbhj 11y ago
        So you're buying a lottery ticket - if you buy it from the female cashier you get a 10x chance of winning. Which cashier do you choose?
        rmxt 11y ago
        No matter who you choose, when you inevitably lose the lottery, you will still only have lost one dollar either way. When a child chooses to not go to an adult at all because only men are around, they might be facing more dire consequences than simply losing a dollar. A valid response to playing the lottery is "don't play the lotto, 10x chance or not"... for a child, there are some things that only adults are equipped to handle, and a valid response isn't to tell a 5 year old "don't go to a man, but do go to a woman". How might that work out at a football/soccer game?
        pbhjpbhj 11y ago
- rdtsc 11y ago
  > "Stranger kidnappings" (where someone the child doesn't know kidnaps them) are incredibly rare, a child is at much more risk from traffic, guns, cancer, or swimming pools. Agreed, I am a parent as well. But a word of warning, you'll get mean looks and talk behind your back from playground parents if you take that attitude. I've seen moms and dads on playground who are way out there in assessing what is threatening and what is not. They'd see a man walking by the playground going by their business and start calling their children closer to them acting all scared. Or make comments about "hmm what are they doing, we haven't seen this person before". Mind you we were not in a crime ridden neighborhood, this is a quiet suburban area. Was going to say "lay of the news people, take it easy" but of course couldn't they'd think I am crazy. Oh and co-worker's neighbor called CPS (child protective services) on them because they were playing by themselves in the cul-de-sac while the parents watched from inside the house. They of course don't know who did it, and even if they knew there no repercussion they could take against that person. They can always claim "they thought of the children", nobody can argue with that...
  - Osiris 11y ago
    I allow my kids to play in our cul-de-sac by themselves all the time. I've never really been worried about them. When I was a kid I'd hop on my bike and my friends and I would ride into town, buy pizza, come home a few hours later. It was normal. This trend toward having to stay within arms reach of your children at all times is, in my opinion, very unhealthy for a child as they don't have opportunities to build confidence and independence.
  - unethical_ban 11y ago
    My parents let me play in the cul-de-sac all the time. It's why we moved to one! One time as an adult, I got a cop called because my music was too loud. The next day, I went to all my adjacent neighbors and said, without malice, "If there are any issues, I'm receptive to being a good neighbor, let me know if I can help". I would have done the same thing in the instance of CPS called on my kids. "Hello, I watch my children and they know how to handle themselves on our home street. If you see a dangerous situation, let me know immediately and we'll work to fix it." Then, if they have any issue with that, we can have it out.
- knodi123 11y ago
  This is not the interesting point of his comment, though. The interesting part is, even in a world where stranger kidnappings were more common - letting the child pick an adult to ask for help is extremely safe. It's letting an adult choose to approach the kid first where the stranger kidnapping even becomes a statistical possibility.
  - paulddraper 11y ago
    Exactly. It's like asking someone to watch your stuff while you go to the bathroom. The chances of picking a thief are low compared to the chances of a thief picking you.
far33d 11y ago
P(adult evil | talk to them) < .0001 P(stranger evil | they talk to you) > .0001
- tgb 11y ago
  In the US there's about 100 child kidnappings by strangers every year [1]. So you're claiming that each year, there are fewer than 10000*100 = 1 million times in the US that a stranger talks to a child. There are 50 million children in the US under age 12 [2], so only one in fifty children would be approached by a stranger in each year. How many times did a stranger talk to you as a child? More than none? Were you kidnapped? [1] http://www.pollyklaas.org/about/national-child-kidnapping.html http://www.pollyklaas.org/about/national-child-kidnapping.ht... [2] http://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/tables/pop1.asp http://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/tables/pop1.asp
  - slavik81 11y ago
    > How many times did a stranger talk to you as a child? More than none? Were you kidnapped? Just to share anecdotes, I had a few memorable experiences as a kid (and probably many more that I don't remember). A very nice person helped fix my bike chain when it slipped off the gears and got wedged against the frame. Without them, I'd have a long walk home with a stuck back wheel. On another occasion, while I was playing outside my house, a man came by and invited me to attend his church. My parents weren't keen on that, and I was rather uninterested so we never took him up on the offer. I presume he was a Jehova's Witness or a Mormon.
Nelson69 11y ago
Is your spouse cool with that line of thinking? It's legit, odds are nothing bad will happen but we live in a fear based society anymore... I live in a fairly well-to-do bedroom community, it's a rural area a short drive from some bigger cities in Colorado. The neighborhood nextdoor.com info is an interesting read. The sheriff (we don't have town police, it's a small place, 5000ish people) is called for ringing and running, that's like the main offense. It seems like there are fears when there are work men of color in the area doing things (building new houses, etc..) it appears that their presence correlates to the crime of breaking in to cars in neighboring cities, at least in the minds of some. I can confess there is a slight feeling of isolation at times, like if you had a problem you couldn't solve, it could take 15-30minutes for a police officer to help you but in 8 years I'm unaware of such a problem happening in the town. For the most part it is insanely safe, like you could leave your doors unlocked and expect no issues. When my son get's on the school bus, he has to swipe a badge. They can track where he get's on a bus and where he get's off. That's what we've come to. They have 4 different kinds of "drills." There is the fire drill we all grew up with. There is "lock down" where they all stay in their class rooms and lock the doors. There is a harder form of that where they stay in the class rooms, lock all the doors and windows and the try to hide. Then there is a drill where they go in the school basement, being that there are tornados in the area from time to time that's not too unreasonable but the staff is open with parents that it's for the event that there is some sort of a disturbance that is used to draw kids outside to attack in the open. The school itself (this is K-5) has locks on all doors, you have to buzz in, or swipe a badge at any time of day. It's all in how you look at it, I guess. The technology is fairly inexpensive and if it helps with anything, then maybe it seems worth it. It's definitely playing in to the culture of fear that exists though. What's really shocking, at least to me, is how cool everyone seems to be with everything. We got emails from the school when the did some of the drills, just to let us know our kids might tell us about something odd that they did. I can't imagine how they'd possibly let middle-school or younger kids on public transportation around here.
- Afton 11y ago
  My spouse agrees with my logic, but occasionally has pangs of visceral concern. We discuss these issues like adults. :)

rayiner 11y ago

I hate people calling normal parenting a "free range parenting movement." It's not. When I was a little kid in the early 1990's, even my overprotective asian parents let me walk to and from school. And I think even today the majority of parents would think nothing of it. Legislation like this is a response to a vocal minority of psychotic millenials. Because few of their peers have kids, and they've moved far from home in pursuit of their careers, they have no frame of reference for normal parenting.

asift 11y ago
Norms are not static and based on your experiences as a child. It's labeled "free range parenting" because it is no longer the norm. Edit: I should have been more careful in my wording. Whether it is "the norm" is obviously very location dependent. The US is a large country with all sorts of different norms at the community level. I happen to have grown up in a suburban Midwest community (incredibly safe) with large residential areas directly across the street from many schools. However, walking to school was prohibited. Any students caught walking were subject to suspension and the school threatened to report parents to law enforcement. Obviously my particular anecdote doesn't apply to everyone, but there are some communities with insane policies in the US.
- Retric 11y ago
  As far as I can tell it's still the norm. It's just not actively defended.
- horsecaptin 11y ago
  It is still quite normal. Just because calling it "free range parenting" is becoming fashionable doesn't mean that most parents aren't "free range". It seems that the more secure our society becomes, the more paranoid and risk averse people are.
  - jandrese 11y ago
    Maybe it is the Amiga effect? All of the reasonable people are no longer complaining so the only voices you hear are the extremist ones?

xyzzy4 11y ago

Preventing kids from walking down a public street is nearly as stupid as preventing mature women from doing so. Reminds me of Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia.

dudul 11y ago
I'm a strong proponent of what is now called 'free-range' parenting (I just call it "normal parenting"), and think that kids should be allowed to walk around. But your comparison is ludicrous.
- zardo 11y ago
  Is it? I wouldn't think so if I got picked up by police on the way home from school, and they arrested my Mom for letting me walk on my own. It would be a gross overreach by the state into the lives of its people.
- x1798DE 11y ago
  Both are oppressive, both are ostensibly done to protect the oppressed target (from rape and violence), both undercut the decisions of mature adults (women, parents). Seems like it's valid on at least a few dimensions. The major difference is that children grow up to be adults and are freed from the restrictions. If that is the most salient issue, then it's a bad analogy, but I don't think it's a "ludicrous" comparison.
  - dudul 11y ago
    The problem is mature women do not compare to children. It's like saying "forbidding children to vote is as stupid as forbidding women to vote". Children do not have the same legal status as grown ups. They can't drive, should they drive because mature women can drive? They can't watch porn, should they be allowed to watch porn because mature women can? Yes, kids not being allowed to walk down the street is stupid, but using the argument that mature women can do it so kids should be allowed to do it is not valid.
ambrice 11y ago

FussyZeus 11y ago

I was a latchkey kid for most of school post 6th grade or so because both parents needed to work to keep us fed. I regularly made my own dinners (boxed macaroni, but still) and had to help out around the house too. I credit this for giving me a solid work ethic and my self-reliance. I don't know what I would've turned out as without a lot of responsibilities as a kid (A lot by american kid standards anyways.)

tn13 11y ago
I was raised in India. I walked half a mile till 4th grade and 2 miles from 5th grade to 10th grade. I remember I had to deal with a madman on the way who would keep running after the kids and throw stones on them. I remember once I slipped and fell into a small ravine where there was this huge f python (goosebumps on my hand right now just remembering that incident), once I was chased by a fox. I never even bothered complaining to my parents because in one way it was fun. We ventured deep into woods, caught crabs, put traps for birds and squirrels etc. etc. It was a wonderful part of my childhood, my kids may not experience the same but I dont want the government to restrict their experience either.

kqr2 11y ago

In Japan, kids are quite independent. It's a bigger issue in the US because of the lack of social trust. http://www.citylab.com/commute/2015/09/why-are-little-kids-in-japan-so-independent/407590/ http://www.citylab.com/commute/2015/09/why-are-little-kids-i...

jrcii 11y ago

This is a very interesting article that relates to this topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_childhood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_childhood Remarkably, "During the 1600s, a shift in philosophical and social attitudes toward children and the notion of 'childhood' began in Europe." This seems to imply that the notion of childhood didn't even exist. Prior to this it explains that, "Children were often temporarily sent off as servants to relatives in need of help." I know in my own family, my great-grandfather's many sisters and brothers (13 in total) had tremendous work responsibilities as children. We appear to have gone from one extreme to the other.

david-given 11y ago
Don't forget that a couple of hundred years later, the teenager was invented. Prior to that, then pretty much at puberty you were deemed to be an adult, and you'd go off to work/marriage/both. (But it's important to remember that puberty now is way earlier than it was then, mostly due to better health and diet, IIRC.) I do find myself wondering what the next social step will be, as social maturity diverges even further from physical maturity...
- e40 11y ago
  My understanding is that puberty is earlier due to additives in food. Tofu, for example, has compounds that mimic female hormones. Compounds in soft plastics are thought to disrupt the hormones of young children, too.
  - snowwrestler 11y ago
    This is an unproven and somewhat controversial hypothesis.
  - fishtoaster 11y ago
    That's an interesting theory- I don't think I've heard anyone claim that before. Do you have any sources off-hand? It kinda sounds pseudosciency, but I haven't looked into it at all.

ilyaeck 11y ago

There mere fact that there are legal battles around this issue in a country that calls itself "free" is mind-boggling and unsettling. More like, police state cum Idiocracy, with some avenues from venting.

JustSomeNobody 11y ago

My parents, and those of all my friends growing up, must have been complete and utter failures as parents because the ONLY restriction of our travels was be home before the streetlights came on.

duderific 11y ago
Yep, that's how it was in the 70's. At 9 or 10 years old I was roaming the city on my BMX bike without a care in the world. No helmets of course. My mom would come out and yell for us when it was time for dinner.

kogus 11y ago

This article (from 2007) has a map that stuck with me. It shows the decreasing range of permissible movement over the past century in Sheffield, England. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-462091/How-children-lost-right-roam-generations.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-462091/How-children-... It would be very interesting to have a similar map across different countries and compare. The thing is, most parents I know would agree this is troubling, but few of them actually allow their children to roam with anything close to actual freedom until high school age.

tn13 11y ago

I feel that the battle is kind of lost when you have ventured into this level of detail. If you have to discuss "legitimate way to give permission" to a child it has reached outside the realms of parenting common sense. I think lot of these issues tie-in very closely to the fact that government is trying to control our lives with the assumption that government knows better than us. As an Indian immigrant to India I am extremely concerned to about my child here because I simply can not exercise my inherited parenting judgement anymore. One thing liberty loving individuals could do here is learn a thing or two from NRA and completely deny any legislative space to the law makers on this issue. These small bills will not deter the government from what they are already doing.

dahart 11y ago

My first gut reaction was, like many, that policing whether children can walk to school is effing retarded. But, I remember when we had no seat belt laws or child seats, and that was a dumb idea, and got solved by government intrusion. My parents moved me and my siblings to Mexico for a year, and used to send us walking through the city on own. I was the oldest, at 7, my sister was 6, my brother 4. One time my brother was kicked in the head by a horse while we were wandering in a field petting the horses. In retrospect, my parents were lucky he lived, and a little more supervision may have been called for. I have children, and usually encourage them to walk to school, a little under a mile. But, I'd never let them loose on their own in a foreign country. I'm also white and have lived only in at least middle class, ridiculously safe neighborhoods, except for my year in Mexico, my whole life. I realize I've been really lucky, and that there are a wide variety of people and places and standards and ways kids can and do get hurt. So, who am I to judge? I think I could accept policing being reasonable, if it turned out that it did on average prevent injuries or deaths, and that my feelings about what's too intrusive might be irrelevant, biased, or lacking data.

jim-greer 11y ago
> I remember when we had no seat belt laws or child seats There's really no downside to putting on a seat belt, or using a child seat. There's a big downside for being overly protective of children - both for their development and for busy parents.
- dahart 11y ago
  I'd wager my personal preferences align with yours, but I'm playing devil's advocate as an exercise in trying to be open minded before deciding what I think about the new laws. There was a lot of uproar about the downsides of seat belt laws when they were proposed. It took government action in the face of industry and some public opposition to make it happen. It doesn't seem like there are downsides now, but in fact there was a fight, and hindsight is 20/20. Do we have proof and data that being over-protective has big downsides? Do we have proof that driving kids to school amounts to being overly protective? Is it really clear cut? Is it possible to be protective about physical safety and lax about social development? I don't know that, even if I suspect it. I'm personally afraid of being over-protective of my children. And, like I said, I send my kids to school on foot. But I might be able to withhold my own incredulity toward the idea of this kind of policing until more evidence has stacked up. ;)

ps4fanboy 11y ago

I am 14 years older than my sister, when I was in grade 3 I was walking myself to school, however as my parents got older and had my sister they became incredibly paranoid and she wasnt allowed to walk to school ever.

duderific 11y ago
It all shifted in the 80's due to the kidnapped children on the milk cartons, among other things. I wonder did your 14 year difference span the 80's?

cafard 11y ago

About 1967 I was one of seven or eight cousins in a Midwestern suburban park when one of the younger ones tripped and hit her head against a bench. She was not gravely hurt, but it tore the skin on her temple, and it bled a lot. A couple of utter strangers, a man and a women of probably 45 to 50, drove her and an older sister to the emergency room while the rest of us waited for my mother to get us. It all worked out. We rounded up the cousins at the ER. The one who fell had no visible scar. Sometimes I think about this and how odd it seems in the context of the last 25 years. If my wife and I showed up at the ER with two girls from a town 200 miles away I think that the staff would call the police. I also wonder what would be required in the way of release forms, payment assurance, and so on.