Parents investigated for neglect after letting kids walk home alone | Hacker News Reader

Parents investigated for neglect after letting kids walk home alone

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92 pointsnherment102 comments

How odd. America is much safer than it used to be, but people are more afraid.

My father walked to and from school every day in Montreal when he was young, for a good half hour each way I believe. He'd go in a group with kids from the neighborhood, there were no adults.

I walked to school every morning in Canada starting from age six, alone. I didn't live far from school, but if I had lived further I still would have walked alone. Lots of kids in my neighborhood walked alone. This was the early 1990s.

but people are more afraid.

The media has taught us to be afraid. Not maliciously so. It makes us better consumers, the metric they're paid to optimize.

I walked to school, about a mile each way, every day from 3rd to 5th grade. We routinely walked to a pool over half a mile away in the summer. We walked to the dentist, we walked to the dairy store for milk. My mom would give me 75 cents and tell me to go get a gallon of milk, which gets heavy quick.

Fear sells. Thats it. Thats the only reason media exhaustively reports on crime. There is no corporatist/consumerist conspiracy. It sells so they do it.

> Not maliciously so.

The vast majority of media people cannot be malicious, sure - but looking at some of the corporate higher-ups, I'm less inclined to absolve them of moral issues.

Perhaps some of the increased safety comes from people being more afraid and therefore taking more precautions now? So it's not necessarily a contradiction.

Edit: Also, I think some of the safety culture comes from diminishing returns. E.g., in the 1950s industrial workplace safety was extremely poor by modern standards. But the people who worked there had just been through world war II, so the risk must have seemed low by comparison. Similarly, the 1990s probably had a bunch of risks which we have solved now---e.g. cars are safer now, and violent crime is lower. So we start worrying about higher-hanging fruit, such as children's commute to school.

It's always worth considering alternative hypotheses, but I don't think this one holds true.

I've lived in dangerous places. North Americans take very few safety precautions. In general:

  * People aren't aware of their surroundings. Often have headphones.
  * People wave phones around in the air, hold them loosely, or leave them dangling out of back pockets.
  * People use public ATMs, in insecure locations, and don't pay attention to machine safety or who is nearby.
  * People will walk down a street with no one on it without increasing their vigilance level.
  * They carry no cash to hand over in the event of a mugging

These are behaviors that will get you robbed, fast, in a lot of places. That this stuff doesn't happen in modern north america with speaks to improved policing, cameras, etc. or fewer people making criminal attempts.

As far as child safety goes, they were never at much risk in public from strangers then or now. I'm prepared to be proven wrong by stats on that point, since I haven't looked it up, but IIRC most crimes against children are done by family or people the child knows.

In most of the world children ride around two or three-up on the back of their parents' motorcycles with no helmets or insurance. North Americans are paranoid freaks in comparison.

I meant safety precautions against crime. I think that's what the article was about, though maybe social services had other concerns as well.

As a parent I would not be afraid of crime but of traffic.

I understood most of what you said, but I'm not sure about

> * They carry no cash to hand over in the event of a mugging

Can you elaborate on this point? I'd be surprised if thieves thought, "Jeez, nothing to steal from this one, I'd better at least stab them or I won't have done anything wrong..."

The idea is that the mugger is in a rush. They don't know if you really have nothing or whether you're lying. They might rough you up to get you to admit you have money. And once that happens, if you react defensively, they might get more violent.

The other possibility is that they might ask for your whole wallet/phone, etc. Whereas if you hand over some money they'll often take it and go. At least this is what Brazilians who had been mugged told me happens. Some carried a dummy phone to hand over as well.

In Brazil, where I lived most of my life, not having cash on you during a mugging can provoke a violent reaction from the mugger.

If you give the mugger $30 and he'll simply take it and run away. If you have nothing to offer the mugger he might get aggravated and start demanding you give him something else of value like your phone/jewelry/shoes etc. and quickly thing can start getting ugly.

The idea of carrying cash to hand over if you get mugged being a safety precaution is funny to me. I never really thought about it that way. I always thought of not carrying cash as a way to lessen the risk of getting mugged, or at least lessen the loss if you were to get mugged (I'm an American).

In general, muggers are small fry criminals. You want to carry on you enough cash for them to be happy, call it a day and go to spend it on meth/booze - e.g. without hurting you - but not enough to give them funny ideas and attempt an amateur kidnap on you.

I've been told the sweet spot is in the ballpark of $20 - $50 USD. But of course this has to be adjusted by location.

I see what your saying with the whole phone waving and public atm's. And I'm not trying to sound macho when I say this but I much prefer to carry a more physical type of deterrent that when employed will have a much more reliable effect than a monetary incentive. I would think it's more of a "don't feed the bears" thing.

Doesn't this prove the point? A weapon only escalates a situation. If Americans were being robbed all the time, they would quickly realise that carrying one is a very very bad idea.

However, because the US is generally a safe place, Americans can carry a weapon without much risk, because they will almost never have to use it.

There's some truth to your second statement, but your first statement doesn't follow from it. If it was commonplace for people to get involved in altercations where they had to defend themselves with a weapon, it'd be both a better idea to start carrying a weapon if you weren't already, and it'd also discourage people from committing petty crimes like muggings. It might be worth it to a criminal to potentially lose their life over $1000, but not for $20.

You could make the argument that my statements logically extend to saying an armed populace increases larger more violent crimes while reducing the prevalence of petty crimes, and I agree that might make sense in a short-term, but criminals don't grow exponentially just because, crime is a symptom of separate social factors.

Fundamentally, there's no downside to carrying a weapon. If you don't need it, then you don't need it. If you do truly need to defend yourself with violence, then there isn't really much substitute and worse case you die wishing you'd had a weapon.

The primary danger is that you might end up in jail. You are in a dark alley, someone tries to mug you, you shoot them dead. No witnesses.

Police find a lot of money and some drugs on your assailant. They suggest that foul play was involved. A drug deal gone wrong. Under pressure you misremember certain facts of that night. The police notice a discrepancy in your story and build a case out of it.

A second danger is that you might aim a gun but not be able to pull the trigger. A large percentage of soldiers in WWII found themselves unable to kill someone, even when their life was in immediate danger.

Subsequently, armed forces spend a lot of time on psychological training to turn recruits into killers. You presumably haven't had this training, so I would bet money that you wouldn't be able to kill someone.

A third danger is that your assailant might have a gun too. In this case, the fact that you are carrying a gun cannot help you if they point theirs at you first. It can definitely get you killed if they notice you are armed.

(for the record, I didn't downvote you)

I don't know whether I agree with your general sentiment or not. But maybe we should consider whether your response to this article is itself an illustration of the very phenomenon that leads us to perceive the world as more dangerous as it is. The usual account of why we live in such irrational fear is that nobody wants to hear about things going well, and everyone being safe and happy on the news. Anyone who watches the news, therefore, sees a distilled tale of conflict and woe.

But this article is may well be doing the same thing. What have we learned from this article? Two kids, walking down the street, were stopped by police, and a social services investigation was triggered. We get virtually no information about the broader context: does this sport of thing happen often, or was this an anomaly? What will be the outcome of the investigation be?

In short, just as the strife you see on the news can make a person think the world is more dangerous than it is, the isolated examples of our culture running off the rails can have the same distorting effect.

To be clear, I don't think this kind of thing is common. But it's also not common to see children walking alone in America, at least in the parts I've been to.

It's the latter that's the problem. The former is merely a symptom of the latter, whether or not it is common.

In much of Suburbia you'll at least get some funny looks walking along certain streets, unless you're obviously out specifically for exercise (wearing exercise clothes, walking/jogging with a purpose) or otherwise have some sort of suspicion-shield, like a stroller, and aren't wearing clothes that look too cheap or dirty. Skin color is probably also a factor.

Walking to get places is for criminals or poor people :-(

I don't know what places you are referring to as "much of Suburbia", but a large number of us who read HN live in Silicon Valley suburbs where you see people walking around all the time. Kids on skateboards, groups of young, Indian software developers, joggers, solo guys like me walking along listening to podcasts, old Chinese couples, parents walking over to a student-teacher conference, teens walking over to friends' houses to play video games, etc.

That's the way it was where I grew up on the East Coast (minus the Chinese and Indians), and the way it was around Harvard when I lived in Cambridge, and the way it is now here in Silicon Valley.

I'm not saying that no such places exist. You might be describing those few neighborhoods that are mostly populated by wealthy retirees whose kids have grown up and left, but this is hardly the general case in American suburbs.

It's likely my middle-westernness is showing. My guess is most 'burb dwellers around here would consider the SV neighborhoods you're describing to be "in the city".

There's an entire country chock full of low density suburbia in between Cambridge and Silicon Valley.

Yes, I lived there, too. I lived in the Rocky Mountains for several years, and my comments are just as true of the suburbs of Denver (say, Boulder) or Salt Lake City (Provo/Orem) as they are of the coasts.

Of course, if you get far enough from a large city and low enough density, you'll get fewer and fewer people walking around, almost by definition, but then that's not where most American suburbanites live.

Los Gatos / Monte Sereno has places where walking is fine and other places where walking is just weird. As a visitor it used to be confusing working out which was which.

Gilroy Outlets are separated by roads and it's really hard to cross from one bit to the other. Part of the reason it's so hard to cross is that drivers just aren't used to seeing pedestrians at the various crosswalks and they seem to forget the rules of the road - they sort of stop and wave you over. That's nice but dangerous because other cars are not stopping unless the lights tell them too.

Sand Diego had some similarly confusing bits where walking is fien and other bits where walking was for weirdos.

So, even though this is very likited experience, I sympathise with people who say that walking as a mode of transport is an oddity.

I lament this fact constantly. As a child I was super free-range. We would leave our house at sun-up and just had to be home by sun-down. We would explore for miles and miles. I'm so sad my children will never experience this freedom.

Don't punish your children out of your fear of dealing with CPS. They will be fine. You will be fine.

It only takes one call to CPS for things to suddenly go very very wrong.

That is not a valid excuse for keeping your kids indoors.

The Police chided the parents for letting the children walk alone and about how unsafe the world is. The Police have fallen prey to the "the world is dangerous" narrative.

Did they just admit they can't keep/make it safe?

But it is safer now, that's the paradox.

Is it though? And even if it is, is it a world we want to live in?

(We need to name the evoking of Ben Franklin's "Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither" quote... _______'s Law).

It's less stable, but crime rates have been on a decrease-a-palooza for decades.

To be fair, Silver Spring, MD, probably isn't safer than it was. It was a pretty sleepy place 20-30 years ago, and in recent years has attracted a lot of urbanization as well as a significant amount of low-income immigration.

The police are naturally going to have a skewed view of society (modulo racial and class issues) because they spend their days dealing in bad situations. If your job is dealing with "bad people" doing "bad things" you're probably going see the world a little differently than folks who maybe never have to deal with the same situations.

You don't have to be afraid of bad things happening to your kids from "bad people" to decide they shouldn't walk by themselves. You might decide that it isn't worth the hassle of "good people" like the cops or child protective services threatening to take away your kids.

So even if you think your children are reasonably safe from people doing bad things to them; the risk of the government causing you all kinds of strife makes you reconsider letting them have an unsupervised walk.

I imagine parents react to not the world as it is, but as it was when they were growing up. The current world is really heavily shaped by a generation of people that: 1) had a very comfortable upbringing (i.e. are not used to loss); 2) spent most of their formative years under the threat of nuclear holocaust, skyrocketing crime, etc. My friends and I are entering our parenting years (my wife and I are 30), and we are already noticing how much more laid back we are than our parents growing up.

Not to mention this place is in the DC Metro, which is uniquely uptight and unpleasant among American localities.

A few here are giving examples of how this kind of thing wasn't a problem when they were a kid. I had similar experiences.

But, I want to say that I actively do not allow my children to play in our front yard. Not because I'm afraid a stranger will take them, not because I'm afraid they'll wander into the street to get hit by a car, not because I'm afraid they'll get hurt without an adult present, not because I'm afraid they'll wonder off to get lost.

The reason I don't let them play in the front yard? I'm afraid a neighbor will report me and the government will come take my kids away.

This is the true tragedy of these stories, society has only traded one type of fear for another that is potentially far worse in nature.

So true.

If anyone other than an officer or CPS agent takes your children, they will face consequences and justice has an opportunity to prevail. If an officer or CPS agent takes your children justice never enters the equation and consequences don't exist for them.

ADD: What can you do? "You might be able to beat the rap but you can't beat the ride. Now comply." In such situations you really are powerless. The worst kind of fear and situation, one where you are powerless.

I wonder how many of your neighbours feel the same as you. I wonder, if after seeing your kids play in the front yard, how many would respond in kind, letting their kids outside to play with yours, assuming that if one parent was willing then they wouldn't feel so guilty about it.

I suppose we just don't live in that kind of world anymore. I used to play the suburbs with other kids, we were rarely in the backyard, going around on the cul-de-sac and the windy roads of suburbia. By the time I was about 10 or 11 I had biked across the entire city.

My daughter is 3, we live in the city, but there are kids. The roads are busier and the neighbourhood more crowded with more cars now. I'm not sure if I'll have the same attitude. Funnily as grandparents even my parents seem much more reluctant, and worried about my daughter than they were about us.

At the grand old age of 9 or so I walked all over Amsterdam and my mom being a 'working single mom' from when I was 6 taught my sister (aged 4) and me to hold hands during the road crossings and to walk to the traffic light, cross, the walk back the other way to get to school (about 1.5 km away from where we lived). Nobody ever batted an eye and definitely were not the kids living furthest from school and not the only ones walking unsupervised.

I'm pretty happy I didn't grow up in a nanny state where I'd have been more or less confined to the house or where my mom would have had to give up her job just so we could be sheparded to school and back twice per day.

This was all around 1971, I'm not sure how many parents let their children that age walk alone to school in Amsterdam today. Traffic is much heavier than it was back then (more cars, comparatively fewer bicycles) and definitely more aggressive. Still, people respect the traffic lights (especially cars, bicycles less so) and I'm pretty sure that that route could be walked safely by a 6 and a 4 year old with proper instruction and a parent that has confidence in their abilities.

Whatever would happen I doubt that that parent would be investigated for neglect. In Canada (or so I was told) leaving your 10 year old unattended in the house could lead to trouble with child protection services.

"The first day of term coincided with the 1926 General Strike in Britain, but he was so determined to attend that he rode his bicycle unaccompanied more than 60 miles (97 km) from Southampton to Sherborne, stopping overnight at an inn."

That's Alan Turing, aged 13.

I used to walk home from school middle school across the centre of the town I lived in. That was about 1.5 miles. Was not considered weird or dangerous.

Kind of matches up with this:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-462091/How-children-...

"When George Thomas was eight he walked everywhere. It was 1926 and his parents were unable to afford the fare for a tram, let alone the cost of a bike and he regularly walked six miles to his favourite fishing haunt without adult supervision.

Fast forward to 2007 and Mr Thomas's eight-year-old great-grandson Edward enjoys none of that freedom.

He is driven the few minutes to school, is taken by car to a safe place to ride his bike and can roam no more than 300 yards from home."

Reading this, I felt real anger at our society. I have 1 year old twin girls and I am genuinely scared and saddened by the limitations that paranoid adults are going to put on us as parents, and them as children. We live in a world driven by fear detached from the real risks and joys of life.

>Reading this, I felt real anger at our society.

I think everybody feels this way. I have a hard time imagining that anything but the vast majority of parents would agree. So that makes we wonder if there is some agenda behind this? A gas lighting effect maybe? People would say "well things may not be ideal where I live, but at least it is not like over there", and so they are less likely to act to change things locally? I don't know, maybe I'm just being paranoid.

> I think everybody feels this way. I have a hard time imagining that anything but the vast majority of parents would agree.

I think this is typical mind fallacy.

Most parents, especially in these days of tiny family sizes, are probably more heavily protective than parents used to be.

I was ten in 1983, and for most of my childhood my only present parent was of the same age as most of my peers' grandparents (all of my siblings were boomers), and the difference in protectiveness was noticeable: I could stay out for hours at any time of the day or night when I was 13 and 14, except for times that were scheduled (school, church, and homework, basically). He wasn't surprised if he didn't see me for the entire weekend at that age.

I think the main reason is that the police feel like they have to do something about any complaint of this sort, because they'll be fed to the media sharks on the off chance that something does happen, even if it's some unrelated incident[1]. So all it takes is one idiot making a complaint and the police feel like they must act because that's safer for them and for the department than if they don't.

No-one's going to lose their job or any money over the linked story, so that's the safe option.

[1] "Could the police be partly to blame for so-and-so's disappearance? Here's the story of how our police ignored reports of vulnerable children in the weeks before this horrible event."

...after thinking about it a bit more, it could also just be part of an overall propaganda in the "cultural wars". Some people will be against the actions of the government in this case, while others will instinctively defend it. Certainly it is easy to get a

"He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance."

...vibe from the article. Which is not so different from the

"For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States"

...vibe that has also been making rounds lately.

I grew up in Manhattan in 80's, early 90's... by 4th grade/age 10 pretty much the whole class came to school by themselves - there is no school bus service in Manhattan kids get buss passes (handed out at school) to use on the buses and subways...

Additionally, most of our parents gave us $5-10 dollars that we were not to spend but keep with us at all time as "mugging money" - so that we had something to give up if we were mugged.

Apparently, a whole generation of parents were "neglecting" their kids...

For reference, I graduated HS in 2005 so my childhood was mid to late 90s. My friends and I used to tell our parents were were all going to each others houses and then ride our bikes all around town, through construction sites, abandoned factories, down highways, etc. None of us were abducted, died, injuries happen but who doesn't fall off their bike now and then ;)

The only times cops were involved were when someone called them. Cops would show up, talk to us, then leave once they knew we weren't making trouble and were safe. Never followed up on us or our parents. The only scary situation is once we were playing paintball and someone said a bunch of kids with guns are running around, cops showed up, searched us then went home laughing.

I think the difference today is all related to liability and the helicopter culture it created. Maybe the cops are just CYAing themselves by involving CPS. Maybe the cops didn't like the parents attitude and involved CPS. There is a huge stigma today about being up your kids ass and if you're not, you're a bad parent. Politicians and the media bank big time on pushing these "morals" and punishing anyone who thinks differently. It's not something that will be fixed tomorrow.

I look at the kids in my neighborhood and I feel sad for them. They wont have the experience I had. I am sure everyone feels that way though, the only difference is 15 years ago no one was going to jail or losing their kids over politics.

My comment is a little all-over-the-place but my point is, raising a kid in America is too dangerous of a risk for me and it's a sad thing to think about. The cultural fixes are all very obvious but then what will the news talk about? What will politicians campaign about? How can our leaders show they are "tough on the issues" unless they are relentlessly hammering insanity?

I always think of a quote from The Other Guys when topics like this come up because the solution is so obviously simple but so obviously never going to happen...

Gamble: What about nine million socially-conscious and unified citizens, all just stepping up and doing their part?

I used to ride my bike out of the county when I was in Elementary school. The worst thing that ever happened was that some redneck threw a beer bottle at me and knocked me off my bike. I got his license plate number and phoned the police. In the semi-rural area I had managed to bike to (about ten miles from my house) the police could care less about why I was biking, They thanked me for the info, made sure I was ok, and sent me on my way. Phoned my mother later (i borrowed her cell phone so I could call home while biking) to tell her that they caught the guy and were charging him with assault of a minor and DWI. I just had to speak to an officer on the phone for about 10 minutes and that was the end of that.

Now we apparently are considering taking children away from their parents because they were allowed to be 1/2 mile from their homes unattended? Was I born in the last decade where one could experience childhood?

I am looking for a house in part based on the criteria of letting my (future) children be able to get on transit or their bike and be independent as soon as reasonable. There is no reason I need to be in a helicopter over the children until they are 16 or whenever the government lets them drive.

With respect to kidnapping, abuse, etc, the larger danger is friends and family, not strangers. It is a fact that America is much closer to 1950s levels of safety in the 2010s.

John Paul Jones joined the Navy at 13. Why hold your children back?

edit: I see these stories come out of NYC, DC, etc. Are there similar reports from places that are, ahem, more known for freedom, i.e., Utah, Wyoming, etc?

So, I'm not up to speed on this issue, but can anyone give a brief summary or link describing why we need a special "extra-legal" department like CPS? Extra-legal probably isn't the exact wording I'm looking for, but why couldn't issues of excessive cruelty to children be handled in the standard manner, with due-process, etc.? I suppose I only hear about the outliers of extreme overreach, but it seems like CPS attracts busybodies with power complexes. And there is a potential that there is more of a backstory here that we aren't hearing about. Is there a compelling reason we shouldn't we shut these agencies down, or at least greatly curtail their activities? Or at the very least, fire everyone who was involved in this particular investigation?

Mostly it comes down to: division of labor is a thing.

CPS is responsible for things like foster care, finding if parents are (truly) neglectful and abusive, helping teach ignorant parents how to not kill their kids accidentally, and other related things. In most of the work they do, it is just due process - Our society has decided that when a parent goes to jail, or is ordered into an institution, or what not, and does so while caring for children and having no backup means for caring for those children, we shouldn't throw those kids out on the street and hope they survive.

In the case of neglect and abuse - it's apparent to people trained to find it (even in clear cut cases) but not as often noticable just by a quick glance: A common tactic of abusers is to hide it to the outside world, and scare the abused into lying about it - cops are trained to handle one situation, CPS investigators are trained to handle this different one. (Much like we have forensic accountants investigate financial crime and homicide detectives investigate murder).

When cops overstep and murder random people - the response is "well they have hard jobs, and they are trained to be safe", but when CPS oversteps and asks some uncomfortable questions, its "busybodies". Why does no one say "well they also get kids into homes rather than putting them on the street, and they see a lot of horrible abuse cases and are maybe a bit overcautious"?

Do you in general disagree with the notion of specialization and division of labor, or is it a knee-jerk reaction to the fact that "government" is doing it?

Why do you want to automatically shut down an agency that does a lot of good, because some bureaucrat is overstepping (or legally mandated to do so, whatever the case may be)?

It sounds to me like providing foster families for incarcerated parents has nothing to do with this particular case, or child abuse in general, and the best "division of labor" would be to not have those under the same roof. But that's neither here nor there. Also, to the strange non-sequitur, I think that cops murdering people is worse than what the article describes.

Are you saying that:

A). All the facts of this particular care aren't being presented (certainly plausible).

B). You don't find the conduct of the CPS in this case infuriating.

C). For the sake of argument you accept the facts as presented, you personally find it reprehensible, but you don't think others should find it reprehensible, or at least shouldn't try to call it out as such.

D). You work for a related agency, and naturally would want to stand up for your colleagues? Certainly you sound a little on the defensive side.

E). Other?

...maybe these social workers should be on a rotation, so they're not working on the same thing for more than two years. Kind of like prison guards should be, so they don't end up dehumanizing the inmates?

I'm saying the following:

There are a lot of reasonable and unreasonable actions on ALL sides of this.

1. Cops are mandated to report any potential child neglect and abuse in most places. While I think children walking to school alone is a good thing, it doesn't change the law stating that unsupervised children (details of the law are in the freaking article) fall under the umbrella of "potential neglect" as the rules are written.

2. The cops are following up on a report to them - again something they have to do. Some random person panicking over kids walking to school is where a lot of the rage should be placed. Not on the cops for following up because we have voted on laws requiring them to.

3. The mandatory reporting rules are in fact "Tell CPS". So yes, of course CPS is going to get involved.

4. CPS decided to find the facts. They are mandated to investigate in a certain way. Again, not by busybodies, but by the freaking regulations.

5. The parents freaked out because CPS came to ask questions. Now, this I find pretty unreasonable - while I understand it's stressful, it's also not the end of the world. It's a simple fact finding mission - answer the questions, with a lawyer if you feel it necessary.

6. Does this need to be investigated? By law yes, by sanity: no.

7. Yes, certainly all the facts are not being presented - the CPS is not allowed to comment on a case (by privacy laws) so we only hear the angsty parent's side.

8. I don't find the CPS case infuriating: I find the people who called the cops initially infuriating. I find the laws our society has enacted infuriating.

9. I'm sure the people who do foster care are a different division than the people who investigate neglect, however, they need to be in the same structure, because it makes sense to have the case worker assigned to a child be the same during an investigation and during follow-up.

10. It's not a non-sequitor to mention the cops misbehaving scenario - It's me pointing out an unreasonable difference between attitudes toward similar roles. Also note I said people, not "xrange". Further - the call for banishment of police departments never happens, but the call for banishment of CPS seems OK - even though they are just enforcing a different group of laws.

11. Rotation would probably be good.

It's because the general idea that someone can take away the children you love due to a misunderstanding is pretty freaking terrifying!

Parents make mistakes all the time. When you see stupidity like this, you realise there's a problem. It's very unfortunate, because at the same time as ridiculous things like this one are occurring there really are abused kids out there slipping through the cracks.

Exactly.

Additionally if a parent stands up to CPS and refuses to sign, CPS will forcefully take your children (even if you shut the door and lock it they'll go get the police, and hopefully a warrant, to come and get your kids) and that itself will cause psychological damage harming otherwise unharmed children. CPS thinks it can do no wrong when they can inflict more harm and damage on children without any oversight and repercussions for their mistakes and overzealousness.

I don't understand what you are saying? The CPS is required to follow up on every report, as a result of hand wavy crap likee "there really are abused kids out there slipping through the cracks". But when they act on it, they are still the bad guy.

Whether I agree with the law or not - as it's reported by the article, the children's ages, and them being unsupervised, does in fact potentially qualify as neglect. The CPS wasn't there to take children, they were there to find the facts. It isn't unreasonable for them to say "hey this takes a few days, we're not taking your kids, but you have to not do the same actions again, as they may be illegal".

Also: there is a giant hole in your argument: if kids are falling through the cracks, perhaps it's an indicator that the boogey man of "the kids will certainly be taken" is not as true as you think? Additionally, if kids are falling through the cracks, perhaps its that abusers (and neglectors) are known to be sneaky about it, so CPS needs to be thorough to prevent it?

> It isn't unreasonable for them to say "hey this takes a few days, we're not taking your kids, but you have to not do the same actions again, as they may be illegal".

That's the opposite of what they said, though. Here's the part that pisses people off:

> The Meitivs say that on Dec. 20, a CPS worker required Alexander to sign a safety plan pledging he would not leave his children unsupervised until the following Monday, when CPS would follow up. At first he refused, saying he needed to talk to a lawyer, his wife said, but changed his mind when he was told his children would be removed if he did not comply.

His children would be removed if he did not sign a piece of paper. That's totally disproportionate, and it's ridiculous that an investigator would have (or claim) the power to mete such an extreme punishment on their own judgment.

If a police officer came to your door, they would be absolutely prohibited from making a similar threat against, say, your computer or car. Apparently parents have more rights to inanimate objects than to their children.

This is why people get up in arms about CPS. The bar for removing kids from a home is way too low.

It's reasonable, in the same way it's reasonable to have people sign a receipt saying they got the package, or that its reasonable to have people sign a ticket (saying I am not admitting guilt by signing this, only that I was in fact presented with this paper). If I refuse to do any of those things there is an escalation (in the last case it's arrest and the impounding of the car!).

CPS does need to document that they took certain steps with the parent, or it doesn't count in court... instead they get in trouble for not being able to prove the parent was there, and discussed the welfare of the child.

The concept of CPS is a good one, as you say--they are specially trained to protect a very vulnerable segment of the population.

The problem is when CPS threatens to remove children from a home because the parents are not compliant with their commands. For example a CPS officer will show up to a home unannounced and demand to inspect it, based on an anonymous tip. If the parent says "no," the CPS officer says, "let me in, or I will remove your child from your home."

In contrast if a police officer came to your home, they would need a warrant from a judge to enter against the owner's will. Do CPS officers need a judge's warrant for the above demand? Everything I've read says no.

A police officer also cannot threaten to take property without a warrant. They can't say, "let me in or I will take your computer." If they want the computer, they need to get a warrant that specifically says they can take the computer.

So: it seems like parents have more rights to inanimate objects than to their own children, who are far more precious to them.

There's also the matter of punishment without due process. Officers can get a warrant to take a computer only if they can show that the computer probably has evidence on it that will further an investigation. They can't take a computer just to force the owner to comply with some other command.

Removing a child from a home punishes the parent. CPS has the power to do so even if they have no evidence that the child will show proof of abuse, or indeed without any tangible evidence of abuse whatsoever. They explicitly say that they are doing it only because the parent refused some other command, like to inspect a home or interview the parent.

And removing a child from a home is traumatic to the child. A computer doesn't care that it's going to the evidence room; a child will be confused and terrified. The emotional impact can persist for months or years even if CPS says "oops!" a day later and returns the child.

There needs to be a high standard for removing a child from a home. It absolutely should not be just another tool in the investigator's toolbox.

I haven't had a lot of interaction with them, but my opinion is that CPS attracts very empathetic people -- people who are attracted to a job of "saving the children".

These people are then exposed to a continuing stream of addicts, criminals, the mentally ill, etc, who are actively harming children.

Preserving your empathy in such a situation is very difficult. I suspect most just protect themselves by shutting it down.

Not to mention the fact that to everybody you interact with considers you the "bad guy".

I was at a party once where we everybody was trying to outdo each other describing the most disgusting thing they'd ever seen. There were some whoppers there -- there were farmers, doctors and vets at the party.

The winner was a CPS officer.

I biked to school from grade 6 to grade 13 (Italy, we have 5 years of high school). Walked to school before, but it was only a few blocks.

I moved to Texas for university, and people looked at me funny because I preferred to bike around if it was less than a couple miles.

It Texas we have this thing called summer ... There are hotter times/places, but it's enough ;)

On a more serious note, the size of the state is enough to pretty much force people to own cars/drive on a daily basis. At least that's been my experience.

Children already have way too few rights. I don't like the direction our society is moving in. You can't just take away rights of a minority, especially children. Getting taken in by the police is probably more harmful and scarring than anything that could have happened to them (with a non-negligible probability) on their short way.

Stay indoors citizen. It is for your protection.

The perception is that CPS workers are egomaniacs that think they can't be wrong and many appear power hungry.

The sad part is for ever time CPS "sign and agree or we'll make your life hell and take your children" they end up screwing up and failing a child in real need.

Their mentality is similar to that perceived of police forces... "you might beat the rap but you can't beat the ride... now comply!" (regardless of whether they are in the right or not)

ADD: It would seem that CPS focuses on making hell for parents who challenge them instead of focusing on protecting children. They'll invest more time and energy in showing people "who's the boss" than just using some common sense and intelligent passive monitoring. Google "CPS failed"

Yea, my wife and I have had a run in with cps, luckily nothing bad came of it. For a while though I was constantly thinking of the kids that actually are in an abusive situation and haven't been helped by these cps jerks who would rather waste their time threatening to shatter everything I live for. And yes, I tried to stand up to them and they threatened to remove our kids. Wtf? How can it be so easy for an entity to just do that? Something really wrong with that.

Different country and different times but at 10 I walked to and from school alone, probably also before that age, can't remember. It would have been odd to go there with a parent, are you a mummy's boy? Furthermore everybody did it, no danger at all with the exception of one road crossing. One or two years later I started walking to that very same school with my younger brother before going to my new one. They started at the same time but luckily they were only a couple of blocks apart so I could manage. I sympathize for those kids and their parents and I'm worried seeing the same things happening here. Luckily no police involved, only apprehensive and omnipresent parents.

>At first he refused, saying he needed to talk to a lawyer, his wife said, but changed his mind when he was told his children would be removed if he did not comply.

Protecting children from abduction, by abducting them. GG America!

For me, the way we treat children has become the shining example of how broken our society has become (in the US at least). I'm appalled by the lack of freedom kids have these days. I'm appalled by how many parents opt to stick a tablet in front of a kid instead of parenting.

From an objective perspective, it really does look like we're trying to breed the most narrow minded, most uninquisitive, most docile versions of ourselves possible and I'm mortified by this trend.

> Danielle and Alexander Meitiv say they are being investigated for neglect for the Dec. 20 trek…

'Trek'? It was a mile walk! Not a big deal.

This country has become insane.

"'The number one cause of death for children of their age is a car accident.'”

They're children. What else are they going to die of?

Measles.

Just a joke, but you're correct. There risk of most major life threatening diseases (cancer, lung disease, etc) are near 0 and therefore MVAs do kill the most.

Gun-related deaths, drowning, suffocation are next on the list at http://www.childdeathreview.org/nationalchildmortalitydata.h... . However, motor injury outnumbers all of the other listed fatalities due to unintentional injury.

A lot of the numbers in that list are due to infants <1 year old. The CDC more generically says "malignant neoplasms" - cancer - is about 55% as likely as as unintentional injury for the ages of the children in the report. http://www.cdc.gov/injury/images/lc-charts/leading_causes_of...

To answer your question, gun-related deaths and cancer.

As a boomer, I think of this from time to time. One point that strikes me is that there were a lot of maternal eyes exercising loose but not infrequent surveillance. And there weren't a lot of latch-key kids around back then: moms knew when school got out, when would be a reasonable time for the kid to show up, dump the book bag and run out back to play. And adults didn't mind leaning out the door and rebuking you if they thought they should. Admittedly, I remember only the case of the lady who objected to a couple of us kicking snow at each other and incidentally onto her well-cleaned sidewalk.

http://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2014/08/03

There are two counter points that are not covered. Kids getting hurt in car accidents doesn't distinguish between them being in the car or being hit by a car. All of the car accidents I have heard where a child was hurt have been when the kid was crossing.

Secondly, its not a question of if the world is safer. The issue is with how litigious the world is, if the cops hadn't called CPS and something was wrong they would have gotten in trouble, if the CPS hadn't followed standard operating procedure their jobs would have been on the line.

In my opinion, as a parent, the people to blame are the over protective parents that call for "Think of the children" laws/rule just because of statistically insignificant tragedies.

I was curious about laws and such (since they said in the article that children under eight were legally supposed to be under supervision in that jurisdiction), and came upon this study on unsupervised kids: http://www.childtrends.org/wp-content/uploads/2003/04/unsupe...

That says that 7% of kids age 6-9 are under self care. Not a huge percentage, but millions of kids. Which is to say, there's nothing unusual about kids on their own – but maybe to avoid criticism, keep them hidden away inside when they are on their own.

People, you are likely not a monster parent but the CPA and police are there to try to find the rare monsters. I understand resisting someone making rules for how you parent, and I support "free range" roaming "liberty fry" eating parenting, but just let the CPA search your house, see all is well, interview your kids. If they don't find dead bodies in your basement they will probably move along.

Peoples perception of the probability of criminal victimization is directly tied to the frequncy and intensity of media reporting on criminal activity.

I'm 45. I walked alone to and from school every day of my youth since I was 7. My kids do the same. This is totally normal.

However, some states are still ruled by people who want to teach creationism, or legislate that pi is 3, because America values freedom to ignore observable evidence in favor of opinion.

> some states are still ruled by people who want to teach creationism, or legislate that pi is 3

sweet dig but this is Maryland we're talking about, they go in for a different kind of loony there.

I remembered a website with a visual illustration of how much the walking range of children has declined in Britain during four generations of a family living in the same town. The map, based on where the great-grandfather, grandfather, mother, and son in the same family walked, shows a stark narrowing in how far children walk on their own.[1] In my town, in Minnesota in the United States, I walked regularly on the city trail system with my children to the county library branch (about a mile away, in one direction from our home) or to the shopping district (about a mile away in the other direction on our same city trail system). All of my children have been able to do those walks on their own, or with an older sibling accompanying a younger sibling, for a long time. My children can be out and about in our neighborhood without anyone hassling them. It should be that way for more children. Most cities in the United States these days are objectively safe enough for children to walk outdoors alone at the ages described in the article kindly submitted here (I don't know specifically about that part of greater DC in suburban Maryland,[2] but I would guess it is safe enough too), and children are better off walking and exploring more rather than being confined indoors or in cars on parental drives to other buildings all day.

AFTER EDIT: Many comments posted after mine here was posted are bemoaning the lack of freedom children have to roam outside today, but that remains to be proven. I think the most astute comments here point out that we really don't know whether there are a lot of external pressures on parents to keep their children from walking outside alone, or just a change in parenting practices that makes that less common. I can testify that here in Minnesota, my children are far from the only children who walk outside by themselves at the ages reported in the news anecdote here. Compared to my childhood growing up not far from where I live now, I think children spend too much time indoors in general, and not enough time outside, but I have no fear of the police or the child protection authorities here when my children are outside. We are homeschoolers, so my children have spent a lot of time outdoors during normal school hours. That has never been a problem here, as everyone knows that homeschooling is legal in Minnesota. My children have often walked to the public library by themselves during school hours. New parents (some of the commenters on this thread) need not be afraid of bringing up their children to take walks by themselves outdoors.

[1] http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/571-the-great-indoors-or-ch...

[2] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Woodside+Park,+Silver+Spri...

I grew up in Silver Spring and was allowed to walk to nearby parks and friends' houses alone or with other friends starting around kindergarten. If I had kids and lived there now, I would definitely allow them to walk around the neighborhood.

In Finland, kids as young as 6 or 7 routinely walk to school on their own, and when it's winter time, that means they do it during night time. No one thinks this is weird, and nothing happens to them.

This might be off topic, but go check Google News for "meitiv", and look at how much spam is there from The Week!

I don't see any.

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