‘Free-range’ parents plan to file lawsuit after police pick up children | Hacker News Reader

‘Free-range’ parents plan to file lawsuit after police pick up children

washingtonpost.com

99 pointsThimothy88 comments

We're so obsessed as a society on making life "easy" for our kids that we completely remove our children's ability to fend for themselves in the real world.

These parents were doing their children a service and trying to break free from the overprotective craziness that has everyone keeping their kids inside. And the response they received is crazy. As if its not hard enough to go against the grain and give your kids more independence, now there is precedence that if you do, you may be at risk.

Our jobs as parents is not to protect kids from life, but to give them the tools to navigate it.

Part of giving them tools is giving them the opportunity to fail and learn from it.

The rates of depression, suicide, bullying and drug use have been climbing higher and higher -- we're not helping our kids stay safe, we're keeping them from gaining wisdom.

Eventually it will change, though I suspect things will get worse before they get better... change comes when the pain of staying the same is too great -- we're all too comfortable keeping our kids inside.

It opens your eyes travelling to other countries, different rules and different social norms.

Most places have kids running wild and seem to be enjoying themselves. Obviously there is risk, but 99.99% of adults would go to a childs aid if anything happened. But there is always one overprotective person in a position of power who delights in taking away some freedom in the name of security. It's hard to argue with someone when they are making kids safer... <cue dramatic music - dun dun duuun> but at what cost.

Related visualization of how kid's range has shrunk over four generations: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/2b/4e/b3/2b4eb36f9...

Very interesting.

I wonder how much of it has to do with automobile traffic.

Probably not much. Most of it, seems to me, to be related to unfounded fear that something bad is going to happen to the child.

Try walking those six miles to go fishing. I'd probably first have to spend 10 minutes to research suitable paths to even get there and not end up in the middle of a desert of cars.

Yesterday I needed to run some errands and it hit me pretty hard how silly we've become. My seven year daughter didn't want to come with me and while I'm sure she's mature enough to stay at home by herself I went to Google to determine if I'd be viewed as a criminal or not in the eyes of my parenting peers or the state. It turned out that my local child protective services had a Q&A on their site stating that it's okay to leave a child home alone at age 11. I then went to my city and state statutes and couldn't find a single law which said it would be illegal. After a bit more research I found plenty of parents recommending that kids not only can, but should be left home alone if they are okay with it. This helps to build independence and self-esteem. I ended up leaving her at home alone for about an hour and not a single bad thing happened.

No idea where it came from, but we've been told that up to one hour alone per grade level is a good rule of thumb.

I heard that too from a uninformed internet commenter.

We used to have the notion of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latchkey_kid

I grew up with both parents working long hours, and I was definitely a Latchkey kid. From the time I got home until right before dinner I was usually alone to do what I wanted.

I think for a few years, when I was 6 or 7, my mother required I call her every hour as a check-in, but even that relaxed by the time I was 8 or 9. My only requirement was to be home by dark, regardless of the time of year and if parents were home.

Curiously, my parents would also occasionally hire a babysitter, but I never quite understood why and what for. It was pretty random.

Homes are pretty dangerous and sometimes children do stupid things. While child protective services shouldn't be called[1] for someone leaving a child for a short time CPS needs to have clear and easy to communicate guidelines. They might want to say "11 and up; unless they're not stupid and the home is safe and you're not gone too long" but, well, the target audience needs clearer information.

[1] it'd be good if we had a "report early, report often" culture and the funding to go with it. A single report of a mild incident means nothing happens; several reports of mild incidents from different agencies means a freindly chat to see if help is needed or wanted.

no they don't. we don't need them telling us when our children are responsible enough for particular tasks. When our first reaction is "is this illegal" we've gone too far. When bad laws influence good parents, its wrong and needs to be repealed immediately.

The first reaction a parent should have to "I might leave my child at home for a few hours" absolutely should be "is it safe?"

CPS is not there for parents who know how to assess risk. They exist for parents who by definition are bad parents. Those parents need simplistic advice, with the threat of legal action. The fact that CPS overstepped their bounds in a few cases is bad, and needs to stop, but it doesn't change the fact that the advice needs to be clear and simple.

And government totally should be trying to influence parents. I guarantee that their are some kind loving parents reading HN right now who do not have working tested fitted smoke detectors. Government here should be playing persuasive adverts; subsidising the costs of smoke detectors; providing assistance to fit those detectors; regulating the manufacture of detectors so we know they work.

The thing that has annoyed me about the discussions of these cases is that people are only talking about the disruption to this family's life. The real outrage is CPS wasting time on non abusive parents when so many children are raped and murdered. An estimate 1600 children died as a rssult of abuse or neglect from a primary care giver in 2012; that doesn't count murders by other family members.

I fully stand by my comment that the home is a dangerous place for children. Home is where children are murdered by family members; physically, sexually or emotionally abused by family members (and siblings are the greatest risk of being the abuser); most accidents happen in the home. Children can't get jobs; can't vote; are not held criminally responsible for their actions[1] -- so parents should be thinking carefully before they leave children alone in the house.

> ...government totally should be trying to influence parents. I guarantee that their are some kind loving parents reading HN right now who do not have working tested fitted smoke detectors. Government here should be playing persuasive adverts; subsidising the costs of smoke detectors; providing assistance to fit those detectors; regulating the manufacture of detectors so we know they work.

Wow, so nobody wants the government reading our phone metadata, but its no big deal if they tell us how to raise our kids? Are you kidding me? "You can't have my privacy, but I'm OK with you taking my freedom." Really?

> Home is where children are murdered by family members; physically, sexually or emotionally abused by family members (and siblings are the greatest risk of being the abuser); most accidents happen in the home.

Most accidents would happen where one spends the majority of their time. One in three car accidents happen within one mile from home [0]. Your statement says a lot of nothing.

[0] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/6018081/One-in-thre...

Yeah, no. The government shouldn't be supervising how we raise our kids, except in the most extreme circumstances.

The government needs to protect children before they're maimed by careless or stupid parents. A government agency letting you know what it considers risky behaviour is a good thing, so long as they don't set it too restrictively.

You may say "but what kind of fucking idiot would leave an 11 year old child at home alone for more than 24 hours?"

Here's a story about a woman who left her 11 year old boy alone at home while she went on a three week holiday.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2601747.stm

That article also mentions the case of a twelve year old boy who was left alone for a fortnight.

Thus, when CPS get a report of a child alone at home it's a good idea for them to ask (but not formally; not as part of taking action) if the child is safe or if the parents are going to be back that day or not.

> "The government needs to protect children before they're maimed by careless or stupid parents."

> "Here's a story about a woman who left her 11 year old boy alone at home while she went on a three week holiday."

Nice sleight of hand. You need to work on it though, it's still too noticeable.

We're not talking about cracking down on parents that maim or abandon their children. We are talking about parents that allow their children to walk around their own goddamn neighborhood.

I definitely could have cared for myself for three weeks when I was eleven. Maybe many 11yo kids can't, but that's a function of what they haven't been taught, not age.

Every single parent alive today is descended from a long line of parents, dating back to the origin of life itself, that did not need CPS to tell them how to act.

The idea that after all of those successful iterations we are now too stupid to raise our own kids is incredibly insulting.

"Report early, report often" sounds extremely creepy and intrusive to me. I realize my culture is fully embracing the police state all around me, and I try not to play the Orwell card too often, but how can it not seem eerily Orwellian to suggest that parents should be reported early and often? What's next, CPS monitors in the home?

It sounds creepy because you live in a police state where people abuse their powers.

Imagine a better society. A six year old child turns up at school unwashed and hungry. The parent, who normally collects the child every day, is not there at pickup time. The child lives 3 miles from school. A couple of weeks later the same child is taken to ER. The mother is evasive, but the injuries seem to match the story. The child is again unwashed and a bit dirty and hungry. There are very many cases where these kind of signs go unreported; and one of these signs on it's own probably doesn't reach a threshold where anyone (even if it is reported) will do anything about it. But when collated they start showing that maybe there is something where the parents need more help, or ultimately the child needs to be protected by removing it from it's family.

I live in a country where every single child attending A&E deparments for any reason is reported to their local child protection social workers. In the vast majority of cases nothing happens; no letters; no visits; no threats. But in some cases abused children are detected and protected. It's not perfect, but it's better than letting untrained people guess at what should or shouldn't get reported. Report early report often culture avoids the need for mandatory reporting, which is IMO worse.

When I talk about human rights my American friends say things like "obviously we believe in human rights. The only reason we don't ratify those UN things is a constitutional matter about our courts and our laws", but looking at what Americans in power shows that some of them have no concept of human rights.

A bunch of this stuff is pretty clear in international law (freedom from arbitrary interference; right to a family life for parents; right to a family life for children; family is findamental unit and should be allowed to parent; protect children from harm).

First thing to get a little closer to that better society -- we need to lose the shady system of secret courts the parents are taken through.

It's truly ridiculous sometimes. My neighborhood has half a dozen schools in it but it's only about a mile in any direction. It has extensive walking paths, sidewalks, crosswalks, lights, etc.

Any child is within an easy 10-15 minute walk to school, and there wouldn't need to be more than 2 or 3 crossing guards to cover all the major roads and intersections. But this would be too easy, instead all the children line up at bus stops throughout the neighborhood, take a 5-10 minute bus-ride to their school and a 5-10 minute ride in the afternoon to get back home.

Parents who want to drop their kids off create chaos as hundreds of cars pack the areas around schools so they can drop-off their children. The local message boards are full of angry parents swearing at each other for driving poorly or violating some kind of unwritten rule during this drop-off/pick-up period. To say it's chaos would by minimizing it.

My understanding is that no child walks to any of the schools, even if they live across the street. The consideration is that it's too dangerous, with all the buses and cars and all. And there's a couple largish roads with people who drive too fast.

So instead of a couple crossing guards, they've created an unsafe chaos, used millions of dollars worth of equipment and hired a dozen or more bus drivers to shuttle kids back and forth to school.

Of course once our pools are open, kids run around the entire neighborhood with complete abandon, dodging hi-speed traffic in flipflops as they frogger their way to their summer fun.

I remember when I was a young child I had about a mile-by-mile area in an urban area I could free-range within. It was naturally cut-off by some major roads, but provided more than enough area for me and my friends to play around in. On occasion, I'd walk to elementary school instead of taking the bus, 3 or 4 miles away. It wasn't seen as a big deal.

When I was about 10 we moved to a rural area, and my local free-range zone exploded to a massive wooded zone full of animals, and creeks and rivers. My mother decided she wanted me to attend an after-school program across the street from my school. It was at an intersection with crosswalks and walk signals and everything. Things went well for the first couple weeks. Then one day, in great alarm, the principal of the school grabbed me before I left for the day and forbade me from crossing the street.

For the rest of the contract period with the after-school program, I had to call a taxi, wait 10-20 minute for him to show up, have him take me the 10 second drive across the street, pay the minimum fare (I think it was $5 at the time). Finally the taxi company even started complaining that this was stupid to the school, but my parents had had enough and pulled from the after school program and just let me take the bus home....where I happily walked a mile down a busy country dirt road from my bus stop to my house to put down my school stuff before heading off into the woods until it got dark.

I remember as a kid I passed about 5 crossing guards each way when I walked to/from school. Now I drive through that same community and the crossing guards have been replaced with speed bumps, bus lanes, and extended entrances to the schools. The walking path through the woods I used as a shortcut is overgrown and I bet if I asked any of the kids there today they wouldn't even know it exists.

I remember one day I was walking home from school and crossed the street not at the crosswalk. By the time I got the crossing guard who spotted me had called my mom and I got a stern ass chewing about using crosswalks (never happened again :)

An interesting side effect is that most of the general populous in a larger city has very little contact with children in public. They've been removed from society at large - to the detriment of both the children and society.

It really boggles my mind how crazy people have gotten when it comes to kids. I grew up in the 1990's with overprotective Asian immigrant parents.[1] They wouldn't let us do anything other kids did. But hell if we weren't walking home from school when we were about the same age as these kids.

As an aside, I hear people complain about lawsuits against police departments, because ultimately any judgments are paid out of tax dollars. I find that argument unavailing. In almost every municipality, police departments are the product of democratic processes. The police department is shitty because the people who vote for the leadership are shitty. This happened in Silver Spring, MD, a suburb of DC and home to a large number of uptight paranoid people. I grew up just on the other side of the MD-VA line: the only tragedy here would be if these taxpayers weren't on the hook for a big judgment to these parents.

[1] I honestly thought that it wouldn't get worse than when I was growing up--assembly rooms full of teachers and parents shrieking "just say no!"

What about the grizzly bears that could hurt the children?

Springfield has the solution to this issue, the Bear Patrol. There hasn't been a single attack from a grizzly bear whilst the B-2s were over the area. The parents of Silver Spring, MD are expecting the Maryland Air National Guard to acquire the aircraft, wih a cost of $2.1Bn each.

In all seriousness, DC Metro is some of the most patrolled airspace in the country. Several agencies fly helicopter patrols around Silver Spring.

[0] https://40.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lat1d3Zmf91qzdsi5o1_1280....

I too had overprotective immigrant parents, yet at age 6 I was walking to elementary school, just a short distance of 4 blocks. Middle school was considerably further at 1.7 miles, and through the woods, but there was never any problem. We were also taking the bus, unaccompanied by parents, around town by age 12.

I think also that people are more uninvolved with the people around them these days, especially in metropolitan areas. People don't know their neighbors and don't have the commitment to their neighborhood as in the past. You rarely hear of people verbally disciplining someone else's unruly children, or watching over them, as you might have read in stories from 50 years ago. People now are more likely to stand and watch a crime or an accident, or simply ignore it, rather than get involved. All this implies a greater danger to unaccompanied children.

Until the age of 10, I roamed in about a square mile of lakes, woods, creeks and fields. At the age of 10, we moved to a different state and city and my range increased considerably and it was common for me to roam miles away from my home. Granted, my parents just thought we were "in the woods" or "on the bikepath" and probably didn't know the full extent of our travels but they didn't make hard rules as to where we could be, either. The freedom I was given encouraged me to push my boundaries and it expanded my mind. I wouldn't trade those years of exploring woods, swimming in creeks and quarries and observing wildlife for anything. There weren't many other kids who traveled as extensively as my brother and I did. Perhaps more children would be persuaded to put down the iPhone and go outside if they had the freedom to roam as they please. Limiting them to their backyards and next door neighboor's house isn't nearly as enticing as "go roam".

Similar story here. Our parents made sure that all children could swim well as early as possible. I remember them supervising us only as long as there was a weak swimmer in the group. From then on I think they generally kept an eye on where we were, not always and without us noticing, but I think they actually had a good idea of our range.

When we were around 11, we were given tools (hammer, saw, nails and old left-over boards with rusty nails in them) to build our own tree house. Our parents started with a basic version, and we were free to build extensions (without supervision). This was really fun and there were only minor injuries. I'm not sure it would still be possible today.

Anybody have the opposite perspective on this?

Supposedly, "most people" nowadays think that children should not be allowed to roam, but I only ever hear from people who think that's ridiculous. For instance, I just scrolled the comments here and they are literally 100% "I can't believe how paranoid we've become". The conversation I read and hear on this is so one-sided that I really have no sense for what the argument of the other side even is.

I think this is just media sensationalist bullshit.

You wouldn't hire a ten year old to babysit your six year old. End of story.

under particular circumstances, yes I would. If my 10 year old was responsible and my 6 year old was responsive to my 10 year old's responsibility, I'd let them go down the street to the park. What's sensationalist bullshit is the garbage the police are spouting and the garbage CPS will be spouting as they take kids from their parents. They seem to think the foster care system will do a better job of raising the kids than these parents how have raised kids to be able to play at the park unattended.

You're completely right. I wouldn't pay a 10 year old, but I'd have one watch my kids for a bit while I nip down to the store.

I routinely rode my bike around the neighborhood at that age. On Saturday, I'd make my own bowl of cereal for breakfast, then ride around until I found my friends grouped on their bikes and we'd hang out as long as we wanted or until supper at 5:00 PM sharp (don't be late!). Ten years old is not an infant, and can responsibly navigate their own neighborhood if trained and allowed to learn.

I watched my brother while my parents were gone when I was 6 and he was 4. There's a huge difference between siblings and strangers.

I frequently babysat my six year old twin brothers when I was eight.

You should seriously consider the possibility that you are the victim of media sensationalism. The world is safer for children today than it ever has been. Children do not need round-the-clock adult supervision.

I babysat my younger brothers and sisters at 11 for a few hours here and there. We had neighbors and a phone. I knew how to use it.

I credit this early responsibility for a lot of valuable workplace attributes I have today.

They exist, believe me, I know a few, and it's pretty terrifying. Law-enforcement is basically backing their paranoia and confirming their biases on the daily.

It sucks, but there's little that non-terrified people can do, without risking having their kids abducted by the state, which is actually significantly more terrifying, and far more likely than the prospect of stranger abduction.

"It sucks, but there's little that non-terrified people can do"

Although running away from the problem is perhaps not the most noble solution, I would like to point out that this entire discussion and the behavior of all the actors involved is completely irrelevant in a small, rural community made up of large landowners.

You can indeed live apart from these norms and depending on your matrix of needs/wants/conveniences, it might even be a lower cost of living.

I scanned the comments below the article, they seemed to me to be mostly against children being able to roam.

Ha, totally didn't do that. I guess I'm self-selecting my bubble by preferring to read comments on the sites I frequent while ignoring actual article comments. Thanks for the pointer.

Edit: I went and read the comments on the article, and I'd say that they're about evenly divided. Lots of people saying similar stuff to what you see hear, but also those saying that you can't do this "in today's world".

These discussions often hover around how safe our current world is, and how any dangers are just perceived dangers, where the perception is way out of proportion to the reality.

The claim is people have wild perceptions influenced by dramatic media coverage, and the world is just as safe as, or safer than, it ever was.

But, I'm not so sure. I think the reality has changed too.

Since the days when we used to walk five miles to the toy store, everyone has better access to technology, transportation, and information, than they did, and this is a double edged sword that enables both good and bad people to have more capabilities.

Also not just perception is the fact that Reagan defunded mental health treatment, leading to the massive homeless situation we have (I'm not saying homeless people or mentally ill people are necessarily dangerous, but as with any unknown variable, their presence does make it harder to determine when a place is safe or not).

Still, in this particular case it seems like the police went way over a line of reasonableness... maybe not in picking the kids up, but in what happened next.

I'm pretty curious about this line of thinking, because I share it to some degree. But it also seems to me that the statistics suggest the world is safer. It seems that we feel less safe despite living in a safer world.

I think this is largely from the persistent messaging from the news, etc. that we're not safe. Even if you completely dismiss it rationally, it's hard to keep it from seeping into your less rational thinking.

I think both sides are right. On the one hand, we actually are safer. But on the other hand, our tolerance to risk is way down.

And one of the main reasons we are safer is because we behave more safely. By doing things like keeping children close to adults who can supervise them.

Could it be that the world is safer, because we are behaving in safer ways?

Ways like keeping children closer to home, and under better supervision? This being just one aspect of a safer world. But if our world is safer, that didn't come about through magic. It came about by doing different things.

Except there's a cost to every security measure you take. When you're talking about "never let kids out of your sight", that cost is having your children grow up with a constant, subconscious attitude of fear. That has real ramifications as an adult, where you are less likely to take risks, less likely to trust strangers, and less likely to try new things. In a world that's constantly changing like ours is, and a large part of your success comes through serendipity, you're setting your kids up to be left behind.

There are prudent things you can do that will make your kids much safer but don't create an overall climate of fear. "Buckle up." "Don't get in a car with strangers." "Look both ways before crossing the street." "Stay away from areas of town where there's active gang violence going on." "Learn to swim." It's all about specifically targeting real, verified risks, and not about generally targeting things that might conceivably be risky but that you don't know much about.

No except about it; I agree with you. There are always costs, and benefits.

Yeah, except crime and injury statistics completely destroys your hogwash armchair musings. Everyone, including children, are much safer now then 30 years ago.

If people want to talk about safety, driving a car is one of the more dangerous activities, certainly more dangerous than walking.

Recently a playground near my apartment got torn down. I was talking to my mother on the phone recently, and mentioned how tragic it was that playgrounds were being torn down across the nation in the name of "safety" (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/science/19tierney.html).

To my great surprise, she disagreed. She thought it was a good thing. This is a woman that took me to countless playgrounds when I was a kid, and let me roam free in hundreds of acres of forest whenever I wanted. Somehow, after successfully raising me "free-range", she had a change of heart. I couldn't tease anything out of her besides "it's dangerous, kids could get hurt".

I don't have a root-cause for her about-face. I suspect either the influence of media or that something happens when adults who have raised children become elderly. Maybe without kids at home, parents start dwelling on the past and fixate on everything that could have gone wrong.

One way to get her to think about it: next time it comes up, say "Huh, I didn't realize you were such a terrible parent. Were you trying to get me killed by taking me to all those parks?"

As a parent myself, I find all of this paranoia completely insane. My daughter and a school friend (8 at the time) walked down a half a block to our neighborhood park here (in the scary city!) to play, and her friends' mother found out and LOST it.

It's crippling to children, and unbelievably annoying for adults (need to run into the store for a stick of gum? Gotta unpack the kids and bring them with for the 1 minute transaction, or someone will call CPS!).

Here in Minnesota, my theory is that Jacob Wetterling's family and the "news"-mongers are largely to blame. That sad incident of course, was 25+ years ago now, and is still regularly dredged up to scare the pants off of parents.

Feh!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Wetterling

A paradox of a safer society is that tragic acts like child abductions make more news than they would if they were more commonplace, inflating the perception of the threat.

People feel that the threat is greater in fact because it is so much rarer.

Child abduction by strangers is extremely rare and around 100 per year in the US although that may be an outdated number. The one stat I just checked said 515 stranger abductions between 1990 and 1995. And that was when free range children were far more common than today.

Overprotective parents will claim that's a result of their actions.

Also, as less parents allow their children to roam, the risk to the remaining ones increase as there are a smaller pool of children readily abductible.

Meanwhile 3 million children a year have substantiated reports of abuse (50% of reported) https://www.childhelp.org/child-abuse-statistics/

At the age of 10, I commuted to a school that was 15 miles from my home (because it was better than the local elementary school). With two of my classmates, 'alone'. With train. Everyone considered this completely normal and acceptable.

Life is getting safer and more secure as time passes. 2015 is safer than, say, 1995. This whole thing is just sad and crippling for kids (and also for the parents, but it's mostly their fault).

It's interesting how people's perceptions have changed over time.

My brother and I walked home from school down dirt roads and through mature forests 3 miles. We weren't supposed to, but it wasn't a big deal.

We were 11 and 6. I wonder what would happen today.

Now your parents would be considered libertarian nuts and prosecuted by the state.

Notice how what were once normal parents are now "free-range" parents.

I can't help but think they've given themselves this label. I have no evidence for that but it has way too positive connotations to be slapped on them from a distance - with sizeable negative connotations for the alternative too. It seems too easy to come up with something far more negative if you wanted to make them seem bad.

I grew up in The Netherlands (until I was 8) and Switzerland (until I was 12), at age 12 I moved to the US.

In The Netherlands me and my friends had quite the range. We were allowed to go down to the soccer field half a mile away, I remember walking to see friends half-way across town. In Switzerland I had a very similar range, and by the time I was 10 I was taking the tram to school (in Basel, other side of the city). I was allowed to roam as much as I pleased so long as I was back home by certain times. I remember spending hours with friends in Basel.

When I got to the US I had the same amount of ability to roam around.

I am now 27 years old, and I am watching all these parents hover over their kids, and it makes me afraid for society as a whole. All that roaming and being outside and away from the house just made me who I am, not afraid, and gave me a huge sense of self-worth, confidence and self-esteem.

I'm British, but I live in Zürich; it's awesome to see random packs of kids roaming around doing stuff on their own.

I think there's two main things which make this possible: firstly, the amazing public transport system, which means that it's basically impossible to get stuck everywhere; also the culture that adults are not scary, which means that they feel comfortable talking to adults (and vice versa). Admittedly, they mostly talk in thickly accented Schweizerdeutsch, which I don't understand a word of, but they're still talking.

In the UK it's dangerous for an adult even to make eye contact with a child.

Another interesting observation is that packs of children here that I've observed are, IMO, well behaved and polite. I have yet to see anything like the adult/child antagonism that you see in the UK. They're obviously doing something right here, while we're obviously not.

Kids in the Netherlands have a range of many miles thanks to bicycles.

Growing up in the Hague, we didn't only roam the entire width and breadth of the city, but we went for long cycling trips through the dunes and countryside to Wassenaar or Hoek van Holland, about 10 to 15 kilometers out of town. And I wasn't even an adventurous kid, being a nerdy bookworm most of the time.

> Police said an officer saw a “homeless subject” who was “eyeing the children.”

We should focus on the real problem: nasty filthy homeless mens wanted to steal our precious children!

Also, there's no possible way the cop just made that up.

Even worse, he might have been having impure thoughts! Clearly, he should be arrested for blatant pre-premeditated pre-crime./s

Why was this boob hanging around watching a hobo allegedly ogle unaccompanied children? Clearly said indigent's activity didn't rise to the level of even mild beating, so I'm not sure why officer Friendly even bothered mentioning it, other than to scare the impressionable.

Probably a bunch of "respectable" folks were eying the children as well. Likely thinking "what are those kids doing out here by themselves! it's Dangerous!"

Agree with the vast majority here who posit the whole thing has gotten destructive and ridiculous.

They were found in a parking garage where a homeless man was "eyeing the children"?

So the police officer got the homeless man's information, right? Oh, no, no evidence to back up his story? THAT'S SHOCKING! Police NEVER lie in order to paint the story they want, EVER!

Question on a slightly different setting: in more urban areas with public transport, is it common for kids (past some age) to be allowed to travel places on their own on metros/buses? It's definitely common here (Copenhagen), and from what I gather also fairly common in other European cities, and in Japan. But I have no idea if it is in NYC, SF, or Chicago. I think it's partly normalized here from a certain age because we don't have school buses, and instead kids are expected to take the regular transit. So then it's not a huge stretch for them to take the same buses to piano lessons, friends' houses, etc.

In a rare fit of sensibility, Minneapolis public schools stopped bussing highschool kids around. They now get free city bus passes, and our roads aren't (as) clogged as they were with giant yellow kindertransports full of young adults.

As a bonus,it exposes random middle-class kids to city busses they might otherwise never consider using.

I'm 19. Pretty sure I walked to school at 11 here in the UK. Probably earlier actually, I can't remember when I started, I just know I definitely went by foot to secondary school (which I started at 11).

I'm not sure I'd be okay with a six-year-old on their own, but they are accompanied by a ten-year-old. Why can't they walk together back home?

In Japan, it's common and encouraged for young children to walk to school on their own from an early age, or so I have heard.

Let's see:

(1) Fifth grade, I got a trumpet so rode the city bus downtown, 7 miles, to music lessons.

(2) Once also downtown there was a movie I wanted to see so got a little extra cash and went to the movie after the music lesson.

(3) About then on radio I heard Beethoven's 7th Symphony. So, when the NY Phil came to town, I got a ticket and rode the bus, right, to downtown, 7 miles away.

(4) After school, I did what I wanted, went exploring.

(5) Soon I got a bicycle so rode it to and from school and otherwise was GONE on my bicycle, commonly rode five miles away, once about 10 miles to the next state.

(6) When about 11, visited a friend my age in the country. He had a motorcycle, and we went "two up" for miles and miles.

Onion solution for the threat of abduction and harassment of children in MD, not entirely in jest: Put the MD police and CPS in diapers in bed overnight, and in the morning have them write 500 times "I will not be a fool". Have all their travels out of house or office supervised with a leash and a GPS ankle bracelet. Four days a week have them wear an orange jump suit with lettering "I am a fool" and work on their knees with a toothbrush washing the sidewalks. For the next year, have them do 15 minute check ins with actually competent adult supervision.

Much simpler solution: Drastically cut the budgets of the police and CPS.

Likely actual solution: Have the MD police and CPS lose a big law suit, and have that legal case provide cover for the bloodless bureaucrats that put up with such nonsense to tell the hysterical busy-bodies to cool it.

So, all crime stats are down since the 70's when I grew up, we have more children that are out of shape, and children are no longer allowed to play outside or go to the park unattended. Yeah, we are seriously stupid and screwed.

I guess the "hey, check out that hill, wonder how far it is to bike there?" mentality in children is long, long gone.

This is actually a prime business opportunity -- outdoors child-sitting. You'd watch over children and escort them home and to pre-approved locations. More liberal and hands-off parents could allow their children to explore as much as they like, as long as they don't trespass other property.

This should also help to create a lot more job openings.

A dog walking service for children?

Well, https://adlibventures.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/daycare-sc...

I've only seen that in Japan so far but both there and in New York I've seen the long leash where each child is clipped on with a harness. But these are for daycares and school field trips... clearly ripe for disruption. What parents need is an app like Uber for when they just need to go somewhere now...

Uber for kids is a fantastic idea (I mean really fantastic, as in, I fantasize about it regularly, usually while driving my kids back and forth).

I suspect the liability & trust problems would be insurmountable though. I'd pay up into the high hundreds per month to not have the time-suck of pick up & drop off constantly...

Perhaps parents could pool enough money together to actually keep a full-time chauffeur around somehow. Scheduling would be rather dicey though.

If 15 parents would pay $3000 per year, they could give one person a $45k/year salary for their services. Somewhere in there is a way to get a TaskRabbit to Uber your kids to their next Meetup. Private daycares exist. Chauffeurs for kids exist for people with enough money, as do parents using Uber for their kids (there was an article here a while back about it). Start with children and then branch out to the elderly and disabled. Call it Chaperone. Piggyback on existing startups so that individuals don't have to be qualified as drivers, caretakers, etc.; their job as chaperones is to ensure that everyone else does their job while mostly just being there.

Found this but for at-home babysitters: https://angel.co/chaperone Don't know if telling people to "think Tinder" for the UI is the best association though.

I am not a parent, but I think we're losing some brightness in our future if we can't resolve trust issues that lie in the way of better services for parents and children. Lots to think about...

Well without the leash. A kinder/jungeüberwachung, if you will.

I read that, on average, it would take 700,000 years for a child sitting on a bench in the park (unaccompanied) to get kidnapped.

I grew up less than 10 miles from the area where this is happening. Now granted when I was these kid's age it was the mid-70s to early 80s, but still from the time I was in kindergarten I walked to/from school about a mile each way every day regardless of whether it was sunny, rainy, snowing, whatever. After school I walked through our community to go to friend's houses at the ripe old age of 5 or 6. And on the weekends, kids of all ages were found running around the community from sunrise to sunset. Our parents trusted us and the other members of the community.

Yet while our parents were letting us do this just around the corner one of the most notorious abductions in the area took place (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyon_sisters). So you can't tell me that there were not predators around at that time.

IMO, the difference was that instead of calling the police on kids that seemed lost, most parents in the community would ask the kids if they needed help. I don't know where or how the shift occurred, but today it seems we live in a society where everyone wants to pass blame and cares only about themselves.

I have two theories why this is occurring. First, the media of today is much different than the past. Today, it seems to me at least, the media has a bad habit of over-sensationalizing every story to pit two sides against one another. This story in particular has created such a havoc in this neighborhood that these kids, and their parents, will never live a "normal" life in that community again. The media has stirred the pot so much that there are now lone individuals that don't agree with these parents that are going to target this family every time they see something they don't like.

My second theory is that we live in a society now where people are afraid of their own shadows at times. When I was about 7 or 8 I was skateboarding down a street a couple blocks from my house. I fell and cut my chin wide open requiring stitches. I started crying and walking home. In that time I must have had 4 or 5 different people come up to me to ask if I was alright with one finally giving me a ride home. I believe if this same situation happened today those 4-5 people would have probably just called 911 instead of trying to get involved and help me. They would have done this out of fear of being sued for not helping better. Or sadly there are those individuals in the community now who will label that person as a predator just for helping.

Where I live now is a small town where everyone that lives here knows everyone. Kids of all ages run up and down the street at all hours of the day in the summer. We have a strong local police force that is always actively community policing and knows everyone that lives in the community. On the other hand it is a tourist town and during the summer the population swells drastically (we go from about 300 residents to well over 10,000), yet nothing changes. People look out for each other. More importantly, we also don't have any local major media outlets that report regularly on news in our area. And because it is a resort area where there is fear if bad things are reported it will drive tourism away, the media doesn't tend to report on all that occurs. Yet nothing bad happens that is out of the ordinary. I mean we have our increased bar fights, DUIs, thefts, and on occasion there has been a murder, but still I can wake up on a nice day and hear kids running around the street playing. No one calls the police on other people's kids. Even high school house parties go unreported as long as the kids don't violate parking laws or destroy someone else's property. And even if they do the party is usually just broken up, people sent on their way, and damages worked out between the parents.

Good. Children today are insanely over supervised. You can't individuate in the presence of an authority figure.

"free-range parenting". Or, in the vernacular of all previous generations, "parenting".

How can kids get to school in such an environment? They are not old enough to drive after all...

They chose to let their kids go out unattended. So obviously they accepted that bad things might happen.

And something bad did happen. It seems like the kids learned a valuable lesson - the police may stop and detain you and there is not a whole lot you can do.

But now the parents are saying they get to pick and chose which consequences are OK. You can't have it both ways.

My guess is that they would sue the Post Office if a postal worker ran them down too.

I hope they do.

Somehow, a lot of us --maybe a few too many of us, have decided to go both authoritarian and over protective with children.

Given how I grew up, this emerging set of norms is disturbing and depressing.

One thing I noticed among my peers is those who really got sheltered had a number of common and significant problems later in life, and they all centered on both the rebellion stage, and their exit from "the bubble" they grew up in.

Rebelling is common, and for most people, just an ordinary part of coming of age. We get through it, and that's that. For the sheltered kids, particularly those who experienced a very authoritarian up bringing, not only did they rebel, but they often over did it!

I'm convinced they overdo it, because the second aspect of this; namely, the sheltering or "bubble" type upbringing really didn't socialize them well enough to cope with basic human realities and diversity, nor did it expose them to the world, it's real limits and risks, not just the safe ones, or invisible ones they didn't see while in their protective bubbles.

Many ended up OK, somewhat protective still, but many didn't either. And they continue a bad cycle, perhaps trying harder with their own kids.

Some of this comes down to wanting to protect the kids and insure they have all the opportunity possible. Noble, but short sighted, given that same lack of general exposure to the world and social dynamics may well inhibit their ability to exploit those hard won opportunities!

Another contributor is the desire to mold the kids, in a sense, insuring they carry some values and norms the parents find important for their reasons. But nobody really asked the kids, did they?

In fact, a big part of the sheltering is to keep them from asking too!

And that's a crime really.

If some value, religion, norm, whatever really does have merit, should it not stand a basic and rational skepticism? Of course it should.

More importantly, does it make sense to structure how people grow up in ways that deny them the critical mind needed to actually make those choices for their reasons?

There is a lot wrong with this growing norm.

Heck, when I grew up, the rules were really basic. Don't get lost, don't get hurt, don't steal, don't fuck with the animals, etc...

From there, my peers and I would gather in a meeting place, decide on the adventure for the day and have at it! We quickly learned the world is real, and that real things happen to people in it, and we took care of one another, getting through just fine, despite the fact that on many a weekend some of us could very easily have gotten killed, seriously hurt.

We can't do everything for our kids. And I submit we really shouldn't. They need to explore, learn, do, think, play, build, and if they don't, or it's too well managed, that managed experience will clash hard with the real world as they enter it.

And the vast majority of them will enter it too. Better to do so eyes wide open, experiences true, minds potent.

I also think we are going to pay really hard for this folly too. Who cares for us in our old age? Who will be calling the shots some time from now?

They can and should file. More parents should.

“We must ask ourselves how we reached the point where a parent’s biggest fear is that government officials will literally seize our children off the streets as they walk in our neighborhoods,” he said.

I think the quote speaks for itself.

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