"...when CPS gets a call, we have to follow up on every single one."
April 13, 2015 10:34 AM Subscribe

In December, the Meitiv family, advocates of "free-range" parenting, were investigated for allowing their children to walk home from a park in Silver Spring, MD (previously). Yesterday, they again allowed their children to play in a nearby park. When the 6- and 10-year-old kids didn't arrive home at 6 pm as planned, their parents went looking for them. Two hours later, they received a call from Child Protective Services, who taken custody of the children after "a concerned resident" notified the police. Additional reporting and commentary from Washington Post columnist Petula Dvorak.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some (233 comments total) 29 users marked this as a favorite

Ten? Kids can't play in the park alone at age ten? What the fuck.
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:35 AM on April 13, 2015 [59 favorites]

Do any locals know which "busy intersections with three to four lanes in either direction" the kids were crossing? Was it Georgia Avenue? Wisconsin? I grew up in Montgomery County, and I gotta say, I nearly got creamed one time crossing Wisconsin Avenue when I was quite a bit older than 10. People take those corners fast. Then again, I jaywalked a lot when I was a kid.
posted by escabeche at 10:36 AM on April 13, 2015 [3 favorites]

People take those corners fast.

I would think the police response to that should be pulling these drivers over, ticketing them, and saying "Don't you know kids live here, dumbass?" if they forget a second time, take their license. No one who doesn't know that turning cars yield to pedestrians should be driving. Criminalize the actual criminals, not the people you're supposed to be protecting from the criminals.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 10:42 AM on April 13, 2015 [171 favorites]

In this day and age, I'm not sure its a good idea for children to wander around without an adult guardian of some sort ...
posted by Renoroc at 10:43 AM on April 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

Certainly not a good idea for them to get into a police car. Stranger danger indeed.
posted by smackfu at 10:43 AM on April 13, 2015 [129 favorites]

In this day and age, I'm not sure its a good idea for children to wander around without an adult guardian of some sort ...

Why? What's different about this day and age than whatever day and age you think it would have been ok in?
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 10:44 AM on April 13, 2015 [177 favorites]

In this day and age, I'm not sure its a good idea for children to wander around without an adult guardian of some sort ...

Haven't people been saying this since time immemorial?
posted by unknownmosquito at 10:44 AM on April 13, 2015 [28 favorites]

First thing I did after reading this article was look up how long of a walk it was from my childhood house to my elementary school. 0.4 miles, twice a day every day from 3rd grade on. Would my kids even be allowed to take that walk? I hope so. As for traffic, isn't that what school zones and crossing guards are for? My school had one.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 10:46 AM on April 13, 2015 [4 favorites]

In this day and age, I'm not sure its a good idea for children to wander around without an adult guardian of some sort ...

...because some wacko will call CPS?
posted by craven_morhead at 10:46 AM on April 13, 2015 [155 favorites]

Kids can't play in the park alone at age ten?

But...they did, and were fine, and were nearly home before the police showed up. I mean I don't have a dog in this fight, but I'm not sure that I agree it's totally unthinkable to let kids play by themselves somewhere they're familiar with.
posted by billiebee at 10:47 AM on April 13, 2015 [6 favorites]

A neighbor of mine said that he walks his ten year old to and from school every day (a few blocks) in large part because of what other parents will think.
posted by Phredward at 10:48 AM on April 13, 2015 [3 favorites]

I love how the cops didn't take them home or call right away. "Scare 'em a little, why not?"
posted by No Robots at 10:48 AM on April 13, 2015 [33 favorites]

Would my kids even be allowed to take that walk? I hope so.

According to this site, 35% of kids who lived within a mile of school walked there. Presumably the proportion is higher for kids within a half-mile. So not everybody does it, but I don't think it's forbidden many places.

As for traffic, isn't that what school zones and crossing guards are for? My school had one.

Yeah, but this isn't a school zone at the end of a school day, it's Georgia Avenue at rush hour. Not a situation where there are going to be crossing guards.

I don't think the issue is "crossing busy streets doesn't involve risk," the issue is whether the Meitivs should be allowed to let their children take on risks they (parents and children) consider reasonable.
posted by escabeche at 10:50 AM on April 13, 2015 [3 favorites]

In this day and age, I'm not sure its a good idea for children to wander around without an adult guardian of some sort ...

In this day and age of record low rates of crime and much simpler methods of staying in touch with your kids?

I would like to know what you feel is particular about "this day and age" that makes it more of a concern.
posted by Cosine at 10:52 AM on April 13, 2015 [105 favorites]

In this day and age, I'm not sure its a good idea for children to wander around without an adult guardian of some sort ...

Could you elaborate on the reasoning behind that statement? My folks make statements like this all the time, and we've asked them to elaborate. They point to child abduction as the only reason for this thinking…which is insane. Quite a bit of this has to do with how much they watch local news TV; they actually think that the rate of abduction is much higher than it actually is. The United States overall, is a pretty goddamn safe place to just hang out…especially teach your kids how to read the room, as it were.

We're in the process of moving to our house that has a straight shot to an awesome park, the path there being sidewalks on relatively quiet city streets. We're going to gauge our child's maturity when we make this decision, but he's got friends in the neighborhood. As long as he's kicking it with people we know, he'll probably be free to run down to the park on his own when he's about 10 (again, unless he's kind of immature that way). There's always kids running around here about that age (8-10

The odd's of someone calling CPS on you are probably way higher than even some creeper exposing themselves to a minor (depending on your neighborhood, I guess). Personally, I'm way more afraid of the statistical likelihood of police pulling shit like this than I am of a stranger walking off with Furnace.kid.
posted by furnace.heart at 10:52 AM on April 13, 2015 [30 favorites]

because some wacko will call CPS?

I think "kids get picked up by CPS" and "kids get abducted by stranger" are both pretty small risks that get magnified by media coverage. Not that they don't happen -- but they don't happen very often. Cars are the risk.
posted by escabeche at 10:52 AM on April 13, 2015 [10 favorites]

I kind of feel bad for the police. To have to waste time on bullshit calls because two young children are walking home together in daylight... And what a huge misuse of resources for the crisis center, too. The people who call these sorts of incidents in -- do they really have nothing better to do?
posted by palindromeisnotapalindrome at 10:52 AM on April 13, 2015 [3 favorites]

It also gets extra fun in that a part of walking to school or parks has gotten more dangerous because kids aren't allowed to walk to school or parks! Once my older brother graduated to middle school, I made my half mile walk to grade school "alone" but also as part of a stream of other children. This meant I was (a) navigating around fewer vehicles because parents' commutes did not necessarily take them past my school, and (b) there were loads of other kids to witness in the unlikely case of a creepy adult. We've increased road traffic and removed safety in numbers.
posted by Karmakaze at 10:53 AM on April 13, 2015 [64 favorites]

In this day and age, I'm not sure its a good idea for children to wander around without an adult guardian of some sort ...

Yes, because violent crime is at historic low, and crime rates continue to fall. Since our kids have a much, much lower chance of being kidnapped or hurt, we should be way more protective than our parents were, even though the lack of independence and reduced physical activity and free play are demonstrably bad for children. Because the dangerz.
posted by jb at 10:53 AM on April 13, 2015 [36 favorites]

Why? What's different about this day and age than whatever day and age you think it would have been ok in?

An aggressive paranoia-fueling media.
posted by tittergrrl at 10:53 AM on April 13, 2015 [20 favorites]

I kind of feel bad for the police.

What, the ones that kept the kids locked up in a patrol car for 3 hours? In this day and age, I can't remember the last time I've felt bad for the police.
posted by Behemoth at 10:55 AM on April 13, 2015 [70 favorites]

In this day and age I'm not sure it's a good idea to do anything but hide under the covers eating girl scout cookies and waiting for the world to fucking end.

Well you'll have to go out at least once to get the cookies because the Girl Scouts who sell them aren't likely to be allowed to go door-to-door anymore.
posted by tractorfeed at 11:02 AM on April 13, 2015 [14 favorites]

You know, at this point, I'm starting to wonder what's going on and if something isn't a little wrong with these parents. Yeah, I'm as concerned about the increasing... constraint of childhood as the next guy, and I'm totally in sympathy with the basic free-range kids philosophy, and the first time this happened I was like, ok what the fuck, government?

But you know, this is the second time in like a month. After the first time, right or wrong, you know what the score is. Don't fucking send your kids out alone again when you know damn well that somebody is going to clutch their pearls and call the cops, and you're AGAIN going to have to sign a temporary safety plan to keep them from getting taken away from you on the spot. After this happened the first time, these parents should have woken up to the realization that - whether they agree with this or not - they're risking having their kids put into the system, which is NOT going to be a good thing for those kids. They need to suck it up and do what they have to do to make sure that doesn't happen - at least while they pursue through whatever social or legal channels are available to them their argument that it's proper for the kids to walk around alone. (emphasizing once more that I agree with them on that.)

I mean I think marijuana should be legal too but I don't go around lighting up on the street and waving it in people's faces because that's going to end badly for me. If it were something I really cared about all that much, I'd work for legalization of it. Because that would be an appropriate way to promote the change I wanted to see without wrecking my life.
posted by Naberius at 11:03 AM on April 13, 2015 [14 favorites]

I mean I think marijuana should be legal took but I don't go around lighting up on the street and waving it in people's faces because that's going to end badly for me.

Except it's not illegal to let your kids go to the park. But at least the cops didn't shoot them, so there's that.
posted by 99_ at 11:05 AM on April 13, 2015 [53 favorites]

In this day and age, I'm not sure its a good idea for children to wander around without an adult guardian of some sort ...

I was a kid growing up in a very nice middle class neighbourhood in the 1980's and my mom drove me and my friends to and from school everyday, but I did walk with friends and even alone and nothing happened to me...

But we used to get letters from school warning us that some kids were molested in certain areas, but police had yet to catch whoever did it. I got more than one of these in my school years in both grade schools I attended.

I also remember when I was an adult living in a posh neighbourhood and I took long walks. One day I saw a man hiding in the bushes taking questionable pictures of kids on the playground. He saw me and took off in his BMW. I took his plate number, but nothing could be done.

We have had serious child abuse scandals from churches to schools to sports to scouts. It is as if people are unwilling to learn that there are people who are predators by nature and all it takes is one second.

The worst comes from people who tell me they have street proofed their kids. Really? You want to test this theory by having a boxing match with your gangly six year old in the ring with a grown mentally disturbed man with no inhibitions? You wanna put some money down on who's gonna win that bout?

Kids need supervision and not just because someone built a dungeon to torture children for years. Kids also get ideas in their undeveloped brains and do dangerous things like ride on the back of trucks or play in traffic -- or even steal, vandalize, and break things.

Parents are needed and a very important part of society, even if Madison Avenue would like to think otherwise.

These parents need a few lessons in reality, it looks like...
posted by Alexandra Kitty at 11:05 AM on April 13, 2015 [3 favorites]

It also gets extra fun in that a part of walking to school or parks has gotten more dangerous because kids aren't allowed to walk to school or parks!

Except that, in this very county, children who live within a mile (or maybe it's a mile and a half?) of their school cannot ride the bus. In other words, the county expects children as young as 5 -- in kindergarten -- to walk a mile to school and back every day, but those same children cannot walk themselves to the park and home without their parents being cited by CPS.

I live in Silver Spring; I have friends in common with this family (though I don't know them); the park they were at this time is all of four blocks from their street. What busybody neighbor decided it was better to call the cops than to go ask the kids if they were OK, if their parents knew where they were, and make sure the kids knew they could reach out to that neighbor if they needed help? I'd like to think that's what I would have done instead of calling the cops.
posted by devinemissk at 11:06 AM on April 13, 2015 [82 favorites]

I wonder if the CPS people had to lure the kids into their van by offering candy.
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:06 AM on April 13, 2015 [15 favorites]

but CPS will demand fines and might place the children to live with even more strangers.

Which is a real possibility because they were charged with unsubstantiated child neglect the first time around after the two month investigation was completed and reported on last month.

But the finding of unsubstantiated child neglect means CPS will keep a file on the family for at least five years and leaves open the question of what would happen if the Meitiv children get reported again for walking without adult supervision.

The parents say they will continue to allow their son, Rafi, 10, and daughter Dvora, 6, to play or walk together, and won’t be swayed by the CPS finding.

“We don’t feel it was appropriate for an investigation to start, much less conclude that we are responsible for some form of child neglect,” said Danielle Meitiv, who said she and her husband plan to appeal and worry about being investigated again by CPS.

“What will happen next time?” she asked. “We don’t know if we will get caught in this Kafkaesque loop again.”

I guess we're gonna find out.
posted by tittergrrl at 11:07 AM on April 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

They need to suck it up

"The job of a citizen is to keep his mouth open."--Günter Grass
posted by No Robots at 11:07 AM on April 13, 2015 [55 favorites]

It's a good thing I didn't grow up in Silver Spring. We used to cover a couple of miles just to go to the pool in the summer if we couldn't mooch a ride, or the movies, or what not (the area I grew up in is a sprawling city, one of those where people from back east would say the only thing within walking distance was their car.) Most kids in the parks didn't have their parents around, and nobody got swiped. I'm no expert on parenting but calling CPS for kids walking to a park is insane.
posted by azpenguin at 11:08 AM on April 13, 2015 [4 favorites]

In the meantime I just got back from Iceland where I witnessed what appeared to be a four year old being supervised by a six year old running around and jumping off walls taller themselves next to the harbor. We even had the classic bit where the four year old tripped, fell flat out, and started to cry until he looked around and realized there were no parents so got back up and kept running.

Europe has its own issues, but it can be such a breath of fresh air sometimes.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 11:08 AM on April 13, 2015 [23 favorites]

Yeah I'm just relieved a cop or self proclaimed vigilante didn't shoot them
posted by The Whelk at 11:08 AM on April 13, 2015

But you know, this is the second time in like a month. After the first time, right or wrong, you know what the score is. Don't fucking send your kids out alone again when you know damn well that somebody is going to clutch their pearls and call the cops,

And for god sakes, whatever you do make sure to sit in the back of the bus lest someone clutch their pearls and call the cops.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 11:09 AM on April 13, 2015 [30 favorites]

Citizen has to call the cops, "just in case."
Cops have to call CPS, "just in case."
CPS has to investigate the parents, "just in case."
Investigation has to end in "unsubstantiated" finding (which is not innocent), "just in case."
posted by smackfu at 11:10 AM on April 13, 2015 [38 favorites]

We have had serious child abuse scandals from churches to schools to sports to scouts. It is as if people are unwilling to learn that there are people who are predators by nature and all it takes is one second.

Actually what those scandals have shown is that it doesn't take one second. It takes widespread and long term access to children, the ability to build up trust and groom them, or at least be safe in the knowledge that the child won't be believed if they report it. A pastor or sports coach abusing a child in their care is not the same as a strange man in the bushes ready to pounce, which is much, much rarer.
posted by billiebee at 11:10 AM on April 13, 2015 [146 favorites]

"The job of a citizen is to keep his mouth open."--Günter Grass

Yes, it absolutely is. But not while throwing your kids into a bureaucratic maw that can't result in anything but trauma for them. If I were willing to go to jail for my right to smoke pot, I suppose that would be my business. We look at people who refused to go along with Jim Crow laws as heroes for deliberately breaking those laws and going to jail for their principles.

But they went themselves. They didn't send their minor children to do the time for them.
posted by Naberius at 11:10 AM on April 13, 2015 [8 favorites]

Yeah I second Naberius's idea. It would be one thing if the parents were getting the back of the cop-car treatment; they knew this could result in similar dipshit residents calling CPS and traumatizing their children. And I was aghast the first time, too.

On preview: This ain't no Rosa Parks shit
posted by angrycat at 11:11 AM on April 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

I would like to know what you feel is particular about "this day and age" that makes it more of a concern.

I've mentioned it, I'm sure, in other threads on this topic, but around here at least, there are a hell of a lot more cars with inattentive drivers roaming the streets.

The little neighborhood school (and by extension, the playground) I live by was built about 50 years ago.
I'm sure in the 60s it was an easy, safe stroll for the local kids.

These days, it resembles a racetrack most mornings, simply because the driveway and access road just weren't designed for the level of traffic they receive.
_I_ don't like walking to it and I'm an adult with a good sense of traffic velocity and my own mortality.

I'd certainly think twice about letting my elementary-age child do it without a buddy system or the "walking school bus" system.

I realize this becomes a self-perpertuating problem, and the community has tried to address it with 'Safe Routes to School' and other measures, but quite frankly my kid will be out of school before anything productive gets done, and in the meantime, I'd rather they not be run down.
posted by madajb at 11:12 AM on April 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

I hope the parents sue the crap out of CPS for kidnapping their children. Until such a time as there are actual laws forbidding children to be alone in public CPS is on very shaky ground with this. Talking to the kids? Maybe. Physically removing them with no present or reported threat? I don't think so.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 11:13 AM on April 13, 2015 [21 favorites]

On preview: This ain't no Rosa Parks shit

Really? Because guess who is most affected by the burden of having to supervise children of every minute of every day?

Clue: It ain't rich white people.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 11:15 AM on April 13, 2015 [82 favorites]

The world is empirically more safe in almost every way than it was 50 - 100 years ago and yet people are so much more freaked out.
posted by the jam at 11:17 AM on April 13, 2015 [23 favorites]

Talking to the kids? Maybe. Physically removing them with no present or reported threat? I don't think so.

Yeah, pretty much this. CPS is actually way out of line here, and someone's fucking up (be it the cops, or CPS, who actually knows right now). The one thing thats getting overlooked here is that it is remarkably difficult to get your kids actually 'taken away,' permanently, by CPS; This probably isn't going to happen. Yeah, they're in a 'kafkaesque' loop now, but their kids are probably not going to be taken away from them, unless actual neglect and abuse are found…and even then its super hard to have your parental rights terminated.

My wife works adjacent to the CPS system, and has dealt with little kids going through the system for years. You've gotta do some really, really fucked up stuff to actually have this happen permanently.

It really should have been a wake up call for the parents, because they're going up against a system they're probably not going to change quickly. They should lawyer up, FAST.

My wife and I have talked at great length at this, and by the time Furnace.kid actually is roaming out and about on his own (which will be younger than most; he's 3.5 now and knows some pretty complicated bus routes on how to get home…I let him lead the charge everyday when I pick him up, he knows all the bus numbers and what all the rail line colors mean…), he'll have a cell phone, and honestly, probably the number of a lawyer we've established a relationship with.

I really hope that the police aren't going to hold a kid for 3 hours if he's asking for his parents, AND his lawyer. I mean…uhg…they probably would.
posted by furnace.heart at 11:18 AM on April 13, 2015 [9 favorites]

Anecdotally, here in the suburbs outside of Boston, I see a lot of kids walking to and from school, and plenty of them seem to be at least 10 to 12 years of age, some possibly even younger. It seems totally fine with me, although I'm not a parent so what do I know. However, if I were a parent, I think I would also feel better that in this day and age, pretty much every adult has a cell phone, and plenty of kids do as well, so I would be less concerned about them getting stranded somewhere, unable to get in touch.

I get that every parent's worst nightmare is having their kid abducted by a stranger, but everything I've read indicates that this likelihood is super small. They are far more likely to be endangered by someone they know then some random person.
posted by litera scripta manet at 11:19 AM on April 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

After this happened the first time, these parents should have woken up to the realization that - whether they agree with this or not - they're risking having their kids put into the system, which is NOT going to be a good thing for those kids.

Agreed, I don't get that part either. Are they actively trying to prove some sort of point by using their kids as pawns? Or are they honestly clueless about the mess their lives could become once CPS takes over their lives?
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 11:19 AM on April 13, 2015 [3 favorites]

There seems to be this belief that regardless of preparing a child in any way, once they reach 18 they will just know how to interface with the world around them.
posted by Cosine at 11:20 AM on April 13, 2015 [15 favorites]

Regardless of whether letting your kids walk to the park is a good idea or not, can we all at least agree that an official agency taking your kids and not telling you for almost 3 hours(!) is a horrible thing?

Let alone keeping them _locked in the back cage_ of a police car for that long?
posted by madajb at 11:21 AM on April 13, 2015 [35 favorites]

"Look both ways before you cross the street."

It's a simple enough thing to teach a child. You can do it with them several times and then they get it.

Oh, man I wish this was true and it was that easy. My kids are 5 and 8 and it drives me crazy that I still can't totally trust them crossing roads. I mean, they should get it by now, right? They cross busy roads every fucking day!
posted by fimbulvetr at 11:21 AM on April 13, 2015 [5 favorites]

If it's against the law, someone should be able to point to the law. If it's not against that law, why is the government involved?
posted by smackfu at 11:21 AM on April 13, 2015 [15 favorites]

I suppose none dare call it kidnapping.
posted by effugas at 11:21 AM on April 13, 2015 [3 favorites]

Man these articles make me sick. I live in Mexico where there is an actual increase in kidnapping and disappearing thanks to the cartel's diversification of nefarious activities and so I would never let my kid walk to school. And there in the US, they seem hellbent on unnecessarily creating a dystopia for themselves.
posted by dhruva at 11:21 AM on April 13, 2015 [26 favorites]

Kids also get ideas in their undeveloped brains and do dangerous things like ride on the back of trucks or play in traffic -- or even steal, vandalize, and break things.

Adults steal, vandalize, and break things too yet they are allowed out unsupervised.

Ultimately, someone has to decide whether kids are ready to do certain tasks on their own. Within reasonable bounds (basic requirements of food, shelter, clothing, medical care, education, etc...), we've decided that the job of making these decisions falls to parents. And this makes sense, because every kid and situation is different and parents know their children best.

Is it that hard to believe that a 10-year-old, who is taught to write essays and do long division and sums with fractions in school, can't have learned how to cross the street safely? I'm not saying every 10-year-old possesses the skills to cross every street safely, but surely a parent who has worked with their kids on traffic safety and knows the streets in the neighborhood can make these kinds of judgement calls?
posted by zachlipton at 11:21 AM on April 13, 2015 [12 favorites]

effugas: "I suppose none dare call it kidnapping."

mmm. Give the kids some pepper spray and see what happens when CPS tries to abuct them.
posted by boo_radley at 11:22 AM on April 13, 2015 [5 favorites]

Kids also get ideas in their undeveloped brains and do dangerous things like ride on the back of trucks or play in traffic -- or even steal, vandalize, and break things.

A 17 year old also does those things. Or a college student.
posted by smackfu at 11:23 AM on April 13, 2015 [8 favorites]

If it's against the law, someone should be able to point to the law. If it's not against that law, why is the government involved?

I'm not sure this is a fair critique. Child neglect is against the law. That's the law they're pointing to. Where the rubber hits the road is how the law is applied to the facts, which can often be tricky.
posted by craven_morhead at 11:24 AM on April 13, 2015 [2 favorites]

I am once again reminded that I'm glad I don't have children and can safely not have to worry about this issue. THANK GOD.
posted by josher71 at 11:25 AM on April 13, 2015 [6 favorites]

But not while throwing your kids into a bureaucratic maw that can't result in anything but trauma for them.

Why not tell them the risks (police, CPS), and then ask them if they want to stand up for their rights? Or are children now to be shielded from political activity?
posted by No Robots at 11:27 AM on April 13, 2015 [3 favorites]

If anything, it should be teenagers that are prohibited to go out in public unsupervised.
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:28 AM on April 13, 2015 [6 favorites]

The family is gonna have to move. Most places in the US aren't like Silver Spring in terms of community freakouts about roaming kids. Hell, go two miles in any direction to neighborhoods of slightly lower socioeconomic status in the greater DC area and I guarantee you the police don't give one shit about unsupervised children.

Heck, they should move in with those relatives in Ithaca they were visiting. Some days I feel like we're the Unsupervised Children Captial of the Northeast U.S.

Kids can't play in the park alone at age ten?

I gathered from the article that the ten-year-old wasn't so much a problem as was the six-year-old. Their laws say that you can't be responsible for watching a child under 8 unless you're 13 or older (although the law fails to enumerate all the possible conditions under which the younger child is required to have supervision). If *both* kids had been over 8, of if the older one had been over 12, they might have had a better chance.

Anyway, the proper response, even if the police agree that the kids shouldn;t be out by themselves, would have been to immediately drive the kids home to their parents. Thw nd a half hours in the squad car in unreal.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 11:28 AM on April 13, 2015 [7 favorites]

Another issue: I'm pretty sure the most likely people to harm kids in the US, statistically, are their parents. If you don't let kids be away from their parents without supervision, kids with abusive or just generally bad parents can't ever get away from them.
posted by Mitrovarr at 11:28 AM on April 13, 2015 [15 favorites]

You know, at this point, I'm starting to wonder what's going on and if something isn't a little wrong with these parents... After the first time, right or wrong, you know what the score is... They need to suck it up and do what they have to do...

Holy shit, the system has won. Where do I go to get microchipped?
posted by Behemoth at 11:29 AM on April 13, 2015 [29 favorites]

Child neglect is against the law. That's the law they're pointing to.

Looking at the list of indicators of neglect, it seems absurd they are applying it here:

* Dirty, unkempt
* Untreated serious medical problems
* Obvious malnourishment
* Listlessness,fatigue
* Child left unattended or without supervision
* Inadequate clothing for weather
posted by smackfu at 11:30 AM on April 13, 2015 [8 favorites]

(I mean, one of those things is not like the others.)
posted by smackfu at 11:31 AM on April 13, 2015 [2 favorites]

When people talk about the good old days when kids could wander around unsupervised barefoot with fishing poles on their shoulders, they're usually thinking about sometime around, say, 1928.

There is no guarantee of safety for any man's child. There are monsters, and sometimes monsters feed. The best we can do is teach our children that the world is worth going out and staying safe in. Americans, though, are a people who refuse to accept the world as it is. This American tendency has led to some fantastic results -- refusal to have kings, refusal to stay inferior, refusal to be earthbound -- but it makes us, as a people, rotten decision makers when we can't bend reality to our will. Our laws and mores about children make this grotesquely visible.
posted by Countess Elena at 11:31 AM on April 13, 2015 [20 favorites]

If the system is causing you problems, the best way to prevent it is to stop resisting the system. Clearly.
posted by dazed_one at 11:31 AM on April 13, 2015 [14 favorites]

mmm. Give the kids some pepper spray and see what happens when CPS tries to abuct them.

I don't really want to think about what would happen.
posted by effugas at 11:31 AM on April 13, 2015 [4 favorites]

These parents have looked at the streets and decided that they're safe enough. Apparently other people disagree so much that they've called CPS. I'm not willing to say they're wrong without know more about what exactly rush hour is like there.

The first incident did involve the kids walking along a busy thoroughfare -- Georgia Avenue -- but that street has sidewalks, ample crosswalks, and lights at every block. A savvy kid should have no difficulty navigating that route -- and it sounds like the parents are confident that their kids have that ability. Still, I can understand why an adult might see two kids walking along Georgia and wonder what was going on.

The most recent incident, however, happened at a neighborhood park in the family's neighborhood. These kids would have been able to walk there solely on quiet, residential streets. And, in fact, that's why we have neighborhood parks -- so that kids can go to the park IN THEIR NEIGHBORHOOD. If you can't send your kid to play in the park in your own damn neighborhood, why have parks at all?

I'll also note AGAIN that these kids likely walk to school because -- if they go to the neighborhood school -- their school is less than a mile from their house. The park they were at, by the way, is pretty near to the school. So they can walk to and from school five days a week but they can't walk to the park that is about the same distance from their home as the school?
posted by devinemissk at 11:34 AM on April 13, 2015 [18 favorites]

The little neighborhood school (and by extension, the playground) I live by was built about 50 years ago. I'm sure in the 60s it was an easy, safe stroll for the local kids. These days, it resembles a racetrack most mornings, simply because the driveway and access road just weren't designed for the level of traffic they receive.

If you think a wider street that is more accommodating to cars would be safer, you would be wrong. Also, let me introduce you to the concept of "induced demand."
posted by entropicamericana at 11:35 AM on April 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

There are monsters, and sometimes monsters feed.

Holy shit Countess Elena, I just involuntarily shivered in broad daylight.
posted by ArmandoAkimbo at 11:35 AM on April 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

Really? Because guess who is most affected by the burden of having to supervise children of every minute of every day?

Clue: It ain't rich white people.

I feel like I'm really being dumb and missing something here, but the issue here isn't about CPS targeting low income or people of color, is it? Because the sense I had was that this is sort of the parents' way of dealing with a government clusterfuck -- just sending their kids out again. And that's what I'm responding to -- the parents knowing about the chance their kids would end up in a cop car and still being all, let's do it.

I still think I'm missing something. How, beyond the acknowledgement that something is fucked with the CPS situation in this community, is this The Issue of our Time? Is it the helicopter parent thing?
posted by angrycat at 11:35 AM on April 13, 2015

Why? What's different about this day and age than whatever day and age you think it would have been ok in?

An aggressive paranoia-fueling media.

Nah, we had that when I was a kid. Comic books, D&D, Rock music ? You were a terrible parent if you let you kids do these things. Lawn Darts, fireworks, and kickball in the street and playgrounds covered in asphalt were all perfectly fine though.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 11:36 AM on April 13, 2015 [5 favorites]

On the one hand, the way to raise healthy, smart, autonomous kids is by giving them space to live, unsupervised or under the supervision of somewhat older kids. On the other hand, there are very nasty elements -- law enforcement, factions within bureaucracies like CPS, and of course self-appointed neighborhood busy-bodies -- that have by chance become bent on ensuring that kids cannot grow up smart and healthy. It may be the case that the presence of these predators has become so thick on the ground that simply trying to train your kids to avoid them is no longer possible. In this case, the appropriate response isn't to stop letting your kids walk to parks and playgrounds by themselves; the appropriate response is to organize a civil disobedience campaign.

Just as I don't buy the argument that ten year olds can't walk to parks themselves, I also don't buy the argument that ten year olds can't participate in real politics for themselves. Obviously no civil disobedience campaign in this context can happen without ten year olds willing to risk harassment from the state, but ten year olds, who are intelligent and mature enough to recognize stupidity and injustice, are also intelligent and mature enough to participate in actions against it.

(Note: 13 and 14 year olds, on the other hand...)
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 11:37 AM on April 13, 2015 [3 favorites]

In this day and age, I'm not sure its a good idea for children to wander around without an adult guardian of some sort

I can't think of an age when it would have been safer. Direct assaults on kids (apart from family violence) don't seem to be tracked, but the figures collected here suggest that kids are at least 1/3 safer than when their thirty-year old parents grew up. Digging into the more detailled study (pdf) shows that violence in the past 10 to 15 years is down accross the board. Sexual violence, even including flashings are all down.

Folks like Nancy Grace have built careers scaring parents. It's time to start calling them out as fundamentally anti-social, in my view. They're not far off being as wrong as the anti-vaxxers.
posted by bonehead at 11:38 AM on April 13, 2015 [25 favorites]

How, beyond the acknowledgement that something is fucked with the CPS situation in this community, is this The Issue of our Time? Is it the helicopter parent thing?

I don't people think it's "the issue of our time". I think it's just another case where a rule applied to the whole of society unduly affects those who are less wealthy. Which is bad and should be avoided if possible.
posted by dazed_one at 11:39 AM on April 13, 2015

Child neglect is against the law. That's the law they're pointing to.

Looking at the list of indicators of neglect, it seems absurd they are applying it here:

* Dirty, unkempt
* Untreated serious medical problems
* Obvious malnourishment
* Listlessness,fatigue
* Child left unattended or without supervision
* Inadequate clothing for weather

(I mean, one of those things is not like the others.)

Our preschool told us that should they ever find out a parent has left a child in their car (even briefly, like to walk another child into the building), they are required to call the police. This is the world we're living in, you can't choose to leave your own kid in your own car for 5 damn minutes. And what's crazier is, I'm sure plenty of people would say I'm crazy and horrible for even wanting to. We had a month and a half of below freezing weather; of course I'd rather leave the sleeping infant in the warm car for 5 minutes instead of waking him up and carrying him through an icy parking lot and being less available to the toddler falling on ice and trying to dart in front of moving cars. Would I make the same decision on a hot August day? Probably not. At what point do we start giving parents the benefit of the doubt just a teeny little bit to weigh their own risks and make their own choices?
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 11:42 AM on April 13, 2015 [53 favorites]

The busybody 'concerned parent/resident' should not be anonymous, and should substantiate their concern to the parents of the children and the police, or be officially reprimanded. This type of intrusion should have some standards and documentation beyond a person's 'concern'.

As much as I disagree with what CPS did, I have to say that I think anonymous reporting is a good thing and should not be done away with because it is abused sometimes. Other aspects of this fucked up situation can and should be fixed.
posted by dazed_one at 11:42 AM on April 13, 2015 [9 favorites]

Cars don't teleport out of nowhere to suddenly be close enough to drive over a child crossing a street. They can be seen a long way off, and with some simple modeling you can teach a child that a car that is THAT far away is safe to cross in front of but a car that is THIS close should be allowed to pass.

Not all environments are the same.
The school is surrounded by several blind alleys, driveways obscured by trees/landscaping and a fun hill.

The last child that was killed near the school was run down _in_ the cross-walk because someone decided to pass the other stopped cars that were waiting for the kid to cross.
In that case, the boy was following all the rules he was taught every day and a car did "teleport out of nowhere".

I don't say this as a nervous parent, I routinely let my young child ride her bike down to a friend's house or play across the street by herself (much to her mother's dismay).
I could tell you a million anecdotes, but that school zone is actively hostile to pedestrians, and I won't go near it during pickup/dropoff.

Similar issues have been described in other threads about pedestrian/bike issues.
Some housing areas are just not safe for non-car adults, let alone 6 year olds with poor judgement.
posted by madajb at 11:43 AM on April 13, 2015 [2 favorites]

If you try to SWAT me, you should go to jail and no anonymity should save you.

I'd rather be SWATted than have my children kidnapped.
posted by effugas at 11:44 AM on April 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

If you think a wider street that is more accommodating to cars would be safer, you would be wrong. Also, let me introduce you to the concept of "induced demand."

Oh no, a wider street would make it much, much worse.
As it is now, they can only get up to 40-45 in the school zone.
If they had a straight shot, forget it.
posted by madajb at 11:45 AM on April 13, 2015

The most recent incident, however, happened at a neighborhood park in the family's neighborhood. These kids would have been able to walk there solely on quiet, residential streets. And, in fact, that's why we have neighborhood parks -- so that kids can go to the park IN THEIR NEIGHBORHOOD.

According to the New York Times report, that's just not true; they were crossing three lanes of traffic. If it was Georgia Avenue, that's pretty much the opposite of a quiet residential street. I mean, the report might not be wrong, but as far as I can see, none of the reporting suggest somebody saw two elementary-school kids alone on a swingset and called 911. Why would they do that?
posted by escabeche at 11:46 AM on April 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

Huh. I thought they'd been reported while walking home from the park, not at the park itself. Sorry about that.

It's actually not clear -- one article says they were at the park, another says they were on their way home. Either way, the park they were at/had been at is a neighborhood park and it's in their neighborhood, so if they were walking home at the time they were picked up, they were walking home along a residential street.
posted by devinemissk at 11:46 AM on April 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

effugas, one example does not disprove the whole point. You really can't think of any situation at all where the ability to anonymously report wrongdoing to the authorities is a good thing?
posted by dazed_one at 11:46 AM on April 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

According to the New York Times report, that's just not true; they were crossing three lanes of traffic.

Which article is that?
posted by smackfu at 11:48 AM on April 13, 2015

According to the New York Times report, that's just not true; they were crossing three lanes of traffic. If it was Georgia Avenue, that's pretty much the opposite of a quiet residential street. I mean, the report might not be wrong, but as far as I can see, none of the reporting suggest somebody saw two elementary-school kids alone on a swingset and called 911. Why would they do that?

I haven't seen the NY Times article on THIS incident. Again, the FIRST time they were picked up, they were walking along Georgia Avenue. This time, they were at a park near Fenton and Easley. Maybe they were walking along Fenton, which is a three lane road (one in each direction and a turn lane) -- though they would not have needed to cross Fenton, as the park over there is on the same side of Fenton as the street where they live.
posted by devinemissk at 11:48 AM on April 13, 2015 [5 favorites]

When I was a little kid in the late '70s I walked a half-mile to school (in a quiet neighbourhood, but still) alone pretty much right from the start. Because I was a little kid I would often turn it into a game or an adventure ("I'm a spy! Traveling behind enemy lines!"). These days I suppose most parents would drive me to school, which means I'd miss out on stuff like that.
posted by The Card Cheat at 11:48 AM on April 13, 2015

How, beyond the acknowledgement that something is fucked with the CPS situation in this community, is this The Issue of our Time?

Because childcare for dual-working parents costs thousands of dollars a year, and in many cases, people with lower incomes cannot afford to engage in the helicopter parenting that has begun to become the norm, with non-helicopter parenting taken as neglectful.

These things aren't problems when you have a two-parent household with a non-working mother with a car who can afford to pick her kids up and stay around them 24/7. But they are an issue for people who work, who can't walk with their kid everywhere. The children must be prepared for independence, because that's the only way the family with two working parents can functionally survive. If every time children prepare for further independence, they are slapped down by CPS, we have a major problem.
posted by corb at 11:51 AM on April 13, 2015 [38 favorites]

by the late 80s I (white boy) was twelve and riding my bike around central Baltimore (think: the wire) starting in my almost entirely black neighborhood.

but, heres the thing about the Meitivs. they are riding the same privilege train as many of the people advocating home schooling. that is, they're idea of freedom is predicated on their own privileges as residents of white safe silver spring. would they be letting their kids range free in my old neighborhood, even though it's a lot safer than it was during the wild days of the late 80s and 90s?

of course silver spring is "safe" but it's safe in direct proportion to the degree large parts of DC and Baltimore aren't.

yet another note in the narcissistic Americans file.
posted by ennui.bz at 11:51 AM on April 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

Is this about the danger of the traffic the kids were around or the danger of the kids being alone in public? In Canada, we have Block Parents, police screened responsible adults with signs in their windows identifying them as a safe place for children in any sort of emergency. It looks like there are block parents in the USA, but it's more of a local inititative. The focus on penalizing the parents for trying to educate their kids on independance, instead of, say, trying to make communities safer, is confusing to me. These kids weren't lost or abandoned, they were confidently walking home.
posted by smartypantz at 11:52 AM on April 13, 2015 [6 favorites]

Here.

The specifics, though, worried local parents, who knew intimately the walk that the Meitiv children were taking, which crosses busy intersections with three to four lanes in either direction. Many local residents consider the intersections in that area dangerous for all pedestrians and cyclists of any age, and two have recently been audited for safety improvements. “This is not just a walk home from a neighborhood park,” one parent said in an email, and not just a story about changes in our parenting culture. “The changes in our physical landscape are real and to the point.”
posted by escabeche at 11:53 AM on April 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

Fear. We consume it. The news industry depends on it. Risk-mitigation has created a whole caste of wealth too. We are told to demand zero risk for our families. That world is not one that I will live in.

Two questions: How far should a child travel from home without an adult? How old must they be?

I don't understand not letting kids grow up.
posted by zerobyproxy at 11:54 AM on April 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

If every time children prepare for further independence, they are slapped down by CPS, we have a major problem.

What if it only happens one in 100,000 times, but the media obsessively reports those incidents until parents get scared they can't let their kid walk to school without a neighbor calling the fuzz? Would that be a major problem?
posted by escabeche at 11:56 AM on April 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

It is not the people in our neighbourhood or walking around that worry me -- it is the cars that give me greatest pause about letting my kids wander. We live in a 1950's neighbourhood with now sidewalks on most roads. A lot of the houses either have the original owners or are student rentals, so there is a pretty low density of kids, which means drivers are not used to looking out for them and speed around corners. Still, though, we do let them go unattended to visit friends in a couple block radius as long as they don't cross busy roads.
posted by fimbulvetr at 11:58 AM on April 13, 2015 [2 favorites]

This happened last night, that NY Times column is from 11 AM this morning, and they have emails from concerned other parents???
posted by smackfu at 11:58 AM on April 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

escabeche, I think that paragraph is referring to the response to the FIRST time the kids were picked up by the cops. I was responding based on the Washington Post article on the incident that happened yesterday, where they were at a park near Fenton and Easley (here).
posted by devinemissk at 11:59 AM on April 13, 2015 [3 favorites]

Because childcare for dual-working parents costs thousands of dollars a year, and in many cases, people with lower incomes cannot afford to engage in the helicopter parenting that has begun to become the norm, with non-helicopter parenting taken as neglectful.

Oh, okay. I honestly didn't understand that before, perhaps because in my (working class, mostly people of color) neighborhood, kids walk to school on busy streets w/o supervision all the time. Thank you for explaining.
posted by angrycat at 11:59 AM on April 13, 2015

Fear. Fear. Fear.

It's contagious, occasionally useful, often not.

I understand everyone's experiences are different but by the time I was 8 or 9 I had a motorcycle and would disappear for basically the entire day, no cell phone, no checking in, just be back around dark.

Did I get lost? Yup.

Did I crash? Yup.

Did I break down? Yup.

Did I run out of fuel and have to go talk to a stranger and ask for a refill? Yup.

I got myself into endless situations that I had to get myself out of, thank god.

This was a huge learning and growth experience, yet as an adult I am FAR from outgoing, I try though. I fear the person I would have grown into if I had been raised in the environment that those people phoning CPS desire.
posted by Cosine at 12:02 PM on April 13, 2015 [9 favorites]

people with lower incomes cannot afford to engage in the helicopter parenting that has begun to become the norm, with non-helicopter parenting taken as neglectful.

This hits the nail on the head, and it's fundamentally a privilege argument: that's to say, the privilege of affluence is to see an unsupervised child, map it to a threat, bring down the power of the state upon that child's parents, and then shuttle little Billy and Suzie to practice in the SUV. The privilege of affluence is to feel assured that CPS gives more of a shit about the busybodies.

It reflects the simultaneous imposition of two myths -- that of the parent with sufficient free time (the true American luxury) to keep children under constant watch, and that of the ever-lurking dangerous stranger 100 yards down a road than you never walk down yourself. Malignant suburbia.
posted by holgate at 12:02 PM on April 13, 2015 [22 favorites]

The police ought to be able to lock certain people up for being busy bodies.
posted by notreally at 12:04 PM on April 13, 2015 [5 favorites]

We have had serious child abuse scandals from churches to schools to sports to scouts.

These kids were in the park, safely away from churches and schools and sports and scouts.

You're railing against unsupervised kids when even you admit that it's the supervised ones who get hurt.
posted by stevis23 at 12:04 PM on April 13, 2015 [31 favorites]

but, heres the thing about the Meitivs. they are riding the same privilege train as many of the people advocating home schooling. that is, they're idea of freedom is predicated on their own privileges as residents of white safe silver spring. would they be letting their kids range free in my old neighborhood, even though it's a lot safer than it was during the wild days of the late 80s and 90s?

But the helicopter parenting norm isn't just limited to the privileged; it's filtering down into the rest of society, regardless of whether parents can afford that lifestyle or not. Look at the Debra Harrell case: She was arrested and fired from her job at a McDonald's for, effectively, being too poor to afford round-the-clock child care for her daughter. Nipping this trend in the bud isn't just good for the sake of raising healthy and independent children, it's a matter of social justice too.
posted by Cash4Lead at 12:05 PM on April 13, 2015 [15 favorites]

This happened last night, that NY Times column is from 11 AM this morning, and they have emails from concerned other parents???

Yeah, having reread it now several times, I'm pretty sure that the Motherlode column is referring to emails received about the first incident. And again, I can totally understand how someone might see two kids walking along Georgia Ave. and call the cops. The latest incident doesn't seem to have involved the kids walking outside their neighborhood, though.
posted by devinemissk at 12:06 PM on April 13, 2015

but the media obsessively reports those incidents until parents get scared they can't let their kid walk to school without a neighbor calling the fuzz?

That only becomes a big issue when people live in communities that they never walk around and barely acknowledge the people who live around them. One's sense of a safe neighbourhood is abstract or defined negatively -- it's not a sketchy neighbourhood like Those Ones, you know what I mean -- and one's sense of risk is defined by shared horror stories on Facebook and Live Local Breaking Eyewitness News Team 7.
posted by holgate at 12:08 PM on April 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

It's the last day of the legislative session for this year in Maryland, but I would encourage fellow Marylanders to write their state representatives and urge them to support the Free Range Children and Parents Bill of Rights next year.
posted by Cash4Lead at 12:12 PM on April 13, 2015 [4 favorites]

This is the world we're living in, you can't choose to leave your own kid in your own car for 5 damn minutes.

This exact thing happened to me. I was traveling with my not-quite-two-year-old and stopped for gas. He was asleep, it was a cool day, and I needed to go into the convenience store and grab something. I was trying to decide whether to let him keep sleeping when a cop pulled in and parked. That sealed it for me. The odds were already astronomically tiny that a stranger would break into my car, grab my kid, and harm him somehow at a busy gas station, but with a cop right there the odds fell from astronomical to zero. I made sure I had my keys, locked the van, and went inside.

Three minutes later I'm back out, and the cop is standing by my van with a frowning woman glaring at me.

"Is this your child?" asks the cop.
"Yes."
"And you left him out here alone?"
"Yes, in a crowded place, in a locked car, for a few minutes, I did."
"Do you know how long it takes to break into a car?"
"Not long, I'm sure, but who would dare try with such a dedicated police officer mere feet away? Did I break any laws?"
"Well, no, but it's the morals of the situation." And then, thankfully, he decided to let it go and walked away.

We have a beautiful park four blocks from my house. I would love to let my older kids walk there. Clear sidewalk the whole way, and no intersections. Couldn't be safer. But after that stupid close call with Officer Morality, I just can't bring myself to let them. I am not concerned about predators at all, but I have developed a justifiable fear of budybodies and law enforcement. The very things that make the park very safe--tons of people around, frequent police drive-bys--also substantially increase my risk of being reported for neglect. The safer my kids are, the more likely I am to be harrassed. It's a stupid insidious Catch-22.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 12:12 PM on April 13, 2015 [72 favorites]

Except that, in this very county, children who live within a mile (or maybe it's a mile and a half?) of their school cannot ride the bus.

This is 100% not true, unless it's brand new. I rode a bus K-12, and in all but high school lived less than a mile from my school. Our elementary school was a quarter mile from the house. We rode the bus.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:13 PM on April 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

roomthreeseventeen, your school is not every school in the U.S.
posted by craven_morhead at 12:14 PM on April 13, 2015 [21 favorites]

What possible excuse did the police have for not a) immediately taking the children to their home address, which the children presumably knew, or b) at the LEAST call the parents immediately?

And how does this not come across to those kids as "the police will not help you if you get in trouble, they will actively prevent you from returning home or contacting your parents?"
posted by nakedmolerats at 12:15 PM on April 13, 2015 [18 favorites]

but I have developed a justifiable fear of budybodies and law enforcement.

When we traveled in the US, I was more terrified of this (some busybody calling the cops over some inane issue) rather than anything else.
posted by dhruva at 12:15 PM on April 13, 2015 [2 favorites]

Roomthreeseventeen: here are the policies on who gets to take the bus in Montgomery County.
posted by devinemissk at 12:16 PM on April 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

Anecdata: From my house to elementary school is, by maps.google.com, 1.3 miles, and IIRC in my 6th grade year, 1978 perhaps, they stopped providing bus service and no-one batted an eye at me walking by myself. ( in truth, but cutting through some back-yards, it was a bit shorter... )
posted by mikelieman at 12:17 PM on April 13, 2015

I have developed a justifiable fear of budybodies and law enforcement. The very things that make the park very safe--tons of people around, frequent police drive-bys--also substantially increase my risk of being reported for neglect.

Please don't let media reports about rare dangers to your kids lead you to live your life in fear.
posted by escabeche at 12:17 PM on April 13, 2015 [3 favorites]

I always knew that I was going to have to teach my kid that if she needs talk to a cop, she should find one; but if the cop needs to talk to her, shut up immediately other than giving them our contact info. I guess I'll have to do it even sooner.
posted by stevis23 at 12:19 PM on April 13, 2015 [12 favorites]

When I was 10 I'd sometimes take 2 buses to and back from school for 1 hour each way, many mornings literally-literally hanging outside of the bus as it barrelled down the street.
Good times.
posted by signal at 12:23 PM on April 13, 2015

I don't know about suburban or urban childhoods. I didn't have one like that. When I was eleven years old (so one year older than the son in this story) I was allowed to hang out with minimal (not line of sight or earshot) adult "supervision" that was probably ten minutes away while Riding Horses Out In The Fields with other 11 year old children. I was allowed to take a rowboat out on the lake (40 acre lake) by myself. I was allowed to disappear into five hundred acres of woods for hours at a time as long as I came home in a timely manner for dinner.

All of my freedom, though, was "in the country" where people think Nothing Bad ever happens. They are wrong on that front, which is why I wound up getting my first tongue kiss from a drunk dying of stomach cancer. Appalachia, I love you so hard. (Mostly my childhood was good but sometimes it was not so good. This was one of the not-so-good moments.)

I'm not sure if the way we do things now is better or worse. My brother's son is barely allowed out of the house unsupervised (when he was 12, he was finally allowed to take the kayak out by himself in the lake, but he had to stay where his dad -- standing on the shoreline and supervising -- could see him the whole time) but he probably won't ever wind up coercively tongue-kissed by a dying alcoholic. Is he getting a better childhood than I had or a worse one?

I honestly don't know.
posted by which_chick at 12:24 PM on April 13, 2015 [14 favorites]

The fact that my story resonates with you people really confirms in my mind that you are my tribe, because I shared it on my mommy board (which is generally very laid-back and reasonable) and everybody freaked out. How could you leave the baby in the car! What if somebody drove into your parked vehicle and the baby was injured! What if every other bad thing I saw once on the nightly news!
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 12:30 PM on April 13, 2015 [18 favorites]

Roundabout June of last year there was a thread here about a family that, after the mom left her child alone in a car on a cool day for five minutes, had been sent through a CPS hell that they only escaped by dint of having white skin and the ability to pay for lawyers. I got into a massive, super immature, "me vs. the rest of mefi" fight because I honestly couldn't believe that mefi consensus at the time was that it was acceptable for busybodies to call the cops in that situation. It was definitely not mefi-mainstream then to note that cops typically make things worse and that calling them when you see a child sitting safely alone in a car is an act of violence committed against the child, especially if that child's family doesn't fall into all of the privileged categories.

I feel somewhat vindicated that consensus here seems to have shifted, now that, thanks to the remarkable organizing in and around the Black Lives Matter movement, it has become acceptable to talk about how police are predators.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 12:30 PM on April 13, 2015 [24 favorites]

IMO the American belief that children can't be left alone in cars on cool days is more or less exactly the same as the South Korean belief that you'll suffocate if you sleep in a room with a fan on. It's a weird, inexplicable piece of cultural folklore that is apparently completely impervious to any arguments against it.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 12:33 PM on April 13, 2015 [27 favorites]

Pogo_Fuzzybutt: Lawn Darts, fireworks, and kickball in the street...

If that was one game -- one magical, awesome, risky, violent, sputtering game -- we would have played it at recess every damn day.
posted by wenestvedt at 12:34 PM on April 13, 2015 [18 favorites]

This was one of the not-so-good moments.

The moment might have been not-so-good but the writing was great.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 12:41 PM on April 13, 2015

This is completely nuts. I used to walk about the same distance to a park in Silver Spring every day at 10-11. There was a community of people there who looked out for kids just by virtue of being good neighbors, and the older kids watched out for the younger ones. Some were folks my family knew, some were just random people who thought nothing of pitching in to help kids or protect them. Like a group of kids would be playing baseball and it gets thunder-y, some adult would come over and go: OK kids go home it's dangerous to be out here.

We're too disconnected from each other. I've always wanted, when I had to children, to find a semi-urban neighborhood like that one where I grew up. Now I suspect it no longer exist in spirit, at least not in many North Eastern cities.

Hell it's probably too many damn Christian white folks in Silver Spring these days. Real talk.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 12:52 PM on April 13, 2015 [3 favorites]

This is just stupid. There is absolutely no reason why parents/children should be subjected to this kind of busybody intervention. My parents would lock us out of the house on their way to work during summer vacation so we didn't sit inside and rot our brains on television. There was a park with toileting facilities and a drinking fountain half a mile away where we were expected to hang out. We'd be back for lunch and then be locked out again until dinner. And this was a normal thing in our neighborhood.

Give kids some rules. Give them some understanding of situational awareness and let them figure things out from there. It's not like these kids were being turned loose in some kind of hellscape. The place sounds like a suburban wonderland (which is a different kind of hellscape if you're not a young child). If a person can't understand kids being turned loose to experience the rights and responsibilities of liberty in a Disney-fied setting like Silver Spring then I'd suggest that person remove the stick from their fundament. To do otherwise is to not enjoy the privilege of affluence that makes this freedom possible.
posted by Fezboy! at 12:54 PM on April 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

If that was one game -- one magical, awesome, risky, violent, sputtering game -- we would have played it at recess every damn day

Okay, whoever's up gets the ball thrown at them. They kick the ball, and then run like hell for the unoccupied base of their choice. The defending team tries to tag him out before he gets to a base by firing rocket-propelled lawn darts at him. Each team is up until they get three players "out" at which point everybody comes back in and the other team is up - or until they win the game by getting a player on every base.

I'm thinking the bases should be old 55-gallon drums, something the rocket darts will ricochet off of, and you have to be completely inside to be safe. So no arguments about whether you were safe or out when you got tagged. If you got hit then you weren't all the way on base and you're out.

If there aren't any oil drums around, pretty much anything that will stop a rocket propelled lawn dart will do. Old refrigerators are perfect.

Any questions?
posted by Naberius at 12:58 PM on April 13, 2015 [9 favorites]

If child endangerment were a thing society really seriously cared about every politician in the world would be in jail because of speed limits higher than 25 mph.
posted by srboisvert at 1:02 PM on April 13, 2015 [15 favorites]

When I was a kid (I'm 52) I don't remember my parents EVER giving a shit where I was. In fact, my father, who worked long hours in a factory, was glad to get my siblings and I out of his hair for a few hours of peace and quiet. There were times when I could have been seriously maimed or killed. It wasn't, however, due to evil people lurking around every corner. It was from climbing trees, igniting incendiaries, exploring abandoned quarries, mucking about in swamps, etc. Sure, there was the occasional kid who got Darwined. It would be interesting to see some hard data on the chronological rise or fall of child abductions, etc. I think there is some truth to the media paranoia that has already been described in previous comments. It may be that white, middle-class Americans have eliminated so much risk that they have to invent things just to eleviate boredom. I predict that we will soon hear of CPS being called because parents gave their kids food containing gluten. Oddly, when going about my mid-size Midwestern mostly-white city, it is unusual to see kids playing outside. Even odder, my reaction is to think that they must be poor and can't afford a large-screen television and Xbox.
posted by rankfreudlite at 1:06 PM on April 13, 2015 [5 favorites]

Naberius,

That game is hilariously awesome. I'm in a fit of giggles because I can totally imagine playing that as a kid.
I was a total free range kid and we and other neighborhood kids were always making games up that had us doing things that were 'unsafe'.
posted by Jalliah at 1:09 PM on April 13, 2015 [3 favorites]

Look, we've decided as Americans that if you aren't either watching your child or paying someone to watch your child 24/7 till they're 18, you are a terrible child-neglecting monster.

This has the added benefit of giving cops another reason to crack down on the poors, who are much more likely to have erratic schedules and not be able to stay home/hire help.
posted by emjaybee at 1:11 PM on April 13, 2015 [12 favorites]

I can understand the point that if there is busy traffic around parks and schools, people shouldn't let their children play unsupervised But I think it's also fair to say that if children can't play around parks and schools, people shouldn't be allowed to drive there.

Making it possible for children to have some kind of independent life should be a priority in city planning.
posted by layceepee at 1:13 PM on April 13, 2015 [13 favorites]

We live within walking distance of 2 parks, both less than a half mile away. One has unsupervised kids in it all the time, nobody cares... and we have to cross a busy-ish street to get there. The other is in a more affluent neighborhood and I never see kids there by themselves, lots of helicopter parenting. That one involves practically zero risk of being hit by a car, you walk on a path in the woods to get to it. Which park do I send my (currently 4yo) to by himself in a couple years?
posted by rabbitrabbit at 1:15 PM on April 13, 2015

Naberius, I was thinking it would be more like jacks, with the Jarts thrown upwards as hard as possible, and then everyone running, cricket-style, from base to base until the missile returns to earth.

You would tape a whole roll of caps to the Jart's nose so that when it landed they would all go off at once -- just as they used to do when we would hit a whole roll with a hammer, satisfyingly loud -- signaling the end of that at-bat.
posted by wenestvedt at 1:19 PM on April 13, 2015 [3 favorites]

I could tell you a million anecdotes, but that school zone is actively hostile to pedestrians, and I won't go near it during pickup/dropoff.

Yeah, the irony is that it's not safe for some kids to walk to school because other kids get dropped off by their parents. When I was a kid, literally not one single person was driven to school by a parent, save for after medical appointments and the like. We were bussed (most of us) or we walked. Now, the block around my kid's school is a nightmare at dropoff and pickup. At least once a week she'll tell me "Sabine's mother almost hit me with her car this morning" or "I saw Mathieu's dad run the stop sign again today." I'm always amazed that drivers who are, presumably, pretty careful with their kids in the car, turn into total morons as soon as they are dropped off.
posted by looli at 1:21 PM on April 13, 2015 [15 favorites]

The police ought to be able to lock certain people up for being busy bodies.

Yeah, maybe we should start thinking about giving the police LESS power to lock people up on whims, not more.
posted by el io at 1:24 PM on April 13, 2015 [3 favorites]

When I was a kid the ONLY family that drove their kids to school (because they feared kidnapping) were the local nutbar family.
posted by Cosine at 1:25 PM on April 13, 2015 [6 favorites]

...because some wacko will call CPS?

America is a wacko-archy.
posted by cosmic.osmo at 1:32 PM on April 13, 2015 [5 favorites]

I carpooled to elementary school and junior high. The damnedest thing is, I grew up only three or four blocks from an elementary school, but my parents never even talked to me about going there. It was a public school, and I went to the white-flight academy on the edge of town, a cheap private school. What with the way that the public schools were underfunded and physically dangerous, I can't blame my parents or anyone's parents for this, but it's just ridiculous. It was not what anyone imagined when they laid out that part of town in the 1910s and 1920s.
posted by Countess Elena at 1:33 PM on April 13, 2015 [2 favorites]

The odds were already astronomically tiny that a stranger would break into my car, grab my kid, and harm him somehow at a busy gas station,

This actually just happened in Milwaukee: someone left their (sleeping?) one year old in the car when she went inside a gas station, and a teenager took off with her car. (The child was found unharmed; not sure about the car.)
posted by desjardins at 1:34 PM on April 13, 2015

When I was a kid, literally not one single person was driven to school by a parent, save for after medical appointments and the like.

I was bussed as well.
But I had a parent at home that could wait around until the bus came to pick me up.

If you're in a dual-earner family, and school starts at 8:30 and you need to be at work at 8:30, well, you're going to be dropping your kid off at 8:00.
posted by madajb at 1:36 PM on April 13, 2015 [3 favorites]

15-year-old girl arrested in theft of car with baby inside
posted by desjardins at 1:37 PM on April 13, 2015

Well that anecdote certainly cements my public policy position.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 1:40 PM on April 13, 2015 [23 favorites]

When I was a kid the ONLY family that drove their kids to school (because they feared kidnapping) were the local nutbar family.

Yeah, my friend in HS's parents drove her to school. If they couldn't drive her to school then she would have to stay home (seriously, she would stay home) rather than take the bus or walk. She was allowed to take the bus home because then she'd be getting on at the school so she would be getting on at the school so surely there would be other kids on the bus. If she got on the bus at home then there might not be any other kids and it would be all stranger-danger-adults (and we all know how common it is to kidnap teenagers off public transit?).

Anyway, her parents were wildly over-protective in many other ways and eventually she started taking advantage of this and playing them. By our last year she was skipping so much school that she failed all her classes our last year and never went to college or university as a result.

Meanwhile, if I ever called my mom and asked her for a ride she'd say no and tell me to take the bus. If I attempted to play her and tell her I didn't have a ticket, she'd say "Well, I guess you should have planned ahead and bought some tickets. Now you have to walk." At the time I was lazy and annoyed, but now I see that it was the flip side of being allowed to do things.

I remember back then, when we were in HS how strange I found it that she never played outside as a kid and how strange she found it that I did play outside as a kid (and took the bus or subway around and went places alone and babysat and did many other things as a teenager). It was like our parents were from completely different parenting planets. I'm sure her parents thought mine were negligent and mine (and I) thought her parents were nuts.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 1:44 PM on April 13, 2015 [4 favorites]

I agree that the idea that the world has become more dangerous is due to media-fueled overreactions to anecdotes, but isn't this story also an example of a media-fueled overreaction to an anecdote?
posted by diogenes at 1:53 PM on April 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

I lived in Japan just under 10 years back and was always surprised to see the tiniest children wearing their little school outfits with the doofy little hats, unaccompanied by adults, at the train station, on their way to school or back again. If I had to guess, some of these kids couldn't have been much older than 6 or 7. It was cool to see.

Because childcare for dual-working parents costs thousands of dollars a year

$1200 a month. A MONTH. It's like paying rent twice. You know, if rent was reasonable and not, like, a whole lot more than $1200.
posted by Hoopo at 1:57 PM on April 13, 2015 [11 favorites]

I dunno about your rent but mine is $850/month. I literally could not afford $1200/month AND rent on my current salary--I'd wind up with -$50 per month before I even tried to take taxes out. Before I moved this year, I paid $650/month.

I mean, I don't have kids, thankfully. But $1200 is even more absurd than "doubling your rent"--try "tripling it," depending where you live.
posted by sciatrix at 2:00 PM on April 13, 2015

In Montgomery County, $1200 is a good price (at least for a kid under the age of three). Infant care in a center runs upwards of $1800/month.
posted by devinemissk at 2:05 PM on April 13, 2015 [2 favorites]

I dunno about your rent but mine is $850/mont

I'm in Vancouver and to be fair it is known as one of the most expensive cities in Canada so it's probably not as bad elsewhere
posted by Hoopo at 2:07 PM on April 13, 2015

Well that anecdote certainly cements my public policy position.

I can't even tell whether you're talking about desjardins' anecdote or the anecdote the post is about. Maybe both!
posted by escabeche at 2:15 PM on April 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

I hope they fight this and I hope they win and I hope they continue to be good parents and let their kids live as kids and not fragile songbirds who must be kept caged. People keep saying they shouldn't be using their kids as pawns. They're not using their kids as pawns, they're trying to give their kids the lives that many kids have known forever. They aren't the crazy ones, it's the authorities here who are the crazy ones.

The argument that they shouldn't do this because the authorities might act badly is an argument that nobody should ever do anything that might cause a ruckus.
posted by Justinian at 2:17 PM on April 13, 2015 [13 favorites]

If the "concerned parent" was so concerned about the children, they could just talk to the kids first instead of calling CPS. Y'know, ask them if they're hurt or lost, and how far they are from home. Walk them home if they feel so strongly about kids walking. Sheesh.
posted by desuetude at 2:38 PM on April 13, 2015 [9 favorites]

I'm in Vancouver and to be fair it is known as one of the most expensive cities in Canada so it's probably not as bad elsewhere

The infant fee for full time care at the early childhood school where I most recently worked (just this year) is $1,330 per month, in Cincinnati. The cost of living here is really, really good. But if you want accredited, four-to-five star (according to state mandates and inspections) programs with infant/teacher ratios of 3-1, you're gonna pay a shitload of money for them.

Back to helicopter parenting, a friend of my daughter lives the equivalent of about two, maybe three, city blocks from our house. There are sidewalks all the way to and from our houses. My daughter and her friend are both 15 and we live in a very quiet, very safe suburb. The friend is not allowed to walk to our house, not even during daylight hours! The mind boggles.
posted by cooker girl at 2:41 PM on April 13, 2015 [2 favorites]

People keep saying they shouldn't be using their kids as pawns. They're not using their kids as pawns, they're trying to give their kids the lives that many kids have known forever.

Indeed. And I see people here and elsewhere say that the parents are so wrong for not taking the hint from the first time and dialing it back. But even if you buy the idea that it's more important to submit to authority regardless of its merit rather than have to have a fight, I think this pretty strongly underestimates how hard it is to dial back autonomy on a child.

Those kids have gotten used to a certain degree of self-directed responsibility. What harm - and how ugly a fight would it be - do you do when you say nope, you don't get to do that anymore?
posted by phearlez at 2:46 PM on April 13, 2015 [3 favorites]

Huh, this is bizarre to me. In 6 years working indirectly with CPS I've never known them to be so involved. Most of the time they are overworked, uninformed, and busy with paperwork.

In my office full of mandated reporters there is a running joke

A: I'll call CPS on client X!!!
B : right and when you're done, we can actually help them!

Social service humor is sad and depressing.
posted by Tarumba at 3:13 PM on April 13, 2015 [2 favorites]

Aren't you supposed to put a tag on your kids so people can track down the owners? If not, well, that's a fucking good idea, so maybe you should.
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:18 PM on April 13, 2015

I will ingest my fedora if it doesn't turn out that the "concerned citizen" who called CPS didn't know exactly who the kids and their parents were.
posted by DanSachs at 4:33 PM on April 13, 2015 [23 favorites]

So I call CPS because the kid next door is wearing a red cape outside. Maybe a bull will come by and maul the kid, you never know these days!

Are they required to take down my report? Are the cops required to respond?

Is there someone empowered to say "Sir or Madam, um, your concern is bullshit?"

In the Greater Toronto area, they are. An article on race & the local CPS quoted a CPS worker describing how a teacher once called them because a child was sent to a school with roti for lunch (delicious Trinidadian curry wrapped in flatbread). The teacher (presumably not Trinidadian) thought it was insufficiently nutritious and inappropriate food for a child. The CPS worker dismissed it as insufficient grounds for further investigation and an inappropriate call.
posted by jb at 5:06 PM on April 13, 2015 [6 favorites]

Hot damn I wish I had a roti.
posted by turbid dahlia at 5:28 PM on April 13, 2015 [9 favorites]

Adults steal, vandalize, and break things too yet they are allowed out unsupervised.

For now.

Give us time, we're working on it.
posted by happyroach at 5:29 PM on April 13, 2015 [4 favorites]

Does anyone else suspect that this was planned by the parents? It's just too perfect of an example of police and CPS over reach.
posted by stowaway at 5:29 PM on April 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

Your kids are in danger all the time. Ooops, the priest and the altarboys. People drive cars as if they are in their living room in the recliner and they are playing a videogame. There are fucked-up people who will lure kids into danger. There are risks from pools, bikes, etc. You should pay attention, know where the kids are, teach them to wear a helmet, how to swim, how to stay away from creepy people. In my high school, the friend who drowned? Tragedy. The kid who died of leukemia, also a tragedy. She'd probably live, nowadays. The horribly depressed guy who killed himself. Heartbreaking.

Citizen Busybody, wanna save some kids? Make sure your state requires vaccinations. Vote for legislators who will fund WIC, food stamps, child care training & assistance. Make sure parks are safe, not just your park, but the parks in all neighborhoods. Get busy about young Black men being shot to death, by cops or by thugs. Yeah, you see those kids walking home from the park? They're the ones who are less likely to get diabetes or heart disease. They're the ones with the skills to be independent and resourceful.

You might also want to consider all the kids in homes where there are guns without triggerlocks, loaded or with ammo easily found, etc.
posted by theora55 at 5:36 PM on April 13, 2015 [21 favorites]

I've mentioned before in the "free range childhood" threads that, as a girl, my free range childhood was marked by several notable incidents of assault and sexual harassment. I developed a lot of grit; when I was teenager my friends admiringly commented on how confident I was at moving around in an urban area. But I wish I had been enrolled in the sorts of activities my friends got to do, I wish I hadn't been so lonely. That isn't to say that 24/7 supervision is the way to go, but there's got to be a happy medium.
posted by stowaway at 5:38 PM on April 13, 2015 [8 favorites]

When I was ten, I lived in the country. I would often walk or bike several miles to play with friends. A popular activity was to practice target shooting with our 22 caliber riffles. [begin sarcasm]I blame the liberuls and their gun laws for making ten year olds such easy targets of child molesters and such[/end sarcasm]. Seriously that was nuts in hindsight. Ten year olds should not have unsupervised access to firearms. It is fucking miracle we didn't murder each other. This Montgomery County thing though seems a bit extreme the other way.
posted by humanfont at 5:41 PM on April 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

To be fair, the last time I went to a public park as a teenager, I was shot at, because, apparently, my sitting under a tree reading was too offensive to someone.
posted by SPrintF at 5:56 PM on April 13, 2015

I love the scene in Footloose when the preacher dad John Lithgow finally comes around about The Dance [the text doesn't really convey the music-swelling awesomeness of it, but anyway]:

REVEREND SHAW MOORE: I'm standing up here before you today with a very troubled heart. You see, my friends, I've always insisted on taking responsibility for your lives. But I'm really like a first-time parent who makes mistakes, and tries to learn from them. And like that parent, I find myself at that moment when I have to decide. Do I hold on... or do I trust you to yourselves? Let go, and hope that you've understood at least some of my lessons. If we don't start trusting our children, how will they ever become trustworthy?
I'm told that the senior class at the high school has gotten use of the warehouse in Bayson for the purpose of putting on a senior dance. Please join me to pray to the Lord to guide them in their endeavors.

Amen. And I'd add: When so many police have proven they are untrustworthy, how can we be expected trust them?

Holding those kids for three hours without calling the parents is just... inexcusable.
posted by argonauta at 6:04 PM on April 13, 2015 [3 favorites]

To be fair, the last time I went to a public park as a teenager, I was shot at, because, apparently, my sitting under a tree reading was too offensive to someone.

Reading a book under a tree is a lot like eating a steak in front of a cow. Not offensive exactly, but definitely a faux pas.
posted by turbid dahlia at 6:18 PM on April 13, 2015 [21 favorites]

Books are basically the porterhouse steaks of trees.
posted by turbid dahlia at 6:19 PM on April 13, 2015 [11 favorites]

Does anyone else suspect that this was planned by the parents? It's just too perfect of an example of police and CPS over reach.

I am sort of at a loss as to how they could have planned this over-reach. By... raising them the way they want to? It is certainly beyond their capacity to cause the cops to hold the children for hours without contact.

I guess you could choose to believe that they called the cops themselves to create this situation. I think that's kinda whack, but even if you did choose to think it possible - what would that mean? The subsequent response to the call is either reasonable or it's not. If you think it's reasonable then the precipitating call is irrelevant. If you think it's unreasonable then the precipitating call is irrelevant.

I find this about as sensible as saying they were somehow "trolling" CPS, as if one could taunt a government agency is a way that would justify them doing their jobs badly.
posted by phearlez at 6:38 PM on April 13, 2015 [4 favorites]

I can't help wondering that someone doesn't start an effective DoS on CPS/police there some day because of kids walking to/from school.

It's a horrible idea, but still ...
posted by one weird trick at 6:55 PM on April 13, 2015

Actually if I lived in this neighbourhood I'd be tempted to call the police every time I saw a kid. "7 year old in a blue jumper getting into a car - do you know how dangerous cars are?!!? They were clearly going to drive him somewhere!!!" After all, they said they have to investigate, right? Let's test that.
posted by the agents of KAOS at 7:38 PM on April 13, 2015 [4 favorites]

Urgh. If CPS is worried about a kiddie snatcher, then yeah, they're completely ridiculous. But unfortunately many, many suburban streets are incredibly dangerous for kids to cross -- not like one-in-a-billion odds of being kidnapped, more like one-in-a-hundred odds of getting smushed like a bug. I hate that we've built such stupidly designed streets, but if that's the reality of the place they live, then the family should either move or lock their kids indoors. I'm all for standing up for what you think is right but this isn't helping anyone.
posted by miyabo at 8:01 PM on April 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

not like one-in-a-billion odds of being kidnapped, more like one-in-a-hundred odds of getting smushed like a bug.

If there was a 1% of getting mushed like a bug every time a kid walked across a suburban street the corpses would be piled to the rafters. It's not particularly dangerous.
posted by Justinian at 8:06 PM on April 13, 2015 [2 favorites]

This is the route I walked alone twice a day in first & second grade. I lived through it, somehow.
posted by Devils Rancher at 8:07 PM on April 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

Here's a street view of one of the busy stretches near the park (no idea if they crossed this specific one). It is a 6 lane 35-mph road with a marked crosswalk, but no signals at all. This is pretty bad, but not as bad as I had imagined. Around here there are some 50-mph roads with no pedestrian facilities at all which you'd basically have to have a death wish to cross -- and yet they have kid-friendly destinations on both sides.
posted by miyabo at 8:12 PM on April 13, 2015

If there was a 1% of getting mushed like a bug every time a kid walked across a suburban street the corpses would be piled to the rafters. It's not particularly dangerous.

It's somewhere in between one in a billion and 1%. Child pedestrian deaths number a few hundred per year. It's a judgment call whether you consider that particularly dangerous. It looks like it's roughly the same order of magnitude of risk as having a gun in your house, which is another freedom people feel strongly about.
posted by escabeche at 8:13 PM on April 13, 2015 [2 favorites]

Phearlez, I get an activist vibe from the parents. They send the kids out with cards that say, "I'm a free range kid" and they went to the media themselves about the first incident. Activists sometimes contrive situations to make a point. Is it entirely unexpected that the cops/CPS would handle this in a dumb way after investigating the family before? Not really!

Anyhow, it was a passing thought. Even if they themselves were the "concerned citizen" it's beyond ridiculous of the cops to detain some kids for hours instead of just giving them a ride back to their house.
posted by stowaway at 8:23 PM on April 13, 2015

Look, an interview with Danielle Meitiv from 3 days ago. What a coincidence.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201504/meet-danielle-meitiv-fighting-her-kids-rights
posted by stowaway at 8:29 PM on April 13, 2015

Of course, miyabo, CPS/cops would have no way of knowing (in most cases*) whether the kids had made any dangerous crossings or not. At the park I can walk my kid to, there's 20 houses from which one would not have to cross a street at all to get there, and 50 more that would involve on sleepy street or one even sleepier cul de sac. Or maybe parents walked them there and continued around the block with the dog. If the kids aren't being assholes to other park patrons, why not verify that they have the ok to be there and them leave them alone?

*I grant that in this case the pair of kids may have wrung a bell.
posted by stevis23 at 8:30 PM on April 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

It looks like it's roughly the same order of magnitude of risk as having a gun in your house, which is another freedom people feel strongly about.

How do you figure? (I mean literally, how did you do the math on that). There are probably a few hundred kids killed by guns in the house ever year, too. But how often do kids "be pedestrians" vs. how often do they "have a gun in the house"? It's not clear how one would set up comparable denominators here. If you do "how many kids are pedestrians" (all of them, surely) vs. "how many kids have guns in the house" (not all of them) then I would think the risk would be smaller for being a pedestrian. OTOH, it seems a little odd to count both being a pedestrian and having a gun as one since being a pedestrian is kind of episodic. I guess one could count epsidoes of "being in the house with a gun" which would probably work out to 1-2 per day for any kid whose household owns a gun and the occasional extra episode for kids who visit gun owners. But I don't imagine anyone has the numbers to do an episodic gun denominator.

I think the more logical thing is to think about this in terms of parental decision-making. So parents decide once-ish whether to get a gun and keep it in the house. So what they need to know to make that decision is the lifetime risk that their kid will be killed with that gun. Parents decide "per trip" whether their kids walk somewhere. I guess some trips are sort of packaged together: Like I walked to and from school every day since I was in senior kindergarten, but that wasn't a daily decision my mom made, it was more like a decision she made once when I was in SK and then could have reversed but never did (just as one could get rid of a gun). So for each pedestrian decision point, some of which involve a package of pedestrian episodes and some of which are a single pedestrian episode (I'm going to the store), parents would need to know the risk that the kid could be killed.

Ok, so on the gun side you have one decision kind of equivalent to one pedestrian package decision and on then on the pedestrian side you have a series of package decisions and thousands of individual decisions. I guess the way to compare would be what's the risk of death if parents went the potentially risk-y way with both sets of decisions? So what's the lifetime risk that your kid will die if you get a gun vs. if you let your kid walk at every possible opportunity? And for any non-optional trip (e.g. school) you need to figure out the difference between the risk of walking and the risk of riding in a motor vehicle (for simplicity, let's assume that's the appropriate alternative transportation method) and include only additional pedestrian risk (or negative risk of the pedestrian risk is less).

Anyway, please show your work if you think the risks are comparable. I'm not convinced.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 8:33 PM on April 13, 2015 [2 favorites]

I imagine that much like vegetarians, car-free people, folks without TVs, and others who in one way or another go against societal expectations, free-range parents are very (VERY) used to having their decisions questioned. Being prepared for the inevitable by having refutations to the most common criticisms/concerns lined up ready to use and trying to get out ahead of the reactive media cycle doesn't indicate that they're cynical media-hounds trying to exploit the situation for attention.
posted by Lexica at 8:37 PM on April 13, 2015 [7 favorites]

How do you figure? (I mean literally, how did you do the math on that).

I did basically what you did. The reported figures that I could find have about 400 kids killed as pedestrians, 100 in accidental shootings, but for the reasons you say I don't think it's at all fair to say walking is four times more dangerous. I don't quite know how to set up the denominator. About a third of households have guns, so it's not exactly rare. Anyway, I mean "order of magnitude" in the sense that I'm guessing the ratio between the two risks is between 10 and 1/10.
posted by escabeche at 8:46 PM on April 13, 2015 [2 favorites]

Those figures of deaths are per year, I should say. For injuries, although again it gets to be really hard to compare, I see a figure of 17,000 pedestrians under 15 per year injured in car crashes, against about 1000 children under 15 hospitalized for firearm injuries. I don't know whether the figure for car injuries includes injuries not leading to hospitalization.
posted by escabeche at 8:51 PM on April 13, 2015

I am far more concerned about the parents who don't have support, like the woman who worked at McDonald's while her kid played nearby, than I am about upper middle class folks with a named parenting philosophy.
posted by stowaway at 9:01 PM on April 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

At least Maryland's got a decent crosswalk law. Living in a state where drivers are merely required to yield (whatever that means) if I'm already in the crosswalk on the same half of the street is crap. As far as I can tell, buzzing past at close range counts as "yielding," as long as they don't actually hit you. We should all have a firm requirement to actually stop for pedestrians crossing, no creeping forward allowed.

More generally, we've got to do a better job making our world a better place to walk, child or adult. I think this sort of thing has got to be less of an issue in places where walking itself is more common and we're used to seeing people on foot.
posted by asperity at 9:08 PM on April 13, 2015 [3 favorites]

Road design has a far greater effect on driver behavior than any law or law enforcement. At one intersection near where I'm currently staying, crossing the street on the east side of the intersection is like playing russian roulette. Make the same crossing on the west side and people actually pay attention.

Why? Because sight lines suck on the west and are wide open on the east. This leads to drivers being more confident in blowing through the intersection and, worse, puts their point of focus far beyond the intersection and any pedestrians potentially crossing. Luckily, traffic engineers have figured this out in the past few years, so street design is changing. Sadly, there are millions of old intersections designed with pedestrians as an afterthought and with the assumption that signals alone would keep drivers in line.

The key is (counterintuitively) to make drivers feel unsafe. That makes the vast majority of them more careful. Wide streets and long sightlines have exactly the opposite effect, and makes the roads less safe for all users.
posted by wierdo at 9:56 PM on April 13, 2015 [4 favorites]

OK, here's a story I haven't shared. On my first day of kindergarten, my older sister walked me to school (a few blocks, no big deal). After my class let out, I stepped outside to the street and was completely baffled about where I was supposed to go.

I am very proud that at the age of five I figured out what to do. The streets looked unfamiliar because I had seen them walking to school. (I had never been out of my front yard before this.) So I realized that to find my way home, I had to walk backwards all the way home, so that the streets would look like they had that morning.

And I did that and I got home safely. I am very proud that I accomplished this. And I am terribly, terribly angry that I was abandoned to this.
posted by SPrintF at 9:59 PM on April 13, 2015 [10 favorites]

What possible excuse did the police have for not a) immediately taking the children to their home address, which the children presumably knew, or b) at the LEAST call the parents immediately?

Because the cops (CPS, judges, etc.) have decided that the parents are the bad guys in this story, and they don't want to leave the kids with the bad guys for fear tomorrow's headlines will start with something like "Neglected Children ..." and end with something like "...Abandoned by CPS, Police." It's all a game of covering their own asses. Like locking kids in a rubber room with 24-hour monitoring to make sure there is zero percent chance that they will hurt themselves and blame the authorities for not protecting them from themselves.

You need to fix the entire system, not just change whether it's permitted for kids to be out by themselves.

Limit liability for the parties involved, so no one person or organization is going to fear being jailed or fired or sued into the ground for allowing kids to take the sort of normal chances people here want (be allowed to walk to school, walk to a friend's house, walk to the store, walk to the library, hang out in the town square, walk to the park, play in the park, play in the woods, climb trees, play ball games, go bicycling, walk home).
Make it possible for a kid to get a pedestrian license, like a kid might get a swimming or boating license. The kid goes to school for it, is observed by experts, and takes tests to see whether the kid would actually fare well alone on sidewalks, buses, street intersections, playgrounds, etc. See what happens when the kid is purposely lost or misled. Maybe one class of license for walking, another for bicycling. Maybe a license that is valid for group walking but not for being out alone. If a kid has a valid pedestrian license for that jurisdiction and time, the cops have to let the kid walk, and the cops and parents can't be held responsible for letting the kid walk and not calling in the cavalry.
Fix the transportation structure to enable the very young and very old to enjoy safe unassisted mobility. Reduce speed limits and narrow streets. Allow no school, public or private, to operate unless the majority of its students walk, bicycle, or take public transportation to and from school. Make sidewalks and bicycle paths a requirement of most streets in town, regardless of school placement, even if that means turning some two-way streets into one-way streets with the other lanes converted to pedestrian traffic. Make public transportation free to everyone under a certain age or over a certain age. Merge public transportation and school buses into one system enabling adults and children even in rural areas to take the bus into town in the morning and back home again in the evening. Get automatic cars on the streets soon so you can get human drivers off the streets.
Free daycare, longer school days.

posted by pracowity at 1:25 AM on April 14, 2015

It's somewhere in between one in a billion and 1%. Child pedestrian deaths number a few hundred per year. It's a judgment call whether you consider that particularly dangerous. It looks like it's roughly the same order of magnitude of risk as having a gun in your house, which is another freedom people feel strongly about.

As penguin notes that's not really how risk works. Causing a similar number of deaths says nothing one way or the other about whether the risks are similar because it depends on so many other factors.

Taking a tylenol is not riskier than taking cyanide even though far more people die from tylenol poisoning than cyanide poisoning.

Additionally you have to assess the risks and costs of not allowing your kids to go be kids. Which are very high.
posted by Justinian at 1:26 AM on April 14, 2015

It's the safest time to be a child in american history. And we're behaving as though society is descending into chaos.

A good time to ask: Who benefits from that?
posted by lodurr at 3:09 AM on April 14, 2015 [5 favorites]

A pedestrian license?

Yes. Not because I think a kid should need one, but because you guys have created a weird and awful system that you don't seem to know a way out of. The license would really be for the parents, not the kids.

It would be a standard, official way for parents to instruct cops and other meddling assholes to let their kids wander, and it would be evidence that the kids had indeed been shown the basics of real-world navigation and that enough of it had apparently sunk in to keep them from leaping into traffic or into a stranger's car. A kid with a license would have to know how to get home, how to get to school, how to cross streets (cars, not kidnappers, are always the biggest threat to pedestrians), how to get help, and how to avoid trouble. Stuff worth teaching.

Cops would be able (and expected) to back off, not pluck kids off the streets, knowing their asses were covered if something happened to the kids later. Snooping neighbors would legally have to shut the fuck up and leave you and your kids alone. Teachers would be able to release kids into the wild after classes ended for the day. Parents wouldn't be dragged out of home or work and threatened with horrible legal actions just because their kids had been found playing in the park or reading in the library. Kids would be able to continue on their way unmolested by busybodies. And a license would not be needed after a certain age, when every kid would automatically be assumed to know what's what and would have the ability and right to wander anywhere without permission.
posted by pracowity at 3:21 AM on April 14, 2015

I'm not so sure how I feel about "pedestrian licenses". Well, actually I am sure. It's dumb (no offense intended). NTTATWWT, I come up with dumb ideas all the time. Then, about five seconds later, I punch myself in the face. What's next? A license to exist? We have enough annoyances trying to satisfy big brother's need to regulate our lives and derive revenue. I recently lost my wallet, and it was an excruciating ordeal trying to replace driver's license, passport, credit cards, debit card, library card, grocery store savings card, coffee-shop punch card, birth certificate, etc.
posted by rankfreudlite at 4:58 AM on April 14, 2015

My old house was about four blocks from an elementary school, in a neighborhood with little traffic, low speed limits, and no difficult intersections. Lots and lots of kids would walk themselves to school, sometimes alone and sometimes in small groups. Others would be walked to school by a parent or guardian. Speed limits near the school were heavily regulated by the police, with speed traps in operation at least once a week. There were also a couple small parks in the neighborhood, which were used the same way.

Now where I live the nearest school is across a busy street from the nearest school, and the same for a park. Speed limits are the same, but there are never any speed traps and people drive through the neighborhood much faster. I only see kids on the street when accompanied by an adult, and I'm not surprised by that.

Infrastructure isn't the only answer (since so much is coming from a general craziness, as far as I can tell), but it is a really important component. Unless streets are safe for kids (meaning from cars and other threats, with lots of people able to see what is happening and intervene if there is a problem), of course people won't want to let their kids roam free.

I had a great childhood, totally free range, but there were bad things too (we had brushes with what were in retrospect clearly predators; we got chased and bit by dogs; and there were bullies and other problem kids who beat us up sometimes) that my parents never knew about.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:04 AM on April 14, 2015

Roundabout June of last year there was a thread here about a family that, after the mom left her child alone in a car on a cool day for five minutes, had been sent through a CPS hell

that refers to this thread. i think there are still arguments for "10 year old and 6 year old walking home from a neighborhood park, that should be totally fine. 4 year old left in a car in a parking lot, out of mom's sight - less fine."
posted by nadawi at 6:59 AM on April 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

It's all a game of covering their own asses.

If you think this situation is more a question of risk avoidance rather than punishing people for contempt of bureaucracy then I have a nice bridge you may be interested in purchasing.
posted by phearlez at 7:15 AM on April 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

Here's an idea: Instead of asinine ideas like a pedestrian license, how about we design streets for people, not cars; stop subsidizing automobile transit; and hold motorists dearly responsible for all the mayhem and environmental destruction they cause on a daily basis?
posted by entropicamericana at 8:00 AM on April 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

Unless it was raining, I was expected to find my own way to school from the day I started public school Kindergarten. That was easy enough, I lived literally across the street from the junior high school that was next door to the elementary school.

Starting in first grade after a move, it was a bit under a mile, across a couple of busy streets with no sidewalks most of the way. There were no sidewalks in my neighborhood at all. Never came close to getting hit by a car, but people didn't have cell phones glued to their ear yet, much less the ability to text. Come junior high, I had to walk around half a mile to the bus stop and if I missed the bus, ride my bike the 3 miles to school.

In 9th grade, we moved to a different city and I got a 49cc motor scooter since school was 5 or 6 miles away and the nearest bus stop was around a mile. Rain or shine, I had to ride it to and from school. Nobody considered that particularly odd. A couple of other kids did the same. After that conked out, it was a long walk from high school home, although I could sometimes get rides partway.

I was only hassled by cops 3 times. Once when I was around 9 and wanted to go to both the grocery store and the convenience store on the other side of the highway interchange and walked along the busy 5 lane road rather than around the long way. He asked me where I was going, where I lived, and whether my parents knew where I was and that was the end of it. I considered and still consider it reasonable, given that it was and still is an odd place to see a kid walking, so there was a decent enough chance I was lost or abandoned.

Second time, I was around 13 and out well after curfew. Being a few houses away from where I lied and told them I lived, they let me go, also.

Third time also involved a late night walk, and was a bit more exciting, but again ended with nothing more than the initial contact. That time my neighbor saw me leaving my house and mistook me for some kind of prowler, hence the extra excitement.

It amazes me how many parents these days don't teach their kids how to be a pedestrian, not because of a lack of time, but because they are afraid for their snowflake to be out in the world unattended. There were a few parents like that when I was growing up, but they were generally considered weird. That said, some kids did get rides to school, but most of them only because it was convenient for their parents. There were not lines of cars spilling out into the street like there are today, despite enrollment not changing much. The only lines of cars were the ones a lot of kids who drove themselves to high school made in the parking lot.

I guess the point of all this is to say that I totally do not understand the world anymore.
posted by wierdo at 8:34 AM on April 14, 2015

I remember walking to school with my 9-year-old brother at the age of 7, and although I don't remember the address, it definitely seemed like a VERY long way at the time. I also took the city bus to the library regularly beginning at age 9 or so, and became pretty good at avoiding eye contact and deflecting conversations with random strangers. The city I grew up in was relatively safe, but it was still a major city, and while I loved going to the library, I kind of wish I'd had a parent at home to take me. Nothing bad ever happened, but I definitely remember moments of fear when I wasn't sure nothing bad WOULD happen. I probably wouldn't let my (currently imaginary) kid do the same thing.

For the record, my parents also left my brother and I in a locked car at night while they visited their pot dealer, so in some ways their parenting left a bit to be desired.
posted by odayoday at 9:56 AM on April 14, 2015

> It would be a standard, official way for parents to instruct cops and other meddling assholes to let their kids wander.

Uh, unless the kids are actually lost or hurt or in trouble or scared, not just strolling home as per usual.

We need cops to do actual community policing, to use their words and talk to people (including children-people), listen to their replies and observe their behavior, and generally invoke the use of discretion and common sense, rather than acting like the dogcatcher.
posted by desuetude at 10:30 AM on April 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

If a person of any age is in distress the cops should help. Otherwise, the cops have a duty to leave us the fuck alone.
posted by pracowity at 11:19 AM on April 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

There’s never been a safer time to be a kid in America.

I walked .7 miles to school every day and any weather from first grade to sixth grade. My mom just told me a story about the neighborhood busy bodies being concerned about unsafe drivers on the neighborhood streets and they bugged the police until they got increased traffic enforcement. It wasn't such a good thing because it was the neighborhood busy bodies that got tickets for speeding and rolling through stop signs. The police just didn't understand, they weren't the problem, it was those other bad drivers making the roads unsafe.
posted by peeedro at 12:04 PM on April 14, 2015 [4 favorites]

When people talk about the good old days when kids could wander around unsupervised barefoot with fishing poles on their shoulders, they're usually thinking about sometime around, say, 1928.

Nope, the 80s for me. From probably age 8 onwards summer days were basically: leave the house in the morning, vaguely indicate which pack of friends I'd be around, be home for dinner--or at any friend's home for dinner, really. Didn't much matter if it was my mum's house or my dad's, we were free-range kids. By age 10, my best friend and I would hop on our bikes and just go wherever. We were free range kids, so were my sisters, except back then we were just 'kids' because that's how it was with everyone in our neighbourhood. We'd regularly, from 9ish onwards, take TTC by ourselves, we'd walk to school by ourselves (or, after we moved, take the TTC to school). It was never a problem. And this was in the height of the Stranger Danger years.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:23 PM on April 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

Lawyer time.
posted by chavenet at 1:14 PM on April 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'm starting to wonder what's going on and if something isn't a little wrong with these parents.

Oh, of course. I mean, how DARE they use their best judgement and determine that it's OK for their children to indulge in the completely legal activity of playing in their neighborhood park.

In other words, are you barkin' kidding me?

My Monsters are Grown-Assed Adults now, but when they were small, I had CPS called on me for EVERYTHING. Left Elder Monster asleep in his crib while I ran the trash downstairs and across the parking lot to the dumpster. "Inadequate supervision". Chose my battles, and when he had a screaming hissy about hating socks, I let him go without socks. "Inadequate winter clothing." Kid told a neighbor we didn't go to church. "Satanic ritual abuse." (No, I'm not joking.) Both kids were whip-thin, like their father. "Malnourished." (The look on the Social worker's face when I just rolled my eyes and told her to open the fridge, both freezers, and the pantry, and feel free to nab a piece of fruit from the bowl on the table on the way out the door "and don't let it hit you in the ass" was pretty great.) Got a job online, which I did while the kids were in school, and after they were in bed. "Poor supervision and internet addiction." (It's better to put them in daycare or leave them with Grammy than it is to get a job you can do when they're not around, and have plenty of time with them when they are. THAT complaint was from a neighbor who was pissed that I wouldn't babysit for her.) Let the then-12 year-old Younger Monster ride his bike to his guitar lessons 2 miles away with his then-16 year-old brother on Saturday mornings? "Inadequate safety precautions."

I stood my ground each and every time, because I was not doing a damned thing that was illegal, immoral, or dangerous to the health and well being of my children. Why did I stand my ground? Because Fuck. That. Shit. If I'm not going to stand up for my own rights and the rights of my children, who is going to? Not you, clearly. Better to STFD and STFU and let 'em walk all over me, right? Nope. With one exception, I would tell the CPS people who showed up at my door "Call my attorney and make an appointment to visit when he is present." My brother in-law is a Med-Mal defense attorney, but CPS didn't need to know that, and he wasn't going to let anyone mess with his nephews. Most people don't know that you don't have to let CPS in. I knew, and I refused entry.

I was - and still am - 100% unapologetic for treating my children as actual human beings with brain cells and sense and shit. They walked the 3 blocks to school on their own after kindergarten. They went to the playground and the park together without me, went to hang out with friends, stayed after school for extra currics and either walked home (elementary school) or took the late bus (high school). They took the city bus to the Zoo or the Museum without me, went to the library at will, and generally got out and acted like real people. Not only were they not among the 100 kids nationwide abducted by strangers each year, they were also not struck by lightning, murdered by terrorists, or swept off to Oz by a tornado. Rather, they learned to be self-reliant, independent, and confident in their own abilities as functional human beings.

They can take the bus anywhere in town (if Dad has the car and they want to do something), unlike my 25 year-old neighbor who is panicked at the notion of it. They can buy their own clothes, do their own laundry, figure out on their own what is appropriate work attire. I can leave the 19 year-old with a grocery list and my debit card, and come home hours later to find everything purchased and put away. Some of his friends still don't know how to use a debit card, and freak out at the idea of buying actual groceries.

When they have children of their own and they treat their Monsters like real people, will I support their decision to do so? Yep. will I encourage them and stand by them when some asshole calls CPS because Elder Monster v2.0 refuses to wear socks and his Mama chooses to let him win that fight? Yep. Will I tell them that there is something wrong with them for not rolling over and playing dead when CPS shows up? Hell no. Because, again, Fuck. That. Shit. CPS has REAL work that needs doing, the busybody panic-mongers need to understand that, and stop siccing them on people who aren't doing anything wrong.
posted by MissySedai at 1:59 PM on April 14, 2015 [28 favorites]

It probably doesn't speak well of me, but I like the idea of a "pedestrian license" for kids -- that is, if it weren't actually a license, but instead a locally administered and issued "free range kid" card. A kind of "StreetwiseCareLifeKidProgram Certificate", nothing required by law for free ranging, but something that the police could take as evidence that a lone pedestrian child is not being neglected (assuming no other factors indicate it). If they were free to the public and offered in elementary schools with a little traffic safety course, they could be really helpful.
posted by Countess Elena at 2:28 PM on April 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

The "pedestrian license" is a horrid idea, look at this post that points out how it's the richest and poorest of us in the US are pedestrians or rely on bicycles for transportation. Nobody should need a license to walk down the street or bicycle to the store. Any such license would become an administrative burden and a new way to criminalize being poor. "Think of the children" is a sinister way to promote that idea.

Keeping kids and families safe from overreactive CPS and police, let alone actual danger, shouldn't involve a whole new program to issue a license to walk home from the park.
posted by peeedro at 2:49 PM on April 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

This makes me fucking sad. My mom was overprotective and helicoptery until she was convinced i had learned enough(and i got a cellphone, back when the cheapest phone cost as much as an upper-model iphone on contract now. a basic make-calls phone now is under $10, shit, it was when i bought my first own-money phone in 2008 at 7-11) and then just went "ok, go do what you think is ok, call me if anything goes wrong or you need help". I had been shown how the bus system worked, how to get places, how to handle intersections, and a ton of other stuff including how to handle creepers and sketchy situations on the street or on transit or whatever since i was in preschool.

I was just barely 11 when i was pretty much given free reign to go around the neighborhood, and even take the bus to friends houses. My parents were plenty confident with "hey, when you're done at your after school program take the bus and come meet us at XYZ location", or "we're at your uncles house across town come meet us" or whatever.

If i had a younger sibling, they totally would have let me do stuff like this. And they were really responsible and taught me useful stuff. When i had to start out on my own at 17, i got a job and had no problem buying groceries, saving money to replace my starting to rip pants(and buy cool new clothes i wanted) and buy my own laptop, cook food and do my laundry. Shit, i knew basic vehicle maintenance like airing up your tires before a road trip that even in my mid 20s people regularly go "wait, you need to do that?"

The neighborhood these kids are in reminds me of the neighborhood i grew up in, complete with a "busy" street. These kids have likely crossed this street hundreds or even thousands of times. They've been going through it since a young age, and have likely even seen accidents or people getting hit there(i saw some HORRIFIC accidents as a kid at the intersection on a busy road a few blocks from my house. like, cartoon-seeming-at-4 cars burst in to flames kind of stuff). Crossing that road with my parents and seeing that, then eventually crossing it by myself was a great lesson. I was fucking scared of that intersection. Hell yes was i looking around. You're not going to lackadaisically stroll in to the road there where you've seen some grandma get run over and a UPS truck turn a car in to a pancake after someone ran a light.

What the hell kind of world is being created by not allowing kids to do this stuff until high school? Because it seems to be one populated almost entirely by the fucking clueless people i knew in high school and college who just wander in to the road texting, or drive like careless assholes, etc.

These kids are going to start driving when they're 16-18, and if they weren't allowed to learn this stuff they won't really care. This is a closed loop, and everyone in this thread whose so afraid of drivers is creating more shitty drivers. Education only goes so far, and being told to do the right thing only does so much. You have to be on the ground and see what happens and be scared to be responsible, imo.

This whole thing just makes me really sad.

I was trying to decide whether to let him keep sleeping when a cop pulled in and parked. That sealed it for me. The odds were already astronomically tiny that a stranger would break into my car, grab my kid, and harm him somehow at a busy gas station, but with a cop right there the odds fell from astronomical to zero.

In Awesome CoolLand, which is to say basically what i thought the world was like for about 2 years between 4 and 6 or maybe at most 7, the cop would have noticed this and... gotten a coffee, and just sat in his car and waited for you, then given you a wave and driven off.

You know, doing what his job theoretically is and protecting people for little to no effort.

It's pretty sad that this is an utter, 100% fantasy. It's also sad that i've had exactly one encounter with the cops where even if i was helped, i didn't feel bad for the other people involved knowing their life had just gotten fucked up way worse(IE having them assist us in recovering my friends bike, then when encountering the person who actually stole it just feeling awful for feeding them in to the gaping maw of the system).

It probably doesn't speak well of me, but I like the idea of a "pedestrian license" for kids -- that is, if it weren't actually a license, but instead a locally administered and issued "free range kid" card. A kind of "StreetwiseCareLifeKidProgram Certificate", nothing required by law for free ranging, but something that the police could take as evidence that a lone pedestrian child is not being neglected (assuming no other factors indicate it). If they were free to the public and offered in elementary schools with a little traffic safety course, they could be really helpful.

This is a shitty idea. It's one of those things like bike helmet tickets that will absolutely be applied unevenly and in the wrong way.

The right idea is mentioned above, with the free range kids/parental freedom laws. There needs to be a law to the effect of "A child walking alone or with other children is not assumed to be neglected unless there is other extenuating circumstances". It also needs to include some language along the lines of if anything bad happens then the parent is not suddenly, automatically guilty of neglect. The burden of proof is on the state to show neglect, not on the parent to show they were taking reasonable precautions(as it currently is) which is a nightmarish shitshow.
posted by emptythought at 4:54 PM on April 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

Seems to me that the simplest approach to start with is to crazily ramp up the penalties for speeding and other violations in school zones or residential / heavy pedestrian areas in general. It's too normalized right now to accept crazy drivers because they so often get away without killing anyone. It's a cliche at this point to say "hey, he could'a killed somebody over there!"

How about some community service, fines, treating problem speeders like DUI drivers and constraining their ability to transgress with technology like phone-home speedometers / GPS and speed governors that self-regulate your top speed based on where you are...

But don't go off the deep end applying the law to every sort of infraction, let the teeth bite where it makes sense -- the stakes are higher in residential and school zones, and the difference between 20 mph and 40 mph in a school zone is vastly more than 60 mph vs 80 mph on an open freeway.

It's bordering on "attempted vehicular homicide" or at least "egregious indifference to life" to blast through any area that is frequented by pedestrians. And too often I see teenage boys, soccer moms and all suburb stereotypes in between driving within the neighborhood like the streets are a personal one-line driveway, blowing through stop signs like they don't apply after you live in the area long enough, driving in the middle of the road taking huge wide turns, etc. WTF. They act like nobody else is there, and it's totally disorienting and off-putting when someone is seemingly actively avoiding noticing that you exist and that you're passing by them at a stop sign they don't believe in, so they just kind of absentmindedly almost T-bone you rolling through and are suddenly jarred by your presence in their bubble.
posted by aydeejones at 1:24 AM on April 15, 2015 [4 favorites]

I'm surprised "latchkey" hasn't come up in the comments...I was a "latchkey kid" beginning at the age of 8, starting with spring break. This meant that I had a key to the house that I wore on my neck under my shirt (in my case anyway) and was trusted to be home unattended for up to an entire day, or to lock up and go to school and come home before anyone else.

Only once did I forget to lock up the house on my way out, and was totally spooked coming back later because I didn't just forget to lock the back door, I left it wide open and forgot that I left it wide open. My first real encounter with "autopilot" and ADHD.

My walk to school was 0.8 miles (confirmed via Google maps!) ; no bus provided for that short of a distance. My parents didn't let me free-range in my free time in the "kicked out of the house all day like it's the summer of '57," sense but I could ride my bike around the block all day or go to specific parks or friends' houses, with specific time limits (almost never more than two hours, unless it's a sleepover) set ahead of time.
posted by aydeejones at 1:38 AM on April 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

Hell no. Because, again, Fuck. That. Shit. CPS has REAL work that needs doing,

The real work is hard and requires dealing with unprepared/indifferent parents and many many visits and interventions. Why do you think they have opted to focus on this instead?
posted by phearlez at 4:45 AM on April 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

Here's the info on who called 911
posted by PussKillian at 10:52 AM on April 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

The real work is hard and requires dealing with unprepared/indifferent parents and many many visits and interventions. Why do you think they have opted to focus on this instead?

As fun as it might be to blame the Social workers and claim they have "chosen" to ignore the real work, the fact is that the law REQUIRES them to investigate every single call. Even when they KNOW the call is bullshit. Society has demanded this, "just in case".

I know a number of Social workers, they don't WANT to annoy/upset/bloody fucking terrify parents who aren't doing anything wrong. The law requires them to, because of the nervous nosy ninnies who think Chester the Molester is behind every tree, and teach their children that they might be stolen from the Target restrooms if they pee by themselves.
posted by MissySedai at 11:16 AM on April 15, 2015

The caller, whose name was redacted from the recording, also said the children’s clothes look dirty, and he first noticed them at Ellsworth Park.

Two kids got dirty while playing at a playground? SOUND THE ALARMS.
posted by a fiendish thingy at 11:22 AM on April 15, 2015 [8 favorites]

As fun as it might be to blame the Social workers and claim they have "chosen" to ignore the real work, the fact is that the law REQUIRES them to investigate every single call. Even when they KNOW the call is bullshit. Society has demanded this, "just in case".

There is a lot of slop, deliberately, in the word "investigate." There's also some slop in the mandatory reporter requirement, which demands reporting in cases of suspected abuse. It is very strident, reasonably, that one should not wait for absolute proof.

So what's abuse? In Maryland it is as follows, straight from the MD social services webpage:

CODE OF MARYLAND REGULATIONS (COMAR) defines child abuse and child neglect as:
Physical injury not necessarily visible of a child under circumstances that indicate that a child’s health or welfare is harmed or at substantial risk of being harmed.
The failure to give proper care and attention to a child including the leaving a child unattended where the child’s health or welfare is harmed or a child is placed in substantial risk of harm.
An act or acts involving sexual molestation or exploitation whether physical injuries are sustained or not.
Identifiable and substantial impairment of a child’s mental or psychological ability to function.
Finding credible evidence that has not been satisfactorily refuted that physical abuse, neglect or sexual abuse occurred.

It's pretty clear that the only way two kids walking three blocks from their home could possibly qualify is under the "substantial risk of harm." Personally I call BS that this circumstance qualifies. You may feel free to check out the street view of the hive of scum and villainy where the call came in from, but I do not personally think it looks all that oogahboogah such that there's a substantial risk of harm.

Put that aside, though, and consider the way CPS chooses to investigate in this situation. They get a call from the mandated reporter and then take almost two hours before they instruct the officer to bring the children to them.

First, if this office needed more than 9 seconds to identify these children as the same family from earlier this year than I will eat my baseball hat. Second, having investigated that home in detail earlier this year they know exactly what the home situation is like.

So you want to say they have to investigate? Super. Open your pre-existing file, note that this question has been raised before, tell the cops to cut the kids loose or take them home. If you have them take them home then you can still, at a later time and without detaining the children, later open a new issue and go crawl up the family's ass over the same thing you have already once dealt with and assigned this nonsensical classification of unsubstantiated.

But keep the kids in a car for hours while you dither about then bring them in for several more hours? That's not a meeting the standard for investigating, that's a deliberate decision to make use of non-replaceable time and resources on this instead of other things.

That's a decision to keep a patrol car out of play for several hours while the cop babysits the kids while you argue about what to do. And given the profile of the earlier case I do not believe for a second that this time wasn't spent with CPS people haggling about how to handle this case.

This is a decision to tie up one or more CPS workers and police manpower (above link indicates MoCo police will continue to be involved) with more safety plans and ongoing investigation, time they therefor will not be able to spend on kids in legitimate need.

Oh, you say, but as unfortunate as that is, they still have to do it.

Well. Here's the 2013 HHS report on MoCo's CPS. Right up at at page four we get to "services we provide." (emphasis mine)

The Screening Unit is the single point of entry for all Child Welfare Services cases. During the past fiscal year, Screening received a total of 9,069 telephone calls. Social workers in this unit receive calls from citizens and professionals in our community, as well as calls from other state agencies seeking assistance with child maltreatment and family problems. Following state policy, social workers use the Structured Decision Making, an evidenced-based tool to determine if a child protective services intervention is warranted. Social workers evaluate each referral carefully to determine if there is a need for an investigation/assessment of the maltreatment allegation and/or to refer the callers to other community services to assist the family.

Assessment Units investigate allegations of physical and sexual child abuse and neglect, and then evaluate the need for services to ensure child safety and
promote family preservation. This past year, social workers investigated 2,665 families. Of that number, neglect investigations/allegations accounted for 58% of the total, while 30% were physical
abuse, 11% were sexual abuse, and less than 1% were due to mental injury.

So clearly not all calls need to go any farther, both from the wording and from the way those numbers shake out from 9,069 to 2,665 - even allowing for likely duplicate family/issue calls.

But why stop there? We could even consider the binding law! Maryland § 5-706. Investigation sets out the timeline and actions that must be taken after a report.

within 5 days after receiving a report of suspected neglect or suspected mental injury of a child who lives in this State that is alleged to have occurred in this State, the local department or the appropriate law enforcement agency shall:

(1) see the child;

(2) attempt to have an on-site interview with the child's caretaker;

(3) decide on the safety of the child, wherever the child is, and of other children in the household; and

(4) decide on the safety of other children in the care or custody of the alleged abuser.

So if the call center determines that what is being reported is actually neglect they have to go out and see the kid sometime in the next five days and attempt to have an on-site interview with the parents.

The best possible spin you put on this is that they decided they were going to do what is legally required all in that same night and making the parents come in to get the kids was a way to make that happen. Which amounts up to "because fuck you."

Need more proof? You can consider the actual SDM form that workers are using when being called for a report. See appendix C of this document prepared for the CPS back in 2009. There is perhaps one item on that checklist that could be chosen here:

A child over the age of 8 has been left alone without support systems for long periods of time or with responsibilities beyond his or her capabilities.

And that's arguable, given that their own document subsequently defines that term as requiring the following:

For longer than brief periods, without support systems that should include phone numbers of parents, other family members, or neighbors;information about personal safety; and what to do in an emergency;

Given that the police's own report above indicated the kids were competent to tell the cop they had food allergies what do you think the chances are they don't have information about personal safety?

But let's keep arguing that and maybe you check it here and get to page 2 where you have to make the screen in or screen out decision. Oh, and look - there's a way to not screen them in even if you checked that box. But hey, screen them in anyway because this is not decided for sure, right?

Oh look, section three lists the ways you might have to have immediate intervention.

 Child fatality or near fatality where abuse/neglect is suspected.
 Serious injury to child and other children remain in home.
 Child left alone/abandoned and requires immediate care.
Age of youngest child in years: ____
 Allegation of child abuse or neglect in an out-of-home setting.

None of these apply. What's under non-immediate attention? Screened-in override, if you decided to intervene even if your decision tree doesn't mandate it.

tl;dr: Nothing in this situation, under MD's own policies and procedures, required immediate detention of the children. At most they had to drop by the Meltiv's house sometime in the next week.
posted by phearlez at 12:49 PM on April 15, 2015 [3 favorites]

These kids are going to start driving when they're 16-18, and if they weren't allowed to learn this stuff they won't really care. This is a closed loop, and everyone in this thread whose so afraid of drivers is creating more shitty drivers. Education only goes so far, and being told to do the right thing only does so much. You have to be on the ground and see what happens and be scared to be responsible, imo.

This. People driving cars frequently do not have any idea what it's like to be out walking and drive accordingly. If you spend more time on foot, you're probably going to be more sympathetic to people on foot.

Had two notable experiences with people driving cars this morning while crossing a four-lane road with a marked crosswalk and no traffic controls, just warning signs. One driver stopped and waved us pedestrians past (yay!), while another coming from the other direction gunned it past us while I flailed my arms and pointed at the crosswalk (boo!). There actually are reasons this intersection isn't any better -- I've attended the city council meetings about it, and IMO it's gonna take reducing this road from four lanes to two to make a real difference. Fixing the infrastructure is going to be slow, but the driver behavior could be better anytime if they just gave a shit.
posted by asperity at 3:36 PM on April 15, 2015 [5 favorites]

This morning, I crossed the street on my walk signal and a girl who looked no older than 18,who was waiting to take right on red,honked at me. I get twenty seconds to cross, and she wants me to give it up for her when I have the right of way? I'm totally certain she was driven everywhere until she got her first car.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 2:29 PM on April 16, 2015 [4 favorites]

Article today on Reason.com by Lenore Skenazy: Sorry, CPS: Free-Range Kids Will Win in Court
posted by hush at 10:08 AM on April 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

I kind of feel bad for the police. To have to waste time on bullshit calls because two young children are walking home together in daylight...

In the case of this family, I agree that this is a complete waste of everyone's time, parents, kids, police, CPS, whatever other resources were involved. In the past when police came and picked kids up under similar circumstances, didn't they drive the kids home? Why would they take them to another location?
posted by vignettist at 4:27 PM on April 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

When I was a little kid in the late '70s I walked a half-mile to school

As did I, my husband, and so many of our contemporaries. Is there even such a thing as a latch-key kid anymore? Or is CPS now concerning themselves with these kids as well?
posted by vignettist at 4:46 PM on April 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

Are you really, actually deeply concerned that your free roaming kids are going to get hit by a car?

The Dutch were.

And they did something about it.
posted by Freen at 8:22 PM on April 19, 2015 [5 favorites]

Salon, from "“What a horrible mother:” How a call from a “good samaritan” derailed these mothers’ lives": "What makes this current situation worse is the climate of judgment that seems to have permeated the national consciousness. There is a moral vigilantism about parenting that, as with all forms of vigilantism, veers far into paranoia."

Yes. So many Americans have lost the knack for low-key, one-to-one intervention and instead increasingly rely on phone recordings, a trigger finger for 911, and the satisfaction of telling others that they're Doing Parenting Wrong.
posted by MonkeyToes at 4:52 AM on April 20, 2015 [2 favorites]

At the time of the call, the kids were about to enter a multilevel parking garage in a sparse commercial block of Silver Spring, next to the Greyhound station and across from a vape, hookah, and smoke shop.

Oh come on.
posted by phearlez at 7:21 AM on April 22, 2015 [2 favorites]

According to google maps, there is an American Legion outpost adjacent to the Greyhound and a church nextdoor to the vape shop, so it's very easy so rewrite that sentence keeping it factually correct but with a completely different implication.
posted by peeedro at 7:48 AM on April 22, 2015 [6 favorites]

But is that labor necessary? In the case of, say, the adult at the playground, is there a clear and present danger because a kid hit his sister in a squabble? Did that really need an adult involved?
posted by corb at 8:01 AM on April 22, 2015

Looking at the street view of what is presumably this commercial lot I'd wager they were being typical kids and short-cutting through the yard, maybe even the garage. Which is somewhere, depending on your druthers, between the maybe not-as-safe as we'd like our kids to be and OMG THEY'RE GOING TO GET RUN OVER AND DIEEEEEEEE. Or it's just the boogieboo of the moment to support this intervention since I'm not sure how we determine "about to enter" the garage when you have a couple of kids on the hoof.

Calling a Slate piece out for being unnecessarily hyperbolic seems redundant, but this issue of community involvement seems worth paying attention to. When I see it also shifts parenting responsibility to a community that largely does not share that philosophy, and thus other parents may feel put-upon, aggrieved, and underappreciated I think "well, boo hoo." I feel that way about a lot of shit in life. Where's my Slate article?

As corb implies, every single one of these things is predicated on the idea that these interventions are necessary. The only anecdote anyone will put their name to is the face-punch thing, and only second-hand. And even there I don't see where the big inconvenience is. Yeah, I'd call out a kid I saw punch another kid at the playground. If it had been my kid I might have decided that yeah, this is going to be the "we're going home now" impetus to drive home the seriousness of it.

But this story has some grown-ass man getting into a back-and forth did-too-did-not with a child and then feeling like he has to take them home, I guess to Have A Word With The Parents. Why would this be required community involvement? Maybe if you're smacking my kid and won't knock it the fuck off when I call you out on it. But I'm not sure what playground experiences these kids are having where they're not already seeing the occasional little hellion who the other kids need to learn to steer clear of. This lone sourced story seems to be 90% someone involved in an unusual level of follow-up not because it was required but because they themselves felt compelled.

I can see how that's sometimes a drag. I get involved in neighborhood shit I don't have to because I personally prioritize something higher than other people. But that's my choice and it's not someone else making me do it because I have a bugaboo. I don't think the author's assertion that the neighborhood "reputation for hippy-dippy deference to any and all parenting philosophies" is as well-earned as she claims.
posted by phearlez at 10:03 AM on April 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

I am a SAHM and I try to keep an eye out for the neighborhood kids. It doesn't really feel like labor, and I'm not up in their kid business, but I feel it's the neighborly way to be. Sometimes I'm very conscious of how empty the neighborhood feels during the day.
posted by stowaway at 3:24 PM on April 22, 2015

But, yeah, I hope the kids know by now that I'm a safe adult to come to if they need help with something.
posted by stowaway at 3:26 PM on April 22, 2015

When we were kids, folks used to put Block Parent signs in their windows to signal they they were safe places of kids to knock on their doors. The police used to come to the grade one classes and talk about the program to kids. We all walked to school those days, with houses on every block we passed showing the distinct red and white sign.

Block Parents Canada closed their doors for good in 2008. Kids shouldn't be on the streets anymore, I guess.
posted by bonehead at 3:45 PM on April 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

(That is, they closed up shop in my city. I see they're still active elsewhere).
posted by bonehead at 3:55 PM on April 22, 2015

You have to stretch so hard to make some guy who is upset about seeing a kid get punched into a busybody asshole.

I am not trying to make him into a busybody asshole. I am pushing back on this idea that the parents not being there is some kind of imposition on him a la the Slate piece. I even quoted the pertinent line it also shifts parenting responsibility to a community that largely does not share that philosophy, and thus other parents may feel put-upon, aggrieved, and underappreciated right above the part you're responding to. For it to shift responsibility it must be shirking a necessary task onto someone else.
posted by phearlez at 5:29 PM on April 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

Block Parents Canada closed their doors for good in 2008. Kids shouldn't be on the streets anymore, I guess.

I believe the reason they closed up shop was that there aren't enough people home during the day now. Teaching kids that there are these safe places they can go to is a problem when the places just aren't there anymore.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 7:55 PM on April 22, 2015

I wonder if this will start to swing back now that there's a significant population of white-collar workers who work from home.
posted by miyabo at 9:39 PM on April 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm not going to quote myself where I very clearly say that intervening in the punch was the right thing and something I would do myself because it's 4 comments up. Either the two of you are determined to misinterpret what I said for the sake of your own axe grinding or you are reading so poorly that you won't catch it a second time either, so why bother?
posted by phearlez at 7:40 AM on April 23, 2015

I do not think removing the kid from the playground is too much. I think that feeling like you have to do so and at the same time feeling put upon about it as the Slate article whinges... that is too much.

I'm not even sure I would say it's anyone's responsibility to intervene between two children when neither of them is yours and the actions aren't significantly dangerous, at least not to the extent that we're talking about what anyone has to do if they feel like it's an imposition on their life. Again, as the Slate article is on about.

I spend a lot of time in playgrounds these days with my little one, and I interact with the other kids as needed. Sometimes they just join in with whatever the little man and I are doing - fiddling with communal sand toys, let's say. And if I have to say hey, share, be careful, don't eat that, don't throw that, whatever... I do it. I have to put some work into thinking about times its happened because it just doesn't much register with me.

Here and there I'll gently scold one who pushes past my boy but for the most part I shrug it off. Either the kid is getting reinforcement at home about not being a tool or s/he is not. If s/he is not then my one-off bits about taking turns aren't going to do anything. If they are then my failing to reinforce it on this one occasion isn't going to matter.

If they're super irresponsible - knocking the boyo over, etc - I will straight-up intervene and tell them something is not okay. I have yet to see a situation where two kids just go at it, but if they did I would step in and try to break it up just as I might between two adults on a street corner.

But for the most part I view kid shenanigans as an opportunity to let my boy learn about coping with crappy people. Kid keeps snatching toys and isn't gently dissuaded? I redirect my son to other things. Kid keep pushing past to use this slide and doesn't respond to gentle statements? I redirect my kid to other slides/things. If a kid was being straight up a danger - let's say swinging a big stick around - and no parent is intervening and they're not listening to "hey quit it"? My kid and I are going to just leave and come back another time.

To my mind these are the coping techniques everyone is going to have to learn as time goes on, either because of jerky kids at the park or kinda creepy homeless beggars (which I mention because they were cited as a bugaboo necessitating the intervention in this story in the very original post). Odds are that eventually my son is even going to have to learn how to negotiate someone popping him one in the nose. Sometimes someone will be there to step in and cope with the aftermath. Many times nobody will, and it may well be that there will never be "justice" beyond him telling one of us - or filing a police report - about it after the fact.

I do certainly hope that everyone doesn't just turn the other way and pretend they say nothing. Both for basic human decency and because I feel like that sort of "I see this" is why things don't escalate. But I don't expect someone to take ownership of a one-off smack and insure Justice Is Done. Sometimes the shitty person does something shitty and the world moves on.

Since I believe the biggest thing we do for our kids is model the behavior we want them to learn and exhibit, I choose to model this sort of coping. Having a kid around doing these sorts of things being talked about in that Slate article doesn't make me feel like I need to demonstrate anything that's such an imposition or cause me to accept some larger responsibility than I would just by default.
posted by phearlez at 2:28 PM on April 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

That Slate piece contained some rather mean, unsubstantiated gossip about Danielle and Alexander Meitiv. How do we know for sure that the playground bully in Andy Sullivan's hearsay story from a few years ago actually was the Meitiv's son? I'm skeptical.

But -- assuming for the sake of argument it is true that their son punched a younger, smaller child in front of a bunch of other people at the park -- the hard truth is witnessing that type of behavior actually does have a negative effect on others. It is emotionally distressing as fuck to witness a bigger boy physically harming a smaller girl. (AskMe how I know this.) It absolutely "inconveniences" others, creates more caregiving work for others, increases the mental load on others, forces the parents present to check on how their own kids are processing it: it straight-up causes major drama. Whatever you want to call it. People notice and are impacted when they see an older boy publicly assault a younger girl, yes, even if she is not their own daughter. Obviously. So while I'm all for a parenting trend that counters helicopter parenting, simply putting a "free range" badge on a boy doesn't suddenly grant him the inalienable right to be a bully on the playground and absolve his parents from any and all responsibility.
posted by hush at 10:52 AM on April 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

Sure. But it happens when parents are present too.
posted by phearlez at 6:50 PM on April 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

« Older Talking about the patriarchy tends to have a... | "History never really says goodbye. History says... Newer »

This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments

MetaFilter

"...when CPS gets a call, we have to follow up on every single one."
April 13, 2015 10:34 AM Subscribe

Tags

Share

"...when CPS gets a call, we have to follow up on every single one." April 13, 2015 10:34 AM Subscribe

Tags

Share

"...when CPS gets a call, we have to follow up on every single one."
April 13, 2015 10:34 AM Subscribe