Police Investigate Family for Letting Their Kids Walk Home Alone. Parents, We All Need to Fight Back

[BlueMTexpat]

48. Like you, I have a few problems with the article.

I was lucky to grow up in a small town in a rural area where labels such as "free range" and "helicopter" were totally unknown concepts with respect to children. We all knew each other and looked out for each other, taking those responsibilities seriously and as a matter of fact. The adults saw us all as their collective charges. Sometimes we actually dreamed of blessed anonymity, not realizing then how fortunate we were to be surrounded by people who cared.

When I raised my own two children in the 70s in a larger city in the same rural state, I did worry about letting them walk alone when they were very young, simply because we did not know everyone. By the time they were about eight, however, I didn't worry because they knew the area, so long as I knew that they were either with each other or with friends and I knew where they were. Those were the rules. Because I was a working mother, technically a single parent, although not always actually because I was still married when they were little, they were also "latchkey" kids. (In fact, we never locked our doors.) But I taught at a school four blocks away. Their own school was two and a half blocks away - in the same direction and on the same street as my own, so we were rarely at huge physical distances from each other. They also knew basics about getting around, crossing streets, watching for cars and not talking to strangers.

During all summers, even when they were very young, they were able to spend at least a month with their grandparents in the small town where I was raised, where they were able to have the same freedoms I had and they flourished, firmly believing - at least until they were teenagers - that the small town was literally heaven on earth. Now in their forties, they remember both experiences as halcyon times.

What is different from those times today, however, is that too many people - even those who live near each other - do not really know each other or even take the time to know each other and they often don't seem to like each other. For a society that so glorifies children as consumers or potential consumers rather than citizens, we don't actually seem to like them either. We don't see children as our collective responsibility. Life is also more impersonal and people are judgmental to an extreme. Children need to explore for themselves; it is a vital part of growing up. But individual circumstances and environments also need to be taken into consideration. Parents also should know their children well enough to know whether they are ready for certain milestones. It is an individual thing.

I know Silver Spring, MD and I know the area in question. While I would be nervous about letting a six-year-old - or literally anyone else who didn't know the area - walk alone there because it is quite traffic heavy; if this was an area she was otherwise familiar with and she was there with her ten-year-old brother who also knew the area and I knew where they were and had given them permission to be there, I would likely take as much offense as Danielle and Alexander, not so much by having the police called - in a way, that's reassuring - but by being threatened by any third party who didn't know the circumstances to have them taken away from me, based on such an incident. That is outrageous and hardly a way to show support either to children or to parents.

But I also don't like the idea of a "free range" parenting movement. It sounds somewhat cultish to me and is just another way of creating division when we are all supposed to be in the business of caring not only for each other, but especially for those most vulnerable.