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

[BlueMTexpat]

53. Even from just reading this story, I got the idea that

the parents were more interested in proving a point than in anything else and that at least some confrontation could have been avoided by a more reasonable response on their part. "Explicitly allying" themselves with a "movement" and flaunting it in a way that does not seem reasonable is evidence of a mentality that is troubling, IMO.

Like you, I am not sure that "solid parental training" was involved. If there was a park that was closer to home and - especially - did not involve being near as much traffic, I can't really see understand why the parents wouldn't have preferred that alternative. Their idea of a "calculated risk" is much different from my own. Some "calculated risks" are more risky than calculated and this one is certainly closer to risky, IMO. I know that it would not have been one that I would knowingly have risked my own children's lives for and, believe me, I was still just about 180 degrees away from being a "helicopter parent."

In my experience, it was more often children who had the 70s equivalent of "helicopter parents" who either acted out more or who literally never left the parental home. Either way, they have since often been among the most unhappy and/or literally incapable of doing things for themselves. There has to be a happy medium somewhere. But extremes seem to be the norm in many parts of US society today, no matter what the topic.