Posted on 08/06/2012 9:45:49 AM PDT by Altariel
Yes, readers, it’s another case of child protective craziness. According to the Manchester, Conn. Patch, a local mom was charged with “risk of injury to a minor and failure to appear after police say she allowed her seven-year and 11-year old children to walk down to Spruce Street to buy pizza unsupervised.”
And according to reader Bob who sent this to us, Google Maps shows that we are talking about a half-mile walk! In addition to the solidarity of outrage, please post your ideas for how to protest the idea that kids are in danger every time they do something on their own, even something dumbfoundingly mundane, which means also protesting any time helicopter parenting becomes the only ”legal” way to raise our kids. – L.
we would never have come home for a skinned knee, mom or grandma might have a chore to do that didnt involve re-injuring one’s knee!
Once they're old enough to make their own informed decison on the helmet, they can decide. Probably because they'll take it off as soon as they're out of my sight, anyway. Until then, they need to wear it because I'm the Dad and I say so. :-)
That'd be about it for playing helicopter parent. I took the kids up to the family farm for summer vacation this year. Only rules were 1) Don't go in the river by yourself and 2) Stay within earshot so you'll hear when I holler for lunch (or, conversely, I'll hear if they holler for me.....)
Soon as both of them learn how to swim well....hopefully by next year....Rule 1 goes out the window. :-)
They had a blast. Nothing like turning a kid loose to explore all day. We're headed back up again next year.
OH THE HORROR!! My parents would have been UNDER the jail if they were reported to the authorities today. My two sisters and I had to walk about a mile to school. The first 3/4 mile were downhill in the morning and the last 1/4 mile was uphill. We had to walk through pastures, cross a creek and then through a cornfield.
Then we got to our great uncle’s place. For a while, he had a bad billy goat that would chase us. We finally figured out the goat was scared to death of a red handkerchief on the end of a stick. We’d leave the stick at their house in the AM and at the gate to our field in the PM.
On really cold days, he would give each of us a shot of homemade wine when we headed home. He would be arrested for giving alcohol to a minor. He had several 10 - 35 gallon barrels of wine at any given time.
We had to cross a highway just before we got to the school. The only time we got to ride home, was when the creeks were too flooded for us to cross safely. We had to take our shoes and socks off many days when crossing the creek.
OH THE HORROR!! OH THE HORROR!!
When I was 8 years old, I would walk twice a week to my swimming lessons. It was 2 1/2 miles and the pond was located in the middle of the woods. If I didn’t walk, I didn’t learn how to swim. Both parents worked!
These were the times when a village brought up a child. Everyone in town knew everyone. You could just feel the eyes on you as you walked down the street!
I’m appalled at how our world has changed and you have to fear allowing your kids out alone.
11 years old should be old enough to attend a 7 year old. I babysat at 11. How times have changed - now you have to be at least 13 and CPR certified. lol
NANNY STATE
Actually most people take a great deal of comfort in that.
And part of that is the very non data-driven notion that, unlike a plane crash or a deadly illness, a parent can drive themselves insane thinking: "If only I had gone with her to get the pizza. If only I had put the talk show on pause, if only I had waited to do the laundry, if only . . . "
Are you aware that you have a mental problem? That you are irrational and hysterical? That you seek to make others as irrationally hysterical - and paranoid - as you are, rather than getting help for your problem?
Actually, that means you have two mental problems - the first is that you're paranoid. The second is that you want to make everyone else as paranoid as you are.
Hmmm... but why? For political reasons? So if everyone is as paranoid as you are, they'll support more nanny state laws to strip Americans of their freedoms and lock the country down into one giant concentration camp?
Ahh, I see now. I take it back. You're not mentally disturbed at all.
You're evil.
In my little town it was common for folks to send their kids on a walk to the store for bread, milk and CIGS! Oh, the horrors...
If we were lucky, we would have a couple of pennys left over so that we could buy a jolly rancher for the walk home!
That was one of my favorite haunts too, as a teenager, I came in from Westchester county. 42second street with all the junky little shops was another haunt.
Your child is in greater danger riding in an automobile with *you* or *anyone else* than he/she is walking two blocks to the local pizza shop.
You can choose to live in fear and paranoia, or you can choose to live in faith.
NYC always amazed me, I could just walk around all day looking at stuff and buildings. Every angle of view, whatever direction I looked, there was always something interesting to look at. I recall many times getting off the Hudson Tubes, doing Canal St, then just setting off walking north as far as my legs could go. Many times I ended up in the Columbus Circle area, up in the 60’s, with my leg muscles just burning. It was also cool because there were 3 different ways I could get into the city; Public Service Bus to the Port Authority; Hudson Tubes taking the Newark subway, and there was another way I could take the Erie Lackawanna RR which ran through my home town, Montclair NJ.
By the way, children are more likely to be molested or abused by their own fathers, mothers, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins or older siblings than they are a stranger.
Too many helicopter parents who think they’re keeping their kids “safe” are keeping them locked up with a predator who is charged with their care.
I agree that elbow or kneepads are overkill (I never wore them and won’t make my kids wear either), but a helmet is common sense. The brain is a vital organ and should be protected.
I’d rather buy a new helmet for a kid after a bad bicycle accident than be in the ER for emergency brain surgery.
I suppose I need to report to the nearest re-education center.
I played in the woods (rarely in sight of my parental units), often came home with poison ivy or bug bites, and typically only came in the house for bathroom use or mealtime. (No, I didn’t get a snack every two hours.)
And I don’t feel deprived or abused because of it!
I didn’t see the Statue of Liberty while I lived there and failed on trips back. I am going on a New England cruise next out of Bayonne next year and the statue will be closed. I guess I will take the Circle Line tour, which I have done either.
I was born in ‘67. I don’t think any of us kids were home during the summer until dark - and out the door first thing when it was light. Unless it was game night and then we’d be at the fields playing baseball (as opposed to communist kickball that’s being foisted on kids now).
Really?
We played that in Catholic school in the 50s.
Man if Bishop Sheen only knew we were flirting with the red menace.....
Farms are great places for kids, particularly if they are working farms. Only one thing I remember not liking about growing up on one. I had to gather and wash the eggs so we could sell them. Had to be real careful when gathering eggs and carefully poke under the hen first with a small stick. On occasion a black snake would slither out from under one of the them. I still have a huge fear of anything that looks like a snake to this day.
Miserable beasts, all of them. I especially enjoy eating them, though. :-)
My family's farm is animal-free, for now. Other than barn cats. And dogs. And a large flock of wild turkeys (family harvests a couple each year for T'giving / Christmas). And whatever other wild animals wander in.
Mostly, it's all hayfield now. My cousin is dabbling in beekeeping.....started with a few different berry patches and needed a way to pollinate them, found that he had a pretty good hand for bees. And the honey tastes good, too.
Is it any wonder the Left raised the age of healthcare coverage for “children” to 26? I grew up in the city, but even back then, neighborhoods had the attitudes of towns. People in your area knew you, and more importantly, all adults had authority. I was taking the bus and the rail into downtown by myself at age 11.
i’m 60ish. we would bike all day. all my mom said was to stay off the main streets which was easy. no helmet or pads. i walked to the store often and walked to school until high school when i took public buses. i bought hotdogs one time and while i was getting my bike from the rack a dog stuck his head in the bag and stole the whole pack. i was mortified but parents though it was funny.
also every mom in the neighborhood could discipline you and that was before you got home.
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