Posted on 07/16/2014 9:55:58 AM PDT by yoe
When I was nine years old, my family moved to Eau Gallie, Florida, near Melbourne. That summer my mother decided she needed to come up with something for my younger brother and me to do. She got some kind of deal buying a book of tickets to the local skating rink. Five days a week we would walk there in the morning and spend hours there before walking back home. There were no mobile phones back then. Our only way to contact home was to use a quarter in the pay phone that was there. The walk was about two miles.
So she set us off by ourselves and we came back hours later by ourselves day after day.
A mother in Augusta, Georgia did something similar. Lenore Skenazy describes what happened at Reason magazine’s blog.
Here are the facts: Debra Harrell works at McDonald’s in North Augusta, South Carolina. For most of the summer, her daughter had stayed there with her, playing on a laptop that Harrell had scrounged up the money to purchase. (McDonald’s has free WiFi.) Sadly, the Harrell home was robbed and the laptop stolen, so the girl asked her mother if she could be dropped off at the park to play instead.
Harrell said yes. She gave her daughter a cell phone. The girl went to the park—a place so popular that at any given time there are about 40 kids frolicking—two days in a row. There were swings, a “splash pad,” and shade. On her third day at the park, an adult asked the girl where her mother was. At work, the daughter replied.
The shocked adult called the cops. Authorities declared the girl “abandoned” and proceeded to arrest the mother.
I’m not surprised that the cops nabbed the mother. That’s what they do, especially when summoned by some nosy parent. I’m not surprise that the Department of Social Services took the daughter into custody (a much less safe environment for the typical child) because, again, that’s what they do. I hate it but I’m not surprised by it.
[Earlier Post: “Child Takes a Walk; Father Arrested for ‘Child Endangerment’”]
What makes me angry is how the media is full of stupid, moronic, sermonizing, cowards. (The video below takes a minute to appear on my browser. You can also go here if you don’t see it.)
Here is a woman thrown into jail and her daughter is now the property of the Department of Social Services, and these people craft a narrative and speak with moral outrage as if the woman is the aggressor. No, she and her daughter are the victims; these interfering busybodies, both private and public, are the aggressors.
[See also: “Father Convicted & Punished for Making Son Walk a Mile Home from School”]
Debra Harrell did nothing wrong. But I doubt she can hire a real lawyer on her McDonald’s salary. If you don’t think Ms. Harrell was evaluated for her ability to afford a lawyer when the police were deciding whether or not to arrest her, then you are being naïve.
Imagining the possibility of a kidnapping is not a rational accusation. Read the story again. The girl could easily have been hurt if she had been home when it was robbed. She obviously doesn’t live in a safe neighborhood. Do we take all the children of all poor minorities now?
The playground, on the other hand, was full of witnesses. Despite the common myth, the fact is that the crime rate has dropped. Children are as safe as they were a generation or two ago.
Let’s be honest: this nine-year-old girl was abducted and imprisoned by the South Carolina bureaucrats because she is capable of taking care of herself and expects to do so. The system punishes the independent and demands dependence and helplessness. Debra Harrell and her daughter need to learn their proper place in the world. This is re-education for them.
I’ll let Skenazy have the last word:
Because some busybody thought she knew more about this girl’s safety than the girl’s own mother, a family has been separated. Harrell is in jail and the child is in the custody of the Department of Social Services. If only the girl had spent her whole summer sitting in McDonald’s—surfing the internet and eating a Big Mac instead of playing outside and getting fresh air—this never would have happened.
Mom would send me down the block to sit on the corner and wait for my sister to get home from grade school. I was three & four years old.
Yep or when you heard Mom’s yell for you.
I lived across the street froma fields...I used to spend ENTIRE SUMMER without shoes (i took them off the last day of school and didnt put them back on until the start of school next year) and in the woods across the street from my house- from the time I woke up until it started to get dardk.
I would give anything to go back to those days- the most fun I ever had. We would carry in 2x4’s and plywood pieces we could scrounge, and chopped down trees to build a fort... it was AWESOME
I imagine at least 9 out of 10 of those things would get me or my parents thrown in jail these days.
I wasn’t too much older than this when my siblings and I would pack a lunch, ride the base shuttle bus 30 miles (one way) from the town we lived in to the AF base, swim all day at the base pool, and keep an eye on the time to catch the bus back home at the end of the day. No parental or any adult supervision. And we were in a foreign country. Never once missed the bus.
Ya, that’s how it was back in my day. We went outside in summer and played all day. Nobody asked where is your mother. I realize times have changed. But that little girl was safe as can be in a public park with lots of other people around.
Where did you live? My domain was between Huntington Park and the Warwick Yacht club, about a 12 mile spread... all neighborhoods and back roads. I now live in Hilton and my current 5 year old will have the same limitation with the only rule being “no crossing Warwick Blvd”. Probably also about 17 miles from Yorktown, but no safe way of getting there via bike.
It’s not paranoia when they really are out to get you.
Faggots like to rape little boys. It’s how they make more faggots.
Sometimes faggots need a bit of wall-to-wall counseling ...
I disagree with the conclusion of the article that the bureaucracy wentvafter this woman because her kid was independent.
The bureacracy went after this woman because it needs to provide a reason for it’s own existance. An idle bureaucracy is an endangered bureaucracy; when bureaucrats run out of legitimate cases to pursue they find ways of manufacturing some.
quote “During summer, we had one rule: Come home when the street lights come on”
we had the same rule! we were only allowed back inside if we were bleeding or it was dark!
I liked my Big Wheel.
But I LOVED my Green Machine.
They actually make adult-sized versions of it now. I’ve been itching to buy one.
Yep. Good God, my childhood would have been absolutely no fun if it were run by the soccer moms of today.
Your childhood sounds like the perfect dream to me. I LOVE feeling that I’m the only human on earth:)
When I climbed out of a 747 at dawn in Fiji, it felt like the first morning of the world. Was up at dawn every day there to watch the sunrise, gorgeous, dewy, so fragrant that you feel blessed just to breathe. Heavenly.
You got survival skills, I got poetry. It’s exactly who we were meant to be.
Pity those poor kids today who are never allowed a minute to themselves to figure out what their hearts need.
They were around then also.
There is always a small percentage of the population with mental issues. What has changed it the population size and how news is covered.
Some kid gets grabbed in Boston, and parents in Texas here about it and make their kids come inside out of fear!
For me-grew up in the 60s and 70s.
On count we had 12 “common age” kids within a three block area. We’d stay out past dark playing “hunt” (a form of “statue”) across all three blocks. Weekends would start with a baseball game around 10AM and go non-stop until mom&dad got pissed and came “yelling” after us; street-lighjts, schmeet-lights!
From my perspective, we knew about sodomites and didn’t really bring-in strangers from outside the neighborhood. Older kids hung out with older kids. If we didn’t know them from school, we told them to “take a hike”. If they were an adult who wanted to join in...we’d tell our parents.
Some of today’s parental angst is the result of the culture ^requiring^ acceptance of sodomy. To wit: “What if, after all, my 8 year old IS homosexual and is simply exploring his budding sexuality?”
Our rule was, come home at the dinner bell. My friend and I would stay all day down at the creeks and woods behind my house. When it was time for my friend to come home, his parents would ring a large bell in their backyard. It could be heard throughout the neighborhood, and even down at the creek.
My next door neighbor’s dad used a CO2 powered boat horn.
Otherwise we were pretty much left alone to our own devices.
Repeatedly sledding down a steep hill, with the only way to stop at the bottom was hitting a chain link fence (and sometimes the pole...ouch)
Playing chicken with a piece of rebar... did that at dusk once and wound up with some stitches in the head
Playing with bows and arrows... shoot the arrow straight up in the air and see how close to your foot you could get it when it hit the ground
Shooting an arrow at a bamboo pole stuck in the ground... deflected off once and went through a neighbor's bathroom window (which was closed)
Making flame-throwers out of spray paint cans
All sorts of things on a Pogo stick
Etc., etc., etc.
I am convinced that the above, along with other “hassle the parents laws” are all forms of population control. The government is trying hard to make it expensive and a hassle to have kids to deter the masses from having too many.
during my childhood we could leave in the morning on our bikes and had to be home by the time the street lights were on....40’s and 50’s were much safer for kids...its a shame that kids now a days don’t have a safe harbor to play in...
I remember when parents said, “Get out of my hair, go out and play.” And we went out and played all day, doing whatever we wanted and going wherever we wanted, as long as we looked both ways before crossing the street and avoided talking to strangers. At suppertime we came home. I guess all our mothers deserved to be arrested.
I don't give a good crap what the laws are. I would have had a quiet talk with this perv and told him very plainly what kind of swift, severe and gruesome things would happen to him if he even talked to my son ever again. He could call the cops but without a recording, it never happened.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.