Posted on 09/14/2009 7:40:44 AM PDT by Arec Barrwin
September 13, 2009 Why Can’t She Walk to School? By JAN HOFFMAN
TO get to school, the child leaves home by herself, proudly walking down the boulevard in a suburb of a small city in upstate New York. The crossing guard helps her at the intersection. She lives only a block and a half from school. Yet she walks by older children waiting with parents for buses to the same school.
She is 7, a second-grader, and her mother, Katie, hears the raised-eyebrow remarks: ‘Are you sure you want to be doing this?’ Katie said friends ask.
‘She’s just so pretty. She’s just so ... blond.’ A friend said, ‘I heard that Jaycee Dugard story and I thought of your daughter.’ And they say, ‘I’d never do that with my kid: I wouldn’t trust my kid with the street,’ said Katie, a stay-at-home mother, who asked that her full identity be withheld to protect her children.
Katie, too, is tormented by the abduction monsters embedded in modern parenting. Yet she wants to encourage her daughter’s independence. Somehow, walking to school has become a political act when it’s this uncommon, she said. Somebody has to be first.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
You’re right. I was only thinking about the current situation and not the bigger picture. I’m sorry for this.
Perhaps the reason so many parents are afraid of their children being abducted is because that they are no longer married to the child’s other biological parent.
seriously! my life is so empty because i never walked to school! LOL!
Rounding up kids, like cattle, and shipping them across town ruined neighborhood schools and the safety our kids felt. I always felt sorry for anyone who had to be bussed - big government deciding what was best -
LOL!
You're right. Bad things don't happen in Wyoming.
Not all of the things are reported on national news...
As far as I know, child abductions make the news just about anywhere. They're also reported and tracked in crime statistics. Those make it clear that it's still a rare thing.
I can teach independence to my child in many ways that are safer than turning him or her loose alone.
"Turning him or her loose alone" is exactly what a parent must do, eventually. By the time your child grows up, she'll need to know how to walk down the street without being afraid. When do you plan to teach her that, and how?
I'm assuming that neither you nor any of your classmates took this guy up on his offer, if any of them had you would certainly remember, right?
So the upshot here is that you learned how to safely walk from school and survived in perfect health.
There were occasional stories of this kind when I walked to school in Chicago (early '70's). We were told what to be alert for and what to do and not do. I and all my friends survived unscathed to graduation. Worked for me and my kids (now 19 and 30) too.
Dingdingdingdingding!!!! WINNAH!!!
Don't worry about my children - I have one in college and one about to start - both are perfectly capable of walking, talking and taking care of themselves.
I will add this to your comments about statistics: Your kids have a 100% greater chance of being abducted, harrassed or harmed walking to school than mine do. As I said before, I hope they never experience anything like that.
I"m not willing to take the chance with my kids. Perhaps you are willing to gamble.
if you could do something that not just mitigates risk, but eliminates it altogether, wouldn't you do that, especially where your children are concerned?
Why stop there? She'll be even safer if I don't let her leave the house at all!
In fact, I could make her wear a helmet, elbow and knee pads as well as shin guards and steel-toed boots while she's IN the house.
...just to be sure.
Seriously though, the problem is that she grows up not knowing HOW to walk down the street safely! She grows up never walking by the neighbor's flower garden, or the old 1939 Lincoln in Mr. Miller's back yard. In short, she misses out on an important part of what it means to be a child. She grows up not feeling safe outside in a largely beautiful, safe world!
Will you let her drive a car when she's a teenager? Why take the risk? Don't ever let her get a license.
Not explicitly. Not intentionally. But that's the effect anyway.
She grows up learning that you just don't DO that. You just don't go walk anywhere, you drive.
There may have been child bullies, but there weren’t adult perverts waiting to rape, torture, and kill you. Big difference. In this violence- and pornography-driven culture of today, things just aren’t the same as they were in the 50s, 60s, or even 70s. I think it all started to change in the 80s. That’s when pornography started to go mainstream. Anyone remember Star Search and the “soft porn” model segments? I think that was the start of it.
Thank you. Very well put.
In my city of 125,000, there are probably 25 people who would harm a child and 124,975 who would protect them.
LOL! Ok, so it WAS my fault after all, huh? :-)
News flash: There are some accidents you CAN'T avoid, FRiend.
Four accidents and none were her fault - I can buy that but she put herself into a position where she couldn't avoid a car hitting her...
Each one was her being rear-ended by an inattentive driver from behind. Care to share your wisdom on how she SHOULD have avoided allowing a car to hit her from behind while stopped at a stop light?
...driving too close and not being aware of what might happen is stil partially your fault - we all share the road. I've driven in many large cities - philly, houston, dallas, Los Angeles, Denver, Jacksonville.... my actions kept me from being hit by someone else.
Good for you. Watch out when you're stopped at a light. :-)
Best of luck to your daughters - I hope they never experience anything scary while walking alone.
They might. That's why I teach them to scream, fight, kick and run. :-) But I want them to HAVE experience.
In my city of 125,000, there are probably 25 people who would harm a child and 124,975 who would protect that child against the 25.
With today's mobility and anonymity, not to mention wholsesale importation of cultural values inimical to our traditional ones, I'm not sure that any place, other than a well-run gated community, is safe to let your children outside of adult observation.
Given that, in my first neighborhood, the friendly guy who would give horse rides and let the kids use his pool turned into a sex offender, I am not gambling with my children's lives or innocence. I will just have to come up with some other method to teach self-sufficiency than letting my kids do a walkabout.
I can top thqat - I have student whose house BORDERS the property line of the school. Yes, a bus stops to pick him up
As I said before, you want your kids to have the experience of walking to school alone - I hope they never have to deal with anything dangerous.
My choice was not to put my children into that type of situation - it is still America pal, I'll make my choices and you make yours.
One of the most poisonous concepts in contemporary America is the idea that risk can be "eliminated altogether".
The only risk-free environment is the grave.
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