Posted on 04/14/2015 11:22:57 AM PDT by drewh
Two suburban Washington, D.C., parents are under scrutiny again for letting their 6- and 10-year-old children play in a park and walk home alone in a case that has stirred debate about "free-range" parenting and government powers.
For the second time in four months, police picked up the children of Danielle and Alexander Meitiv on Sunday as they were walking home alone from a park that's nearly a mile from their house. This time, instead of bringing the children home, police took them directly to Child Protective Services.
"It's beyond ridiculous," Danielle Meitiv said Monday. "The world is safer today, and yet we imprison our children inside and wonder why they're obese and have no focus."
The Meitivs, who live 6 miles from Washington in Silver Spring, Maryland, believe in "free-range" parenting, which includes allowing their children to play and walk alone in the neighborhood to teach them self-reliance and responsibility.
Danielle Meitiv said she and her husband began worrying when the kids weren't home by 6:30, but that Child Protective Services didn't call them until 8 p.m. to say the children were in their custody.
Police had picked them up on the walk home after another concerned citizen called.
The Meitivs were able to take their children home around 10:30 p.m.
"This morning my daughter wanted to go play in the yard and I couldn't let her out because I was making breakfast," Danielle Meitiv said. "Are they prisoners? She's 6 and she's not allowed to play in the yard?"
The case has drawn international media coverage, and Danielle Meitiv said the couple has heard from people all over the world. The majority have been supportive, Meitiv said, but some have expressed outrage at the couple's parenting style.
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
Myself, at my parents summer home, in the morning I took my 14’ inflatable (Zodiac) with a 55 HP outboard and they wouldn’t see me until I had to leave for home. One time, my mom didn’t see me for 4 days...
My patents said the same thing. I remember one year Easter 71, my 3 cousins, me and my brother went to an abandoned coal mine in Pennsylvania. We were about 8 miles from my aunt and uncle’s house.
Part of the issue is that the arrestees are not segregated from the village for long enough.
Back in the late '40s, on a spur of the moment, my buddy and I rode our bikes from Patchogue, L.I. all the way across to Port Jefferson - about 30 miles round trip. Folks didn't know about it until we got back. Even then, they - or the authorities - were upset.
“Thanks to leftists the world isn’t safer now.
With all the perves out on society it is stupid to have children unsupervised these days.”
The pervs were ALWAYS around and the same percentage of the population. We just didn’t have a 24-7 news cycle for every missing kid. And your kid is many many times more likely to be abused by someone they know than a random person.
Today I think it is actually safer since people are more aware of the pervs and population is denser.
You can either let your kid go free and risk a 0.001% chance of attack or keep them inside and they are 100% guaranteed to become sheltered moron drones.
Lord knows we don’t want confident and fearless children.
And thanks to the idiots, these kids ARE targets now. Good job MD.
Let me guess, those upset were all liberals? When school was out, my parents used to throw me out of the house and tell me not to come back until dinner. I would walk the three miles to Sheepshead Bay and go fishing. If I didn’t do that I went to the beach.
But their motto is: To Protect and To Serve /s
3rd grade - one mile each way to school - morning, noon and night. No school lunch for me.
Before everyone starts going on about how this is wrong then there should be more info about this than just letting kids out by themselves so before I start in the anti town frenzy I’d like to know more info.
Sandy.
That might be but a 6 year old staying out with their sibling at aged ten years old till ten thirty at night begs the question, WTH?
Plus before I start saying the local city or town is wrong I’d like to know why are they out till that late, did they not have school, what is the neighborhood like, are there child molesters about in the neighborhood?
When I was 12 my folks put me on a passenger train with a railroad pass at Klamath Falls, OR and sent me to LA. When I arrived at Union Station I found my way to a bus line that took me to San Fernando Valley where my aunt and uncle met me. A few days later they took me back to train station and I went to Deming, NM where they joined me a couple of weeks later after staying with my grandfather. I remember it well and absolutely loved it.
Was you 6 years old staying out at night till ten thirty too?
” Let me guess, those upset were all liberals? “
Close to 100% I’ll wager.
I’d encourage them to move out of Blue Maryland, but looking at them it is clear they are stupid liberals who voted for government control of their lives.
Reap the whirlwind, idiots.
When I was eight, I would hunt all day. With a rifle or a shotgun.
Sometimes, we’d bring a shotgun to school and put them in our lockers so we could hunt birds right after practice.
If some CPS creep had followed us around I think my friends and I would have ambushed him, tied him to a cottonwood down in the creek and left him there.
Common sense at last.
It’s like a feeding frenzy till I got to your post.
We don’t know the area, we don’t know if child molesters live in the area, we don’t know if there are gangs, drugs and why is a 6 years old kid staying out at night till 10.30pm.
Do these parents go to dinner and leave their kids at a park while they have a nice dinner in a restaurant at night and looking at them they the parents look totally liberal nuts who would do that.
So before we al pass judgment why not get all the facts instead of jumping on a bandwagon and stating how we were raised 40-50-60 years ago when times were different and kids were safer back then.
I know damn well I don’t let my kids stay out that late except my oldest at 17 and he has a car and is back by 11.00pm.
My other kids who are younger do not leave the street where I can see them and they do not stay out at dark in the cold
My best friend and I would also go to the movies and to the Bronx Zoo by bus or subway, when we were 12, living in a different borough.
We weren't treated like "hot house flowers" and we turned out just fine.
We did this all the time. My bro was 4 years older.
” till ten thirty”
You skimmed the article too fast. They were supposed to be home by 6. The reason it went to 1030 is because they were picked up by cops. It took that long to get the kids back into the parent’s custody.
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