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The WaPo reports that Danielle and Alexander Meitiv in Montgomery County Maryland say they are being investigated for neglect after letting their 10-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter make a one-mile walk home from a Silver Spring park on Georgia Avenue on a Saturday afternoon. “We wouldn’t have let them do it if we didn’t think they were ready for it,” says Danielle. The Meitivs say they believe in “free-range” parenting, a movement that has been a counterpoint to the hyper-vigilance of “helicopter” parenting, with the idea that children learn self-reliance by being allowed to progressively test limits, make choices and venture out in the world. “The world is actually even safer than when I was a child, and I just want to give them the same freedom and independence that I had — basically an old-fashioned childhood,” says Danielle. “I think it’s absolutely critical for their development — to learn responsibility, to experience the world, to gain confidence and competency.”
On December. 20, Alexander agreed to let the children walk from Woodside Park to their home, a mile south, in an area the family says the children know well. Police picked up the children near the Discovery building, the family said, after someone reported seeing them. Alexander said he had a tense time with police when officers returned his children, asked for his identification and told him about the dangers of the world. The more lasting issue has been with Montgomery County Child Protective Services which showed up a couple of hours later. Although Child Protective Services could not address this specific case they did point to Maryland law, which defines child neglect as failure to provide proper care and supervision of a child. “I think what CPS considered neglect, we felt was an essential part of growing up and maturing,” says Alexander. “We feel we’re being bullied into a point of view about child-rearing that we strongly disagree with.”
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 16 2015, @05:51PM
What does it say about their neighborhood when other parents call the police when they see children walking home by themselves? Are these other parents so shocked by seeing something so normal that they need to involve law enforcement? Are they so controlling and smothering that they felt the need to introduce those kids to what has become the militarized police of small town (and big city) America? Is that the first step to getting them accustomed to "papers please"?
When I was in kindergarten I walked well over a mile to and from school every day. When I started high school sometimes I had to walk close to four miles each way. That's not child neglect, it's called life, or exercise.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday January 16 2015, @06:01PM
This is only the later generations doing this because they have internalized the voices of their own helicopter parents, and have transferred that demanding authority into themselves. Couple this with a generally hostile personal and political climate in the states, which is rapidly becoming the "every man for himself" feeding-frenzy like Chinese society, and viola:
Every person becomes their own budding tyrant, working with the system to exercise their pathological hunger for control they were taught by their own overbearing parents.
(Score: 2) by tempest on Friday January 16 2015, @06:27PM
I don't think it's so much the parents are controlling, it's the fact that our society is driven by fear. Watch the news and what do you see? Basically end to end fear mongering. Our government realized a while ago that feeding fear and paranoia allows them to exert control. We should trust them because a terrorist could be just around the corner. Consumerism likewise found this makes them money. Need traffic to a website? Drum up the latest fear. To some extent I believe modern egocentrism amplifies the problem. I see children treated as possessions of parents instead of individuals growing up. Mix all that with modern technology and you get the helicopter parent.
I'd also like to say I walked to school everyday since kindergarten, about a mile and a half. I was glad when I was old enough to ride bike, but I couldn't ride it in the winter. Ten below zero? Still walked to school. I remember a few occasions when a blizzard would hit, and they'd send us home early. So what did I do? I walked home in the blizzard. :)
(Score: 2) by CoolHand on Friday January 16 2015, @06:30PM
Exactly!! There is something really wrong with society today.. (and I know I'm getting older, but it's not just a case of crotchety old man syndrome)
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
(Score: 2) by buswolley on Friday January 16 2015, @06:47PM
you are right of course there's something not right about today's sociwty, but... there was something not right about society 10 years ago or a hundred years ago or a thousand years ago.
subicular junctures
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Saturday January 17 2015, @02:40AM
you are right of course there's something not right about today's sociwty, but... there was something not right about society 10 years ago or a hundred years ago or a thousand years ago.
It's because of all those effin' people. Get rid of them and the problem goes away.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 16 2015, @10:39PM
I'd also like to say I walked to school everyday since kindergarten, about a mile and a half. ...
I was bussed to school through the '60s, but it was several miles (far suburb/exurb school district) each way. I was very envious of my classmates that lived close enough to walk. By high school I was riding a bike to school, along a busy main road.
(Score: 1) by thelexx on Friday January 16 2015, @06:27PM
What it says to me is that the masses have been successfully programmed by the news media to "BE AFRAID - BE VERY AFRAID!" There's muggers, murderers, kidnappers, and rapists just prowling the streets night and day. You can't throw a rock without hitting one! Stay indoors and only travel in packs during the daylight. It's the only way to survive. And we have this medication for your depression...
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday January 16 2015, @07:07PM
How do you know?
Some places *are* dangerous. I admit that from the story this didn't sound like one of them, but in some areas it's *wise* to avoid being seen to be vulnerable. It's also true that even in such areas the extent of danger is usually overstated. (And it's also true that such areas are generally the last place where the "child protective agencies" are likely to be active.)
But be a bit cautious about blanket claims that the action is reasonable or unreasonable. There are lots of parts of the story that aren't mentioned.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1) by thelexx on Friday January 16 2015, @08:54PM
I thought it was a given that we weren't talking about those obvious kinds of caution. Jeez.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday January 16 2015, @09:26PM
A lot less dangerous than you might think. I've been in the worst neighborhood of my city at 2 AM on a Saturday, alone, unarmed, on foot, wearing fairly nice clothes, and white. You'd think somebody would try to rob me, but in fact the only interactions I had were with a stray dog, a guy who offered to sell me drugs, and a bus driver that basically demanded I get on board. In other words, absolutely nothing bad happened to me, even though most think "White guy goes into that neighborhood late at night, someone'll bust a cap in him".
The fact is that the crime rate, particularly the violent crime rate, has nose-dived over the last couple of decades, and now cops who are trying to be all authoritarian and oppressive are shooting jaywalkers and choking loose cigarette salesmen rather than going after the truly bad guys, in large part because there are fewer truly bad guys.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 17 2015, @02:52AM
Fear sells well among those with defective amygdalas, so that is what Fox so-called News and the rest of Lamestream Media pushes.
A giant void has grown, exposing a lack of balance in media in the years after the Powell Memo, [wikipedia.org] exacerbated by the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine by Reagan's FCC Chairman. [wikipedia.org]
Left-leaning folks allowed media to be bought up and consolidated by wrong-wingers.
Repeatedly hearing the unchallenged bleating of wrong-wing mantras has permitted that Neoliberal/Authoritarian propaganda to gain an undeserved mindshare.
.
There are clearly way more beat cops[1] in the USA than are necessary.
In the military there is an up-or-out meme.
If you don't show that you have what it takes to make the next higher grade, you need to find another line of work.
The same should apply to the cops.
This would filter out the non-thinkers and result in more detectives.
Closing unsolved cases doesn't currently seem to be a priority, but it should be.
The practice of bullying people on the street and otherwise presenting yourself as part of an occupying force, OTOH, is something that is unneeded and should be winnowed away.
[1] "Beat cops" as in "I'm going to beat you if you don't bend to my will".
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday January 17 2015, @05:19PM
Fear sells well to nearly everyone. The question is how realistic do you need to make the fear appear to be. The ones who ignore fear are also possessors of defective amygdalas. Judging how afraid one should be in a situation is not one that it's feasible to make accurately, but one should be able to tag certain signals as "deceptive mimicry". Somehow that's very hard to do except at a safe remove.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday January 17 2015, @05:15PM
Yeah, I have too. So what. *Most* of the time nothing bad happens, but the time something does is the critical one, and the potential positives are a lot less good than the potential negatives are dangerous. Dangerous doesn't mean something bad is guaranteed to happen, but rather the probability of something really bad happening is a lot higher.
That said, I agree that the news is designed to make things seem worse than they are.
OTOH (if this is the thread I'm remembering) my point was that my expectation is that if it really is dangerous you won't see the child protective services setting foot there. Parents may keep their kids glued to the TV "and don't you dare open the door", but the child protective services are absent.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 16 2015, @07:10PM
> What does it say about their neighborhood when other parents call the police when they see children walking home by themselves?
Not other parents. One person. May not even be a parent for all we know. Every neighborhood has at least one uptight nutjob. That one nutjob doesn't represent the entire neighborhood any more than the westboro baptist church represents all christians.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday January 17 2015, @10:52AM
So what does it say about our social services that a single nutter can get them so up in arms and in the faces of perfectly normal decent people over nothing?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday January 16 2015, @07:13PM
BINGO!!! I walked 1/2 mile to catch the school bus when I was 5 yrs old. I think there were twelve kids who lived on the two roads that composed what would be called a "subdivision" today. The big kids kinda watched out for us little kids - sometimes, anyway.
Later, I walked two miles to junior high school, and a three mile walk to high school. EVERYONE walked back in those days. If you lived within the city limits, you got your own arse to school, and NO ONE wanted Mom or Dad to TAKE THEM TO SCHOOL!!
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Friday January 16 2015, @07:44PM
My younger brother disputed teh calim I made - that in 1969, I walked a half-mile to Kindergarten, five days a week - Sept through May.
Google maps gave some needed correction to my claim: It was 7/10ths of a mile - but a 5-year-old can't be expected to have a firm grasp on precision in fractions.
Yes. It snowed.
You're betting on the pantomime horse...