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posted by janrinok on Friday January 16 2015, @05:38PM   Printer-friendly
from the who-knows-the-kids-best? dept.

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.”

 
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  • (Score: 1) by thelexx on Friday January 16 2015, @06:27PM

    by thelexx (4735) on Friday January 16 2015, @06:27PM (#135438)

    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

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 16 2015, @07:07PM (#135471) Journal

    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.

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    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

      by thelexx (4735) on Friday January 16 2015, @08:54PM (#135519)

      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

      by Thexalon (636) on Friday January 16 2015, @09:26PM (#135529)

      Some places *are* dangerous.

      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

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 17 2015, @02:52AM (#135586)

        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

          by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Saturday January 17 2015, @05:19PM (#135689) Journal

          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

        by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Saturday January 17 2015, @05:15PM (#135686) Journal

        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.