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Free Range Parenting: How Letting your Kids Walk to the Park Can Get You in Big Trouble.

 
 
 
AthenaAwakened

AthenaAwakened

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Danielle and Alexander Meitiv believe that the best way to raise children is to give them the freedom to play, walk and explore without parental supervision.

That philosophy got them in trouble when police picked up their two children – Rafi, age 10, and Dvora, age 6 – when they saw the kids walking home from a park one mile from their house in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Montgomery County Child Protective Services says the parents are responsible for “unsubstantiated child neglect” and will keep a file on them for the next five years. The Meitivs say that will not change their belief.
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http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2015/03/09/free-range-parenting-meitiv

When I was 8, we lived in Washington DC. I rode my bike, I skated, I walked to the pool with my friends (all kids). I rode the bus (the subway was still under construction). Most of the time, there was someone thirteen or older we me, but not all the. My brother and I walked to school when I was 5 and he was 11. No one bothered us.


We felt safe because our parents taught us how to manuver our city, because we took routes where we knew the people and the people knew us, because we knew to say hello to bus drivers, storekeepers, even police officers along our way so they would pay attention to us and what happened to us, because we lived in an actual neighborhood where people interacted and practiced community.

Kids walking to the park, and parents fostering independence in their children, are not the problem. Not building community is.
 
Good lord, that's a bit of state overreach imo.
 
Yup, I've got a park three blocks away in one direction, and another three blocks away in the other direction, and the fucking kids still play in the goddamn street. Go to the fucking park!
 
I live in the same DC Metropolitan Area that includes Montgomery county, except I grew up on the Virginia side. It's all pretty much the same sprawling suburbia surrounding D.C. and the sort of nexus for 'helicopter parenting' that is the antithesis of 'free-range parenting.'

I was 10 years old in 1998. I would walk to and from many places by myself.
 
Can the cops be brought up on unsubstantiated charge of unsubstantiated child neglect?
 
The youngest child is only six years old. I don't know anything about the area they live in but I would not be able to relax knowing my six year old child was on walkabout unsupervised. As to whether the authorities need to be involved, not sure about that either.
 
When I was in grade 7 I used to ride my bicycle nearly 10km to school and back, all alone, and without a helmet or a cell phone. Times have certainly changed.
 
TSwizzle said:
The youngest child is only six years old. I don't know anything about the area they live in but I would not be able to relax knowing my six year old child was on walkabout unsupervised. As to whether the authorities need to be involved, not sure about that either.
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That depends on the 6 year old.
 
Loren Pechtel said:
TSwizzle said:
The youngest child is only six years old. I don't know anything about the area they live in but I would not be able to relax knowing my six year old child was on walkabout unsupervised. As to whether the authorities need to be involved, not sure about that either.
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That depends on the 6 year old.
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And whether the 6 year old is in the presence of their 10 year old brother.

They shouldn't be doing road trips to the west coast, but locally? Heck, I walked to school when I was 6, and the distance was probably half to a full mile, and there was a decent size uphill (on the return trip). 10 years old? That is 4th grade. You can't drive, but you are old enough to know better.
 
No, I'm meaning didn't we already have a thread on a family that got into trouble for letting their young children go to the park unaccompanied by adults?
 
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