Back in the day kids younger than this were mature enough to hold a job. Now they can’t even walk by themselves.
But seriously, times have changed and society has completely different idea of what acceptable risk for a child is than 30 years ago. They will also prosecute you for letting your kids do things that go beyond the limits they established. Not for actually letting your kid get harmed but just for risking it which will always be subjective. Everyone is scared now (even though crime is going down) and you have to be too or they will treat like you’re crazy. For me it’s just another reason not to have kids.
My son is 8 and we live about a 5 minute walk from his school. The entire walk is down a lively pedestrian mall, he has to cross one, narrow, 30kph, crosswalked road that’s constantly being crossed by other kids and parents as it’s the main route to get to the school from all of the nearby flats. The teacher got visibly agitated and shocked when I suggested the possibility of him walking to or from school by himself and said she vehemently disagrees with it and that she didn’t even let her 4th grader walk alone. He has a locked down smart watch he can use to call us if there are any issues.
And I’m not even in the US, I’m in central Europe. These people are honestly kind of batshit insane.
Officials in the case decided to press charges against Parkinson, and last week she was convicted of contributing to the delinquency of a minor and placed on Virginia’s child-abuse-and-neglect registry, where she will remain for seven years.
I am all in favor of delinquency, but I don’t understand what delinquent behavior she could possibly have contributed to in this case? Walking in public? Having an interest in waterfowl?
She allowed a 5yo to go to a pond on his own.
No five year old is mature enough to understand and recognize the dangers involved.
Drowning, sure. But also, I’d be willing to bet there’s at least one person there who would harm that kid. There’s also the potential for traffic and getting lost on the way home; if trying to eat something dangerous and all manner of other things.
Damn, have you interacted with any 5 year olds? They’re smarter than you think.
The incidence of kidnapping was WAY higher in gen-x days with no cell phones to rat out the pervs. And even when it was way higher, most child abuse happened by someone well-known to the victim. Stranger-danger was unbelievably rare.
My entire school in the 4th grade (so 9yo) lived next to a busy highway used by full 80t logging trucks, dump trucks, semi-trucks with full loads, in an area where snow is common in winter. We’d trudge down the boulevard of the highway, alto sax or trombone cases in hand, lugging it all to school and back. The whole class would. All grades would, from 4-7, hair and clothes flapping in the wind as a semi would roar past.
Then from the 8th grade we’d attend the school in the next town over. We’d get ourselves to the bus stop and disappear for 8 hours, completely out of contact, the eldest child with a house key and no ID, no phone, no tracker watch, no geofencing.
Tell me again how modern life is dangerous.
You’re making a statistical claim and the statistics don’t support you. Although you personally are paranoid, in reality, children have gone around the neighborhood almost entirely safely for almost all of human history.
Of course there is some element of risk. That’s true for life, for everyone, forever. But until you have solid data that says the kids shouldn’t be able to go a very short distance to a place that they know how to get to safely, then you’re speculating about what could possibly go wrong. And that’s just a waste of time from a public policy perspective.
No five year old is mature enough to understand and recognize the dangers involved.
I think the mother is better qualified to make that call than you.
Children eventually become adults, and they don’t magically become autonomous on their 18th birthday. It’s something responsible parents teach, and it starts young.
There’s a long running Japanese show called “Old Enough” where kids younger than this go off and do errands.
There’s a long running Japanese show called “Old Enough” where kids younger than this go off and do errands.
You know there’s at least one adult watching that child as they go off and do errands, right? the child isn’t unsupervised.
Children eventually become adults, and they don’t magically become autonomous on their 18th birthday. It’s something responsible parents teach, and it starts young.
And the key word here is “starts”. The leading causes of death of children between 1 and 19 are mostly things that that child could have encountered.
they include:
- Firearms.
- being ran over by a car.
- Poisoning
- Suffocation
- Drowning.
And before you’re like “But they were in a gated community!”… I’ve worked security for gated communicates. people still drive like shit, and people are still people, and I’ve never met a 5 yo that was old enough to know the difference between a sweet tart and rat poison tablet- at least not before chomping on it.
Are you trolling? You just perfectly summed up everything that’s wrong with the US
I feel like I am in a Monty Python sketch right now. She “contributed to delinquency” because he could have gotten in trouble that he didn’t get into if things had gone entirely differently?
Yes.
The government decided that children that young should be supervised. She failed to provide that supervision.
The child coming back safe that time doesn’t count- it’s a dangerous world.
But they didn’t charge her with endangering him, that’s a different thing.
Edit to add: And I suspect they didn’t because he was, self evidently, not in danger. So I remain confused about why this became an entire affair.
Because prosecutors are elected in the US, they do all kinds of stupid things.
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The government decided that children that young should be supervised.
And we all know that the government is always just and never gets it wrong.
did I say the government was right?
the good news here is that, as part of that government by means of voting, you can go and change yours.
Parkinson told me that her son—who competently walked the security guard back to their house after politely explaining that he wasn’t allowed to get into cars with strangers—had become distraught upon learning that he had apparently done something very bad.
There it is. This should have ended it. A short discussion between the security guard and the mother, with the mother explaining that her son was fine should have been the end of this, and the security guard could rest easy if he saw the kid outside again.
I’m Gen X and you already know our stories--gone from dawn to dusk in the summer with a stop in for lunch. Why have we done a complete 180 on this? Why are parents so afraid of fucking everything, it seems?
Its the Republicans and their fear mongering, almost every network tv has overflow of cop/crime shows. They think they’re tough but whom is the real snowflakes in this country?
This seems like a big part of it.
Elder millennial, same here
We made tracking easy. Why leave your kid out all day if they have a phone that you can call whenever to make sure they’re safe? Why let them go out without knowing where they are if it’s so convenient to just put a tracker on them and know where they are at all times?
As soon as we didn’t have to trust our kids anymore, we stopped, and as soon as we stopped, we no longer trusted them with anything. That’s the issue with convenience - we’ll do anything so long as its easy and sounds useful, and we won’t bother wondering what the repercussions of that might be.
Why let them go out without knowing where they are if it’s so convenient to just put a tracker on them and know where they are at all times? As soon as we didn’t have to trust our kids anymore, we stopped
This causation is exactly backwards; this was a trend happening long, long before trackers were common. Helicopter parenting really started taking hold in the 90s and was pretty firmly entrenched by the 00s, well before every kid was walking around with a phone.
The trackers are actually a response by parents who are trying to buck this trend and want to be able to go back to giving their kids more independence but need to prove to other parents, teachers, police, the state, etc, that they aren’t being irresponsible by doing so.
Parents are afraid someone will call the cops on the kid, and the cops will call the state, and now your kid could be taken away, or you (the parent) arrested.
OK, but to be fair, we really really shouldn’t have been drinking out of hoses
I still do.
And there weren’t tracking devices in every pocket back then either.
While true, there was a network of mothers who called each other without our knowing about it
That’s fair, I definitely remember a lot of “hey, your parents are looking for you,” usually while I was already on my way home.
Oppression
Why do so many in the US feel entitled to make decisions for others?
I wish this was just the US. Having to fight the teachers here in Hungary so my 8 year old can walk down the pedestrian mall we live on and cross one slow road with a crosswalk to walk to school by himself. They’re dead set against it.
“because I’m right and everyone else is wrong!”
Unacknowledged sub/dom kink
The fact she was arrested is unbelievable.
Admittedly, I wouldn’t let my 5 year old have that much leeway, but I don’t know her kid or the neighborhood and he seemed pretty capable based solely on the article. I’d probably wait until they are eligible for numbered grades. I was walking solo to elementary school and I made it out ok, so I guess kindergarten might not be much different. I think 7-8 is much more reasonable, but each kid is different.
I walked home from kindergarten. It was like 10 blocks. There were a few turns. And there was never any problem because of course there wasn’t.
In a gated community, with private security patrolling. That’s probably safer than just being in the backyard unsupervised next to the woods.
That’s fair, though I don’t think the security was patrolling. I imagine it was just the gate guard or something, but like I said, it seems like it was something the kid could handle. My main issue is with the fact it was around a body of water where it’s possible not a lot of other people were. Maybe he’s an Olympic swimmer and would be fine, maybe he has the self restraint that all the Greek gods lacked, but all the sudden the wind carries a feather into the water and who knows from there. Again, I don’t know the kid or the area. I don’t think this was an appropriate response. I’m just saying for me personally, based on my experience with children in my life, I think 5 is a little young for that activity. I’d probably be fine with a longer walk to a friends house, to school, or to a park. I just don’t love the idea of young kids unsupervised near water.
The TV show Old Enough with Japanese kids running errands has kids 2-5, so I’m not saying it can’t be done, I just personally wouldn’t love the idea.
Edited for clarity
Security guards aren’t life guards. Totally different training, and even if the guard was a roving guard, it’s unlikely they’d be near the pond while the child was drowning. They are, after all, roving through the whole neighborhood.
Did you mean to reply to me? I never suggested that the security guard was a life guard. The person I was responding to suggested that guards were patrolling the neighborhood, and I was just pointing out that wasn’t my understanding based on the article. If you’re responding to the part of my comment where I suggested it was “something he could handle”, I was referring to the fact the child seemed capable of handling the situation he was in. Maybe that was unclear there, but in my prior comment I believe it was clear I was referring to the kid being able to handle himself, so I was referencing that. My whole point was basically that I would be too concerned to allow a kid in my care to do that, so I believe we are in agreement.
I did mean to reply to you, yes.
I read your comment about it being something they can handle as pertaining to the guard.
Bet that gated community has at least 2 pedos in it.
When I was a kid I collected toads from a nearby pond and biked to elementary school by myself. I was fine and I know the kids in my area still do this and they’re also fine. I don’t think this mother did anything wrong.
I kind of sound like an old fart complaining about kids not playing outside by themselves anymore saying this but I’m only gen z. Which is funny cause my 80 year old grandmother says stuff like that, but then also says that this mother should have been arrested.
¯\_ (ツ)_/¯There’s a bit of a difference between a preschooler and an elementary student in terms of capability in the outside world.
That being said, it’s a gated community.
Jesus who decides the age in which a kid can ride the subway or walk to a gated community pond by themselves?
Age 26 and no sooner, gated neighborhoods just aren’t safe /s
Thank you for your service.
Yet another sign of a diseased society. Whether the disease will be terminal remains to be seen.
Kid was 5, went on a short walk to an open body of water where he would get feathers unsupervised.
When drowning is the second largest cause of deaths in children, I don’t think this is an acceptable level of risk.
Trial will determine whether that’s true or not though.
I don’t think this is an acceptable level of risk.
I think it pretty much purely depends on whether he knows how to swim and is a reasonably strong swimmer, but that is possible by 5. Mine was only a year older when he had completed swimming lessons and I was confident enough to leave him unsupervised in my in-laws backyard with a pond.
Prior to that, to your point, I did have to yank him out one and he absolutely could’ve drowned had I not been there.
If he hasn’t had swimming lessons and lots of practice, I agree.
I think a lot of the downvotes I’ve gotten are from people who haven’t been exposed to much water. I grew up in Australia, we’re almost all trained swimmers.
But even here swimming lessons aren’t common before 5.
I agree. I grew up in a place with very, very hot summers and open irrigation canals for farming; we had multiple kids die every year, many who knew how to swim but weren’t strong swimmers. Even pool deaths happened every year, and those are fenced in by law. We had PSAs every year for both, it was a big issue.
Most kids don’t have access to open bodies of water, so most kids don’t drown. That doesn’t translate to a valid risk assessment of drowning for kids that do have access and opportunity for it.
Kids that age have been walking around independently since the dawn of time. Kids that young can know how to swim. Kids that young can be taught basic boundaries and responsibility.
Some searching suggests the drowning death rate for children globally under 5 is 7 per 100,000 per year, lower in the US. Yes, it’s the second leading cause of death of kids, but it’s not a high risk. A child has just a 0.035% chance of dying by drowning before their 5th birthday.
It’s always tempting to say, “but no risk is too low!” But that’s idiotic reasoning. Every method of increasing safety also inevitably decreases freedom, independence, and the development of proper self-sufficiency. Every choice to mitigate risk has to be balanced against the long-term risks of preventing kids from growing up into full and independent adults. Lack of freedom stunts emotional and social development and the growth of street smarts. These imprisoned children are then cast out into the world after high school completely unprepared to actually live as independent adults. And they crash and burn.
Even if all you care about is safety, you have to balance multiple life risks. For example, we’ve taken away most of the freedom from our children. They have very little ability to move about in the world on their own. This means they don’t really start developing independent life skills until they’re in their late teens or even til they graduate high school. And they’re going to have to leave the nest eventually. And the less they’re prepared for the real world when they’re minors, the more they have to figure out when they’re out all alone and without close parental support. You can prevent some childhood deaths by taking away children’s freedom, but in turn you increase the chances of them dying early deaths of despair in their twenties. The kid that never has a chance to grow up suddenly has to do all their growing up all at once when they’re a legal adult. This leaves them unprepared and at high risk for a complete failure to launch, drug addiction, and overdose. Kids who are never allowed to grow up become adults who can’t cope with the world and end up dying from heroin overdoses.
Historically, bodies of water are the most dangerous. Not just due to drowning but the constant threat of predators at the waters edge.
But the biggest problem with your statistic is that most kids just simply don’t have access to large bodies of water regularly. If you were to factor that in, I think you’d find the risk is much, much higher.
Some searching suggests the drowning death rate for children globally under 5 is 7 per 100,000 per year, lower in the US. Yes, it’s the second leading cause of death of kids, but it’s not a high risk. A child has just a 0.035% chance of dying by drowning before their 5th birthday.
Careful here, this is where statistics can very much lead you astray and you can end up like the statistician who drowned in a lake with an average depth of one meter.
I find it pretty likely the vast majority of kids don’t have access to open bodies of water that aren’t fenced in, especially in the US where laws tend to require fencing them in. You’d need to break this down to number of kids who actually have opportunity to drown in an open body of water. You can’t count kids living in a desert with no pool towards the risk factor of drowning.
Drowning is a real risk for any non swimmers, and kids are less likely to make accurate risk assessments, and this isn’t the kind of risk you learn from by fucking around and finding out, you’re typically dead. I lived in a place that got very hot in summer with open irrigation canals and we had multiple kids die every year from it. Even adults, but mostly kids.
This is actually a fair point, I think… if the kid has had swimming lessons, it should be fine, but if he hasn’t that’s indeed reckless to let him play alone next to an open body of water, I’d argue.
You clearly do not have kids.
I do have kids, and was a kid, and agree, and the world is so much safer than when I was running around. My mom taught us water safety and made us do swimming lessons younger than that kid, let us walk down the block or up to the corner store past the apartments, made us walk to school through the neighborhood a couple miles, and again, all this in a more dangerous city than it is now.
I was a little more involved, didn’t let mine walk to the shop when little as it involved crossing a bigger road, and also didn’t leave them unsupervised around a pool or the beach. And bodies of freshwater here have alligators so that’s a no for all kids. But some kids can swim and do know how to be safe around water, and aren’t idiots.
My husband moved around a lot growing up, and talks about wandering for miles in Indonesia when he was 6. Seeing the water buffalo, the farmers, eventually making it to the town.
And my kids, when they went to college, said they ended up glad I was, by their standards, lasseiz-faire, because they saw what happened to sheltered kids who were suddenly free.
Hopefully she isn’t in trouble, kids haven’t changed that much. It’s good for them to explore.
