I can't imagine the government telling me what time my kids have to be home.
Our oldest son, 11, has a friend down the street who is 10. Frequently, the neighbor kid stays late and watches movies with us on Friday nights. Sometimes, especially during the summer, they play in the yard or back and forth between our house and his house. Often, they're playing until 10 or 10:30 at night.
Our son always walks him home. If we lived in your town, my son would be in trouble with the law.
As I've been instructed on this thread today, my child shouldn't be out that late, he is poorly behaved because he is out that late, I am a bad parent because he is out that late and, if he's toting an Airsoft gun, he deserves to be shot by the police for being out that late.
That's all well and good for all the folks who have been educating me this afternoon, but I'm pretty satisfied with the behavior of my children, they're pretty happy playing outside after dark, and I wouldn't stand for any city council telling me that my son has to be in the house at 10 p.m.
My desire is to get my kids outside as often as I can.
When I was in high school, my curfew - set by my parents - was midnight. That gave me time to work an after school job, it gave me time to take girls to movies that didn't start until 8 p.m., it gave me time to take those girls down to the baseball field to make-out before they had to be home.
Kids should be allowed to be kids, and the government doesn't need to force them indoors when there's all kinds of fun stuff for them to be doing.
Although it was 11 PM we weren’t thinking about robbing and killing. Not like a lot of these little monsters nowadays.
The difference, I guess, is that I don't see them as "little monsters" plotting murder. Maybe they're going to roll a yard, but rolling yards is fun, too.