sounds like we were neighbors in different states
Posted on 03/31/2018 3:33:48 PM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
This week, parents in one state can breathe a sigh of relief. Utah Governor Gary Herbert has made parenting a lot easier by signing a bill that legalizes “free-range” parenting.
Free-range parenting allows children to play without the constant and close supervision of their parents or another adult. Devotees believe children benefit from more freedom and learn vital decision making skills while playing at parks, walking to school, or wandering the neighborhood, without a parent hovering over them.
The bill’s sponsor, Utah state Senator Lincoln Fillmore recognized the benefits of free-range parenting saying, “kids need to wonder about the world, explore and play in it, and by doing so learn the skills of self-reliance and problem-solving they’ll need as adults," adding that society has “become too hyper about ‘protecting’ kids and then end up sheltering them from the experiences that we took for granted as we were kids.”
While all parents should cheer the bill’s passage, they should also ponder why this bill was even needed. A generation ago, free-range parenting was simply known as … parenting. Why now is the state required to “allow” people to make certain, and until very recently, normal parenting choices?
The sad answer to that question is that these laws are desperately needed. As Lenore Skenazy, founder of the Free Range Kids movement and head of the nonprofit Let Grow Organization, has documented for decades, many practitioners of free-range parenting have faced criminal charges and even prosecution for allowing their children the freedom to roam unattended by an adult.
Consider what happened to the Meitiv family. These parents from Maryland allowed their two children (ages 10 and 6) to walk to and play at a park less than a mile from their Silver Spring home. In 2015, as the children were walking home, police picked them up and handed them over to Child Protective Services, where they were held for more than five hours without notifying the Meitiv parents. CPS later opened a neglect investigation against them and although the Meitivs weren’t charged, this was a chilling example of the state disapproving of a parent’s personal decisions.
Or, consider what happened to Connecticut mom Maria Hasankolli. When her son missed his bus and began walking to school, the police were called about “an unaccompanied child.” Hasankolli was placed in handcuffs for allowing her child to walk to school and later charged with “risk of injury to a child.”
Similarly, Sonya Hendren from Sacramento, Calif, was arrested, when she let her four-year-old child play alone at a playground that was 120 feet from her home (that’s roughly two bowling lanes long, or going from home plate to second base). Again, her actions were deemed negligent and potentially dangerous to her child.
And just this week, a Missouri mom is facing charges for leaving her children in a car when she went into the gas station to pay for the gas because, according to that state’s law, it’s illegal to leave your child in a car unattended — even for the five minutes it takes to swipe your credit card at the cashier station.
Today, sitting in judgment of the way people choose to raise kids has become a very sad, unnecessary, and commonplace reality. Yet, it’s one thing to disagree with or even mock a parent’s style of raising kids and quite another to take punitive action against these same parents.
As a conservative, I tend to believe fewer laws are better and I generally resist the idea that we need legislative action to fix society’s problems. Yet, as a parent trying to raise kids in an increasingly judgmental and caution-loving culture, laws protecting parents who want to make their own parenting decisions — even unpopular ones — are clearly needed.
Contrary to what popular culture tells us, there simply is no right way to parent. Utah seems to understand this. Other states should follow.
I haven’t lived in a city or neighborhood where you couldn’t let your kids outside to play, I lived in Simi for over 30 years where I raised my child, but most cities are real sh^tholes and I would never even consider it in most parts of Los Angeles
We had a child molester in our small town when I was a kid in the 50’s. Every child was warned if he was walking on one side of the road, you were to cross to the other side. If he talked to you, You were to keep going. He was scorned, chastised, talked about and shamed. Can’t do that these days.
A governmental order is necessary to allow children to be children. Sad.
“It will be blood and guilt on their hands should something happen to their kids. Kids are not “free range” animals.”
Blood and guilt? I hope that you’re kidding.
Helicopter parents create kids that need safe spaces in college.
Kids have to roam and explore-—and parents know when they are ready to do it.
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Free range.
In the 60’s we never gave it a thought. Bikes gave us massive mobility all over the east side of the valley.
Interesting responses to my comment by a number of folks. I don’t watch my kids 24x7 and they can do things, are responsible, etc. But the extremes—the idiot parents that send a 6 year old to a park supervised by a 10 year old is ludicrous. Skip the BS about what we did or were allowed to do as kids ourselves decades ago. WOULD YOU ALLOW THIS OF YOUR KIDS TODAY? Or your grand- or great-grand kids. I see no one touching that. Nice to muse on what we did or didn’t do as kids decades ago, but today is not the same place.
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We used to wander miles down a creek to a place where rope swings were hung from a railroad trestle that spanned a lagoon full of carp and bullfrog tadpoles, and get our clothes soaked wading out to grab the ropes.
Always got scolded when we got home, but we always got home!
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It all depends on the place and the kid Reno.
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When I was growing up, we put people who threatened little kids in INSTITUTIONS - now we’ve closed those places let them openly ‘marry’. Like it or not, they wore us down, and when we needed to fight, we said (collectively) “why bother”. So now if there are 5 kids at a school bus stop, there are also 4 parents there. If one of those parents decides to ‘free-range’ her kids, they become a mark for the ‘de-institutionalized’ types...whether we like it or not.
Bottom line: If you want to ‘free-range’ your kids, move to Japan, or a handful of other countries (mostly in Asia), where it is actually still safe for little guys to be out among adults at any time of day.
One other difference back then: There was no SECTION 8 (of the ‘Housing Code’), so people who could not afford to live in a ‘civilized’ neighborhood, simply did not live there. Instead they lived in the now-blasted-away public housing projects. In addition - Illegals were not coddled by EITHER POLITICAL PARTY - the relatively few who caused trouble back then were simply sent home - rather than being called ‘Dreamers’ and put on some kind of public pedestal.
Obviously we no longer live in that world.
I grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin. All 4 of us are pretty independent & able to take care of ourselves- and we were when we were kids. Our parents didn’t hover. All of us have been self employed—3 of us with employees.
A kid being raised today doesn’t learn to think past their nose, as Dad used to say.
When I was a kid on summer vacation from school, I disappeared for the entire day riding my bike miles from my home. During school, I walked a mile or so, by myself, to my ELEMENTARY school, in all types of weather. Once we had an early release because of a snow storm. Walked home in knee deep snow by myself and enjoyed every minute of it.
sounds like we were neighbors in different states
That such a law is necessary is a shame. I grew up in the ‘burbs, not in the country. I was on my bike and away from the house all day every day during the summer months, in the days before cell phones. I usually had a little change in my pocket so I could have called from a pay phone if necessary, but there were no pay phones on the ballfields and playgrounds where I was. Only time I ran into trouble was once when my bike tire went flat and I was miles from home. A friendly tow truck driver saw me walking my bike and took me and my bike home.
When I was in the third grade, I used to go to a lake about 3 miles from my house. USUALLY with some friends. There was a canoe tied up there which was used by anyone who came. No parents hovering around. Had to be back when the street lights came on. That was in Alabama in the 60s.
I’d just like to point out that you do not seem to be representing Reno very well to the FR community.
A popular bumper sticker here states “We DO NOT CARE how they do it in California!”
Utah “gets it” better than you do, it seems.
Yo - snowflake...when I was a kid, we would walk or ride our bikes to a park about 2-1/2 miles from the house to ‘explore” by the river or use the public pool - kids learn a little about growing up by not having constant babysitters ....
“Bikes gave us massive mobility all over the east side of the valley.”
Oh, you bet! Living on cement in Milwaukee, we kids were always looking for ‘green.’ Milwaukee, for all of its other faults, has a beautiful park system and we spent a lot of time in the local parks, playing in the creek, and just being kids.
Why, it’s almost as if green spaces were MEANT for recreation and a break from City Life!
(Re: Central Park, NYC)
*SMIRK*
Different environments make for different decisions, I'm sure, but You may be aghast, and I don't blame you if you've always live in particularly dicey neighborhoods. But parents can judge their own neighborhoods and the competence of their own children.
I raised my own boys similarly.
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