Posted on 04/04/2008 4:55:02 AM PDT by PurpleMan
[Money quote] "The problem with this everything-is-dangerous outlook is that over-protectiveness is a danger in and of itself. A child who thinks he cant do anything on his own eventually cant."
(Excerpt) Read more at nysun.com ...
The quote is good, but in NYC I still won’t let a 9-Year-Old ride the Subway alone.
> The quote is good, but in NYC I still wont let a 9-Year-Old ride the Subway alone.
Do the Guardian Angels still patrol the subways of New York? (I should know this but I don’t!)
If so, the 9 year old will probably be quite safe riding them.
As a parent, tho’, I’d be more concerned about what happens before and after the subway.
I hope that nine year old has a black belt in street fighting and carries a Ka-Bar.
I wont let a 9-Year-Old ride the Subway alone in any city unarmed.
I saw both the mom and the kid on Fox News. Both seemed level headed and in complete control of their faculties.
The mom looked chic but had confidence in her son who seemed to know exactly what he was doing. Although he was young he seemed to have a lot on the ball and was not cocky and overconfident or overly proud of his ride.
We live in a free society and that included the right to move about.
Agreed. It's all a matter of relative risk. Do you send the kid out at 11 p.m. to ride uptown past 125th St.? No. But at 4 p.m. after school to head to a piano lesson on the upper West Side? Sure.
If a kid gets into a jam and starts to holler there are plenty of folks - yes, even in NYC - who will come to his aid.
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www.AnySoldier.com
How far we have fallen as a society. I think this parent is insane.
When I was growing in DETROIT in the fifties and early sixties kids could go anywhere. When politicians decided to stop defending property rights it was the beginning of the end of all personal rights including personal safety of children.
Today, Detroit and most other big cities have become criminal enterprises. This is where Lyndon Johnson and the liberals have taken us.
Does this nine year old wear a target on their shirt? When something happens they should and will be prosecuted. Now if we actually kept our sex offenders and other criminals in prisons without releasing them early things might be different. The parent here isn’t living in the real world.
The odds are against the little kid. The subways are a jungle. Sorry in my opinion no sane, conscerned parent would allow a 9 year old to ride the subway alone.
BRAVO! So many parents are raising NANNY-STATE wards who are afraid of their own shadow.
Apparently the writer never heard of Etan Patz.
Granted, Patz was 6, not 9, but he wasn't on a subway, either.
ML/NJ (Friend of the Patz family)
Because you're stupid.
Exactly! Let's all cower down in our bunkers because 'X' might happen to us, regrardless of the fact that the odds of 'X' happening are 1 in 50 million. Geez!
Growing up in Yonkers, if I did my homework, I was expected to be home for dinner. Between 3:30 and 6:30 P.M. my friends and I had free roam of the neighborhood. Never had a problem. (If you don’t count the bicycle damage to the golf course)
Now, as parents, we are constantly trying to balance freedom and safety for our kids. Part of the problem is that middle school aged children are not as innocent as we were. Thirteen year-olds are getting into things that I was clueless about at 16.
A nine year old is generally small enough to pick up and carry off.
My rule about the kids going out on their own is that they had to be too big to easily abscond with.
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