from the same woman that prolly won't let her kid have a BB gun...The quote is good, but in NYC I still won’t let a 9-Year-Old ride the Subway alone.
from the same woman that prolly won't let her kid have a BB gun...I hope that nine year old has a black belt in street fighting and carries a Ka-Bar.
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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Great because you did it!
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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.
Because you're stupid.
Live far from NYC, but doubt letting a nine year-old ride the subway alone is anything I’d do for many reasons.
But as some have said, stranger abductions are very rare in the US, only about 100 - 130 per year in a nation of 300 million, and about 4 million kids born each year:
http://www.crimelibrary.com/criminal_mind/psychology/child_abduction/4.html
But because child abduction cases receive so much news coverage, and the coverage of one case can last for weeks and months, and be updated for years afterward, then child abduction can become many times larger in the public’s mind than it actually is.
No. An idiot with a weak grasp of a good idea.
Children do need to be taught increasing levels of independence as they grow older.
However, nine years old is not old enough to be left alone on a New York subway.
A nine year old is naive and helpless against a predator, even if they have been taught to be independent.
There are unfortunately a considerable number of children predators that exist in this world, and in a large city with a concentrated population, there are likely to be a few in the area.
You need to teach your children to use good judgment, not just give them independence without the common sense that will keep them from harm.
Teaching your child how the subway works so that they could get home if something drastic happened and they were separated from you isn't a bad idea, but you shouldn't turn them loose on their own.
Guess what, Ms. Garfinkle: I’d have been devastated. But would that just prove that no mom should ever let her child ride the subway alone?
No. It would just be one more awful but extremely rare example of random violence, the kind that hyper parents cite as proof that every day in every way our children are more and more vulnerable.
"Random" acts of violence are almost never completely random. Criminals attack those they think won't be able to fight back. They prey on the helpless.
Pedophiles don't attack healthy middle aged men. They prey on children, because children are helpless and innocent.
Yes this woman could probably allow her nine year old to ride the subway alone again and again, and has a pretty good chance that he would get home safely.
Is having a good chance of getting home safely, good enough when considering the consequences?
You do eventually have to start letting go, but nine is too young. My stepdaughter is 8 1/2, and while she is responsible and mature for her age, she is also naive and trusting of adults, and she's also completely incapable of effectively defending herself from an adult.
No, I did not give him a cell phone. Didn’t want to lose it.
This woman is worried that her son might lose her cell phone, even on a short trip home where he would obviously be especially careful with it, yet she trusts him to get himself home safely?
This woman is an idiot.
Teach the kid to be more responsible with objects like a cell phone first, and in a few years, give him more personal freedom.
My wife’s grandfather grew up in NYC.. he passed recently, but tells of routinely riding the subways, busses and streetcars from the age fo about 6 (maybe it was younger) alone.
Yes it was a different time, the wack jobs were locked up and not roaming the streets thanks the the ACLU.
Try for yourself. The zip code is 10022. There are 1923 sex offenders that live or work in the area.
http://www.familywatchdog.us/Search.asp
The area might be a bit broad, but take a look at the map.
Do you really think that's a reasonable environment to leave a 9 year old boy alone?
If this were a small town where everyone knows everyone else, I would say it's a different story.
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I have riden the NYC subway for years. IMHO, this woman is an idiot. Right idea, but taking too far at too young an age. And where is the father when potentially life and death decisions about the child are being made?