Posted on 09/14/2009 7:40:44 AM PDT by Arec Barrwin
September 13, 2009 Why Can’t She Walk to School? By JAN HOFFMAN
TO get to school, the child leaves home by herself, proudly walking down the boulevard in a suburb of a small city in upstate New York. The crossing guard helps her at the intersection. She lives only a block and a half from school. Yet she walks by older children waiting with parents for buses to the same school.
She is 7, a second-grader, and her mother, Katie, hears the raised-eyebrow remarks: ‘Are you sure you want to be doing this?’ Katie said friends ask.
‘She’s just so pretty. She’s just so ... blond.’ A friend said, ‘I heard that Jaycee Dugard story and I thought of your daughter.’ And they say, ‘I’d never do that with my kid: I wouldn’t trust my kid with the street,’ said Katie, a stay-at-home mother, who asked that her full identity be withheld to protect her children.
Katie, too, is tormented by the abduction monsters embedded in modern parenting. Yet she wants to encourage her daughter’s independence. Somehow, walking to school has become a political act when it’s this uncommon, she said. Somebody has to be first.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
My kids walk — with me or my wife.
Sorry, it’s not safe anymore.
This aint the 70’s anymore...
My daughter walks to school...with me...and my .357.
Traffic. If my kids went to school, it wouldn’t be safe for them to walk to the elementary school just across the road from our subdivision. I nearly got killed trying to walk over there to vote. Now I drive my big van less than 1/2 mile for elections.
Geez ... I walked to school Every day from KINDERGARTEN til 7th Grade, when I moved to an place where school was 12 miles AWAY!!
And the cute little blonde walker and to her mother I say... GOOD FOR YOU.
I’ve never been on a school bus, and I’m thirty-something. Homeschooling advantage #795.
During the cold weather Mom always made sure I at least had a bowl of hot oatmeal under my belt...but walking 1/2 mile with that stuff running down my leg was no fun.
I walked to school every day from First grade on, until I got a car. But times are different. In all those years I was never even approached by a stranger. Now, the consequences are so dire, it’s just not worth it.
I don’t like it, but it’s a sad reality.
Until Rule of Law is re-established, it isn’t safe.
Through 4 feet of snow, 6 miles, 1 pair of shoes for three kids...uphill in both directions.
From a pure safety perspective, I won't second-guess parents who want their kids to ride a bus.
But I'm calling BS on part of this story. When I was a kid, I had to live 2 miles from the school in order to be allowed on the bus. I couldn't take the bus. My neighbor could, because he lived that much further away (about 100 feet).
Now, I know times are different, and I know cities are different, but in these times of tight budgets, are they really having school buses take kids "a block and a half"????
Uphill!
Both ways!!!
You made me spew!!!!!!!!!!!
Uphill!
Both ways!!!
Uhh Because the G*D Damned courts and liberals let perverts, rapist and criminal run free. I would not let my teenagers walk to school in today’s America.
...”.uphill in both directions.”
sounds like a tower of babel!
you must be in heaven by now
I usually rode my bike, does that count?
My son just started walking this year as we live next door to the middle school while his elementary was several miles away.
He loves being able to have the independence.
And if you look at the statistics, kidnappings & child abductions are the same now as they were 30 years ago. We just have 24 hour news & helicopter parenting nowadays.
But, I don’t blame parents for feeling insecure seeing what the media does to us.
Forced busing in the South killed off most walking to school.
Drop the concealed carry age to six? I know, I know...
Colonel, USAFR
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