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 ...
Schools should never have been forced to consolidate into larger and larger schools. Your point about wasted fuel is a good one but also think of all of the kids that never got a chance to participate in varsity sports. If it weren’t for my sports experience I wouldn’t be the leader I am today.
What's wrong is the hold the MSM has on people and this story is another example of the illusions people suffer under which just aren't based on reality. The power of the MSM over people's thinking and behavior is way scarier than would-be kidnappers.
They did it last Fall with the economy and they did it with global warming and this is just another example of how they operate IMO.
Happens in my neighborhood, too, even though every house is on a residential-only street, with stop signs, sidewalks, and crosswalks. They could drop the the whole busload at a central point and no child would have to walk more than 10 minutes to his door.
Where are you? The West Bank? Dearborn, MI?
Sad, but I still don’t see why we need SCHOOL BUSSES if the school is under two miles away. If that is the case, the kids should be driven by their own parents.
I let me children out without supervision (my oldest is 15 and he watches his siblings) and had CPS called on me for neglect.
I really had no idea so many places had no sidewalks. That does make a difference. But, the voters should be raising a stink about that.
Yes this mother is sad. Wanting her 7 year old child walk to school??? Is this woman even stable enought to keep this kid. Now she has plastered her all over the media and still wishes her kid could walk. Man she has a deathwish on this child of hers.
It almost sounds like you live near me! In the subdivision, one can walk all around safely, but trying to get the last 100 yards to the school is a nightmare. People go roaring along in their SUVs talking on the cellphone, like they’re in their own private universe. (/rant)
30 years ago there were places kids to run to if they were worried about a stranger. These days, many don’t want to be involved.
Maybe that belief in times past was naivete, but I certainly don't believe it now.
Actually, when I taught elementary school (a couple of years ago) the kids DID seem insecure. They thought a lot about things like getting abducted or murdered. I never thought about it at their age (4th grade).
I think parents should do as they see fit with their own kids, however, I think it’s silly to suggest that there will be no repercussions from teaching them that danger lurks in every corner.
Unless the media is making child abduction stories up, I see parents' reactions as quite reasonable.
When I subsitute teach at my children's middle school, I don't see that. I see happy, confident kids.
Who all were driven to school by either a parent or carpool.
Wandering around unattended? Going to a specific place is not exactly wandering around. Unless of course you don’t trust your kids to go from point A to point B, but instead to just wander around. I admit, I never had to worry about that with my boys.
What is wrong with you?! Stop making sense!
LOL I suspect riding in a car with a parent on a cell phone may be more dangerous than walking.
Good question - I’m curious to know as well. Wondering if that was an isolated incident or an ongoing problem. I’d have to move, for sure.
As with everything else, they overhype the stories because they get money for doing so.
If there really were only 115 cases of abduction in the entire US of A as is reported in the article, fears are grossly exagerrated.
Right! When I was shopping for my first home it took me forever till I found a house I wanted. I finally found one where the elementary school was two blocks away, the middle school one block away and hi-school a couple of miles. My son walked to all three schools with never a problem.
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