But then how would we evacuate people when there is an impending disaster looming....oh wait....nevermind.
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 ask to walk in good weather, but we live on a road with no shoulder, much less sidewalks.
I refuse to even let them ride their bikes on our road, much less walk early in the morning when it is still dark now.
Okay, so a parent waits with the child at the bus stop rather than just walking with them a block and a half? This really doesn't make any sense and sounds like an exaggeration, a hallmark of a poorly thought-out non-story.
But then how would we evacuate people when there is an impending disaster looming....oh wait....nevermind.
This issue of safety of children in the U.S., has had me puzzled for some time now. Five years ago I moved to Moldova, a small very poor country in Eastern Europe that is about the size of Maryland. It was a part of the Soviet Union.
One of the things that I immediately noticed and thought was so nice is that the children walk to school with no fear of being bothered. When I first came it was kind of a shock to me to see even first graders walking to school alone. I asked some of my Moldovan friends about it and they say there is just not a problem with crimes like that here.
My wife and I were recently in Florida and stayed near an elementary school. She was shocked at the long lines of cars every day taking children to school. I told her it was just not safe otherwise.
I totally agree with you.
If there actually was more crime today, it would mean that humans had genetically changed. Crime statistics come and go, depending about whether people are actually convicted of crimes.
I spent most of my young years walking to school. There were bullies, and I even had a knife brandished on me. There were no doubt sex predators just like there are today. But, do we really need to go to the extreme of not letting kids outside without supervision?
My elementary school had hundreds of bicycles, my kids have zero. And yes, the last bus stop is about 2 blocks away, within a hundred yards of school. Disgusts me, especially when I see that 30-40% of the kids are grossly obese.
Something is really messed up. But hey, at least the schools are actually pretty good, and my kids have very intense education starting at 1st grade.
This issue is about cable news scaring people to death, along with laws too lax for evil people living in our communities.
115 out of 300 million is a speck.
Sure it's a tragedy that even one is kidnapped but what is all this paranoia about so low a number in a country this size? More MSM mind control?
30 years ago, people had the luxury of saying "how could we have known?" when their child was abducted/raped/murdered.
They don't have that luxury, as hollow as it may actually be, anymore.
30 years ago, most folks lived in areas where they knew most of their neighbors, could easily recognize suspicious interlopers, and probably had faith that their local, state, and Federal government were honestly concerned about their safety.
Things have changed.
I didn’t grow up in the USA, but my wife did and she is certain it is worse. She used to walk to school (the same school our children attend) with little difficulty.
Several decades later now, the children have been harassed (bricks were throw from a van) and we have been warned to not let our children walk alone for fear of attack.
I have had some “cat calls” with the kids (”JOOOOO” and various things in arabic), but no violence.
Do you have children?
My kids don’t walk because the public school system is unsuitable........therefore we have a 10 mile drive but well worth it :)
I walked 1/2 mi year-round all through elementary school, and 1+ mile for Jr High and High School until I got my license and a car (grad 1965).
Very very many of my best and most instructive real-world socialization lessons and experiences were on the way to/from school (and detours, LOL) as well as the go everywhere/anywhere way of life back then when America was America and skoo was School. And “snow” days when school was closed?.....I think maybe 4 or 5 in my entire public school education.......these days, school is closed twice as many days in just one winter....
We got the same questions when our three walked home (about 4 blocks) from school in a residential area. When we told folks to mind their own business, we got phone calls to the school principal and the police. FO busybodies.
The thinking ("psyche" was my word earlier) has changed.
But the reality is that very, very, very few kids are abducted. So much fear over so little cause.
Probably safer these days then when many of us were kids and walked. But the media of course has elevated the dangers to beyond reality in our heads.
Same here. My kids would have to cross a road that doesn’t even have a pedestrian crossing, and walk along another next to a main road without even a sidewalk, just couple feet of grass between the road and the guard rail. A kid got killed walking around there recently.
Add in the custody disputes that trigger nation-wide Amber alerts and you have a great recipe for paranoia.
Here in central Connecticut, every kid takes the bus.
There is a house next to the entrance to the elementary school, complete with sidewalks...the kids in that house take a bus.
I think parents are being ridiculous in most situations.
I live in a nice, safe neighborhood, and yet I get stuck behind the school bus stopping at nearly every single driveway for another precious snowflake.
Can’t they at least group up in one yard or another to minimize the stops?
And what I wonder is this: Why is it Ok for your kid to play in the front yard without you at his side, but it’s not Ok for him to stand there waiting for a bus without you at his side?
Somebody ‘splain that to me..
If you're in a neighborhood where people throw bricks from a van it may not be the typical suburbia.
There's no doubt that society has coarsened overall. But statistics show that the facts often don't bear out the fears; on many of these issues the MSM has brain-washed the public.
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