Mom is apparently the last one to have seen her, who drops off a 5 year old? You take them in
I used to walk half a mile to kindergarten myself just a few years before.
That was normal, decent parenting back then, and only a tiny number of children died from it.
But when ONE child in the area disappears or is murdered, and no killer caught, THEN the standard of proper caution goes way, way up.
Two children dead and three missing, never found.
This was back in 1975 when you thought dropping your kids off at school meant leaving them at a safe place. It was a different mentality. These are the kind of events that changed that. I would never just drop my child of in this day and age.
When I was five I would walk to my friends house at the other side of the neighborhood, well out of sight of mom. I had to walk along a busy street for part of it, until Mr. Guion and Mr. Murphy built a little wooden ladder I could climb over the fence between their yards. I can’t believe moms let kids do that, but it was 1966, and as the 3rd kid I was expendable anyway.
I walked to my elementary school and home, a journey of about a mile or so, every day from when I was 5 years old, as did my little sister and my older brothers. Sometimes we walked together, sometimes we walked on our own, sometimes we met up with friends.
Although I walked the proper way to school the journey back home was shorter if you went down a steep path through a disused quarry, so we always did, getting very mucky along the way.
My mother also made me pick up bread for the family dinner from the baker’s along the way too. And when I got home if she wasn’t in, yes imagine that a kid coming home to a house with no adults in it, I was expected to peel and put on the stove a pot of potatoes.
Absolutely routine.
Did I live in some little Nirvana, well it was the 1970’s and I was living in the town of Derry, Northern Ireland where there were bombs and shootings on an almost daily basis.
I asked my mother, may God rest her, about this seeming insouciance to our personal safety, she just tutted and said, “sure that’s how it was back then we weren’t scared of every pedophile hiding behind a bush back then, and sure did it do ye a bit of harm?”
Can’t really argue about that, even if today I do drive my kids to school and watch them until they enter the doors of the building. Oh and any parent wishing to enter school grounds must wear specially issued photo-id and their cars must have numbered stickers registered with the school, something we would have thought was absurd when I was a kid.
Different times I supose.
In the mid 60s at 5 years old I walked 10 blocks to and from school.
It was a different time and people along the routes to the schools used to watch out for the children and keep the neighborhoods safer.
i didn’t go to school alone in kindergarten. by 2nd grade i walked a few blocks to and from school, in a safer suburban neighborhood.
Not in 1975. In the early 60’s, when I was in kindergarten, EVERYONE walked. You saw no cars. Mothers had other little ones at home and people had one car families - the men took the cars to work often, and mom stayed at home without the car. Usually one Mom on the block had a car in case of an emergency. But everyone walked to school. That’s why there was no worry about child obesity at the time.
Also, you didn’t worry so much about anything happening to your child because there were so many kids on the way to school. There was always someone in sight.