Free-range parenting: Maryland parents under fire for letting kids walk home alone

WTTG, Fox 5, DC ^ | Jan 16, 2015 9:48 AM EST | Laureen DeMarco/AP

[Olog-hai]

A Montgomery County couple says they’re being investigated for neglect for allowing their two children to walk home from a park by themselves.

Danielle and Alexander Meitiv say the county’s Child Protective Services began investigating them after police stopped their 10-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter about half-way through a mile-walk home on Dec. 20 in Silver Spring. Police say they stopped the children and drove them home after someone reported seeing them. …

[Thank You Rush]

What you’re really saying is we’re much safer because of all the precautions taken. That’s hardly the same as saying we’re a much safer nation today. How many people still leave their doors unlocked - day or night? How many people leave their keys in their cars today? How many people had home alarm systems years ago? How many concealed carry permits are there in the country? People get those because we’re so safe, right?

[Altariel]

I’m concerned that you’re more troubled by the parents’ disgust at statist attempts to control them than you are by the statist attempts to control these (and other) parents.

“The parents do need to be investigated!”

Ahh....and that explains why. Hail the Glorious State, which is all knowing and justly investigates all!

(Do I really need a sarc tag?)

[mdmathis6]

Yes let’s use the kids as pawns to push a political agenda..when this sort of situation needed more of a wiser low key approach. Liberalism and its support of the most basest forms of human behavior has made many urban areas very dangerous for young kids. There are ways to wisely teach children self reliance without putting themselves in danger.

Now I suspect the parents will get a stiff lecturing but nothing much will happen to them otherwise. It depends on if parents are simply nerfball pollyannas who believe in the inherent goodness of everyone or if they are pushing a political agenda to the detriment of their children.

[KC_Conspirator]

Ridiculous.

[Hiddigeigei]

“Free Range Kids.” I find this story somewhat amusing. Starting about 1940, I attended Parkside Elementary School (historic) located on the other side of Sligo Creek Parkway less than a quarter mile from where the Meitivs now live. My parents dropped me off in the morning on their way to work but my brother (who was four years older) and I were expected to walk back after school about a mile and a half to our home (now a county park called Forest Glen Park) on the other side of Georgia Avenue. After my brother graduated to junior high school, I walked home alone. The only problem I ever had walking home was a confrontation with a goose on Beans’ farm where I learned the hard way what my nurse from childhood told me; ”Gooses has rocks in their wings!”