conuly

They're all here, I'll just pick and choose

If it is indeed normal today that parents in bucolic suburban neighborhoods do not even let their children walk alone a few blocks, then North American society either has a deep paranoia, or society has truly broken down. Here in Belgium, children walking and taking public transportation by themselves is commonplace, as I remember in Philadelphia in the early 1980s. This is a sign of a mentally-healthy and safe society. Achieving such a society must be be the highest priority of any government.

Philadelphia in the 80s must have been much less safe than Philadelphia now. I'll check the stats later.

I wonder if there could be any studies done on the comparable risks of letting your child walk to school alone, and driving them? Certainly the risk of a car accident is much higher than that of being abducted...

Indeed.

My 11 year old is still slight of build. I won't allow him to go to men's public toilets unless I've checked the facilities myself. I don't care. Call me overprotective, but at least he is still alive and well.

Alive and well enough to put you in a nursing home when he's grown. The kid's ELEVEN. For crying out loud!

As parents the goal is to teach children to be cautious, not afraid. Walking or driving your child to school is being cautious. You can point to the statistics of child abductions vs. car crashes, but in the end, it’s your child and he/she only needs to be abducted once.

He only needs to die in a fatal car crash once. When you're cautious about things that rarely happen, and cavalier about things that happen to a lot of kids, that's called being afraid.

I was walking to school since I was seven and everywhere in town and in the mountains surrounding my home. It would be a very sad narrow childhood to be imprisoned in house and alternately school and never get to be out on your own.

Ditto.

By insisting on 24/7 adult supervision, this is what the parent takes away from their child:
- a chance to learn and practice the incredibly important skill of independence
- a chance to feel trusted by their parents
- physical activity
- environmental responsibility
- an opportunity to notice the world around them
- confidence in themselves

That is a lot to take away from a child in order to prevent an event as rare and unlikely as being struck by lightning.

Ditto this as well.

Insanity. The chances of abduction are infinitesimally small. The damage done to kids' ability to navigate the world and be independent, let alone their physical health (walking and biking are good exercise!) is huge.

Yes, that. People talk as though there's no harm to being "cautious" or "overprotective", but I think there is - real, tangible harm.

Some say the threat does not match the reality. Try telling that to any parent who has a perfect angel they must deliver to the school house step every morning. Observe the all middle-aged perverts that slow to look at children. Where did they come from?

Um, I'm gonna guess they come from whatever the fuck you're smoking, brother. I have no idea what you're talking about. Has anybody else ever witnessed this? (There's more! I have no intention of posting more of his garbage, though.)

Stranger abduction is not and has never been statistically significant in harm our children can suffer. Children are most likely to be hurt by their own family members. I suppose parents have to foist their worries on something? In the meantime, we raise our children to believe in the Boogeyman and live full of some unnamed fear.

Now we're back to reality.

Parents who don't let their kids walk or bike to school are the ones being irresponsible.... A parent's job is to encourage independence, responsibility, self-sufficiency.

Not sure it's that simple, but let's go with it.

What sort of useless, degenerate parent in this day and age lets their 7-year-old walk to school by herself while she stays at home? Yes, things have changed since we were kids, but for the better. What next? Is this stupid woman going to reject booster seats, preschool, pediatric dentistry, and Amber Alert as some sort of political statement because they weren't standard when we were young?

One who pays attention to the facts and thinks it's better for her child to do things on her own? And yes, I will reject Amber Alerts so long as they keep being used for things they were never intended - they were ONLY supposed to be used for cases where the abductor could be identified and the child was known to be at risk. That's not the case now.

Indeed, the statistic that 115 children are abducted in the U.S. PER YEAR should be lectured loudly to this generation's paranoid, helicoptering parents.

They don't listen, they just don't.

How soon we forget what many children endured walking to school in the 1940s--black children, I mean. It took my mother and her siblings an hour to walk to school--one way--during America's era of legally sanctioned separate and unequal education. The white kids rode buses to school and peppered them with insults and racial epithets as these valiant children pressed on.

All of which is terrible, but what does it have to do with the topic of discussion other than involving the words "bus" "school" and "walking"?

Here's a quote from the handbook for my 12-year old daughter's new middle school which is located "on a busy throughway without sidewalks for pedestrians. Therefore no students are allowed to walk to or from school for any reason. All students must take the bus or receive a ride from a parent or guardian".
If being on a busy street makes it inaccessible to anyone not in motorized transport, they should have picked another site. When the roads around the school were improved a few years ago, why were provisions not made to allow pedestrians to also safely use the new improvements. This is a failure in our planning and engineering process. These design decisions are having huge long-term impacts on the behavior of the residents of this particular community and influence how these children are being raised without any prospect of change at this location for years to come.

Yes, this. What on earth were they even THINKING not to put any way for kids to get to school (in middle school!) without help?

It is very risky to allow a young child to walk the streets alone. the statistics alone show that young children should be accompanied by adults.

1. What statistics? Don't name 'em if you can't cite 'em.
2. How young is young? Some of the children in the article and comments are in their double digits.

There are over 75 registered pedophiles living within a 10 mile radius of my daughter's home. Perhaps there are dozens more that are unregistered. Happily the school bus picks up my granddaughter at the end of her driveway, and if that were not the case, she would have to be driven the 3/4 of a mile to her elementary school.

1. Registered pedophiles or registered sex offenders? There's some overlap, but not as much as you'd think. What did these people do, exactly - is your granddaughter the type of child they targeted (assuming any of them even did target strangers at all)?

2. You "have" to drive her the 3/4 of a mile? She and her mother can't walk that short distance? That's absurd. It's insane!

I'm white and live in a primarily black neighborhood and all the black kids walk to school—mostly in small groups—with the youngest being kindergarten age. I've never seen a white kid walk to school in our neighborhood.

Interesting point.

I know it must be tough on working parents, but if you care for your child, the least you can do is to walk them to school, if it's at a walking distance from home. Or make arrangements for someone to pick them up and take them, etc. And back. Please.

Six-year olds alone, Jesus! Only if its across the street and you are watching. It just takes a little planning and talking with your neighbors and making arrangements for someone to walk or drive them to school.

Talk about missing the point! It's not always about lack of options, sometimes it's about conscious, reasoning choice telling you that your kid needs a little independence and responsibility.

I want to end with the closing paragraphs of the actual article:

Recently, Amy Utzinger, a mother of four in Tucson, Ariz., let her daughter, 7, walk down the block to play with a friend. Five houses. Same side of the street.

Afterward, the friend’s mother drove Mrs. Utzinger’s daughter home. “She said, ‘I just drove her back, just in case ... you know,’ ” recalled Mrs. Utzinger. “What was I supposed to say? How can you argue against ‘just in case’?”

I'll tell you how you argue against 'just in case'. You point out that the risk of dying in a fatal crash is so insanely high that you never let your child enter a car without your permission and stare at this woman as though she's deluded - which she is if she has to drive your kid five houses instead of, you know, walking her... or watching from the porch.