I have no problem with what they did. Of all the kids being abused, they choose to harass these parents.
https://www.yahoo.com/parenting/parents-under-investigation-for-neglect-after-108180228512.html
I have no problem with what they did. Of all the kids being abused, they choose to harass these parents.
https://www.yahoo.com/parenting/parents-under-investigation-for-neglect-after-108180228512.html
I agree that this is going too far.
Agreed. This is not the government’s business. Nobody was harmed and the kids knew what they were doing.
When you allow your children of any age to be or go anywhere unaccompanied by a chaperone, you are taking the inherent risks in doing this, but unless dictated by local laws, it’s up to you.
Yeah, that’s unbelievable. I walked quite a few blocks to and from school every day when I was 6 years old. One time, I was swinging my bag back and forth and it flew out of my hand and landed on a garage roof! I still remember running the entire way home, crying! I don’t know why I was so upset. Another time, I found a kids’ bike next to a creek. In my mind, not seeing its owner in sight meant it was abandoned. I took it home, proud of myself for snagging such a great prize. Of course, my mom made me turn around immediately and take it back! I loved walking home. There was so much to see every day.
I am sure my mother did not know we rode our bikes across the busy (6 lane street with lights) to the liquor store to get our bazooka bubble gum, usually with a bag of bottles we had collected to turn in for the cash, but I recall walking quite longer distances than these kids on my way to school.
I don’t understand how the bureaucrats in so many different areas caught this fear bug!
Some mom- sounds similar to my childhood. We were the only kids whose parent worked and our Mom never gave us the forbidden rule of not crossing the busy street. I think she didn’t have a clue. As long as we were home by the time the streetlights came on.We would go to the seven 11 and buy candy for the neighborhood. We would run jay walk style across the busy boulevard. Most of the neighborhood kids were forbidden to cross the boulevard. Returning bottles was a great source of candy money. My younger brother would set up a candy store on our front lawn.
Unfortunately, the bureaucrats are just doing their jobs, but the procedures at the agency need to change. I am sure they probably have a rule that all calls must be investigated. A "concerned"parent probably called the hotline, and set off the chain of events. I dont blame child services for going out, but after they talked to the parents, saw the house, received an explanation, it shouldve been over.
TEN? The older child is TEN, and it’s neglect to let them walk home in broad daylight in an expensive neighborhood?
Let’s all remember this when the kids are paralyzed with fear and unable to function alone in college.
@hanna, agreed! That is why a wonder about the person that saw them walking and deciding to call. It seems that it is bystanders paralyzed with fear, and then they set off a chain of events that wreak havoc.
But the chain of events shouldn’t wreak havoc. And, this not the first one of these cases so it’s not just some bone-headed bureaucrat. I agree CPS should go out if called but launching an investigation once they see what’s going on is nothing is a bad decision someone is making for some reason. A visit and a report really should be then end of it and it really should not be a close call at all.
The bizarre part for me was the CPS person saying sign this agreement now, no talking it over with wife or lawyer, or I take your kids away.
Since elementary students in Silver Springs are not eligible for transportation, unless they live more than one mile from the school, it is apparent that authorities are fine with young kids walking alone for 20 minutes or so. ( erring on the conservative side, cause short legs).
It’s typical for CPS in our area to harass families whose cases don’t pose real risk. They are easily resolved as opposed to when children actually need a safer place to live.
I often missed the bus at my elementary school, because there wasn’t a consistent order to the buses, and I ended up walking home more than a mile on a route without sidewalks much of the way when I was 8 or so. I couldn’t call my mom, because she was probably driving to get my younger brother who had been assigned to a different school, farther away.
I actually do have a problem with what they did if the kids had to cross any streets. A 6-year-old doesn’t have the mental maturity to cross streets safely. A 10-year-old does (and I would have no problem with the 10-year-old making the walk alone), but it’s putting too much responsibility on a 10-year-old to make that child responsible for a 6-year-old’s safety, in my opinion. In families with that sort of age gap (my kids are 3 1/2 years apart, so I’m familiar with this sort of gap), the younger child often is not accustomed to obeying the older one.
But if you read the news stories about this incident, they’re all about stranger kidnapping (a highly unlikely danger), not about the very real risks involved in crossing streets.
CPS in our area often removes the children from the home when a complaint has been made, before any investigation is done. And seemingly without weighing who made the complaint.
I know very little about Maryland, other than a friends daughter received a very generous aid package to attend Mt. St. Mary’s. But Silver Spring does seem to have a higher crime rate than the rest of Maryland.
i wouldn’t have required my ten yr old to be responsible for her sister out and about in the neighborhood, but I was a helicopter mom. That isn’t a requirement to have kids.
The line in the story that struck me was about how dramatically things have changed in just one generation. My two older kids are 25 and 30 and they often walked to the corner store alone at that age, crossing a non-busy, quiet neighborhood street. Their friends were allowed to walk to our house alone, their cousins walked up the block from their home to my mother’s house around the same age. We all walked to school without adults-a 10 yo might have even been a “patrol leader” of younger kids, crossing streets and everything getting to and from school. We had badges and these straps in bright orange or white to wear.
We are raising kids based on fear, as Hanna says, and I think it’s very much related to “kidaults” being unable to handle things that we did quite well on our own when WE were their age. My youngest is 15 so she has grown up in this fear culture-hearing about the things her siblings did when they were young amazes her. She’s never know that kind of freedom because none of her friends do either.
This mom is a “free-range” mom. I think I was somewhere in between and my kids did walk home from school a few times as did other kids but usually I picked them up and was in a panic when I didn’t know where they were. But, there were those times to be sure. And, getting calls from neighbors saying have you seen little Johnny this afternoon I can’t find him certainly happened. Nobody called the cops, thank goodness. I am happy they had that freedom and survived it. But, I do agree there are a lot of kid/adults running around out there these days and this could be at least part of the explanation.
My kids were totally free-range kids and would ride their bikes to the downtown area of our city (mostly along a lakeside path, never in traffic) by the time they were 10. My dad and his best friend used to get all-day passes to ride around London on theTube when they were 9. My own experience was somewhere in the middle based on where I lived as a child.
This is one of the most ridiculous things I have ever heard.
My kiddos are free range. (funny term) One of them even ranged across the pacific to europe last summer to stay with a strange family. Yet, I have a sister who is accompanying her 17 (yes, 17) year old daughter on a school choir trip to Ireland because she “doesn’t want her to go alone.” alone? She’ll be with her entire choir and school personel!
I must be a terrible mother. My youngest has been walking the mile back and forth to school since he was seven. By the time he was ten, he would often detour to a corner store or the library to get his homework out of the way. The rule is simple. If he’s going to be more than thirty minutes late, he needs to call me.
Just three days ago I woke up to a note on the kitchen table from my 18 year old who is home from college. It said, “Went to NYC. Love you.” He and a friend with a car were driving a few hours to the closest metro north station to take the train in. I’m assuming he is staying with a friend from college but I don’t know who. Yesterday morning I sent him a text to ask when he was leaving NYC. Last night he replied.
You have to teach your kids how to deal with the world, starting young. I vividly remember being in Penn Station with my youngest when he was six. We had missed our Amtrak home and I showed him how to change the ticket. Then, I showed him where on the ticket you could find the train number and pointed to the big sign where the track number would be announced. Then I said, “but if you don’t know, or can’t find the display to tell you the track you need to be at, look for someone with a uniform and ask.” Before I could finish the sentence, he had snatched the ticket from my hand and was walking over to the uniformed Amtrak employee, “excuse me, sir, could you tell me which track train number 354 will be departing from?”
So yeah, we live in a rural area where he can roam free and go to urban areas whenever we can. So I have to be clear that things that are safe in our little town may not be in the city. Youngest son had one little boy when he was 8 that I loved him playing with. Why? Because they would do all that Little Rascals lets go have an adventure crap. It was great. Problem solving skills, man.
There is one thing that I do try to make clear with my 12 year old’s friends’ parents. When he brings them home, I make sure to let the mother know that I allow my son to walk by himself throughout our town. If they do not want their child to do so, they need to let me know. So while I may not be a helicopter parent, some of his friends have them and i have no wish to undermine their mother hen ness. Because, face it, those are the kinds of parents who would call social services on me for sending an 8 yo to the corner store for milk.
My 15-year-old daughter spent five months studying in Spain last winter. Her host parents spoke NO English. She thrived!! She grew up so much. College will b a snap for her.