As far as the comment above, about a 10 year old not being in charge of a 6 year old at busy streets, that’s a call to make based on the actual kids. My kids, when they were 9 and 6, would have been perfectly okay at streets. My son listened to his sister when it was just the two of them, and she had a well developed sense of responsibility toward him.
Mine were pretty free-range after school and on weekends until junior high when everything they had an interest in doing began to require a ride somewhere, although one of them was pretty adventurous on a bicycle. He liked to ride up mountains where there was no cell service so I did get worried more than once when he failed to return at the expected time. Not long after getting a driver’s license he went camping by himself overnight and this was not a long time ago, either. Both of them were crossing guards in 5th grade. I think they were 9 years old. Completely agree, this is getting ridiculous.
I agree with this, when my oldest was 10, his sister was 7 and she knew he was in charge, and followed his directions.
@MaineLonghorn, that’s such a cute story. I don’t know why, because I wouldn’t want a child to be upset, but I guess it’s cute that you held yourself to such high standards that you just couldn’t accept making such an oopsie. 
I ride my bike everywhere. Once, someone saw me crossing the bridge to adjacent neighborhood and called my mother. My mom knew where I was going. I have no idea if she was embarrassed that she was too permissive.
This is the same mom who gave me permission to pick up friends to drive to a party. Unbeknown to me, she spoke to at least one parent about my driving. She followed me on my route and to the party. She didn’t tell me this for years.
Since the original comment was mine, I should say that I agree with you that it varies depending on the kids.
I’m 3 years older than my sister, and I was never put in charge of her because I was a shy, quiet child and she was a dynamo. Not only would she never have obeyed me, she could easily beat me up and did so on many occasions.
My son is 3 1/2 years older than his sister, but because he tended to be young for his age and she tended to be old for hers, they grew up more or less as peers. I would never have put him in charge of her. Putting her in charge of him would have made more sense, except that you can’t expect a child to obey a younger sibling!
When I was 10, my grandmother sent me to a neighborhood store to get two half-gallons of milk. On the way home, I was swinging the bottles back and forth, and they smacked into each other, which broke both of them and spewed the milk all over the ground. (Remember glass bottles?) I had to go back to my grandmother’s house and ask her for more money and make a second trip to the store. It took me a long time to live that one down.
Incidentally, I’m not particularly overprotective. When my daughter was 7, she asked for permission to stay home alone while I dropped off and picked up her brother at his piano lessons (a 15 minute absence each time) because she didn’t want to miss part of a TV show she habitually watched at that time of day. This was before our family had cell phones, so she had no way to reach me while I was gone. I allowed it, with the restrictions that she couldn’t go outside and couldn’t answer the door. Fortunately, we didn’t live in Maryland at the time, although we moved there a year later. In Maryland, I could have been arrested for leaving a 7-year-old unattended even for a few minutes.
Key point is the agency is required to investigate all complaints. The police are required to do this too. The same would be true if a complaint were made to a teacher or social worker because they are legally mandated reporters.
There is hysteria over stranger abduction. And part of the blame falls on groups who intentionally conflate family abduction with stranger abduction. Statistics are pretty shaky and the numbers used seem to be high but even the high estimates are maybe 100 kids a year in the entire nation abducted, with maybe half of that seriously harmed. I’ve seen FBI estimates as low as 40-45 a year true stranger abductions.
I let my then six year old first grader ride his bike to school a mile and we have no sidewalks. He didn’t even have an older sibling to ride with him. He was also allowed to ride to our village center with friends to get candy at the little market (there are sidewalks there.)
I feel sorry for children today.
I walked about a mile to elementary school, home for lunch & back when I was five! I walked with my sister, who was two years older and along the way other kids would join us. They had these people called “crossing guards” when we got to a busy intersection.
My sister was “in charge” after my mom went back to work when I was 7 and she was 9. There were a few incidents were we got mad at each other and did some stupid things, such as the time I locked her out of the house and she started kicking the front door, her foot slipped and went through the glass window next to the door. Lots of blood and lots of stitches needed. And because my mom was working and wasn’t home to give us lunch (and there was no cafeteria’s then) we got to go down the street from school to the little shopping center where there was a luncheonette and eat. It was a very cool thing for a 7 yr. old.
It’s stories like this that make me not want to be a parent.
Not because I don’t want kids, but because I don’t think I’d think twice about letting my kids walk anywhere and now I’m risking JAIL?!
I do live in maryland, and I had cps called on me. I thought they were going to take my son. I had a house that sit further back than the other little tract homes. I could sit on my front porch and watch my son, 3 at the time, riding his tricycle on the sidewalk around the cul de sac. I had just had a baby so I’d push her on the swing on the front porch while he peddled or ran around the little loop, would see me across the street, scream and laugh and run or peddle back. Apparently the Gladys Kravitz who called couldn’t be bothered to see what was going on.
When CPS came he asked if there was neighborhood rules against playing outside. As soon as he stood on my front porch he noticed you couldn’t see my porch from the other houses down one way. The case was dropped, but it impacted me really badly for a long time. People who call on others should bear some kind of responsibility if it’s a bogus or mean spirited call.
@nrdsb4, do you know me in real life?? 
“Both of them were crossing guards in 5th grade. I think they were 9 years old.”
Yes, we had 4th and 5th grade crossing guards in my (urban) neighborhood. I’m not even 40 yet.
Agencies that are required to investigate can take 10 minutes to determine that there’s nothing going on and drop the matter. In fact, they must do that in order to reserve resources to deal with major problems.
I have seen some parents resist learning opportunities for their kids. For example, I might suggest that the student use public transportation to get somewhere, and the parent says no: “She’s never done that; she wouldn’t know what to do.” Fair enough, but she’s 16; wouldn’t this be a great time for us to teach her?
man, my parents would have been given life sentences in a maximum-security prison based on how little supervision we had growing up…
it was awesome, btw.
When I was 16, my parents let me take a Trailways bus from NYC to Baltimore to go to a wargaming convention at the Johns Hopkins campus, taking the public bus in Baltimore from the bus station. They didn’t think anything of it. I can’t imagine what people would say about that today.
My parents let me fly to NYC when I was 15 to stay with a friend for two weeks. She and I rode the subways and wandered all over NYC. ALONE.
I was also a free range kid – mom threw the five of us out the door at 9:30 am, we could come home for lunch, and then had to come home for dinner when dad whistled. As I got older, I rode my bike everywhere without supervision (and often without telling anyone where I was going).
I live in said county and I am horrified at what happened to this family. S2 walked home alone from school starting in 3rd grade. It was three blocks and there was about 150 feet where the traffic guard couldn’t see him and he couldn’t see our house. I sent them out to use public transit solo the summer between 8th and 9th grade because they would need to know how to use it since they weren’t attending our neighborhood HS. (They had been on it with us many times already.) There are elem kids in our neighborhood who walk home, and if I’m outside at the time, I say hello so they recognize me as a friendly face if they ever need help in an emergency.
We live in a small town (though at a busy corner). I admit it took me awhile to let my kids cross the busy street without a parent or their older brother watching them. My younger 2 are now 11 and 14, both in middle school, and they starting walking to school this year with another boy. They absolutely love it! I like it because I know they are getting at least a little exercise every day.
They were tardy one day due to a mid-walk snowball fight.
Today they had their monthly breakfast before school at a local bakery (they like the egg sandwiches). Just the three boys–they sit down, place their orders, divide up the bill and leave a nice tip. They get up early to have the extra time and make sure they leave the cafe in time for class. They like feeling “grown up”. The owner was shocked the first time they did this but now she gives them free cookies to go.
Is this a regional or geographic thing? I ask because I have lived in a the same suburban neighborhood for 26 years – we moved in when my daughter was a baby-- so I raised two kids here, and now am seeing the second generation growing up. One of my neighbors grew up here --he’s probably in his mid-40s and is raising 3 kids, now teenagers. My kids had free range all over the neighborhood-- though we are in a clearly defined tract with clear natural boundaries-- so it was easy for me as a parent to give my kids age-appropriate limits. When my grandson, age 4, was visiting - I allowed him to play outside in my front yard alone-- I just told him he had to stay in the yard. When my daughter was the same age she was allowed to roam freely up and down the block to each corner, as long as she didn’t cross the street. I’m out every day walking my dogs, I see the neighborhood kids playing outdoors, no parents in sight. The kids ride their bikes & skateboards, and play ball in the streets, etc. But the main point is that I haven’t seen much of a generational change around here.
When my son was preschool age we lived in the city and did not allow him to play outside alone – there weren’t other kids around, there were sidewalks but the house fronts were very close to the street with no yards, so no where really to play. So there certainly was a difference between urban/suburban culture and expectations. Part of the reason my kids enjoyed such freedom - which carries onto another generation – is a certain level of neighborhood stability and expectations. We all kind of know which kid & which dog “belongs” to which house, even if we aren’t on a first name basis with all the neighbors. Most of the parents (including me) would leave our doors unlocked because the kids were always running in and out to their friend’s houses.
I’d add that my kids are 5 years apart and my son was often “in charge” of his sister when he was 10 and she was 5 -though she was far more independent and outgoing than her older sibling. More typically, he would be alone in her bedroom and she would be out all over the neighborhood. I wouldn’t know for certain where she was-- I certainly didn’t require her to tell me-- but I knew where the other children she played with lived, and had a pretty good sense of where I could find her. At any given time period, there would only be two or three neighborhood kids that she played regularly with.
For a first time incident of this kind, the overreaction by CPS, especially Interviewing the kids without notifying the parents, was awful. As the article states, while a child under 8 may not be left with anyone under 13 or unsupervised inside a building or vehicle, there’s currently no law that applies to playing outdoors.
But if you are asking me if I think these parents were responsible in this day and age, I’m sorry, but I don’t. Outright abductions are far from the only bad thing that can happen to a child. There are currently 400,000 registered sex offenders in the US, not to mention the ones who have never been caught. Among them are older children and teens. Many of their victims never say a word to parents or any authorities. That’s not even taking into account the physical dangers of crossing streets, doing something stupid and dangerous on the equipment, etc.
Do you think there were less sexual offenders in the past, just because they were not “registered”? Why do people persist in this fantasy?
I don’t think there’s any reason to believe there were fewer sexual offenders in decades past.