Comments on: Letting kids, 10 and 6, walk home from the park

By: Hugo S. Cunningham

Hugo S. Cunningham — Sat, 17 Jan 2015 13:31:15 +0000

My respect for the Obama administration would go up immensely if Michelle Obama, as part of her campaign against childhood obesity, would take up the cudgel on behalf of free-range parenting. (In addition, helicopter parenting may well be behind recent survey results showing an unprecedented drop in interest in entrepreneurship among our newest generation of adults.) As an alternative, could lawyers for free-range parents persuade the US Supreme Court to issue another parental-rights ruling like Wisconsin v. Yoder? (In Yoder, the USSC exempted Amish parents from high-school truancy laws partly on the grounds that they had proven they could raise their children to be productive and happy adults.)

By: MattS

MattS — Sat, 17 Jan 2015 00:04:15 +0000

“Almost as shocking, from a 2014 point of view, my mother freely left me in the back seat of the car when she went in to shop.”

And you survived? You must be the luckiest person alive.

By: Walter Olson

Walter Olson — Fri, 16 Jan 2015 23:35:13 +0000

Growing up in a different era, I was sent by myself each day to walk about a half mile to school in the city of Detroit along a known route by the time I was about 6, and by age 9 or 10 I was walking independently around downtown Detroit at will. Almost as shocking, from a 2014 point of view, my mother freely left me in the back seat of the car when she went in to shop.

By: No Name Guy

No Name Guy — Fri, 16 Jan 2015 23:28:03 +0000

Oh…..and we also walked to school about the same distance (but the other direction) and that was as a first and 2nd grader – what’s that, 7 or 8 years old?

By: No Name Guy

No Name Guy — Fri, 16 Jan 2015 23:26:36 +0000

Hmmm…..I just checked the distance using Google Maps. My brother, friends and I would walk or ride our Huffy bikes ~0.8 miles, each way, to the gas station that also sold candy bars (it seemed a lot further than that back in the day). This was in the 70’s. We were about 7 to 11 years old. I’d occasionally go solo. This was in suburban Seattle. There is nothing wrong with kids traveling this far on foot or bike alone.

By: David Smith

David Smith — Fri, 16 Jan 2015 23:09:49 +0000

Yeah, but the backcountry of BC, even at minus 70, is safer than the streets of America.

How do I know? I asked a liberal.

By: Bill Poser

Bill Poser — Fri, 16 Jan 2015 20:42:27 +0000

An Indian man I know here in northern British Columbia was sent out to spend the entire winter alone trapping at the age of 12. His father would leave a little package of sugar, tea, and flour for once a month, but otherwise he was on his own.

By: DEM

DEM — Fri, 16 Jan 2015 17:52:37 +0000

Sounds like a mass demonstration of civil disobedience is needed here. I can see it now, thousands of kids walking to and fro with no supervision.

By: Silver Spring family faces off against CPS — over letting kids walk outside | Free State Notes

Fri, 16 Jan 2015 14:15:45 +0000

[…] The Meitiv family of Silver Spring is now under Child Protective Services scrutiny for permitting their children to walk the neighborhood alone a little too freely. Lenore Skenazy of Free-Range Kids has been on the story for a while, and now the Washington Post and columnist Petula Dvorak are covering it too (related). More: Beth Greenfield, Yahoo Parenting (cross-posted at Overlawyered). […]