Mom gets 6-month suspended sentence for letting 5-year-old walk to the pond

I think international readers see these headlines and assume the entire US is like this, but the reason the story is a headline is because it’s a dumb sentence. This is going to get appealed.

The US is a big country. The state this happened in has a similar population to the entire country of Switzerland. Laws and cultural norms vary across the country, but this story is unusual even for the location it happened in. That’s why it’s a news story.

In our neighborhood it's very common to see kids (including mine!) outside doing things by themselves. We bike with our oldest son to school (he's 7), but plenty of other parents let their kids bike to school on their own. I think it helps that we live in a city with good pedestrian infrastructure and lots of green spaces. The whole city is better for it and I wish more US cities would do the same. My sister's neighborhood in a different state feels like a very fancy prison, nice homes, but you can't even go to a park without getting in a car.

I can't imagine living somewhere where that was prohibited.

It depends of the town/location and region. In our town, police had to be involved several times due to different issues with creeps targeting 12yo or less.

Edit:And I forgot, as it's Switzerland, police moved only because parents were accompanying their kids and almost done justice by themselves. Protecting creeps is a national sport here too.

I also pulled one of my sons twice from the same pond around that age, so I would not necessarily be super comfortable trusting them around those attractive nuisances, even though I’m on board with the “let them walk to school” policy. It’s a difficult balancing act.

In Japan they call it a Katamari.

What's the rationale for the parent being punished? I would understand the government employing programs to encourage parents to develop their child's autonomy, but forcing them under threat of punishment? What if there are particular circumstances, like medical conditions, or they keep seeing something sus along the way one week? How to go about things with a minor should ultimately be by the parent's judgment, since they're the most informed on their circumstances.

That's what I did when I was in first grade. Suburban US, late 70s. Lived at the end of a cul-de-sac. Met with the other kid who lived at the end of the cul-de-sac, walked to the house of a kid who lived at the other end of the street. Then the three of us got on the sidewalk of the main road and walked to the school.

Can't help but think that this is just swinging things in the opposite direction.

I had so much fun going there and going back on foot.

So much that when I was a teenager and my mother drove by my school one day and decided to pick me up, I was super unhappy, because I wanted to walk the 20 or so minutes with my friends to the bus.

When I had 9 hour school, I would need to wait 50 Minutes for a bus... or I walked the 5 kilometers home.

I always choose to walk, even when it rained, because I was faster and I loved it!

I am curious how it will be with my daughter, once she goes to school.

Because today this is totally frowned upon. But I will not play taxi for her all the time. Occasionally, sure. But CERTAINLY not every day.

There is likely too much crime in urban areas for children to walk freely, and it could be dangerous to even try to walk in areas that barely have walkable streets.

Europe can let this happen since their city planning is much better for people who either walk or bike to different areas. Some, like in Switzerland, even have extremely low crime rates as well. Still, a sentencing seems rough for letting a kid walk, in a probably safe area.

When I read the headline, I sided with the mother. But a five-year old having to cross four roads in total to and from (with vehicles going up 25 mph legally, and who knows how fast illegally) is a bit much.

That seems excessive.

Huh? So if they live 10 miles away they must walk 10 miles? Surely not, but then how does it work?

As society has weeded out all the things to fear over time, more and more far flung things get put into the bank, and more and more fear is allocated to the dwindling amount of things to be scared of.

If it's not the alligators, it's the careless older kids in e-scooters or e-bikes, if you're rolling your eyes, just note that one of those careless kids drove into my neighbors four year old, who went flying back because some kid was not paying attention, he was also by chance wearing a helmet because he wanted to ride his bike so he did not hurt his head, but he definitely had a bruise on his lower back.

Do I think there needs to be laws around this? No, though, should a child suffer because they have negligent parents? Also no. It hurts me more to think that having these laws is the only way to get some people to pay attention as parents.

The part that really gets to me is that the neighbor was so "concerned" about the child's safety that they called the police, but for some reason, in their urgent concern, they didn't take the simple step of approaching and talking to the child to see where they were going or if a parent knew where they were.

The criminal definition apparently has no such modification.

E: removed a double ‘likely’

And in particular, the conviction here was delinquency of a minor. That's usually used to convict parents of teenagers whose kids do serious crimes.

I caveat to say, we don't know the full details. But it all seems pretty weak sauce.

Simple. Evolutionarily, the dumber you are, the higher the risks of dying, because you do stupid shit. Inversely, the safer the environment, the dumber people become, because not doing stupid shit stops being evolutionarily advantageous. Nature is pretty brutal so there is evolutionary pressure not to be dumb, but in modern civilization we have pretty much infinite resources dedicated to safety, which means there is a feedback loop "people are dumber -> more safety measures -> people are dumber -> more safety measures".

When you go to poor countries you'll realize just how much knowledge children posses on the topic on how not to die.

https://oregon.public.law/statutes/ors_163.545#google_vignet...

>A person having custody or control of a child under 10 years of age commits the crime of child neglect in the second degree if, with criminal negligence, the person leaves the child unattended in or at any place for such period of time as may be likely to endanger the health or welfare of such child.

That said, there may be details we don't know here. This particular article is written from one bent, and the officials didn't comment on the case as is common in child-related prosecutions.

in germany on the other hand, there was a case where parents demanded a school bus for a 7yr old, but the court said the kids could take the public train to school on their own.

I would say if you're in a neighborhood where there's just like 1-2 kids, it may not be that typical. The kids parents might do more scheduled playdates.

Unfortunately in the US there are people that get annoyed about kids playing. And they are also the same kind of person that escalates things to the authorities / complains a lot about trivial things.

There's a Netflix documentary about one such sad case https://www.netflix.com/title/82018736

they are probably right and I can certainly bet my money there are way way more cars in small EU country than there were 30 years ago (assuming you had her at least at 30, if later, then the difference will be even starker)

my kids school is ~1.1km walk, son is walking to/from school by himself maybe from 3rd grade (8.5yo) with classmate(s), I still walk my 4th grade (8yo) daugher to school in the morning (unreliable/inconsistent slow classmate living nearby), at least I get some exercise working from home (if I didnt have time to walk them and help them with backpacks I would probably let them go by themselves earlier)

the main reason I still walk her is crossing the road, because I consider Prague roads dangerous even for adult pedestrian, let alone for kid, too many crazies driving here cars

other big reason is heavy backpack when they have to lug tons of books/workbooks

on the way back they go home either with classmates or together already for years, used to pick them up only in 1st and maybe 2nd grade

Have you seen this personally? Or are you repeating it blindly? Or do you not understand the difference between NGRI and innocent?

This particular situation seems ridiculous. I’d be furious if I lived there.

This is your opinion. Presenting it as fact creates more problems.

5 year old kid who has been properly trained walking alone--I have no problem with that. My mother was blind, I was taught safe street crossing from an early age. I do not recall when I was crossing residential streets unsupervised, I do recall I was crossing major streets (at traffic lights) alone at 7. I'd take the bus to go visit grandma--no escort on either end.

But 5 year old unsupervised at a pond is another matter. Unless they have plenty of swimming experience that disturbs me.

They charged the mom with delinquency of a minor to get around this. Usually reserved for teenagers that commit crimes.

We don't really know all the facts, and we only get one side of the story here. So we all need to keep that in mind too.

a happy consumer consumes less than an anxious one :(

I'm a parent of three and strongly believe in letting your kids roam around (indeed, I live on acreage and taught my kids about the venomous snakes and spiders in our area, and then let er rip). But a 5yo who specifically asks to go back to a large body of water unsupervised is a bit too much for me.

Reason always strikes me as an opinionated libertarian media outlet, and this article really feels that way to me, where they keep playing up the "walking on the street" type stuff, the "we're too afraid of kidnappings" part, but not the fact that a 5yo unsupervised at a pond is by far the most dangerous part of this entire story.

Even as a kid of the 80s, I never saw 5yos out and about unsupervised, let alone by a pond. 5yo is possibly preschool.

Religious conservative, likely politically so, whose college degree was in family science at BYU—a degree Mormons steer their daughter into for her Mrs Degree—with experience in conservative politics at the state level who is responsible for passing a law giving parents a lot of freedom to let their little kids run around by basically saying "unless they're in immediate danger, YOLO"? So of course a reasonable judicial system tried to find a way to stop this wild behavior perpetrated by a woman with self-dealing political sway.

Article does not pass the vibe check. Letting your PRESCHOOL age kid go to a pond alone is pretty damn irresponsible, and Reason is trying to gin up anti-gov't feelings when this is probably the best possible outcome. Mom gets slapped on the wrist for fucking up in a way that just barely skirts a law she helped get passed and politicians were too stupid to think about before passing.

It's literally a parallel world.

Research the massively destructive bird feather trade in the 19th century if you want context for why the law is that broad.

I have a 7 year old and a 4 year old. The 7 year old started back at school after the summer holidays and some of her friends had to be taken into class early, showed signs of having anxiety attacks and distress. While I'm slightly hypocritical here, we live on a busy road so it's not really suitable for them to go wandering alone, we do try to give them as much autonomy as we can.

I'm pretty sure the societal pressure to helicopter around children constantly is a net negative to their well-being.

I think this is probably the reason why these cases come up

people age and then they think that a 10 year old is a toddler, and then they enforce that belief upon them