Here in Switzerland children start walking to school at around 5-years. Parents aren't allowed to bring them to school. If a parent escorts their children to school they'll be told not to. If they keep doing it they'll get a letter from the school and probably a police visit. And if they continue (I never heard of it getting to this stage) they may be fined.
It's funny in the morning. One child walks to another child's home then they walk to another child's home and so on until you have a big group of kids walking to school together. In Austria they call it something like a children train.
Twice a year you see the children practicing crossing streets. The police are out at the intersections and show the children how to do it. It's very cute. Also how to ride bicycles properly.
Young children also walk to the elementary schools near me. When I’m at the park with my kids, it’s common to see other very young kids show up alone on their bikes or on foot to play in the park. This is in the US.
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.
Our neighborhood in the northeast US does the same (minus the hard prohibition against parents going with them). Our 5 and 9 year old walk to school daily, usually picking up the neighbors' kids (6, 6, 10, 9, 7, 7) along the way. If we happen to be free sometimes an adult will walk with them, sometimes we start walking with them and then stop for coffee with a neighbor while the kids continue on, sometimes they go by themselves.
I can't imagine living somewhere where that was prohibited.
I live in Colorado, we have a "free-range" law that protects parents allowing their children to play outside unattended. It's a bit sad that such a law needs to exist, but I'm glad we have it here.
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.
> If they keep doing it they'll get a letter from the school and probably a police visit.
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.
Yes, I’m Swiss and walked to school starting around 5. I was hit by a car (due to bad judgment on my part) on the way back from school at 6, though, so it’s not all roses.
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.
That's lovely. Also all the heartwarming ways things work in Japan where kids get a lot of autonomy and live their own little lives on the way to school, among other things.
>> It's funny in the morning. One child walks to another child's home then they walk to another child's home and so on until you have a big group of kids walking to school together. In Austria they call it something like a children train.
Pedibus. So civilized. People in California don't believe half the things I tell them about life in Switzerland, such as "if you try to drive your kid to school the cops will chastise you" and "if you drive 40 in a school zone you'll automatically get a year in jail" and, of course, "gas is nine bucks".
> If a parent escorts their children to school they'll be told not to. If they keep doing it they'll get a letter from the school and probably a police visit. And if they continue (I never heard of it getting to this stage) they may be fined.
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.
> One child walks to another child's home then they walk to another child's home and so on until you have a big group of kids walking to school together.
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.
> Parents aren't allowed to bring them to school. If a parent escorts their children to school they'll be told not to. If they keep doing it they'll get a letter from the school and probably a police visit. And if they continue (I never heard of it getting to this stage) they may be fined.
Can't help but think that this is just swinging things in the opposite direction.
When I was a kid, about 3 decades ago, walking to school was a blast.
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.
Parents and Adults in America are often afraid. Sometimes rightfully so, sometimes not.
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.
It's a high trust homogenous society without lots of different groups with all kinds of grievances about the past, present and the future. And it's probably rural, where everyone knows each other.
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.
The government should not tell people either way whether the parents have to escort or not. This story is horrifying to me as a parent who may want the choice of whether to go with my child or not.
This is one of those frustrating things. You're just not allowed to not be scared with kids. If you aren't scared of letting your kid walk to a pond, you get punished for it. If you're not scared of the kidnappers, you have to be scared of the police. None of it is rational, it's different how many of us were raised, yet if you try to opt out the law gets involved.
I swear human brains are programmed to have a "fear bank" of things to be scared of, and an allocation of fear that must be spent on items in the fear bank.
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.
I'm sympathetic with this sentiment but surely it's pretty rare the law actually gets involved? Our kids play outside a lot and no cops have ever raised an eyebrow (except for at our crazy drunk of a neighbor, where eyebrow raising is appropriate).
Here in Florida there's no just letting my 4 year old wander to a nearby lake, it might be the last time I ever see her. There's an assumption that alligators are in every lake, and next to my house I have two lakes visible the moment I come out of my front door.
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.
How does this happen? There’s no silver lining which makes this conviction reasonable. If they can’t appeal, I hope they use Streisand to get the town or state of Virginia to vacate everything.
It happened because a neighbor was so disturbed by a child walking alone to report it, the police thought it was serious enough to refer for prosecution, and a prosecutor decided it needed to be charged using their office's limited resources. All insane.
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.
They charged her criminally instead of civilly, because in 2023 VA passed a 'free-range parenting' amendment to allow for actions that appropriate for the child's maturity and are not done in a grossly negligent manner that endangers the child. This is likely why the defense asked for comments from others on the child's maturity.
The criminal definition apparently has no such modification.
I'm not sure if this just bias from news stories but in general it feels like absurd things which would be avoided with just common sense from authorities tend to happen in the US.
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.
Old Enough! is a Japanese reality show that has been aired irregularly since 1991 on Nippon Television. The program depicts, in a documentary manner, the efforts of toddlers going on an errand on their own, buying groceries and delivering packages, accompanied by the camera crew.
> No child whose parent or other person responsible for his care allows the child to engage in independent activities without adult supervision shall for that reason alone be considered to be an abused or neglected child, provided that (a) such independent activities are appropriate based on the child's age, maturity, and physical and mental abilities and (b) such lack of supervision does not constitute conduct that is so grossly negligent as to endanger the health or safety of the child. Such independent activities include traveling to or from school or nearby locations by bicycle or on foot, playing outdoors, or remaining at home for a reasonable period of time.
I would think that in order to justify a conviction, prosecutors would have had to overcome the above by showing evidence that this particular child is INCAPABLE of safely walking to a nearby location within his neighborhood, or that the child ACTUALLY DID put himself in danger, i.e. by entering the pond.
Something tells me that evidence does not exist, and the judge ruled based on something other than a correct reading of the law.
>CPS responded, he recounts, that "a 5-year-old child can never be unsupervised."
I would immediately move from that neighborhood and that city, if they do not have roots with neighbors or kids' friends. These are people who see her as a bad parent for letting their child outside the house.
>The James City County family services specialist assigned to Parkinson's case declined to comment, citing confidentiality requirements. The prosecutor in the Commonwealth Attorney's Office for James City County said the same.
So the state doesn't have to answer to the public about why they interpret their laws to mean a 5 year old can never be alone. Show me the statute where there is an age cutoff.
Feels like these people made enemies, except that too many separate groups came down on her at once. What awful people.
>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.
I feel even if CPS or cops got involved, they can just take the kid home, no need to escalate things to charging the mom.
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.
CPS type agencies all around the world wield immense power and are staffed by power hungry narcissists who get off on threatening to take parents' kids and coming up with demands they must follow
depends. my kids school in china didn't allow me to let my kids bike to school without supervision. (well, actually, they couldn't stop me from sending them to school alone, but they would not let them out unless i was there to pick them up. (there was only one crossing on the route, and that was close to the school and didn't have a lot of traffic)
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.
In the US, if you are in a residential neighborhood with a lot of kids, its also fairly typical for them to be out finding their playmates.
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.
Well, I actually live in Gurgaon, India. It is very modern, and it's pretty much the same. Everyone lives in these gated complexes with a tiny militia guarding them from no real threat. Children are driven around everywhere and are always accompanied by a nanny or grandparents inside the gated complex.
I started walking to school alone once I started 1st grade (at around age 7) and did it for about 5 years until my parents moved our family to a place outside of town where it was impractical to do so. I just checked Google Maps to be sure and it is about a 1.2Km / 0.75 miles, so a short walk for either an adult or a 7-year old.
A few months ago I had a heated argument with my father, stepmother and wife because I (half-joking/serious) told my almost 8-year daugher that next year we will start practicing her going to school by herself. You would not believe the stink all of them raised telling me I was irresponsible, yadda, yadda, what about child molesters/ kidnappers, yadda, yadda, too many cars and the usual non-sense you usually hear about this.
Again I went and checked on Google Maps just to be precise and the walk between our house and my daughters school is... 500 meters / 0.31 miles.
In a single generation we went from "your starting school for the first time? time to fend for yourself, you will do fine" to "you are a snowflake that needs to be protected at all times and must not be allowed to alone in any circunstances".
PS: To give more context, I don't live in the US but in a small EU country with a low crime rate, on a town that indeed is busy but very safe.
On top of this is a pregnant mother of 5.
With all the decrease in fertility, maybe the woman that managed to make their children independent enough to allow them to have 4 siblings should be given a freaking medal.
It blows my mind that a bunch of adults, prosecutors, CPS employees, etc all decided the fair, reasonable and best thing to do was prosecute and punish this mother.
Sounds like there is very little crime happening in their precious gated community that they've got to trump up everything they can to justify the budget wasted on them
What seems odd to me whenever this debate comes up is the failure to differentiate between:
- the child must never be unsupervised
- I/we think the child should never be unsupervised
We have less and less space between an opinion or recommendation and legal requirement. On a wide range of subjects people go straight to “require”, unwilling to simply express their opinion and move on.
People should watch the Netflix version of Old Enough! - it is a Japanese show where young (!) children 3-5 year old walk around the neighborhood doing chores. The one scene I recall was where a child was supposed to carry a fish to the butcher and was being followed by hungry cats.
I'm of the generation where one of my responsibilities as a kid was walking to the neighborhood liquor store to buy cigarettes for my dad, so I'm empathetic. But if she was found guilty by a jury, I'm guessing there's more to the story.
American here, it seems to vary by location. I walked to school as a grade school student (Midwest) and where I live now (Orange county, California) I regularly see swarms of kids biking to school.
This particular situation seems ridiculous. I’d be furious if I lived there.
I walked myself to and from kindergarten every day. Approximately the same age, same distance, and it went through a park with water. That was normal.
The extreme neuroticism toward children having any kind of agency these days is unhealthy for everyone involved. Social media turned being neurotic into a virtue.
I think the logic behind most of this trash is law enforcement gradually ridding themselves of all responsibility or accountability. They don’t handle theft or burglary anymore, they dismiss stalking or harassment even when people end up in danger, they stand by afraid in school shootings, they take reports of whatever happens and then do nothing about them. Every crime is either too big or too small for them. Kidnapping is a serious sensational crime that would make the news, and they’ve learned they don’t have to deal with that either if they just force children to be indoors or supervised all day.
>> A mom of five was convicted last week of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Her offense: allowing her 5-year-old son to walk about a half-mile by himself in their gated community.
Surely allowing your children to roam freely would be a major benefit of a gated community?
This happened in my neighborhood, and I've met the "perpetrator." She's a sweet person, and I'm convinced she was absolutely acting in the best interests of her child as she saw it. Kids as young as elementary school age in our neighborhood frequently go to the various ponds for fishing, watching the wildlife or even sailing remote control boats. Five years old without a buddy might be on the younger end, but it's hardly criminally negligent. And given the several close calls I've had with elementary & middle school-aged kids on e-bikes and scooters this summer, I hardly think this is even close to the most serious youth safety problem here.
That sounds awful. This kind of case doesn't seem like something you should let a single person decide on their own, judge or not. Is she not entitled to a jury trial because it's a misdemeanor or something? If she can find the funds/support somehow it totally seems worth appealing all the way to the supreme court.
Yeah, it's not really clear from the article. Wild that you can get on some list of abusers without a jury trial. Maybe she waived her rights? Can that even happen?
You can waive your right to a jury trial, and it's sometimes a good idea in cases where either A) you're definitely guilty, and the trial is mostly going to be about sentencing or B) your defense is more complicated than "I didn't do the thing", because jurors are not good at making decisions based on complexities of the law.
Additionally, you don't have the right to a jury trial for minor offenses that carry a maximum sentence of less than 6 months in prison. Contributing to the delinquency of a minor in Virginia carries a maximum 12 months, but to my understanding it is possible for the prosecution to waive any greater sentencing in order to avoid a jury trial.
> Parkinson admits now that she is embarrassed by her confrontational demeanor.
Which was the real crime. To be fair, many places outside the US not respecting the police is a illegal -- but genuinely not enough that an office would be justified in as much as indicating that the officer is armed (which usually counts as use of force).
I'd take this story with a grain of salt. Judges aren't heartless automatons. There's another side of the story that Ms. Parkinson hasn't told the ever-gullible Reason, and Ms. Parkinson herself is a known agitator: https://thefederalist.com/2025/08/01/immigration-crackdown-p...
Look up her law firm, Holtzman Vogel. It's infamous.
Maybe right-wing agitators should make a point of trying to get Judge Brian J. Smalls of the 9th Judicial District Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court of Virginia under formal legal scrutiny for abusing his authority as a judge and imposing punitive sentences on people who work for law firms that have an immigration restrictionis political stance. Certainly if he imposed a prison sentence, even a suspended one, because he didn't like what Parkinson said about US immigration policy, then he should not serve as a judge and possibly should go to prison himself over it.
Where is there any evidence he did that? My point was that the one side of the story presented by Reason came from a clearly unreliable and outrage-seeking source and that judges are not inclined to throw the book at pregnant mothers under the circumstances claimed, more so if the defendant is herself a lawyer who would know how to argue her case effectively. Hence, the recommended grain of salt.
That's what happens when there are few children and many adults all with strong opinions on how the few children should be raised. Back in my days (millennials) there was abundance of children and they knew that adults are a danger to be avoided.
I am struck by the fact that arguments for or against within this thread are only about perceived safety (something hard to know at a distance) and not the substance of the law involved. Does Virginia actually have laws prohibiting unsupervised 5 year olds? If so what is the minimum age at which children are allowed outside unsupervised? Does it also apply to leaving children at home unsupervised? The charge of “contributing to the delinquency of a minor” would suggest the minor’s behavior had to be illegal, which does not appear to have been discussed.
While I agree with the overall sentiment in this thread, it should be clear that any body of water is highly dangerous for kids until they can swim. It is not disclosed in TFA if the kid was able to swim, but the average 5 year old in the USA is not.
"I told [the authorities] that kids need to be able to take reasonable risks," he says, "in order to grow up non-anxious
Who would have thought that the actual anxious inducing situation came from trusted authorities, although well intentioned, causing harm to their community.
In the US a kid cannot walk half a mile on their own inside a gated community patrolled by security guards? This sounds more dystopian than all the AI talk.
"I told [the authorities] that kids need to be able to take reasonable risks," he says, "in order to grow up non-anxious."
"Gated community" tells you everything you need to know. If you want to live amongst busybody, nosy, fearful and controlling people, move to a gated community.
The article really glosses over the fact that the kid was 5yo walking to a pond. It mentions it at the very start and then never brings it up again. That's the part that got me: the mom gave her 5yo permission to go to a large body of water unsupervised.
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.
Myself and my siblings all lived on a fairly large rural farm with 2 large bodies of water that we always hung around unsupervised from about 4 y/o onwards. We loved catching bullfrogs and watching the fishes and stuff. Our mom gave us very strict/scary warnings about never going in and being careful, but other than that we were pretty free thankfully. 5 y/o with a good warning seems totally fine.
That depends? My first swimming lessons were in Kindergarten when I was 4-5. We were visiting public baths "unsupervised" (they still had lifeguards of course) by the time I was 8.
Assuming the kid wasn't even planning to enter the water, I see no inherent problem here. We seem to be operating on the assumption that unsupervised children will immediately succumb to sudden and irrational urges to kill themselves in creative ways.
I understand ponds can be dangerous, and every year kids drown in various bodies of water, but you're probably more likely to get hurt by a vehicle crossing the road... so should the limit be "the road". Can the destination change the verdict?
my dad and mom grew up in Peru and they tell me that at that age they were basically outside all day, getting lost in the woods, taking buses to the soccer stadium, etc etc. IDK - my son is about to turn 5 and we do helicopter him a bit, ... there needs to be a healthy balance.
Honestly by modern “standards” all parents from probably the 90s and earlier would be just be thrown in jail.
Pre cell phones kids of all ages would just disappear for the whole day and show up back home for dinner. Nobody knew where they were. Nobody cared. Could be in the woods somewhere, off at the mall. And it was fine. Kids built bike ramps in the woods and jumped off them, sometimes someone broke an arm. Nobody sued.
I guess they're trying to overcompensate for years of brutal child slavery with kids working in textile mills, tobacco processing, agriculture, mines, and factories.
Honestly it depends on the situation and saddly the common sense of everyone.
I grew up in the 70s and 80s, and in the neighboring town a child went missing.
Pre internet there was still a lot of worry. We got talked to by my parents who were too busy to change their day to day. Being kids we weren't very concerned (I don't think we thought it could happen to us)
It was a rural/suburban type area (my high-school walk home from the bus was 1 mile). I was given free range, and did a lot of exploring of trails and things unsupervised with my brother and friends. It was probably too far in the other direction with lax supervision. We never ran into big trouble, but cellphoneless us last century, we had to be hard to track. But that was the way things were. Playground games were rough too (I had a dislocated elbow that says maybe too rough sometimes..) but we got through.
There are two ways to interact with authority: being respectful and acknowledging it or being an idiot.
This Mom had multiple chances to avoid this escalation: "Yes, thank you for bringing it to my attention. No, will not do it again." - Instead she decided to go full Karen(TM) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_(slang)) and went insane on the security, police, and child protection service.
You can argue that she had every right to be an idiot; but play stupid games, win stupid prices.
American society has become paranoid, and as a parent I find this extremely disheartening. It was refreshing when a family from Europe moved in down the street and their kids would come over by themselves and knock on the door to see if our kids could go out and play. Very few American families do that (gotta set up a whole play date in advance, drive over even if it's a few blocks -- which all seems way over the top until you read about something like this and don't want to risk get accused of neglect by some stupid neighbor who sees your kid walking the neighborhood and decides to call the police.
I blame the media, mostly, for the fear / paranoia that seems to have captured us in the past decades. Sure, media was always sensational, but it was local. Now stuff travels through social media and the internet and so you might be in Maine but hear about every weird thing that happens in Florida or Arizona.
"they" like to gaslight us that cities are safer than ever. That it's social media scaring us into thinking our cities are less safe.
But in actually safe countries (Japan, Switzerland, Singapore) kids are already taking themselves to school around 5 years old and parents aren't getting criminal records for letting their children explore their independence.
Your reasoning makes no sense. Laws are not indicative of how dangerous being outside is, the only indicator is getting into danger. The child did not get into any danger. The point you oppose still works - "they" made you (Americans) terrified of cities/other people/the idea of children leaving your house, so you all start passing helicopter parenting laws.
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.
Parenting "pros" don't break the law. If everyone did this we'd have similar number of drownings and vehicular homicide as we did in the 60s about 4000->1000.
Argue the law all you want, just don't break it or try to rationalize it after breaking it. The title is misleading, she was sentenced for neglect, not for "allowing" her child to do something. She told him to go to the pond unsupervised putting him at substantial unnecessary unreasonable risk, that's intent.
Furthermore when officials informed her that she was going against local regulations she doubled down and didn't want to hear it. "Point to the exact statute that says I can't do this insane thing" Ma'am please, nobody here does that.
I mean I wouldn't let me 5 year old cross busy streets by himself in my neighborhood... People drive while staring at their phones going 45 mph in a 25... Maybe we should start punishing people who make the roads so dangerous in the first place...
Phones, 45 in a 25? I was taught that pedestrians are invisible. 99.9% of cars will stop, but not all--don't take the risk. Cross only when you can see that nobody's coming.
Reminder that Utah has laws preventing this outcome ("free range parenting laws") and other states can follow suit with enough outcry. Utah is the best state to raise children for this and many other reasons.
And to add more nonsense, iirc collecting (possessing) bird feathers, that they shed naturally, is illegal in the US under the name of protecting migratory birds.
That is a matter of practicality of just enforcing the laws around protecting migratory birds. You can't possess the feathers of protected birds, and it doesn't matter how you got them.
Research the massively destructive bird feather trade in the 19th century if you want context for why the law is that broad.
I wonder if people who are down-voting you actually have children. I even know someone who's kid just died in a pool when no one was watching... My kids almost drowned themselves multiple times when they were below 5 yr old and they are trained to swim... My brother fell into a pool when he was little, and had to be saved... the list goes on and on... edit: Apparently it's the leading cause of death for 1-4 year olds...
Yeah, sorry kid, play inside. It's indeed safer there: you'll become a couch potato with anxieties and heart disease, but at least you won't get poisoned that much.
/s
Nice outrage bait, but completely unfactual. If she avoids conviction, it will be because she was mentally not competent at the time of the murders, not because anyone approves of murder.
Cant american see how really fucked up usa have become in soo many ways? Or way have america become how it is today? They was a great country in many ways, but nowdays everything is just fucked up. The sad thing is that they dont seem to see it themself, the majority atleast. They just see them self as the bigest and greatest country in the world, so the dont look outside, and dont see how the rest of the world passed them long time ago in many ways and how much greater things is, like in Europe. And how people support trump is unbelievable.
He is just a trojan horse that have trown usa under the bus. His agenda is not make amerika great again, just make trump great/rich again and the goverment is just a joke. Usa is just crazy, like kids cant play alone outside without parents gets called police on and gets sentenced.
We see usa as crazy, but one american that lived here in Europe told, its much crazy than we think. Then its really bad. At least there is some americans that still is sane.
Sorry for the rant, but it is so crazy to see the severe self-harming behavior usa is doing to themself.
I hate this comes from Reason (along with an opinion piece at the bottom about regulation is always bad), but the story itself is disgusting and a complete government overreach.
On the one hand, we tell parents they’re accountable for their kids, which is fair and reasonable. Then we build a society where parents cannot dedicate themselves to being effective parents because they both must work, unless they have enough wealth and privilege to afford (and find) child care services or can have one parent stay at home full-time. Then if said lucky-ass parent decides in their wisdom that their kid is mature enough to roam a secured neighborhood with active security patrols on their own, they get prosecuted criminally for daring to let their child develop confidence and independence.
It’s nauseating, and I’m tired of this “stranger danger” bullshit along with the societal hostility towards adults and children alike. We can - and must - do better than this shit.
You should check out a Japanese show called "Old Enough!".
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.
Five is too young. Sure they can do the right thing most of the time, with their mom watching. But they don't have good judgement and are easily distracted. Especially with a pond involved. I would never let my kids around an open body of water alone.
> Parkinson's attorney, Andrew Gordon, took the case pro bono and argued that the only real "evidence" against the mom was that Sam was 5, and that, hypothetically, a host of horrible things could have happened.
You get what you pay for, I guess.
> David DeLugas, founder and executive director of ParentsUSA, a nonprofit that provides pro bono legal help to parents wrongly accused of neglect, scoffed at the charge.
Sounds pretty cool; do they have a better record of legal wins?
I don't know how old you are, so maybe you've forgot how it's like to be that old, but by 7 you're way past that age... crossing streets is not like going to war..
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
There’s plenty of ways to trust your very young kids and raise them to be independent. Allowing them to walk alone for half a mile crossing roads is not one of the them. Kids can behave very differently when they are with their parents or other adults. So you can’t assume because they do something with you all the time they will stick to the same behavior and rules without supervision. At 5 years old their brains are still way too mature, they lack any judgement and impulse control, it doesn’t matter how smart you think your child is. Once they reach 9-10, that’s a different story.
Here in Switzerland children start walking to school at around 5-years. Parents aren't allowed to bring them to school. If a parent escorts their children to school they'll be told not to. If they keep doing it they'll get a letter from the school and probably a police visit. And if they continue (I never heard of it getting to this stage) they may be fined.
It's funny in the morning. One child walks to another child's home then they walk to another child's home and so on until you have a big group of kids walking to school together. In Austria they call it something like a children train.
Twice a year you see the children practicing crossing streets. The police are out at the intersections and show the children how to do it. It's very cute. Also how to ride bicycles properly.
Young children also walk to the elementary schools near me. When I’m at the park with my kids, it’s common to see other very young kids show up alone on their bikes or on foot to play in the park. This is in the US.
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.
Our neighborhood in the northeast US does the same (minus the hard prohibition against parents going with them). Our 5 and 9 year old walk to school daily, usually picking up the neighbors' kids (6, 6, 10, 9, 7, 7) along the way. If we happen to be free sometimes an adult will walk with them, sometimes we start walking with them and then stop for coffee with a neighbor while the kids continue on, sometimes they go by themselves.
I can't imagine living somewhere where that was prohibited.
I live in Colorado, we have a "free-range" law that protects parents allowing their children to play outside unattended. It's a bit sad that such a law needs to exist, but I'm glad we have it here.
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.
> If they keep doing it they'll get a letter from the school and probably a police visit.
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.
Yes, I’m Swiss and walked to school starting around 5. I was hit by a car (due to bad judgment on my part) on the way back from school at 6, though, so it’s not all roses.
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.
That's lovely. Also all the heartwarming ways things work in Japan where kids get a lot of autonomy and live their own little lives on the way to school, among other things.
>> It's funny in the morning. One child walks to another child's home then they walk to another child's home and so on until you have a big group of kids walking to school together. In Austria they call it something like a children train.
In Japan they call it a Katamari.
Pedibus. So civilized. People in California don't believe half the things I tell them about life in Switzerland, such as "if you try to drive your kid to school the cops will chastise you" and "if you drive 40 in a school zone you'll automatically get a year in jail" and, of course, "gas is nine bucks".
> If a parent escorts their children to school they'll be told not to. If they keep doing it they'll get a letter from the school and probably a police visit. And if they continue (I never heard of it getting to this stage) they may be fined.
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.
> One child walks to another child's home then they walk to another child's home and so on until you have a big group of kids walking to school together.
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.
> Parents aren't allowed to bring them to school. If a parent escorts their children to school they'll be told not to. If they keep doing it they'll get a letter from the school and probably a police visit. And if they continue (I never heard of it getting to this stage) they may be fined.
Can't help but think that this is just swinging things in the opposite direction.
When I was a kid, about 3 decades ago, walking to school was a blast.
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.
This is the way.
Parents and Adults in America are often afraid. Sometimes rightfully so, sometimes not.
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.
It's a high trust homogenous society without lots of different groups with all kinds of grievances about the past, present and the future. And it's probably rural, where everyone knows each other.
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.
In NZ we call it the walking school bus.
> If they keep doing it they'll get a letter from the school and probably a police visit.
That seems excessive.
The government should not tell people either way whether the parents have to escort or not. This story is horrifying to me as a parent who may want the choice of whether to go with my child or not.
It's as insane as this post' article
> Parents aren't allowed to bring them to school.
Huh? So if they live 10 miles away they must walk 10 miles? Surely not, but then how does it work?
Unfortunatly some countries are not safe...
This is one of those frustrating things. You're just not allowed to not be scared with kids. If you aren't scared of letting your kid walk to a pond, you get punished for it. If you're not scared of the kidnappers, you have to be scared of the police. None of it is rational, it's different how many of us were raised, yet if you try to opt out the law gets involved.
Stranger kidnappings are basically unheard of. It's never been a safer time for kids in terms of crime like that.
I swear human brains are programmed to have a "fear bank" of things to be scared of, and an allocation of fear that must be spent on items in the fear bank.
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.
I'm sympathetic with this sentiment but surely it's pretty rare the law actually gets involved? Our kids play outside a lot and no cops have ever raised an eyebrow (except for at our crazy drunk of a neighbor, where eyebrow raising is appropriate).
This is proof to me this world is Hell.
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Here in Florida there's no just letting my 4 year old wander to a nearby lake, it might be the last time I ever see her. There's an assumption that alligators are in every lake, and next to my house I have two lakes visible the moment I come out of my front door.
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.
How does this happen? There’s no silver lining which makes this conviction reasonable. If they can’t appeal, I hope they use Streisand to get the town or state of Virginia to vacate everything.
It happened because a neighbor was so disturbed by a child walking alone to report it, the police thought it was serious enough to refer for prosecution, and a prosecutor decided it needed to be charged using their office's limited resources. All insane.
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.
They charged her criminally instead of civilly, because in 2023 VA passed a 'free-range parenting' amendment to allow for actions that appropriate for the child's maturity and are not done in a grossly negligent manner that endangers the child. This is likely why the defense asked for comments from others on the child's maturity.
The criminal definition apparently has no such modification.
E: removed a double ‘likely’
Virginia also has a free range kid law.
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.
I'm not sure if this just bias from news stories but in general it feels like absurd things which would be avoided with just common sense from authorities tend to happen in the US.
> How does this happen?
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://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Enough!
Old Enough! is a Japanese reality show that has been aired irregularly since 1991 on Nippon Television. The program depicts, in a documentary manner, the efforts of toddlers going on an errand on their own, buying groceries and delivering packages, accompanied by the camera crew.
The American version - https://youtu.be/VhGTtWsW9F8
https://www.netflix.com/title/81506279
I'm no lawyer, but I can't see how the judge is able to square this with a plain reading of the law.
Here is the Virginia code on contributing to the delinquency of a minor: https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/title18.2/chapter5/secti...
The only portion that is even remotely relevant is:
> (b) renders a child delinquent, in need of services, in need of supervision, or abused or neglected as defined in § 16.1-228;
However, here is that section: https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/16.1-228/
Paragraph 2 is the relevant one:
> No child whose parent or other person responsible for his care allows the child to engage in independent activities without adult supervision shall for that reason alone be considered to be an abused or neglected child, provided that (a) such independent activities are appropriate based on the child's age, maturity, and physical and mental abilities and (b) such lack of supervision does not constitute conduct that is so grossly negligent as to endanger the health or safety of the child. Such independent activities include traveling to or from school or nearby locations by bicycle or on foot, playing outdoors, or remaining at home for a reasonable period of time.
I would think that in order to justify a conviction, prosecutors would have had to overcome the above by showing evidence that this particular child is INCAPABLE of safely walking to a nearby location within his neighborhood, or that the child ACTUALLY DID put himself in danger, i.e. by entering the pond.
Something tells me that evidence does not exist, and the judge ruled based on something other than a correct reading of the law.
They will simply call it grossly negligent, triggering the exception.
>CPS responded, he recounts, that "a 5-year-old child can never be unsupervised."
I would immediately move from that neighborhood and that city, if they do not have roots with neighbors or kids' friends. These are people who see her as a bad parent for letting their child outside the house.
>The James City County family services specialist assigned to Parkinson's case declined to comment, citing confidentiality requirements. The prosecutor in the Commonwealth Attorney's Office for James City County said the same.
So the state doesn't have to answer to the public about why they interpret their laws to mean a 5 year old can never be alone. Show me the statute where there is an age cutoff.
Feels like these people made enemies, except that too many separate groups came down on her at once. What awful people.
I would have also immediately asked for their policy on how long children of different ages can be unsupervised.
Oregon pushes it all the way to 10.
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.
I feel even if CPS or cops got involved, they can just take the kid home, no need to escalate things to charging the mom.
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.
CPS type agencies all around the world wield immense power and are staffed by power hungry narcissists who get off on threatening to take parents' kids and coming up with demands they must follow
In China, I would see kids who must have been 7 years old running around the streets or on public transit without adult supervision.
It seems like a much healthier way to live than in constant fear.
depends. my kids school in china didn't allow me to let my kids bike to school without supervision. (well, actually, they couldn't stop me from sending them to school alone, but they would not let them out unless i was there to pick them up. (there was only one crossing on the route, and that was close to the school and didn't have a lot of traffic)
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.
In the US, if you are in a residential neighborhood with a lot of kids, its also fairly typical for them to be out finding their playmates.
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
One of the worst aspects of modern life. The most paranoid person decides what the right thing to do is.
American modern life. Vast swathes of the rest of the planet doesn't suffer from our unfortunate pathology.
The person who thought they cared about the child's welfare turned out to be the actual danger, and made the child's life much worse.
Well, I actually live in Gurgaon, India. It is very modern, and it's pretty much the same. Everyone lives in these gated complexes with a tiny militia guarding them from no real threat. Children are driven around everywhere and are always accompanied by a nanny or grandparents inside the gated complex.
I started walking to school alone once I started 1st grade (at around age 7) and did it for about 5 years until my parents moved our family to a place outside of town where it was impractical to do so. I just checked Google Maps to be sure and it is about a 1.2Km / 0.75 miles, so a short walk for either an adult or a 7-year old.
A few months ago I had a heated argument with my father, stepmother and wife because I (half-joking/serious) told my almost 8-year daugher that next year we will start practicing her going to school by herself. You would not believe the stink all of them raised telling me I was irresponsible, yadda, yadda, what about child molesters/ kidnappers, yadda, yadda, too many cars and the usual non-sense you usually hear about this.
Again I went and checked on Google Maps just to be precise and the walk between our house and my daughters school is... 500 meters / 0.31 miles.
In a single generation we went from "your starting school for the first time? time to fend for yourself, you will do fine" to "you are a snowflake that needs to be protected at all times and must not be allowed to alone in any circunstances".
PS: To give more context, I don't live in the US but in a small EU country with a low crime rate, on a town that indeed is busy but very safe.
On top of this is a pregnant mother of 5. With all the decrease in fertility, maybe the woman that managed to make their children independent enough to allow them to have 4 siblings should be given a freaking medal.
It blows my mind that a bunch of adults, prosecutors, CPS employees, etc all decided the fair, reasonable and best thing to do was prosecute and punish this mother.
Sounds like there is very little crime happening in their precious gated community that they've got to trump up everything they can to justify the budget wasted on them
Prosecuting people is their job. If you don't do your job you get fired.
What seems odd to me whenever this debate comes up is the failure to differentiate between:
- the child must never be unsupervised
- I/we think the child should never be unsupervised
We have less and less space between an opinion or recommendation and legal requirement. On a wide range of subjects people go straight to “require”, unwilling to simply express their opinion and move on.
I agree. It's one thing to think her action was riskier than you would like for your own child. It's another to think it should be a crime.
This in the same week that a women murdering her 3 kids is being called innocent by thousands of women on the Internet.
Very "interesting" times, indeed.
People should watch the Netflix version of Old Enough! - it is a Japanese show where young (!) children 3-5 year old walk around the neighborhood doing chores. The one scene I recall was where a child was supposed to carry a fish to the butcher and was being followed by hungry cats.
I think I've seen that anime.
I maintain my, "what is abundance good for, if we can't make it safe for kids to walk places?!" stance. :(
Was it a bench trial or jury trial?
I'm of the generation where one of my responsibilities as a kid was walking to the neighborhood liquor store to buy cigarettes for my dad, so I'm empathetic. But if she was found guilty by a jury, I'm guessing there's more to the story.
This is so sad. America is really messed up. In other countries it is normal for a child to be allowed to walk on their own
American here, it seems to vary by location. I walked to school as a grade school student (Midwest) and where I live now (Orange county, California) I regularly see swarms of kids biking to school.
This particular situation seems ridiculous. I’d be furious if I lived there.
If that's the boundary then I must have been a really neglectful and abusive parent.
I walked myself to and from kindergarten every day. Approximately the same age, same distance, and it went through a park with water. That was normal.
The extreme neuroticism toward children having any kind of agency these days is unhealthy for everyone involved. Social media turned being neurotic into a virtue.
I think the logic behind most of this trash is law enforcement gradually ridding themselves of all responsibility or accountability. They don’t handle theft or burglary anymore, they dismiss stalking or harassment even when people end up in danger, they stand by afraid in school shootings, they take reports of whatever happens and then do nothing about them. Every crime is either too big or too small for them. Kidnapping is a serious sensational crime that would make the news, and they’ve learned they don’t have to deal with that either if they just force children to be indoors or supervised all day.
>> A mom of five was convicted last week of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Her offense: allowing her 5-year-old son to walk about a half-mile by himself in their gated community.
Surely allowing your children to roam freely would be a major benefit of a gated community?
This happened in my neighborhood, and I've met the "perpetrator." She's a sweet person, and I'm convinced she was absolutely acting in the best interests of her child as she saw it. Kids as young as elementary school age in our neighborhood frequently go to the various ponds for fishing, watching the wildlife or even sailing remote control boats. Five years old without a buddy might be on the younger end, but it's hardly criminally negligent. And given the several close calls I've had with elementary & middle school-aged kids on e-bikes and scooters this summer, I hardly think this is even close to the most serious youth safety problem here.
That sounds awful. This kind of case doesn't seem like something you should let a single person decide on their own, judge or not. Is she not entitled to a jury trial because it's a misdemeanor or something? If she can find the funds/support somehow it totally seems worth appealing all the way to the supreme court.
Yeah, it's not really clear from the article. Wild that you can get on some list of abusers without a jury trial. Maybe she waived her rights? Can that even happen?
You can waive your right to a jury trial, and it's sometimes a good idea in cases where either A) you're definitely guilty, and the trial is mostly going to be about sentencing or B) your defense is more complicated than "I didn't do the thing", because jurors are not good at making decisions based on complexities of the law.
Additionally, you don't have the right to a jury trial for minor offenses that carry a maximum sentence of less than 6 months in prison. Contributing to the delinquency of a minor in Virginia carries a maximum 12 months, but to my understanding it is possible for the prosecution to waive any greater sentencing in order to avoid a jury trial.
> Parkinson admits now that she is embarrassed by her confrontational demeanor.
Which was the real crime. To be fair, many places outside the US not respecting the police is a illegal -- but genuinely not enough that an office would be justified in as much as indicating that the officer is armed (which usually counts as use of force).
I'd take this story with a grain of salt. Judges aren't heartless automatons. There's another side of the story that Ms. Parkinson hasn't told the ever-gullible Reason, and Ms. Parkinson herself is a known agitator: https://thefederalist.com/2025/08/01/immigration-crackdown-p...
Look up her law firm, Holtzman Vogel. It's infamous.
Maybe right-wing agitators should make a point of trying to get Judge Brian J. Smalls of the 9th Judicial District Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court of Virginia under formal legal scrutiny for abusing his authority as a judge and imposing punitive sentences on people who work for law firms that have an immigration restrictionis political stance. Certainly if he imposed a prison sentence, even a suspended one, because he didn't like what Parkinson said about US immigration policy, then he should not serve as a judge and possibly should go to prison himself over it.
Where is there any evidence he did that? My point was that the one side of the story presented by Reason came from a clearly unreliable and outrage-seeking source and that judges are not inclined to throw the book at pregnant mothers under the circumstances claimed, more so if the defendant is herself a lawyer who would know how to argue her case effectively. Hence, the recommended grain of salt.
That's what happens when there are few children and many adults all with strong opinions on how the few children should be raised. Back in my days (millennials) there was abundance of children and they knew that adults are a danger to be avoided.
I am struck by the fact that arguments for or against within this thread are only about perceived safety (something hard to know at a distance) and not the substance of the law involved. Does Virginia actually have laws prohibiting unsupervised 5 year olds? If so what is the minimum age at which children are allowed outside unsupervised? Does it also apply to leaving children at home unsupervised? The charge of “contributing to the delinquency of a minor” would suggest the minor’s behavior had to be illegal, which does not appear to have been discussed.
FWIW - Virginia has a free range kid law. And does not have a minimum age for supervision.
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.
If this was the same in the 1970's my parents would have been executed and me and my siblings in a orphanage.
Actually the village would probably enjoyed that, I was a real "Swedish Emil" as a kid..
It's things like this that tell you the real state of your country.
While I agree with the overall sentiment in this thread, it should be clear that any body of water is highly dangerous for kids until they can swim. It is not disclosed in TFA if the kid was able to swim, but the average 5 year old in the USA is not.
"I told [the authorities] that kids need to be able to take reasonable risks," he says, "in order to grow up non-anxious
Who would have thought that the actual anxious inducing situation came from trusted authorities, although well intentioned, causing harm to their community.
Very sad story. I hope this gets appealed.
In the US a kid cannot walk half a mile on their own inside a gated community patrolled by security guards? This sounds more dystopian than all the AI talk.
"I told [the authorities] that kids need to be able to take reasonable risks," he says, "in order to grow up non-anxious."
I guess the system prefers to breed anxiety.
"Gated community" tells you everything you need to know. If you want to live amongst busybody, nosy, fearful and controlling people, move to a gated community.
> the system prefers to breed anxiety
a happy consumer consumes less than an anxious one :(
They’re also more dependent upon the state.
Have you ever taken care of a 5yo? They are certainly safer in public alone than a 3yo. How much more, hard to say.
All the kids in my neighborhood do this weekly in the US.
The article really glosses over the fact that the kid was 5yo walking to a pond. It mentions it at the very start and then never brings it up again. That's the part that got me: the mom gave her 5yo permission to go to a large body of water unsupervised.
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.
Myself and my siblings all lived on a fairly large rural farm with 2 large bodies of water that we always hung around unsupervised from about 4 y/o onwards. We loved catching bullfrogs and watching the fishes and stuff. Our mom gave us very strict/scary warnings about never going in and being careful, but other than that we were pretty free thankfully. 5 y/o with a good warning seems totally fine.
That depends? My first swimming lessons were in Kindergarten when I was 4-5. We were visiting public baths "unsupervised" (they still had lifeguards of course) by the time I was 8.
Assuming the kid wasn't even planning to enter the water, I see no inherent problem here. We seem to be operating on the assumption that unsupervised children will immediately succumb to sudden and irrational urges to kill themselves in creative ways.
I understand ponds can be dangerous, and every year kids drown in various bodies of water, but you're probably more likely to get hurt by a vehicle crossing the road... so should the limit be "the road". Can the destination change the verdict?
> 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.
Wow that's a lot of assumptions baked into one sentence.
Even if we concede that it is irresponsible, which would very much depend on the individual child, it should not be a crime.
I walked home along a river (path) as a 5 and 6 year old, home from school in the UK.
my dad and mom grew up in Peru and they tell me that at that age they were basically outside all day, getting lost in the woods, taking buses to the soccer stadium, etc etc. IDK - my son is about to turn 5 and we do helicopter him a bit, ... there needs to be a healthy balance.
Honestly by modern “standards” all parents from probably the 90s and earlier would be just be thrown in jail.
Pre cell phones kids of all ages would just disappear for the whole day and show up back home for dinner. Nobody knew where they were. Nobody cared. Could be in the woods somewhere, off at the mall. And it was fine. Kids built bike ramps in the woods and jumped off them, sometimes someone broke an arm. Nobody sued.
The nanny state stuff is out of control.
I guess they're trying to overcompensate for years of brutal child slavery with kids working in textile mills, tobacco processing, agriculture, mines, and factories.
https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/hiring-out-of-the-e...
Reminder when talking to any authority: yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir else you a liable to get the boot. (Bonus: don’t be black)
Should have said it was post preschool psychosis
This is insanity, I thought "gated communities" were sold on safety - the child should absolutely be safe there.
The problem with gated communities is the kind of people who are attracted to them.
It's literally a parallel world.
If I were the cop I would have cited the person who called the police for being a nuisance and went about my day.
Honestly it depends on the situation and saddly the common sense of everyone.
I grew up in the 70s and 80s, and in the neighboring town a child went missing.
Pre internet there was still a lot of worry. We got talked to by my parents who were too busy to change their day to day. Being kids we weren't very concerned (I don't think we thought it could happen to us)
It was a rural/suburban type area (my high-school walk home from the bus was 1 mile). I was given free range, and did a lot of exploring of trails and things unsupervised with my brother and friends. It was probably too far in the other direction with lax supervision. We never ran into big trouble, but cellphoneless us last century, we had to be hard to track. But that was the way things were. Playground games were rough too (I had a dislocated elbow that says maybe too rough sometimes..) but we got through.
This is insane. I grew up in India and I used to walk 10 minutes after school to get home everyday.
There are two ways to interact with authority: being respectful and acknowledging it or being an idiot.
This Mom had multiple chances to avoid this escalation: "Yes, thank you for bringing it to my attention. No, will not do it again." - Instead she decided to go full Karen(TM) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_(slang)) and went insane on the security, police, and child protection service.
You can argue that she had every right to be an idiot; but play stupid games, win stupid prices.
Legally mandated helicopter parenting? Small government amirite?
This cames to mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infantilization
And with that also Agency, or lack thereof.
This is sad, very very sad.
American society has become paranoid, and as a parent I find this extremely disheartening. It was refreshing when a family from Europe moved in down the street and their kids would come over by themselves and knock on the door to see if our kids could go out and play. Very few American families do that (gotta set up a whole play date in advance, drive over even if it's a few blocks -- which all seems way over the top until you read about something like this and don't want to risk get accused of neglect by some stupid neighbor who sees your kid walking the neighborhood and decides to call the police.
I blame the media, mostly, for the fear / paranoia that seems to have captured us in the past decades. Sure, media was always sensational, but it was local. Now stuff travels through social media and the internet and so you might be in Maine but hear about every weird thing that happens in Florida or Arizona.
"they" like to gaslight us that cities are safer than ever. That it's social media scaring us into thinking our cities are less safe.
But in actually safe countries (Japan, Switzerland, Singapore) kids are already taking themselves to school around 5 years old and parents aren't getting criminal records for letting their children explore their independence.
Food for thought...
Your reasoning makes no sense. Laws are not indicative of how dangerous being outside is, the only indicator is getting into danger. The child did not get into any danger. The point you oppose still works - "they" made you (Americans) terrified of cities/other people/the idea of children leaving your house, so you all start passing helicopter parenting laws.
pond != school.
Ponds are notoriously unsafe and even treacherous for small kids.
In any case this is law enforcers overreaching and creating unneeded and useless trauma in the family just because they can. Should never went so far.
Yup, this is the part that bothers me.
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.
Parenting "pros" don't break the law. If everyone did this we'd have similar number of drownings and vehicular homicide as we did in the 60s about 4000->1000.
Argue the law all you want, just don't break it or try to rationalize it after breaking it. The title is misleading, she was sentenced for neglect, not for "allowing" her child to do something. She told him to go to the pond unsupervised putting him at substantial unnecessary unreasonable risk, that's intent.
Furthermore when officials informed her that she was going against local regulations she doubled down and didn't want to hear it. "Point to the exact statute that says I can't do this insane thing" Ma'am please, nobody here does that.
In my state saying kids can't go anywhere near a body of water unsupervised is saying kids can't ever be outside without full time supervision.
I mean I wouldn't let me 5 year old cross busy streets by himself in my neighborhood... People drive while staring at their phones going 45 mph in a 25... Maybe we should start punishing people who make the roads so dangerous in the first place...
Phones, 45 in a 25? I was taught that pedestrians are invisible. 99.9% of cars will stop, but not all--don't take the risk. Cross only when you can see that nobody's coming.
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Reminder that Utah has laws preventing this outcome ("free range parenting laws") and other states can follow suit with enough outcry. Utah is the best state to raise children for this and many other reasons.
And to add more nonsense, iirc collecting (possessing) bird feathers, that they shed naturally, is illegal in the US under the name of protecting migratory birds.
That is a matter of practicality of just enforcing the laws around protecting migratory birds. You can't possess the feathers of protected birds, and it doesn't matter how you got them.
Research the massively destructive bird feather trade in the 19th century if you want context for why the law is that broad.
Of course. If you find a bunch shed by a protected species, there's a good chance they're ill-eagle feathers.
How do you prove that feathers were shed naturally, without harming a bird?
As a victim of an extremely overprotective parent growing up, it was all the media's fault for getting us there.
this is the definition of bullshit authority
Letting a 5yo wander off unsupervised to a large body of water is pretty dumb.
I wonder if people who are down-voting you actually have children. I even know someone who's kid just died in a pool when no one was watching... My kids almost drowned themselves multiple times when they were below 5 yr old and they are trained to swim... My brother fell into a pool when he was little, and had to be saved... the list goes on and on... edit: Apparently it's the leading cause of death for 1-4 year olds...
I agree. The word "pond" is what immediately got my attention.
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The most dangerous things for that child in that gated community, apart from its citizens, are the _three_ golf courses: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...
Yeah, sorry kid, play inside. It's indeed safer there: you'll become a couch potato with anxieties and heart disease, but at least you won't get poisoned that much. /s
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I think you're looking for newsmax dot com, not news dot ycombinator dot com.
Nice outrage bait, but completely unfactual. If she avoids conviction, it will be because she was mentally not competent at the time of the murders, not because anyone approves of murder.
This is unfortunate because boomers love to extrapolate weird outlier headlines into a comfortable imagined reality.
The main lesson here is: don’t be confrontational with cops.
That sounds like a reasonable thing to say in a free society.
I have no idea what "free society" means. Honestly.
Everything is fine as long as we obey.
This is true; we should strive for this not to be true.
She was also 8 months pregnant, her 5th kid, and studying to become a lawyer... Thats a lot of stress right there....
this is not the lesson lol. Why should the cops be allowed to enforce such a dumbass rule with no consequence?
Because it's their job to enforce rules. Don't like the rule? Go vote for someone who will change it.
Cant american see how really fucked up usa have become in soo many ways? Or way have america become how it is today? They was a great country in many ways, but nowdays everything is just fucked up. The sad thing is that they dont seem to see it themself, the majority atleast. They just see them self as the bigest and greatest country in the world, so the dont look outside, and dont see how the rest of the world passed them long time ago in many ways and how much greater things is, like in Europe. And how people support trump is unbelievable.
He is just a trojan horse that have trown usa under the bus. His agenda is not make amerika great again, just make trump great/rich again and the goverment is just a joke. Usa is just crazy, like kids cant play alone outside without parents gets called police on and gets sentenced.
We see usa as crazy, but one american that lived here in Europe told, its much crazy than we think. Then its really bad. At least there is some americans that still is sane.
Sorry for the rant, but it is so crazy to see the severe self-harming behavior usa is doing to themself.
I hate this comes from Reason (along with an opinion piece at the bottom about regulation is always bad), but the story itself is disgusting and a complete government overreach.
On the one hand, we tell parents they’re accountable for their kids, which is fair and reasonable. Then we build a society where parents cannot dedicate themselves to being effective parents because they both must work, unless they have enough wealth and privilege to afford (and find) child care services or can have one parent stay at home full-time. Then if said lucky-ass parent decides in their wisdom that their kid is mature enough to roam a secured neighborhood with active security patrols on their own, they get prosecuted criminally for daring to let their child develop confidence and independence.
It’s nauseating, and I’m tired of this “stranger danger” bullshit along with the societal hostility towards adults and children alike. We can - and must - do better than this shit.
a 5 yo walking around in a neighborhood without a guardian or supervisor doesnt sound like a great idea to me.
You should check out a Japanese show called "Old Enough!".
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.
Five is too young. Sure they can do the right thing most of the time, with their mom watching. But they don't have good judgement and are easily distracted. Especially with a pond involved. I would never let my kids around an open body of water alone.
> Parkinson's attorney, Andrew Gordon, took the case pro bono and argued that the only real "evidence" against the mom was that Sam was 5, and that, hypothetically, a host of horrible things could have happened.
You get what you pay for, I guess.
> David DeLugas, founder and executive director of ParentsUSA, a nonprofit that provides pro bono legal help to parents wrongly accused of neglect, scoffed at the charge.
Sounds pretty cool; do they have a better record of legal wins?
I don’t think this should be a criminal charge but 5 seems a bit young to walk that far while crossing streets. At 7 I would be more comfortable
Here's the thing: It doesn't matter how comfortable you are, you're not the child's parent.
Yeah, and? Being a parent doesn't entitle someone to do anything they want
I walked to school alone when I was 4, crossing several streets. I bicycled when I was 5. This was typical of the time.
Really depends on the kind of upbringing of the child. In Mongolia 5 year olds are teaching their younger siblings how to ride a reindeer.
it shows how far we've come wrt infantilization in the west, it's really sad to see imo.
I don't know how old you are, so maybe you've forgot how it's like to be that old, but by 7 you're way past that age... crossing streets is not like going to war..
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
Not at all. We all did it when I was child that age in the 80s.
There’s plenty of ways to trust your very young kids and raise them to be independent. Allowing them to walk alone for half a mile crossing roads is not one of the them. Kids can behave very differently when they are with their parents or other adults. So you can’t assume because they do something with you all the time they will stick to the same behavior and rules without supervision. At 5 years old their brains are still way too mature, they lack any judgement and impulse control, it doesn’t matter how smart you think your child is. Once they reach 9-10, that’s a different story.
This is your opinion.