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

neaden

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.

xutopia

If that's the boundary then I must have been a really neglectful and abusive parent.

daxuak

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.

ragazzina

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.

jryan49

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...

jollyllama

> 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?

add-sub-mul-div

This is unfortunate because boomers love to extrapolate weird outlier headlines into a comfortable imagined reality.

p1esk

The main lesson here is: don’t be confrontational with cops.

smallerize

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.

armchairhacker

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.

dionian

a 5 yo walking around in a neighborhood without a guardian or supervisor doesnt sound like a great idea to me.

CamelCaseName

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.

unethical_ban

>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.

zeroonetwothree

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

comrade1234

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.

rahuldracula

One of the worst aspects of modern life. The most paranoid person decides what the right thing to do is.

voidfunc

Letting a 5yo wander off unsupervised to a large body of water is pretty dumb.

cdelsolar

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.

victorbjorklund

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

0cf8612b2e1e

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.