Kids & Family
Free Range Kids vs Nanny State
Free Range Children abducted by Child Protective Services for No Credible Reason. Educating the State.
Rafi and Dvora, happily walking the streets of their neighborhood, get lured into a police cruiser and held for more than 5 hours with no charges and zero notification to the parents. Is this where we are going with government oversight? Ordering the police to take away children, who are in no apparent danger, off of the streets?
A drug deal? A kidnapping? An Amber Alert? A gang fight? Abuse? Absolutely nothing illegal or immoral on the part of the parents.
“People are really interested because they want to know if they can raise their own kids in the way they choose,” said Lenore Skenazy, founder of the “free-range” movement that encourages childhood independence. “Our children have the right to some unsupervised time, and we have the right to give it to them without being arrested.”
From the time I could walk, my parents let us roam out the back gate of our home, in the Caribbean, to go swim in the sea. We’d go home when we got hungry. Later as a child in America, my parents made me walk to school on the streets of Boston. School was less than a mile away.
These children were in a safe neighborhood, less than a mile from home and they get taken away for absolutely nothing? They were playing in the park. They weren’t even j-walking!! These kids weren’t mugging anyone. Nothing was wrong, except for some annoying busy body calling the police to report that two innocent young children were happily walking around having a wonderful time on their way home.
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Jennifer Henel, the parent of preschool-age kids, worried what it bodes for her as a parent. “We live two blocks from our school. Can I no longer dream of my kids walking to school on their own?” she said. “Or worse: What if I run in my house to grab something I forgot and someone sees my three children in the car alone? Will they report me for negligence?”
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When Casey Kennedy lived in Seattle, her 7-year-old walked a half-mile to and from school on his own — rain or shine.
“He’s now 14 and very confident,” she said. “We as a society are taking away a child’s right to do things on their own. People complain about our government being/becoming a ‘nanny state.’ This overparenting by the police will ensure the next generation needs it!”
If I see a couple of young children casually walking from Trafton Park to Maplewood Square after school hours, the first thought in my mind isn’t to call the police. This insanity has to be called out before it spreads to our neighborhoods. I support this Maryland family, who are doing nothing wrong.