Land of the Free?

[Kathianne]

Not feeling the love:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/maryland-couple-want-free-range-kids-but-not-all-do/2015/01/14/d406c0be-9c0f-11e4-bcfb-059ec7a93ddc_story.html?Post+generic=%3Ftid%3Dsm_t witter_washingtonpost''


Parents investigated for neglect after letting kids walk home alone

By Donna St. George (http://www.washingtonpost.com/people/donna-st-george) January 14 <iframe id="twitter-widget-0" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" src="http://platform.twitter.com/widgets/follow_button.331904cc91ddebde387d36578bfb9deb.en. html#_=1421377966127&dnt=false&id=twitter-widget-0&lang=en&screen_name=donnastgeorge&show_count=false&show_screen_name=true&size=m" class="twitter-follow-button twitter-follow-button" title="Twitter Follow Button" data-twttr-rendered="true" style="width: 160px; height: 20px;"></iframe>
<article>It was a one-mile walk home from a Silver Spring park on Georgia Avenue on a Saturday afternoon. But what the parents saw as a moment of independence for their 10-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter, they say authorities viewed much differently.

Danielle and Alexander Meitiv say they are being investigated for neglect for the Dec. 20 trek — in a case they say reflects a clash of ideas about how safe the world is and whether parents are free to make their own choices about raising their children.

“We wouldn’t have let them do it if we didn’t think they were ready for it,” Danielle said.


She said her son and daughter have previously paired up for walks around the block, to a nearby 7-Eleven and to a library about three-quarters of a mile away. “They have proven they are responsible,” she said. “They’ve developed these skills.”


The Meitivs say they believe in “free-range” parenting, (http://www.freerangekids.com/) a movement that has been a counterpoint to the hyper-vigilance of “helicopter” parenting, with the idea that children learn self-reliance by being allowed to progressively test limits, make choices and venture out in the world.

“The world is actually even safer than when I was a child, and I just want to give them the same freedom and independence that I had — basically an old-fashioned childhood,” she said. “I think it’s absolutely critical for their development — to learn responsibility, to experience the world, to gain confidence and competency.”

On Dec. 20, Alexander agreed to let the children, Rafi and Dvora, walk from Woodside Park to their
home, a mile south, in an area the family says the children know well.

The children made it about halfway.


...
</article>

[Jeff]

10 and 6 seems a bit to young to allow them to walk a mile by themselves, I am all for allowing parents to be parents but I don't think back when I was a kid my parents would of let myself and my 6 year old sibling walk a mile from the house, yes we walked to school but it wasn't a mile and the entire school basically walked the same way ( so kids weren't alone ) and there was crossing guards all the way home so we did have some adult supervision. Furthermore if ya have to put a note on the kid saying I am not lost that to me is a pretty good indication they are to young.

[jimnyc]

I think around that age we walked to the local park, all kinds of blocks in our area with friends, and to school about 1/2 mile away, although there were of course crossing guards at all corners. I disagree with "neglect".

[Kathianne]

My daughter sent me this article not so long ago, with a note saying 'maybe I was right' to insist on independence earned and required:

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2015/07/helicopter_parenting_is_increasingly_correlated_wi th_college_age_depression.html


Kids of Helicopter Parents Are Sputtering Out

<header class="article-header" id="article_header" style="margin-bottom: 20px;">Recent studies suggests that kids with overinvolved parents and rigidly structured childhoods suffer psychological blowback in college.

By Julie Lythcott-Haims (http://www.slate.com/authors.julie_lythcotthaims.html)

Excerpted fromHow to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success (http://www.amazon.com/dp/1627791779/?tag=slatmaga-20)by Julie Lythcott-Haims, out now from Henry Holt and Co.
</header>Academically overbearing parents are doing great harm. So says Bill Deresiewicz in his groundbreaking 2014 manifestoExcellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life (http://www.amazon.com/dp/1476702721/?tag=slatmaga-20). “[For students] haunted their whole lives by a fear of failure—often, in the first instance, by their parents’ fear of failure,” writes Deresiewicz, “the cost of falling short, even temporarily, becomes not merely practical, but existential.”

Those whom Deresiewicz calls “excellent sheep” I call the “existentially impotent.” From 2006 to 2008, I served on Stanford University’s mental health task force, which examined the problem of student depression and proposed ways to teach faculty, staff, and students to better understand, notice, and respond to mental health issues. As dean, I saw a lack of intellectual and emotional freedom—this existential impotence—behind closed doors. The “excellent sheep” were in my office. Often brilliant, always accomplished, these students would sit on my couch holding their fragile, brittle parts together, resigned to the fact that these outwardly successful situations were their miserable lives.

In my years as dean, I heard plenty of stories from college students who believed they had to study science (or medicine, or engineering), just as they’d had to play piano, and do community service for Africa, and, and, and. I talked with kids completely uninterested in the items on their own résumés. Some shrugged off any right to be bothered by their own lack of interest in what they were working on, saying, “My parents know what’s best for me.”

...


In a 2013 survey (http://www.apa.org/monitor/2013/06/college-students.aspx) of college counseling center directors, 95 percent said the number of students with significant psychological problems is a growing concern on their campus, 70 percent said that the number of students on their campus with severe psychological problems has increased in the past year, and they reported that 24.5 percent of their student clients were taking psychotropic drugs.

In 2013 the American College Health Association surveyed (http://www.acha-ncha.org/docs/ACHA-NCHA-II_UNDERGRAD_ReferenceGroup_ExecutiveSummary_Sprin g2013.pdf) close to 100,000 college students from 153 different campuses about their health. When asked about their experiences, at some point over the past 12 months:



84.3 percent felt overwhelmed by all they had to do
60.5 percent felt very sad
57.0 percent felt very lonely
51.3 percent felt overwhelming anxiety
8.0 percent seriously considered suicide


The 153 schools surveyed included campuses in all 50 states, small liberal arts colleges and large research universities, religious institutions and nonreligious, from the small to medium-sized to the very the large. The mental health crisis is not a Yale (or Stanford or Harvard) problem; these poor mental health outcomes are occurring in kids everywhere. The increase in mental health problems among college students may reflect the lengths to which we push kids toward academic achievement, but since they are happening to kids who end up at hundreds of schools in every tier, they appear to stem not from what it takes to get into the most elite schools but from some facet of American childhood itself.

...



My brother and I walked 1.38 miles each way to school from age 6. (Yes, I just did a mapquest for mileage, lol). The library, park, and a museum were a block and 1/2 further-we could go there too on foot or by bikes.

When my kids were 7-9 they walked 1.66 each way to school, (all 3 together. Miraculously they stayed together!)

In both cases, my mom or myself walked with the kids for the first two weeks, so that they knew where to cross and what to do if there were problems. Most of the time during inclement weather, we all got rides. Sometimes not though. Shockingly one learns very quickly to wear appropriate clothing for weather, something lots of kids today seem to have a problem doing.

None of us just started walking to schools at such distances. We walked to kindergarten after the first few weeks-3 blocks from homes and home. If ready to leave on time, there were plenty of other kids walking too. If late, one is left to run on their own.

After that was done successfully, time to start walking to friends homes in the neighborhood. Then riding bikes around the area with friends. Then going to local grocer for paper or milk or bread. Mailing letters.

IOW, learning to gain self confidence.

Today that's called, 'free range' and has resulted in parents being charged with neglect.

Finally, there's some push back:

http://reason.com/blog/2015/07/17/sen-mike-lee-added-a-free-range-kids-cla


Sen. Mike Lee Added a Free-Range Kids Clause to Major Federal Legislation (http://reason.com/blog/2015/07/17/sen-mike-lee-added-a-free-range-kids-cla)

Gives kids the right to walk to school.

Lenore Skenazy (http://reason.com/people/lenore-skenazy/all)|<time datetime="2015-07-17T06:08:00+00:00" style="font-family: Helvetica, helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.5em; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 11.8999996185303px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">Jul. 17, 2015 2:08 am

</time>Libertarian-leaning Republican Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), a supporter of the Free-Range Kids movement, has proposed groundbreaking federal legislation to protect the rights of kids who want to walk to school on their own.

That’s right: a Free-Range Kids provision made its way into the Every Child Achieves Act, a reauthorization of major federal law that governs funding and regulation of elementary education in the United States. The Free-Range Kids portion of the law would permit kids to walk or ride their bikes to school at an age their parents deem appropriate, without the threat of civil or criminal action.

Laws like this one could prevent—or at least deter—local officials from waging harassment campaigns against parents who want give their kids some autonomy. If this had been the law of the land when the Meitivs (http://reason.com/blog/2015/06/22/free-range-meitiv-family-beats-charges-f) allowed their kids to walk home by themselves in Maryland, it might have forestalled the whole shebang. (Though, admittedly, the kids were coming back from the park, not school.)

...

Here’s the section of the Every Child Achieves Act that deals with parental authority:


SEC. 9116. RULE OF CONSTRUCTION REGARDING TRAVEL TO AND FROM SCHOOL...
‘(a) IN GENERAL.—Subject to subsection (b), nothing in this Act shall authorize the Secretary to, or shall be construed to (1) prohibit a child from traveling to and from school on foot or by car, bus, or bike when the parents of the child have given permission; or (2) expose parents to civil or criminal charges for allowing their child to responsibly and safely travel to and from school by a means the parents believe is age appropriate....

"Notwithstanding subsection (a), nothing in this section 15 shall be construed to preempt State or local laws.’’


And the tide begins to turn.