Petula Dvorak, Washington Post - Of all the adventures my lucky children had this summer — swimming in two oceans, hanging out on their bearded uncle’s commercial salmon fishing boat, endless Popsicles — the biggest one, they told me, was just 495 feet away in their own D.C. neighborhood.
They got to walk to the corner store on Capitol Hill by themselves. Clutch your pearls, America. The boys are 7 and 10. Apparently, I could be arrested for this.
In another disturbing national trend, we’ve sanctioned the criminalization of childhood independence. This summer we heard about a Florida mom arrested for letting her 7-year-old walk to the local park and a mother locked up because her 9-year-old was playing at their neighborhood park in South Carolina.
A recent poll conducted by Reason/Rupe said that 68 percent of Americans think there should be a law prohibiting children 9 and younger from playing in a park unsupervised; and 43 percent think the same about allowing 12-year-olds that kind of freedom.
... I rode nearly a mile on my bike to get groceries for my mom when I was 8. I walked down one street and around the corner to the bus stop when I was in kindergarten.
.... My dad left me and another kid in the car when we were 4 while he visited my mom at the coffee shop where she was a waitress. We ate his cigarettes. But no one abducted us.
.... Yes. There are scary people out there. It is always a risk to let your children out of your sight. But truthfully, the most dangerous thing you do every day is drive anywhere with a child. About 300 kids are hurt daily in car accidents; an average of three are killed that way every day.
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