“A few days later, DFCS presented Patterson with a “safety plan” for her to sign. It would require her to delegate a “safety person” to be a “knowing participant and guardian” and watch over the children whenever she leaves home. The plan would also require Patterson to download an app onto her son’s phone allowing for his location to be monitored. (The day when it will be illegal not to track one’s kids is rapidly approaching.)”
You don’t want the Dutch scenario to happen. Children as young as 6 are joining bike gangs that hog half the trail width and don’t bother to step down in pedestrian zones!
The absolute state of the U.S. A thousand years of shame would not be enough
10 year old is too young to walk alone to town but 16 year old can be trusted with a car.
The car is the difference. If they could ban walking everywhere, they would. Who knows, maybe they will
This is my third time coming across this topic today. I was waiting for additional information, but I wonder if there is any history there. Maybe the sheriff has been feuding with the family for a while and wanted to use this as an opportunity to exert dominance. Maybe they suspect the kid has truly been causing trouble and so are using this as an opportunity to track the kid and see.
Overall, seems like an overreaction, especially in small town USA.
Looks like Georgia DOES have a “Reasonable Childhood Independence” law…
So cops are ignorant or just don’t care?
“She kept mentioning how he could have been run over, or kidnapped or ‘anything’ could have happened,” recalls Patterson.
Might have even had Police Contact and that’s dangerous as FUCK.
How is that different from what anyone faces when they go out?
Yeah, why isn’t anyone clutching their pearls when I walk my dog twice a day? I’m in the street, on the sidewalk , I even cross medians. And I have a large dog, so I could theoretically be attacked by a large dog. “Anything” could happen.
America, fuck yeah!
Huh? What the actual fuck?
This is insane. When exactly is a permissible age for kids to be walking about on their own?
Things are absolutely different today than they were when I was a kid. My parents never had any idea where I was. They simply said “be home by dinner” and I was home by dinner. Did we get into trouble? Absolutely. But that’s part of being kids.
Fast forward to today. My partner and I don’t see eye to eye on this because of how things feel so unsafe now. I know how valuable that independence was for me though, so I tend towards permissiveness.
The thing is, kids still walk to school in all kinds of localities. I remember walking to school on a much busier road than the one described in this article. The worst I ever encountered was teenagers throwing eggs once. (Haha. They missed.) And yeah, drivers may hit you. I get it. The government can help mitigate that with better planning and sidewalks, if they actually cared.
But a tracking app too!? Where the government can know my kids location?! That presumes my children even have a phone with a mobile plan, which is a privilege the government isn’t paying for. And if they did, @#$& you government! Seriously. WTF?!
I’m both flabbergasted and not. Because, these days, I pretty much only expect fuckery. I wish that weren’t the case. I often hope it isn’t. And I love being surprised when it’s not the case. But 🤬!
I live on the same street as an elementary school, I see dozens of 3rd-5th graders walking to school every morning. Really confused about why this person was singled out.
It’s not unsafe… It’s never been safer.
I wouldn’t mind having USPS offer cellular service and Internet, as a service. Bring back basic banking at the post office too. Solid revenue streams for the USPS and cuts out the cancer of ISPs and cell companies.
Easy to monitor too. 😏
I babysat younger kids at 13 while the parents went out and got back after midnight. Nowadays I think leaving a 13 year old alone would get someone in trouble much less have them be the one watching the other kids.
This is insane. When exactly is a permissible age for kids to be walking about on their own?
In Georgia, probably 30.
I was around this kid’s age when I was at a friend’s house for a sleep over and we decided to leave his house at 2 am and go downtown and see what was happening. We had big backpacks full of stuff because we were 10 and it was an adventure. Cops drove by and looked at us as they drove by and didn’t slow down. And the town was a whole hell of a lot bigger than the 370 population of this one. There were also a lot of people likely to be stumbling out of the downtown bars at 2 am, but I don’t remember anything other than the cops driving by and looking at us. Apparently Indiana cops back then didn’t think it was all that big a deal.
But things have changed for kids since the 1980s and, in cases like this, not for the better.
If anything, the cops should have been more on the ball in your case. I would have been grateful as a parent. Bring the kid home and let it end there. What happened in this article is describing something so very far on the other side of the pendulum. Good grief.
As for me, I managed to stay out of sight of the police. And I will admit that there are times when the police would have had very very good reason to take me downtown. 😬 I can’t even count how many times the cops brought my older brother home. But in every case, it ended there.
I’m guessing the cops want to make sure kids are better controlled these days that way they can more effectively shoot other innocent kids with all that extra free time they have.
It was the 80s. They were probably just glad we were just walking through downtown with backpacks on and not taking a hit off a homeless man’s crack pipe without heeding Nancy Reagan’s warning about saying no.
The other side of the coin is when kids are legitimately getting abused and it gets brushed off as a kid “acting out”.
Europeans who’s children go to school alone at 6 would be laughing their ass off if this wasn’t such outrageous bs
There are cities all over the U.S. where American children walk to school alone.
And in this case, it wasn’t even a city. Just a town of 370!
These dumb fucks should come out where I live. Little kids younger than that walking much farther than that to school alone.
Because we’re fucking normal here.
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The State requires Adults to be responsible for Children until they are at the end of the age of Legal custody, these ages vary, but it’s usually 18 years old
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It it very difficult for The State to determine which activities done without Adult supervision are safe for children, I mean, just look at the Catholic Church
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The State is a hammer, everything it sees is a nail
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I read the article, and the only abuse here is the state abusing its authority.
I don’t really know much about the mother other than what’s in the story, but she obviously raised a child who feels independent enough to walk a mile to town by himself at age 11. (The title says “10”, but the article says “11”.) I would say that this is a positive thing.
On the other hand, the state is threatening to take away all of her children with this single incident. The state wants to break up this family unless she complies with all of their invasive demands. Breaking up a family seems like tyranny, especially in response to such an innocent incident.
All this over a fucking mile? Holy shit.
When I was 11, that was 5th grade and we would rotate being on “safety patrol” which is where you would stand, by yourself, at certain intersections and make sure the younger kids waited for cars to pass and it was safe before crossing the street. Of course we walked to those spots by ourselves. And by age 12 I was babysitting other people’s kids.
So those people and their rules are crazy. If we really aren’t letting kids walk somewhere by themselves by age 10-11, no wonder our society is so dysfunctional. This has got to be very detrimental to the personal and social development of the children.
I’d be willing to bet she’s a single mother and these people are just going after her for that sin and to flaunt their power over someone they perceive as weak and evil. Otherwise, it makes no sense at all. I was forced to walk to the store alone many times starting at like 6 or 7, and I rode my bike all over the place from like 8 and up, way more than a mile from the house. And the crime rates are way lower now in most of the country. And there weren’t cell phones.
The article says she’s married, but the husband works out of state.
Thanks, guess I missed that. No man for the LE to deal with, so they can flex. And no man there to raise the child other than the elderly, so it hurts their “family values”.
If I already didn’t wish to bring kids into this world this would’ve pushed me there. Holy 🤬.