Officials were willing to drop charges if she signed a “child safety plan” but she refused, stating that it would make her appear to be a negligent parent, so she’s fighting the charge.
My mother would be serving life in prison if scrutinized for not knowing where I was or how far from home I was at that age and younger.
A Georgia mom arrested after her 10-year-old son took a solo walk to a store about a mile from home in rural Georgia has vowed to fight the charges in a case that has prompted confusion and criticism from experts and parental rights activists…
Deputies returned the boy, who was unharmed, home. Then, they came back several hours later to arrest Patterson.
Patterson had to take one of her older children to a medical appointment on Oct. 30, and called out for her 10-year-old, Soren, to get in the car and go with them. When Soren didn’t come, Patterson said she looked around the house for him a bit, assumed he didn’t want to go, and then she left.
Patterson lives on 16 acres in Mineral Bluff, Georgia, an unincorporated rural community in the northern part of the state. There, Patterson told USA TODAY, it’s pretty common for families to let their kids and pets explore their properties on their own or play in the woods.
Soren is homeschooled, and the mom of four said when she has to leave for an appointment, her kids get to choose to go with her or stay at home, where their grandfather also lives. She thought nothing of leaving that day without him.
Virginia passed a law last year protecting parents from this kind of nonsense. Hopefully this continues to spread to other states. Seems to have bipartisan support.
Keep in mind it’s usually other parents dropping the dime on these families, my guess is mostly other moms. Police are required to enforce the law no matter how stupid it may be.
Something similar happened here a few years ago with a single dad who got in trouble for taking 2 years to teach his eldest kids (10 and 7) how to ride the bus without supervision.
About 15 years ago during a work trip to Japan i was starting my daily commute at Ikebukuro Station, the 2nd busiest in the world. I saw the cutest little 6 or 7 year old girl with her pigtails and randoseru (boxy looking backpack) cautiously making her way through the maze of people and onto the train during morning rush hour on her own. That image has always stuck with medue to the contrast with our helicopter parent culture.
When i was 10 i did things like walk or ride the mile+ to school, ride my bike by myself or a few friends 3 miles to the mall, and once did a 20 mile roundtrip bike ride from our house to Southfork (yes, that house on Dallas). Parents didn’t know about that one until after i got back home. The 70s and 80s were a great time when kids could be kids.
I look back in fondness on being a latch key kid. Probably not a bad thing for kids to have some independence at younger ages than most are getting nowadays.
I’m not judging but times have really changed. I was one of the youngest in my huge group of childhood friends and I know that I was taking the bus to downtown Newark before I went to grammar school.
Now my wife’s father is really extreme. He grew up in Berlin during Hitler. When he was 14 his mother put him and his girlfriend on a train to Rumania and they were on their own from then on. It took them 10 years to get to America
So times have really changed. Is it really more dangerous? I don’t know, but when I was a kid everyone had 5 or 6 kids so they couldn’t hover over them. We were pretty much able to do whatever we could get away with as long as we were home when we were to supposed to be.
I know a family with one kid. He’s homeschooled because he might get picked on in public school. I think it’s ridiculous but that’s the way it is these days.
Google fu says kids are way more likely to be abducted today, but that’s because of divorce, as it’s almost always a parent abducting the kid.
Stranger abduction is so rare that it seems like it’s hard to know if that is any more common or not today as the stats are lost in the wash of parental abductions.
It is a whole different world today than when I was a kid. Between 1st and 2nd grade summer I got a new Schwinn single speed bike. Man that was my key to freedom. We used to ride way the heck far from home. As long as we got home when the 5 o’clock whistle blew parents had no idea what any of the kids from hood were up to. Now on am dog walks we wave to the kids with their parents waiting on the school bus that is like 8 blocks from school. Don’t know how long it takes to get to school 8 blocks away on a bus, but it was about 5 min for us on the bike or 15 to walk on snowy days. Like zero bikes in the rack at schools these days.
I had a 10 speed Free Spirit and rode to town, 10 miles away, every day of the summer to hang out with my friends in elementary. Also, we were told, if we miss the bus you better be riding your bike to school.
When my kids were young, my wife would struggle to let them walk to a friends house, I always told her to let them go, they’ll be fine and need to walk anyway.
We live on Main St. in our town, about a mile to the downtown area where the schools are. Literally a straight shot with sidewalks the whole way. School bus drops kids off at our side street. I don’t know if we are just outside the limit or if it drops kids off even closer.
When we bought our house my wife was all about the kids walking or riding bikes to school. They never took the bus and would walk sometimes, but my wife ended up driving them the majority of the time.