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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm sort of a partial free range parent -- I don't think what these parent did was child neglect, but I think all the people saying it's perfectly normal are a little delusional. I grew up in the '70s and there's no way my parents would let me walk around a commercial area with my 9 year old sister when I was 6.  No way.  You had to be within hollering distance.  (Granted, my parents were loud, so hollering distance went a pretty good ways, but not like this.)  My dad walked himself to school at that age in the 1930's through a neighborhood that was also not a residential one -- BUT he did it with a big German Shepard so that no one would bother him.  (The German Shepard then walked himself home and returned in the afternoon for pickup.  Nowadays, granted, that would get you a call to animal control.)  
The fact that there are very few children attacked by strangers is in part a result of the fact that there are very few children left unattended around strangers nowadays.  As some posters have pointed out, back when there were more unattended children, there were also a lot of creepy things that happened to kids  -- but back then, before children were taught all the stuff about reporting anything suspicious, kids just didn't report it as much.  (I have a family friend that was murdered as a teen because he went into someone's house that offered him a drink of water --- that's an extreme example and that obviously came to the attention of the authorities, but other posters have mentioned friends that they knew were molested when they were generally unsupervised and which was never reported.)  Also, I think my parents were probably somewhat protective in the '70s because they were old enough to remember friends from the '30s and '40s that went out to play and never came home because they drowned in the local pond, got hit playing on railway tracks, etc.

And, I think that the world probably is more dangerous than it was decades ago, because: (1) fewer people are home during the day, so there's not a community of moms and grandparents standing out front watering their geraniums or ironing by the window; and (2) the internet really encourages perverts to think that they are normal,  to act on their perversion, and coaches them on how not to get caught.

All that said, I give my kids a lot of freedom -- probably a lot more than most parents in the DC area.  But we're kidding ourselves if we think that there aren't risks, and we don't assess those risks each time, and teach our kids how to minimize those risks.  Given that the kids in this case were followed for 30 minutes by a strange man--and they did not, as a result, immediately call their parents and/or get themselves to a safe place like a Starbucks to wait -- I don't think they were appropriate trained to deal with the freedom they had been given.

Do I think CPS should take them away?  No.  (Just like CPS should not take away the kids of other parents that make choices that I think are kind of dumb.)  Do I think the parents should reconsider their extreme approach?  Yes.

And, I don't blame the guy for not going up to talk to them.  As a mom, I would probably say something to them.  But I don't blame a single guy for not saying anything.  Even as a pretty non-threatening mom, when I speak to kids that aren't my own, even just to ask them if they're alright, the kids often look at me like I've just tried to mug them.[/quote]

Extremely reasonable post. I love the dog escort story![/quote]

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