Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am sad to live in a county that does not allow kids to walk to and from a park without getting paranoid people calling 911 and getting pulled over by police. My siblings and I definitely were this age on our own playing outside daily. And not right in our front yard. As soon as the training wheels were off, we were free to ride to friends homes, the park, the baseball field, and the convenience store. The last 3 were at least a half mile away and the store was crossing a busy 2 lane road. We didn't have cell phones, we had watches and were told what time to be home. Made a lot of friends and had a lot of fun. Great childhood. Kids these days are so coddled and structured it is scary. And the fact that so many of you think that walking a mile back home from a park is abuse is even scarier.

Maybe that should be written into the law. As soon as a child can ride a bike without training wheels.

Your sadness is lost on elitist children, you should be sad for children who go days without food not hours.

Yes because I am sad about a rigid overprotective government telling me how to raise my kids, means I am not sad at all for the children who go days without food. Nice well thought out retort!!

I am not sad that my kids may have to follow some rules that I don't agree with like waiting until 8 to walk to a park alone or adhering to curfews even though our neighborhood does not have hoards of kids stealing from 7-11 and threaten police officer's lives. I realize I live in a society that needs rules to protect kids and society and when these rules/guidelines/laws are looked at individually, may not make sense to me but when applied to a society is in the best interest of all kids not just my very privileged kids.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am sad to live in a county that does not allow kids to walk to and from a park without getting paranoid people calling 911 and getting pulled over by police. My siblings and I definitely were this age on our own playing outside daily. And not right in our front yard. As soon as the training wheels were off, we were free to ride to friends homes, the park, the baseball field, and the convenience store. The last 3 were at least a half mile away and the store was crossing a busy 2 lane road. We didn't have cell phones, we had watches and were told what time to be home. Made a lot of friends and had a lot of fun. Great childhood. Kids these days are so coddled and structured it is scary. And the fact that so many of you think that walking a mile back home from a park is abuse is even scarier.

Maybe that should be written into the law. As soon as a child can ride a bike without training wheels.

Your sadness is lost on elitist children, you should be sad for children who go days without food not hours.

Why can't we be sad for both children? Why can't we work to improve the lives of both children?

Because 1 set of children lives far exceed the measurement for excellent.

Not necessarily. Children who grow up with too much supervision have problems, as well:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/parenting/wp/2014/09/02/how-helicopter-parents-are-ruining-college-students/?tid=sm_fb

Bradley-Geist and Olson-Buchanan, both management professors, surveyed more than 450 undergraduate students who were asked to “rate their level of self-efficacy, the frequency of parental involvement, how involved parents were in their daily lives and their response to certain workplace scenarios.”

The study showed that those college students with “helicopter parents” had a hard time believing in their own ability to accomplish goals. They were more dependent on others, had poor coping strategies and didn’t have soft skills, like responsibility and conscientiousness throughout college, the authors found.

“I had a mom ask to sit in on a disciplinary meeting” when a student was failing, said Marla Vannucci, an associate professor at the Adler School of Professional Psychology in Chicago, who was that students’ academic adviser. Her team let the mom sit in, but in the end it doesn’t help. “It really breeds helplessness.”

Vannucci also had a college-aged client whose parents did her homework for her. The client’s mother explained that she didn’t want her daughter to struggle the same way she had. The daughter, however, “has grown up to be an adult who has anxiety attacks anytime someone asks her to do something challenging” because she never learned how to handle anything on her own.

These may be extreme cases, but parental over-involvement has been bleeding into college culture for some time now. “I think they need to know that they are actually diminishing their child’s ability to understand how to navigate the world by trying to do it for them,” Gibralter said.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Legal definitions often differ from dictionary definitions, you're clearly not a lawyer. And no one said that being a mile away from home constituted neglect. They said it constituted evidence of neglect. I think you don't understand what evidence means.

Correct, I am not a lawyer.

So is the lawyerly argument is that being a mile away from home isn't neglect but is evidence of neglect? In my limited experience of lawyers, when lawyers say that [word] might seem to mean [definition], but actually means [something completely different that nobody who was not a lawyer would ever think it means], that's a sign that the lawyers are on shaky ground.

Well in this case, it means that the definition is laid out in the regulations. That's how that works usually. You should probably stop opining on stuff you don't understand.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am sad to live in a county that does not allow kids to walk to and from a park without getting paranoid people calling 911 and getting pulled over by police. My siblings and I definitely were this age on our own playing outside daily. And not right in our front yard. As soon as the training wheels were off, we were free to ride to friends homes, the park, the baseball field, and the convenience store. The last 3 were at least a half mile away and the store was crossing a busy 2 lane road. We didn't have cell phones, we had watches and were told what time to be home. Made a lot of friends and had a lot of fun. Great childhood. Kids these days are so coddled and structured it is scary. And the fact that so many of you think that walking a mile back home from a park is abuse is even scarier.

No one said it constitutes abuse, stop making stuff up. And if you really think the kids will grow up damaged and coddled because they weren't allowed to walk a mile from home alone before they were eight, well then I'm afraid you have a lot of concerns.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am sad to live in a county that does not allow kids to walk to and from a park without getting paranoid people calling 911 and getting pulled over by police. My siblings and I definitely were this age on our own playing outside daily. And not right in our front yard. As soon as the training wheels were off, we were free to ride to friends homes, the park, the baseball field, and the convenience store. The last 3 were at least a half mile away and the store was crossing a busy 2 lane road. We didn't have cell phones, we had watches and were told what time to be home. Made a lot of friends and had a lot of fun. Great childhood. Kids these days are so coddled and structured it is scary. And the fact that so many of you think that walking a mile back home from a park is abuse is even scarier.

Maybe that should be written into the law. As soon as a child can ride a bike without training wheels.

Your sadness is lost on elitist children, you should be sad for children who go days without food not hours.

Why can't we be sad for both children? Why can't we work to improve the lives of both children?

Because 1 set of children lives far exceed the measurement for excellent.

Not necessarily. Children who grow up with too much supervision have problems, as well:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/parenting/wp/2014/09/02/how-helicopter-parents-are-ruining-college-students/?tid=sm_fb

Bradley-Geist and Olson-Buchanan, both management professors, surveyed more than 450 undergraduate students who were asked to “rate their level of self-efficacy, the frequency of parental involvement, how involved parents were in their daily lives and their response to certain workplace scenarios.”

The study showed that those college students with “helicopter parents” had a hard time believing in their own ability to accomplish goals. They were more dependent on others, had poor coping strategies and didn’t have soft skills, like responsibility and conscientiousness throughout college, the authors found.

“I had a mom ask to sit in on a disciplinary meeting” when a student was failing, said Marla Vannucci, an associate professor at the Adler School of Professional Psychology in Chicago, who was that students’ academic adviser. Her team let the mom sit in, but in the end it doesn’t help. “It really breeds helplessness.”

Vannucci also had a college-aged client whose parents did her homework for her. The client’s mother explained that she didn’t want her daughter to struggle the same way she had. The daughter, however, “has grown up to be an adult who has anxiety attacks anytime someone asks her to do something challenging” because she never learned how to handle anything on her own.

These may be extreme cases, but parental over-involvement has been bleeding into college culture for some time now. “I think they need to know that they are actually diminishing their child’s ability to understand how to navigate the world by trying to do it for them,” Gibralter said.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

What are you doing to help those kids?

What are you doing? Besides posting on DCUM.

A lot actually.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am sad to live in a county that does not allow kids to walk to and from a park without getting paranoid people calling 911 and getting pulled over by police. My siblings and I definitely were this age on our own playing outside daily. And not right in our front yard. As soon as the training wheels were off, we were free to ride to friends homes, the park, the baseball field, and the convenience store. The last 3 were at least a half mile away and the store was crossing a busy 2 lane road. We didn't have cell phones, we had watches and were told what time to be home. Made a lot of friends and had a lot of fun. Great childhood. Kids these days are so coddled and structured it is scary. And the fact that so many of you think that walking a mile back home from a park is abuse is even scarier.

Maybe that should be written into the law. As soon as a child can ride a bike without training wheels.

Your sadness is lost on elitist children, you should be sad for children who go days without food not hours.

Yes because I am sad about a rigid overprotective government telling me how to raise my kids, means I am not sad at all for the children who go days without food. Nice well thought out retort!!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am sad to live in a county that does not allow kids to walk to and from a park without getting paranoid people calling 911 and getting pulled over by police. My siblings and I definitely were this age on our own playing outside daily. And not right in our front yard. As soon as the training wheels were off, we were free to ride to friends homes, the park, the baseball field, and the convenience store. The last 3 were at least a half mile away and the store was crossing a busy 2 lane road. We didn't have cell phones, we had watches and were told what time to be home. Made a lot of friends and had a lot of fun. Great childhood. Kids these days are so coddled and structured it is scary. And the fact that so many of you think that walking a mile back home from a park is abuse is even scarier.

Maybe that should be written into the law. As soon as a child can ride a bike without training wheels.

Your sadness is lost on elitist children, you should be sad for children who go days without food not hours.

Why can't we be sad for both children? Why can't we work to improve the lives of both children?

Because 1 set of children lives far exceed the measurement for excellent.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
The thing that really bothers me about all of this is the poor judgment shown by the cops and CPS. I don't care what your parenting philosophy is, but there is no excuse to delay calling the parents. They should have been notified right away or at least within the first hour.

The cops and CPS are supposed to be there to help keep children safe, not terrify them.


I totally agree with you.

Are you for real?
Do you know the job of CPS? It is to protect the kids. These people had history with CPS, they were familiar with them . If they think this family is in any way in violation, do you think their first call is to the parents??
No, they access and determine course of action. Do you think they call "Shaniqua" when they take her kids, you think she is their first call?
Miss me with your 1st world , privileged BA .

See you miss the point, the kids did not need protection. So it's just harassment.

They have to investigate to be sure the kids do not need protection. You cannot be that stupid. This is a waste of tax payer money and CPS time. If these dummies would have just complied with the regulations and the deal they signed and then gone off and lobbied to change the regulations/write a book/write their state rep, etc.
Instead people are all up in arms about these little privileged kids not being allowed to swing on the monkey bars by themselved. BOO-FREAKKING - HOO.
Get worked up about kids who are really in trouble, kids who DO NEED SUPERVISION/LUNCH/MENTORS. Instead all of this sound and fury about some privileged ass kids not being able to walk to the park. Yep, we have all of our priorities straight.

NP here. I don't want the system to tell me how to raise my kids and at what ages they think it is okay for my child. Kids in MCPS walk to school sometimes up to a mile away. They do not need to go assisted with a parent and many of them do not. Many walk alone, many with friends, many with siblings. If the kids can walk to school, they can walk to a park, to a friends house, to a store, or anywhere else they want to go. There is no set law in MC that says they can not. These parents have done nothing wrong and I for one think CPS is wasting their time fighting this, when like you said, there are better battles to fight. How about if CPS wants to cry neglect on parents like this, THEY go and change the regulations first and then start hunting kids down and harassing them with legal cause. Because until them, my kids are still walking to the bus stop and to the park on their own.

You just don't get it. And yes, we do need some regulations as to what can and cannot with their kids -- we do. People do not mind that their are car seat laws or leaving kids alone in a car, etc. . I let my kids do stuff that technically may be against the regs and if I got called out on it -- I'd get over it and comply. Why? Because I know that I am responsible, but their are a lot of other people that are not and it is not going to kill me or my kids to not walk to Starbucks by themselves. Folks get pissed because things are no longer old-school and neighbors are not friendly and looking out, but as soon as someone does -- there is hell to pay. These parents are loud mouth grand standers who are more interested in a cause then the possibility of losing their kids. Horrible execution on their part, so much else they could have done to change the regs if they disagree. Just another example of the privileged, all about me, entitlement epidemic in this area.

So basically you are saying that you believe that there should be a law stating kids can't walk to a park unless they have a Mommy hovering. Otherwise it wouldn't bother you that they are trying to fight CPS. I can't imagine what a coddled up world our poor grandkids are going to live in. It is bad enough right now. Each decade, the kids get less and less freedom and ironically more and more disorders, depression and anxiety.

thanks for providing a perfect example of exactly what i was talking about.

1) I said if you do not like the regs, lobby to change them. But you do not do it by taking the chance that your kids will go into the system.
If you knew what that entailed, you would not take that chance

2) You are worried about walks to the park and mood disorders, when there are kids out there who are the same age as these kids whose parents are almost never home, kids who go hungry, kids who are NEVER properly supervised, kids who are undereducated and underserved. Kids who get called "FARMS", that people run away from because they think poor is a disease that their precious snowflakes will catch.


3) There are real, serious, life determining issues related to the kids in our world and people are about ready to lose their damn minds about walking to the park.
You know what -- MISS ME WITH THE BULLSH****!@!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

What are you doing to help those kids?

What are you doing? Besides posting on DCUM.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Legal definitions often differ from dictionary definitions, you're clearly not a lawyer. And no one said that being a mile away from home constituted neglect. They said it constituted evidence of neglect. I think you don't understand what evidence means.

Correct, I am not a lawyer.

So is the lawyerly argument is that being a mile away from home isn't neglect but is evidence of neglect? In my limited experience of lawyers, when lawyers say that [word] might seem to mean [definition], but actually means [something completely different that nobody who was not a lawyer would ever think it means], that's a sign that the lawyers are on shaky ground.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am sad to live in a county that does not allow kids to walk to and from a park without getting paranoid people calling 911 and getting pulled over by police. My siblings and I definitely were this age on our own playing outside daily. And not right in our front yard. As soon as the training wheels were off, we were free to ride to friends homes, the park, the baseball field, and the convenience store. The last 3 were at least a half mile away and the store was crossing a busy 2 lane road. We didn't have cell phones, we had watches and were told what time to be home. Made a lot of friends and had a lot of fun. Great childhood. Kids these days are so coddled and structured it is scary. And the fact that so many of you think that walking a mile back home from a park is abuse is even scarier.

Maybe that should be written into the law. As soon as a child can ride a bike without training wheels.

Your sadness is lost on elitist children, you should be sad for children who go days without food not hours.

Why can't we be sad for both children? Why can't we work to improve the lives of both children?

Because 1 set of children lives far exceed the measurement for excellent.

Anonymous wrote:

What are you doing to help those kids?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
The thing that really bothers me about all of this is the poor judgment shown by the cops and CPS. I don't care what your parenting philosophy is, but there is no excuse to delay calling the parents. They should have been notified right away or at least within the first hour.

The cops and CPS are supposed to be there to help keep children safe, not terrify them.


I totally agree with you.

Are you for real?
Do you know the job of CPS? It is to protect the kids. These people had history with CPS, they were familiar with them . If they think this family is in any way in violation, do you think their first call is to the parents??
No, they access and determine course of action. Do you think they call "Shaniqua" when they take her kids, you think she is their first call?
Miss me with your 1st world , privileged BA .

See you miss the point, the kids did not need protection. So it's just harassment.

They have to investigate to be sure the kids do not need protection. You cannot be that stupid. This is a waste of tax payer money and CPS time. If these dummies would have just complied with the regulations and the deal they signed and then gone off and lobbied to change the regulations/write a book/write their state rep, etc.
Instead people are all up in arms about these little privileged kids not being allowed to swing on the monkey bars by themselved. BOO-FREAKKING - HOO.
Get worked up about kids who are really in trouble, kids who DO NEED SUPERVISION/LUNCH/MENTORS. Instead all of this sound and fury about some privileged ass kids not being able to walk to the park. Yep, we have all of our priorities straight.

NP here. I don't want the system to tell me how to raise my kids and at what ages they think it is okay for my child. Kids in MCPS walk to school sometimes up to a mile away. They do not need to go assisted with a parent and many of them do not. Many walk alone, many with friends, many with siblings. If the kids can walk to school, they can walk to a park, to a friends house, to a store, or anywhere else they want to go. There is no set law in MC that says they can not. These parents have done nothing wrong and I for one think CPS is wasting their time fighting this, when like you said, there are better battles to fight. How about if CPS wants to cry neglect on parents like this, THEY go and change the regulations first and then start hunting kids down and harassing them with legal cause. Because until them, my kids are still walking to the bus stop and to the park on their own.

You just don't get it. And yes, we do need some regulations as to what can and cannot with their kids -- we do. People do not mind that their are car seat laws or leaving kids alone in a car, etc. . I let my kids do stuff that technically may be against the regs and if I got called out on it -- I'd get over it and comply. Why? Because I know that I am responsible, but their are a lot of other people that are not and it is not going to kill me or my kids to not walk to Starbucks by themselves. Folks get pissed because things are no longer old-school and neighbors are not friendly and looking out, but as soon as someone does -- there is hell to pay. These parents are loud mouth grand standers who are more interested in a cause then the possibility of losing their kids. Horrible execution on their part, so much else they could have done to change the regs if they disagree. Just another example of the privileged, all about me, entitlement epidemic in this area.

So basically you are saying that you believe that there should be a law stating kids can't walk to a park unless they have a Mommy hovering. Otherwise it wouldn't bother you that they are trying to fight CPS. I can't imagine what a coddled up world our poor grandkids are going to live in. It is bad enough right now. Each decade, the kids get less and less freedom and ironically more and more disorders, depression and anxiety.

Anonymous wrote:

Legal definitions often differ from dictionary definitions, you're clearly not a lawyer. And no one said that being a mile away from home constituted neglect. They said it constituted evidence of neglect. I think you don't understand what evidence means.