frankly if I were these people I would consider moving. this is going to probably keep happening now that the neighbors know their kids and know their parenting style. it almost sounds like one of the neighbors called the cops on them.

They were hoping that they lived in a place where children can walk to the park and back on a nice Sunday afternoon without getting picked up by the police. But obviously they don't. There is a problem here, and it's not with the parents.

Amen to this and Petula Dvorak's column.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To be honest, I don't really know that I think it is a great idea for a 10 year old to supervise a 6 year old at a park on his/her own. Last summer, I had a 9 year old kid come up to me, a random stranger, and tell me that she thought her 5 year old brother had broken his leg, they lived 12 blocks away, and she didn't know what to do. I helped her deal with the situation (stayed with her brother while she went to get their mom and called 911). But I wouldn't say the 9 year old really seemed on top of the situation.

Sounds like she was on top of it--she knew she needed help and she asked a grown up for help.

And, there is certainly room for debate about which school-aged kids should be given which responsibilities at which ages. But that should be a debate for parents to have with each other about their own kids. It should not be resolved by the cops or CPS by picking up any kids found playing outside and detaining them for 5 hours without food and without letting their parents see them.

Except it was not the adult stranger's responsibility. It was the parents.

That's awfully reductive. It's people's responsibility to help people. Children are people in their own right.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To be honest, I don't really know that I think it is a great idea for a 10 year old to supervise a 6 year old at a park on his/her own. Last summer, I had a 9 year old kid come up to me, a random stranger, and tell me that she thought her 5 year old brother had broken his leg, they lived 12 blocks away, and she didn't know what to do. I helped her deal with the situation (stayed with her brother while she went to get their mom and called 911). But I wouldn't say the 9 year old really seemed on top of the situation.

Sounds like she was on top of it--she knew she needed help and she asked a grown up for help.

And, there is certainly room for debate about which school-aged kids should be given which responsibilities at which ages. But that should be a debate for parents to have with each other about their own kids. It should not be resolved by the cops or CPS by picking up any kids found playing outside and detaining them for 5 hours without food and without letting their parents see them.

Except it was not the adult stranger's responsibility. It was the parents.

Anonymous wrote:To be honest, I don't really know that I think it is a great idea for a 10 year old to supervise a 6 year old at a park on his/her own. Last summer, I had a 9 year old kid come up to me, a random stranger, and tell me that she thought her 5 year old brother had broken his leg, they lived 12 blocks away, and she didn't know what to do. I helped her deal with the situation (stayed with her brother while she went to get their mom and called 911). But I wouldn't say the 9 year old really seemed on top of the situation.

Sounds like she was on top of it--she knew she needed help and she asked a grown up for help.

And, there is certainly room for debate about which school-aged kids should be given which responsibilities at which ages. But that should be a debate for parents to have with each other about their own kids. It should not be resolved by the cops or CPS by picking up any kids found playing outside and detaining them for 5 hours without food and without letting their parents see them.

To be honest, I don't really know that I think it is a great idea for a 10 year old to supervise a 6 year old at a park on his/her own. Last summer, I had a 9 year old kid come up to me, a random stranger, and tell me that she thought her 5 year old brother had broken his leg, they lived 12 blocks away, and she didn't know what to do. I helped her deal with the situation (stayed with her brother while she went to get their mom and called 911). But I wouldn't say the 9 year old really seemed on top of the situation.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Setting aside this issue of whether it is right or wrong for the kids to be on their own in this park , I really don't know what the parents were expecting in this situation after what previously happened. They are well within their rights to advocate to have this law changed, but until it is, they've chosen to live in a place where this is the law, and by disregarding it after their kids were picked up by the police, they are the ones who have set the kids up for an unpleasant interaction with the police.

Perhaps they were expecting that the children would be able to walk to the park and back on a nice Sunday afternoon without getting picked up by the police.

No, that's what they were hoping. They should have expected exactly what happened.

Yes, you're right. They were hoping that they lived in a place where children can walk to the park and back on a nice Sunday afternoon without getting picked up by the police. But obviously they don't. There is a problem here, and it's not with the parents.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Setting aside this issue of whether it is right or wrong for the kids to be on their own in this park , I really don't know what the parents were expecting in this situation after what previously happened. They are well within their rights to advocate to have this law changed, but until it is, they've chosen to live in a place where this is the law, and by disregarding it after their kids were picked up by the police, they are the ones who have set the kids up for an unpleasant interaction with the police.

Perhaps they were expecting that the children would be able to walk to the park and back on a nice Sunday afternoon without getting picked up by the police.

No, that's what they were hoping. They should have expected exactly what happened.

new poster here. Parents should be concerned about CPS and the police overstepping. Do we want a police state? Since when is letting your 2 kids play and walk together somewhere a crime?

If the neighbor actually was concerned, it would have made sense for the neighbor to call the parents. This whole incident sounds like 1984 the book.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

More likely... Breaking News... the "concerned citizen" that called the police ends up being the parents and their wacko free range attention seeking friends.

Well, as long as we're speculating, I think that the neighbor who called the police had it in for the parents, and this was a good way to get back at them. Because otherwise I absolutely cannot imagine why a neighbor would see elementary-school-aged children the neighbor knows, walking down the sidewalk on a Sunday afternoon, and think, "Hey, I know! I'll call the police!"

So there are people in SS who "had it in for the parents" ... yet the parents still let their kids walk around these people with no concern.

Hey Grandpa is a sex offender... let's go to his house for a sleep over!

Letting your children walk around the neighborhood they live in, even though the neighborhood has a neighbor who has a grudge against you, is like going over to a sex offender's house for a sleepover?

The neighbor is the one who decided it would be a good idea to call the police. This one is on the neighbor, not the parents. I really hope that none of my neighbors are so vindictive.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Setting aside this issue of whether it is right or wrong for the kids to be on their own in this park , I really don't know what the parents were expecting in this situation after what previously happened. They are well within their rights to advocate to have this law changed, but until it is, they've chosen to live in a place where this is the law, and by disregarding it after their kids were picked up by the police, they are the ones who have set the kids up for an unpleasant interaction with the police.

This has little to do with the "law." There is no specific law about how old kids have to be to be out in public alone. (locked in a car or left in the home, yes. In public, no) They are completely at the mercy of the judgement and discretion of busy-body strangers, the police and CPS.

I absolutely am certain that if these kids were black or hispanic and were playing in the same park or crossing the same streets, nobody would call the police and CPS would not get involved. I say this because I live in Silver Spring and see it all the time.

Yet most the kids that are neglected in SS are Hispanic. Irony! Turn a blind eye.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

More likely... Breaking News... the "concerned citizen" that called the police ends up being the parents and their wacko free range attention seeking friends.

Well, as long as we're speculating, I think that the neighbor who called the police had it in for the parents, and this was a good way to get back at them. Because otherwise I absolutely cannot imagine why a neighbor would see elementary-school-aged children the neighbor knows, walking down the sidewalk on a Sunday afternoon, and think, "Hey, I know! I'll call the police!"

So there are people in SS who "had it in for the parents" ... yet the parents still let their kids walk around these people with no concern.

Hey Grandpa is a sex offender... let's go to his house for a sleep over!

Anonymous wrote:Setting aside this issue of whether it is right or wrong for the kids to be on their own in this park , I really don't know what the parents were expecting in this situation after what previously happened. They are well within their rights to advocate to have this law changed, but until it is, they've chosen to live in a place where this is the law, and by disregarding it after their kids were picked up by the police, they are the ones who have set the kids up for an unpleasant interaction with the police.

Perhaps they were expecting that the children would be able to walk to the park and back on a nice Sunday afternoon without getting picked up by the police.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

More likely... Breaking News... the "concerned citizen" that called the police ends up being the parents and their wacko free range attention seeking friends.

Well, as long as we're speculating, I think that the neighbor who called the police had it in for the parents, and this was a good way to get back at them. Because otherwise I absolutely cannot imagine why a neighbor would see elementary-school-aged children the neighbor knows, walking down the sidewalk on a Sunday afternoon, and think, "Hey, I know! I'll call the police!"

You are making a big assumption that it was someone the parents know. Multiple people would find it concerning to see unaccompanied, very young looking children, in an urban park. Also we have no idea how these kids behave. Maybe they looked scared or lost, or maybe they said something weird to a concerned bystander.

You can speculate, I can speculate, everybody can speculate! Yay!

But in fact they were not in a park, let alone an "urban (eek) park)". They were two and a half blocks from home, so it's unlikely they looked lost. And if they looked scared, or said something weird to a concerned bystander, it was probably because they were worried that the police were going to come pick them up, as the police had in January.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/free-range-kids-and-our-parenting-police-state/2015/04/13/42c30336-e1df-11e4-905f-cc896d379a32_story.html

Anonymous wrote:Setting aside this issue of whether it is right or wrong for the kids to be on their own in this park , I really don't know what the parents were expecting in this situation after what previously happened. They are well within their rights to advocate to have this law changed, but until it is, they've chosen to live in a place where this is the law, and by disregarding it after their kids were picked up by the police, they are the ones who have set the kids up for an unpleasant interaction with the police.

No, they live in a place where there is no clear law against what they are doing. And, when this happened before they ended up with a nonsensical "finding" of "unsubstantiated" child neglect.

In any case, the issue of national debate is not whether these particular people should "learn their lesson" that someone--a neighbor? the cops?-seems to be stalking their children and reporting them to CPS whenever they go outside. It's whether it should be illegal for parents to decide to let their children play alone outside at ages at which, a few decades ago, there was consensus children should be able to walk a few blocks alone.