How Young is Too Young to Walk to the Park Alone?

Do you or will you allow your children to walk to school or to the park alone?

If you said “yes” and happen to live in the state of Maryland, you could find yourself on the wrong side of the law.

Danielle and Alexander Meitiv of Silver Spring, Maryland, learned that the hard away.

Mr. and Mrs. Meitiv practice “free-range parenting,” a philosophy where moms and dads give their children a great degree of independence. So when they allowed their two children, Rafi and Dvora, ages 10 and 6, to walk home alone from the park, the police got involved.

Not just the police, though.

Montgomery County Child Protective Services were also called in to look into the issue. After a two-month-long investigation, the Meitivs were found “responsible for ‘unsubstantiated’ child neglect.” The family will now have an open file with CPS for the next five years.

Are today’s kids “overprotected,” as The Atlantic magazine asserts?

The Meitiv case, and others like it, have fueled an ongoing national debate on parenting styles that’s caught the attention of columnists and bloggers from The New York Times and elsewhere. It’s part of the trend some are calling the “criminalization” of parenthood and childhood, where alleged “Bad Samaritans” call the police before they check in with parents of children.

This issue isn’t black and white. There are a lot of factors to consider when debating and determining how old is old enough before letting your son or daughter ride their bike to the park alone or with a sibling or friend.

When I was 5 years old, I was riding the streets of Southern California solo on my bicycle.

Did Jean and I allow our own boys to do the same?

Absolutely not.

Times have changed, and with it we’ve all had to make adjustments.

Sadly, the degradation of the culture is obvious. It’s not an easy time to be a parent.

For example, Jean and I get an email update whenever a convicted sex offender moves within a certain mile radius of our house.

But setting aside the particulars of our own parameters and comfort levels, are we OK with the government labeling some of these decisions concerning a parent’s right to introduce independence to a child as criminal?

To be sure, there are cases of definite neglect, and good parents can come to different conclusions on where to draw the line.

But what if one day authorities label practices common to many Christian parents, like appropriate spanking, homeschooling, and teaching a biblical sexual ethic, as criminal?

This is a developing issue where opinions tend to waver depending on the circumstance. But one thing is evident: in the ongoing tension between parental rights and government intervention, it’s a debate that won’t be solved soon.

I’m curious to know what you think.

How do you work through setting parameters and limitations on your children’s activities?

What factors, like gender, age and neighborhood, do you consider when letting children first go off on their own? How young is too young to allow a child to play alone in the park?

How old is old enough?

Where should the legal lines be drawn around these parental decisions?

I look forward to reading your comments.

Topics: Current Events Tags: news, parenting April 15, 2015 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura