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"Free Range" kids

Frayed Knot Jan 17 2015 07:14 AM

I've heard of free range chickens before - even though I don't quite know how a chicken qualifies for such a label. Maybe it fills out an application somewhere, I dunno. But apparently there is now something known free range children too. These children are being raised, perhaps not surprisingly, by 'free range parents' who consider themselves part of a movement but are considered by some others to be part of a crazy cult. Anyway, I didn't know this whole thing was a 'thing' until earlier this week when a story broke about two siblings, 10 & 6, who were picked up by police (who had been alerted by neighbors) for walking down the sidewalk unattended!! The two had been walking home from a park about a mile away. Tuns out that's illegal. Kids were brought home, parents were chastised, then visited by Child Protective Services, made to sign a pledge never to leave their children unattended (ever?), father at first refused to sign said pledge until CPS threatened to forcibly take kids from them if he didn't. Didn't realize I was a 365 day/yr lawbreaker when I was a younger lad.

themetfairy Jan 17 2015 07:32 AM Re: "Free Range" kids

I never heard of this before. My gut feeling is that this is kind of hippie mumbo jumbo, but OTOH this is America and people have the right to raise their kids as they see fit (even if it's not the way I would choose to do it). As for walking a mile, my question is where is the mile? In a rural or very suburban setting it might be fine; in a high traffic area I might not even want to run a mile myself. Details are needed; common sense should be applied liberally.

Frayed Knot Jan 17 2015 10:03 AM Re: "Free Range" kids

Well I suspect these 'free range' types don't think of themselves as a movement, hippie jargon not withstanding, as much as they do a counter-movement to what they see as an age of overly protective "helicopter" parenting. In this particular case, the kids usually (but didn't that day) carry cards identifying them as "free range" kids and therefore have parental permission to be out on their own, an act which indicates that they have reason to believe that their kids are subject to being questioned, ratted out, or even picked up by law enforcement simply for not having a parent with them at all times. And what that mile walk in this case was like isn't really the question as it's apparent that, in this particular jurisdiction anyway, it's the fact that the kids were unescorted was the 'crime' by itself and the specifics of the route were irrelevant.

RealityChuck Jan 17 2015 10:27 AM Re: "Free Range" kids

The point is simply that society is overprotective of children. Kids of previous generations were often left to manage on their own during the day: walking to school, or to a friend's house, without an adult watching them every second. The entire over-protectiveness is part of the culture of constant fear that has taken over America. People seem to love being constantly terrified.

metsmarathon Jan 17 2015 11:12 AM Re: "Free Range" kids

when i was in 2nd-4th grade, living in jersey city, a quarter mile seemed incredibly far and distant. it was about the limits of my free range. the neighborhood wasn't the greatest, and that quarter mile range was bounded on two sides by a park, and two sides by busy streets, but within the space of the few blocks i was allowed and comfortable, i was not escorted. i was also a suburban kid through and through, so jersey city was a very foreign place to us, though it was where my grandparents lived, and my mother had grown up. before 2nd grade, and after 4th grade, in the hinterlands of northwest jersey, on the fringe of suburbia, it turns out i kept to a similar quarter-mile radius, as that was about the limits of the neighborhood we lived in. i could venture farther, if i wanted, and indeed did up to about a half mile, but it was along slog of a hill back home, and rarely worth it. but by the time i was in, maybe 6th grade or so, but definitely 8th grade, my range included "the 5-mile loop", via bicycle - a long stretch of roads that went past our elementary school, and which added up to, naturally, about 5 miles. it seemed far and distant, and it was, and for a time is was seen as the ultimate challenge, to ride a bike successfully around it. the other directions from our house had either a big steep hill, dense woods, or a heavily trafficked road, so that kept us confined to our neighborhood, plus that five mile loop. in my current neighborhood, i don't really see a problem with a 10-year old venturing a mile. there's a playground at a school that's a mile away that i foresee being a future destination. i'm know a specific 5-year old who i don't think should be making the trek solo at this point (and it's a moot point too because he doesn't like traveling solo), but i think that when he turns 10, i would be likely comfortable with his being an escort to a pair of 6-year olds.

Frayed Knot Jan 17 2015 12:31 PM Re: "Free Range" kids

Of course there need to be limits on the wanderings of kids depending on age, surroundings, and whatnot. What gets me about this story is, as RC says, that at least some segments of society have developed into such an over-protective mode that certain parents felt the need to provide their kids with cards to carry declaring them to be part of this almost separatist-type movement to combat the trends of law enforcement, CPS, and peers. Especially since the transgression in this case wasn't about where they were walking or what they were doing while walking it was THAT they were walking in the first place.

Mets – Willets Point Jan 18 2015 02:39 PM Re: "Free Range" kids

This is not a hippy thing. Free Range Kids originated with New York City writer Lenore Skenazy. When her son was 9, he wanted to ride the subway on his own, so they worked out a plan, dropped him off at one station and met him at the station he got off at. Skenazy wrote an article about the experience and was lambasted by the media and the public.* Since then she's been blogging about how many parents have gotten in trouble with busybody neighbors and even the police for allowing children and teenagers to do things on their own that were common childhood activities a generation or two ago. You can read it at http://www.freerangekids.com/. It's both sobering and enraging to see where we are today. * To be honest, when I read it I didn't know what the big deal was. When I went on the subway with my parents and grandparents in the 70s & 80s (when the subway was actually scary) there were always kids my age riding without adult supervision. As a suburban kid I just thought it was what city kids did to get to school and stuff.

Vic Sage Jan 20 2015 02:33 PM Re: "Free Range" kids

8-reasons-children-of-the-1970s-should-all-be-dead: http://read.feedly.com/html?url=http%3A ... ize=medium funny cuz its true. i really resent the assumptions and impositions of modern parenting. My wife is one of these kinds of parents, and i'm decidedly not, so this causes some marital friction, needless to say. Having grown up and gone to school in a slum area, i learned early on how to outrun packs of feral dogs, and how to negotiate my way past potential injuries of a human sort as well. That which does not kill you makes you stronger. But now We take the sting out of life for our children (and i understand the impulse), so then they are ill equipped to deal with the world on their own. That being said, it's a delicate balance between letting them figure some stuff out on their own and allowing them to put themselves in serious peril.

Nymr83 Jan 20 2015 02:52 PM Re: "Free Range" kids

I love the kid riding the tortoise with a goat ... I was born in 1983 and did pretty much whatever i wanted with a reasonable curfew, i hate the overparenting i see now and hate even more that the state seems to be impossing it more and more. I have friends who never sit down unless their kid is asleep because they are constantly hovering over them, it sucks.

Frayed Knot Jan 20 2015 06:06 PM Re: "Free Range" kids

What surprises me is how often I hear some version of the phrase: ‘I drop/pick-up the kids at school each day’ Now I realize that some of this comes from off-season athletes and/or between-films actors trying to convey what an active and involved a parent they are and whose kids are more likely to attend private schools not necessarily close to home. But I still hear it said a lot more often than I expect coming from someone who never went to school by any method other than by bus or by foot. As new schools were built or consolidated for various reasons as I was growing up, I wound up bussing to grades 1, 2, & 3, then walking to 4th, 5th & 6th grades, then bussing again the next three years, then walking the final three. The walks were each about a 1/2 mile with one high traffic road to cross where there was a school district supplied crossing guard to guide the younger kids across both in the mornings and afternoon. You walked alone or with siblings/friends in an either organized or haphazard group, and waits at the bus-stop (usually a block or so away) were the same way. But this whole driven to school movement is something very foreign to someone who not only never had it but don’t remember anyone who was either aside from the occasional missed bus or say a doctor’s appointment, and nobody’s mother walked them to or met them at the bus aside maybe for 1st graders on their 1st day of school.

John Cougar Lunchbucket Jan 20 2015 09:10 PM Re: "Free Range" kids

RealityChuck wrote: The point is simply that society is overprotective of children. Kids of previous generations were often left to manage on their own during the day: walking to school, or to a friend's house, without an adult watching them every second. The entire over-protectiveness is part of the culture of constant fear that has taken over America. People seem to love being constantly terrified. I'm not sure it's not actually driven by terrified people so much as by terrified institutions. For example, my kid (8) goes to elementary school directly across the street* from the Y where he attends an afterschool program. To facilitate this the Y and the school work together to be certain a Y supervisor gathers the kids at the dismisal time and gets them across the street. On Tuesdays, the boy attends afterschool chess club which ends after the Y program begins but before it lets out. But neither the Y nor the school will allow him to walk the 30 seconds it would take to get there, they're scared of being responsible if something goes wrong! I have to bail on my job at 3:30 to hustle over there just to pick him up! The other change is that it's next to impossible to raise kids without 2 income earners in the family when there was less of that back when I was a kid. If there were Moms hanging around the neighborhoods -- instead of the unemployable, the corner drinkers, the pedos, etc. -- it might be more normal for kids to go explore on their own the way we did. For as much mischief as we got into, we all knew it was rare when any of us didn't have a parent at home to run to if and when things went wrong. *-crossing guarded(!)

Edgy MD Jan 20 2015 10:00 PM Re: "Free Range" kids

It was also rare that, even if we were three blocks away from home, and one of us did something stupid, a neighbor woman I had perhaps remembered seeing once in my life didn't stick her head out a window and declare herself to be calling my mom at that very instant. Eyes and ears everywhere.

themetfairy Feb 10 2015 10:04 PM Re: "Free Range" kids

Parenting (including Free Range children) was the subject of Comedy Central's The Nightly Show tonight.

Frayed Knot Mar 03 2015 06:24 PM Re: "Free Range" kids

The case of the Maryland parents that spawned this thread has been (sort of) adjudicated with a finding of "unsubstantiated child neglect" against the parents following a two month investigation. And while the "unsubstantiated" part initially sound good for the parents (certainly better than GUILTY) it doesn't go as far as having the charges dismissed. That the charges weren't dismissed means that a file remains open on these parents for the next FIVE years (this will go on your permanent record!!) and the specter of what will happen if the children are found wandering the sidewalks of suburbia (along the mean streets of Silver Spring, Md) again during this period remains unresolved. Presumably the possibility of arrest and/or having their children taken from them remains an option as CPS threatened both upon the initial 'incident' when the police picked the two siblings up off the streets after complaints from [crossout]nosy-assed busybodies[/crossout] concerned neighbors.

themetfairy Jun 04 2015 11:07 AM Re: "Free Range" kids

From The Daily Show last night.