Mom arrested, charged with felony for letting son walk to park alone.

I think that's crazy! If the child is dependable enough to handle the task responsibly, I think it's fine.

A friend of mine had a daughter who was "flashed" right in front of her house. So, proximity to the house is no safety net.

I think the people at the pool were right for asking the kid if he was ok, but calling the police is insane!

Utterly ridiculous!

My son is now 11 and from the age of 7 I began to loosen the apron strings in a controlled manner, I say controlled because I would never let him do something I didn't think he could cope with.

Now, he is entirely capable of getting about just about anywhere, confident and free to enjoy his life in a responsible way.

Sadly some of his friends are late to the party and cannot enjoy the freedoom my son does, some are stilll fearful even now.

We have to remember we are our childrens caretakers not their owners.

Concerning the kindly people who stopped and quizzed the boy, I'm sure they thought they were doing agood thing, but sadly their over-reaction has cost a mother her confidence and a child their peace of mind.

Well done to the kid for running away when quizzed, he must have been scared stiff, the irony in the samaritans actions is that they played to what child are all taught.

If you see a stranger and they start talking to you....RUN!

I guess its the culture, but to me personally this seems far too extreme.

Round here, it is uncommon for 7-year-olds to go to school alone (1st grade), even if the school is miles away. Public transport exists and the parents just show the kid how to get to bus, where to go off and the route to school. Nothing uncommon in it. Some parents do send their kids to school and pick up every day during the first grades, most do not and there is nothing weird in it in my eyes.

Seven is a tad young to go wandering anywhere ALONE. Safety in numbers. A felony is too much. It will probably be pleaded down to some minor charge and minimal punishment.

I notice that most of the posters who thought nothing of it always used "we" in their anecdotes. I lived a block away from a park in a small rural town. At seven could I go there alone? No. Could i go with a small group or even just a friend or two? Certainly.

At that age, I used to ride my bike five miles to school and back. I played in the desert miles from home. This is BS meant to generate revenue for the state.

a reply to: gladtobehere

There's a big push on to criminalize as many as possible. In Texas for example, the State signed contracts with private prison companies. Those contracts penalize the State with hefty charges if the State doesn't supply a minimum number of prisons. As a result, State Judges are taking plea deals Felony cases, offering Deferred Adjudication probation. Then, they promptly revoke the probation and re-sentence the person who plead out to 2-10 years prison time.

In this Florida case, they may be able to remove the child from the home if the mom is forced to plea out to a felony offense. Then the State can charge the mother with payment of monthly child support, which, if she doesn't pay or gets behind in payments will cause a probation revocation and a sentence to prison time.

There's no "justice" in the Criminal Justice system; its a racket.

Seriously?! People have become super paranoid down here. Everywhere, really. When I was that age, I used to go to the secluded little landside beach near our house by myself. 10 minutes of biking to get to the foot trail, 15 minutes or so of hiking through the brush to the shore. Occasionally, I'd swing by a friend's house and ask if they wanted to go swimming, too. We never had ANYONE stop us back then, all we were told was "Be careful" or "Watch for scorpions on the trail".

If my parents had been arrested for letting us out & about solo young, they'd be serving life sentences for all the offenses racked up.

a reply to: AutumnWitch657

Dang straight! Collectively as a nation we are raising our children to be scared little dependent pansies. Obviously, this kid knew to run away from strangers. Good job mom. Admittedly, todays world is getting more dangerous for kids to be kids, but I'd walk a mile down the road to my friend's house when I was 7. I don't know... Law is out of hand. Freedom in America has stage 3 cancer. We can still make it out OK, but we may die too. Arresting this mom for that is crazy.

The telling part from the source are the comments. Many were in support of the arrest. The reoccurring themes were:

Sexual predators at the park...
Negligent parenting...
The world has changed...

All may have some kernel of truth. But the world being more dangerous today? Please. Read a history book. That statement is patently false. What has changed is peoples' concept of danger.

Guess that makes all of us criminals...

Perhaps that is the real agenda.

It's happening every where:

It seems like a trend is emerging in the form of authorities going after parents. For instance, in a new case out of Florida a mother was arrested on a felony charge after she let her 7-year-old son walk by himself to the local park. Dominic Gainey was stopped by someone while he walked and police were called to the Port St. Lucie park. Officers then brought Dominic home and charged Nicole Gainey with child neglect.

She had to post a $4,000 bond to get out of jail. Gainey says since her arrest, she has learned from the Department of Children and Families that the charge will likely be dropped. Gainey said she argued to police that her son always has a cell phone with him so she can check in on him. Officers felt she had put her son in danger, pointing out that numerous sex offenders live in the area.

Anna Kooiman pointed to two other recent cases that seem to highlight a criminalization of parenthood:

An Ohio dad was arrested last month and lost his job at McDonald's after his 8-year-old son turned up at a park. The boy was supposed to have boarded a church van, but skipped out, unbeknownst to his father.

In another case in South Carolina, a mother was arrested and spent 17 days in jail after she left her nine-year-old daughter to play at a popular neighborhood park while she went to work.

Another similar story from 2012:

Mom Arrested & Sent to Jail for Letting Her Kids Play Outside in La Porte, Texas. According to Cooper she was sitting outside of her home in a lawn chair watching her children, ages 6 and 9, ride their motorized scooters in their cul-de-sac. The next she knew, police were there, handcuffing her, and taking her jail where she was forced to spend the night. Why? Because she was apparently endangering her children.

She told Click2Houston she was out there watching them the entire time, but police didn't want to hear it. Apparently they had received a call from a neighbor that the kids were out there unsupervised, and it was an orange jumpsuit for her. Eventually the charges against Cooper were dropped, thank goodness, but she says that's not good enough to make up for the humiliating and terrifying ordeal. She told the station, "My daughter had him (the police officer) around the leg saying, 'Please, please don't take my mom to jail. Please, she didn't do anything wrong.'" So she's suing the police department, and I hope she gets some justice.

originally posted by: ABNARTY

The world has changed...

My favorite excuse for paranoid behavior.

The world has changed. It's far safer than it has ever been.

The days of kids going to the park with some friends their age or by themselves are over. I hate to be cliche, but the world isn't what it use to be. While the punishment might be a little severe, parents need to watch their young children, the world is full of predators. In fact, someone I work with who I thought was a normal guy is a convicted sex offender (lewd acts with minor under 14 X2 convictions.)

When I was a kid, that's what we did, then the late 80's early 90's there were a lot of kidnappings in the SF Bay Area.

The neighborhood I would play in was always thought to be safe, until one day a young girl rode her big wheel down the street to a friends house, to this day is still missing.

Amanda was last seen near her family's residence in Fairfield, California on December 27, 1991.

She had been at a friend's house four doors down from her home when left her brother and a friend between 4:30 and 5:00 p.m. to ride her bicycle to another friend's house around the corner, eight doors from home.

Amanda never arrived and has not been seen again. Her bicycle was found abandoned a few blocks from her home later that evening.

Missing Child Amanda 'Nikki' Campbell

Hey dude I understand that. You never outgrow that concern for your children. You just have to grin and bear it when the time for freedom comes around. What are you going to do when she starts dating? Or are you going to tell her she can start dating when she goes off to college ? LOL.

Now that my son's are all grown I worry about them getting their heart broken.
a reply to: crazyeddie68

Yeah my parents would still be doing time and I'm 57 years old. a reply to: Nyiah

The way the world is changing, people think it is dangerous for a kid to be outside on their own.
They expect you to keep them inside with a cell phone or ipad to play on.

The playgrounds we have here in the back of the buildings are almost empty all the time.
The kids are all sitting inside playing games.

Give it about 20 years when these kids all are out in the real world, and almost none of them will know what to do if they skin a knee.

It is ridiculous that someone would be charged for allowing their kid to walk to the playground alone. Or anywhere.
A 7 year old should be able to play without adult supervision.

This lady needed a wake-up call before her son became a statistic. No kid that young should be walking alone that far away from home in this day and age. She obviously is a bad mother, but she can change, and maybe this will make her take her kids safety seriously.

a reply to: gladtobehere


On one hand I can chime in with the "we used to ..." crowd. I grew up during the seventies and eighties, a time for me at least when children in my sphere of existence had lots of freedom. By age seven I along with other same age kids pretty much had the run of a small Pennsylvania town. We'd walk to the playground, to the creeks outside of town to fish and catch tadpoles and water snakes, and we'd explore the sprawling abandoned factory at town's center. By nine or ten I was riding as far as twenty miles down a railroad track rendered useless by hurricane Agnes. We swam, we fished, we built dams in the creeks. We never had trouble with adults (or cops) or wildlife or whatever other threats could have popped up.

On the other hand, there's just no way I would have allowed my own offspring the same freedom at so early an age. That said, I think the law enforcement officer involved in this case should have given the mother a warning and left it at that. Certainly does seem these days the government invites itself to intrude in every facet of our being.

a reply to: gladtobehere
This is absolutely ridiculous my mom would have been in prison for life, we always went to parks and walked to school(2 miles in the snow,lol)
without parents.
how bizarre to think you can't let your kids go out to play for fear of getting arrested for neglect.

Maybe it was the distance?

Your right TonyS, once in the system many never get out

a reply to: gladtobehere

I have a seven year old. I currently would not let her walk half a mile to a park by herself, but that is my decision. My neighbour lets her seven year old walk to the park by herself and that is her decision. I worry too much, she has four kids and is more relaxed. She is certainly no felon!

Funny, my parents winter near Port St. Lucie. I will make sure I don't let my child out of the house alone while we are visiting this Christmas.

a reply to: gladtobehere

Seriously when I was 7 before cell phones and pagers I would just tell my mom I’m leaving and when the street lights came on that was my signal to head home. I used to ride my bike all over town miles away from home. This is outrageous. I have a seven year old daughter and she is smart enough to know were she can ride her bike and were she cant and when to come home. She has a cell phone but either way that’s crazy the police charged her. Do people not realize how intelligent a 7 year old is???