Child abuse, naive or "nurturing" parent?

[-..__...]

Personally... sounds like mom is way out of touch with reality (and just got lucky on a roll of the dice), child abuse? No, moran... yes.

Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride the Subway Alone
By LENORE SKENAZY | April 4, 2008

I left my 9-year-old at Bloomingdale’s (the original one) a couple weeks ago. Last seen, he was in first floor handbags as I sashayed out the door.

Bye-bye! Have fun!

And he did. He came home on the subway and bus by himself.

Was I worried? Yes, a tinge. But it didn’t strike me as that daring, either. Isn’t New York as safe now as it was in 1963? It’s not like we’re living in downtown Baghdad.

Anyway, for weeks my boy had been begging for me to please leave him somewhere, anywhere, and let him try to figure out how to get home on his own. So on that sunny Sunday I gave him a subway map, a MetroCard, a $20 bill, and several quarters, just in case he had to make a call.

No, I did not give him a cell phone. Didn’t want to lose it. And no, I didn’t trail him, like a mommy private eye. I trusted him to figure out that he should take the Lexington Avenue subway down, and the 34th Street crosstown bus home. If he couldn’t do that, I trusted him to ask a stranger. And then I even trusted that stranger not to think, “Gee, I was about to catch my train home, but now I think I’ll abduct this adorable child instead.”

Long story short: My son got home, ecstatic with independence.

Long story longer, and analyzed, to boot: Half the people I’ve told this episode to now want to turn me in for child abuse. As if keeping kids under lock and key and helmet and cell phone and nanny and surveillance is the right way to rear kids. It’s not. It’s debilitating — for us and for them.

And yet —

“How would you have felt if he didn’t come home?” a New Jersey mom of four, Vicki Garfinkle, asked.

Guess what, Ms. Garfinkle: I’d have been devastated. But would that just prove that no mom should ever let her child ride the subway alone?

No. It would just be one more awful but extremely rare example of random violence, the kind that hyper parents cite as proof that every day in every way our children are more and more vulnerable

More...

[Breeze54]

1. "City girls just seem to find out early... How to open doors with just a smile"

That song just popped into my head... 'Eagles - Lyin' Eyes' Lyrics...

Seems a little young but a kid raised in the city has to be pretty savvy, imho.

I took cabs alone at 8 & 9 years old and rode buses too but that was in the 60's.

I went into the "big city" alone every day at age 13 on a bus and then the MTA.

[seabeyond]

2. i dont agree with mom. i wouldnt/couldnt do it. i so understand the mom and get her

i do not condemn her and i think she is right on with what she is saying. her son will have something my kids wont have. but then my kids will have things her son will not have, that is why i am not so worried about my kids doing without that particular aspect.

interesting.

[Ellen Forradalom]

3. Not sure I'd have done the same thing

but I'll trust her judgement. After all, when I was 11, my mother gave me subway fare and directions to downtown Chicago and trusted me to get there on time--which I did.

The completely screaming paranoia surrounding our kids is debilitating, I agree. I am fortunate enough that I can boot my son out the door to go play with his posse until dark--a rare gift these days.

[MonkeyFunk]

4. Wow!

Good for that Mom!

[Withywindle]

5. Is this really that big a deal?

I see kids around that age on the CTA in Chicago fairly often. More often with groups of friends than alone, but still, it's hardly unheard-of.

:shrug:

[Sophia_Karina]

6. it should totally depend on the kid

and his\her street smarts and readiness to be independent.

BTW, in many states there really is no "home alone" law, even though everybody seems to believe there is. It's again about being responsible and making sure your kids is competent in taking care of herself: can call for help, knows what's safe or not safe to do, can contact parents, can escape from the house if need be.

I also was kinda wondering whether riding a subway is actually safer than walking deserted streets in some neighborhoods

[Breeze54]

9. Welcome to DU, Sophia_Karina!

I love your melodic name! ;)

:hi:

[Sophia_Karina]

23. thank you so much!

you guys got a great forum, I look forward to contributing to and drawing from the collective wisdom :)

[Breeze54]

24. I don't think I have a lot of wisdom but I have a lot of heart!

:hug:

[lumberjack_jeff]

7. That reminded me of the Richard Branson story

Richard Branson was born on July 18, 1950 into a middle class family in the English county of Surrey. Branson was the oldest of three siblings. His father, Edward (Ted) Branson was an attorney, in the tradition of the Branson family ancestry. Most agree that Branson inherited his Nordic looks as well as his adventurous spirit from his mother, Eve Branson, a one-time dancer and actress, and a former flight attendant. So energetic and spirited was Eve Branson, that she learned to fly gliders at a time when few women drove cars. She flew so well, in fact, that she trained with the Royal Air Force (RAF) cadets for duty during the Second World War. The Branson children were raised to be hearty, active, and brave.

Richard Branson was not adventurous by nature. Out of concern, his mother left him alone in the countryside one day, with instructions to find his own way home through the fields of Devon. Branson was only four at the time, and a neighboring farmer eventually discovered the boy and alerted the Bransons to retrieve their son. Young Richard, who spent that day chasing butterflies, was enamored by the exhilaration of freedom at such a young age. Years later, when his parents enrolled him at Stowe boarding school in Buckingham, he found the environment too restrictive. He dropped out of high school and moved to London, where he made his living as a publisher and later opened a retail record business.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_gx5221/is_2005/ai_n19141658

When I was nine, I was capable of nearly complete independence. It wasn't really a good thing.

[Warpy]

8. I was a latchkey kid at 10

which meant I had to find my way home and unlock the front door and get inside and either get my homework done in bad weather or change into grubbies and play with the neighborhood kids in good weather, with homework after supper.

These days, my parents would be charged with neglect.

By the age of 10, I knew how to make myself a cup of tea without burning the house down. I knew better than to wear school clothes to go play in the dirt. I knew how to call the cops or fire department if something went seriously wrong. I knew enough not to accept the invitations of strangers for a ride home or to look at a new litter of puppies.

In other words, I survived. So did other kids I knew whose parents worked until long after they got home, kids my age who were responsible for making the family dinner.

I can't imagine what these overprotected, over scheduled and over organized kids are going to do when they confront the real world of down time and boredom. I'm not surprised these overprotective people threatened the mother in the OP with CPS. May their helpless children forgive them when they become adults who don't know how to cope.

[givemebackmycountry]

10. No shit...

I grew up in the BIG city, as in NYC.
Queens, New York as a matter of fact, on Steinway Street.
When I was barely 8, me and my short pant wearing friends used to go down to the Steinway piano factory and watch the German immigrant craftsman building big works of art that would play in symphony halls and palaces world wide.
If we would catch them at lunchtime, we would see them eating sausages and liverwurst sandwiches and drinking beer out of ice cold bottles.

When I was that young my Mom basically cut me loose as soon as she woke up and knew I had breakfast in me.
It was understood that I would be back home by the time the "streetlights came on".
If I wasn't, I would get my ass whipped.

Way before I hit my early teens, I knew how to board the subway and venture to the Bronx Zoo - Coney Island (Oh man...a Nathans Hot Dog on the boardwalk - I'd KILL for one of those right now) - Rockaway Beach - Times Square (before Disney took it over) - The Museum of Natural History - Bryant Park -The Empire State Building - The Worlds Fair site at Flushing Meadows - we used to play in Laguardia Airport - I knew the city like the back of my hand before I exited grade school.

We used to go down to the foot of the Rikers Island bridge and throw rocks at rats as big as small cats.
We were free to explore, and I'm sure my Mom would not have blinked if she knew how far from home I ventured when I was supposed to be at the "playground" just a few blocks away.

I would scavenge for change so I could by potato knishes from the street vendors in Manhattan and maybe even one of those big ass pretzels sold in the subways and streets.

I had a Pastrami Sandwich stacked a mile high from the Carnegie delicatessen when I was 11 and loved every minute of it.

No one thought twice about seeing a kid under the age of 10 on the streets by himself back in the 60's.
And thank God for that.
I wouldn't be half the man I am now without those experiences.

When I was 16, we moved upstate to the Catskills.
Those kids on the farms had nothing on me.
They didn't know shit.

Street Smarts.
There's something to be said for having the freedom to develop those.

Thanks Mom!

[Breeze54]

11. LOL! I'm just laughing with delight at your words!

:)

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

39. What a beautiful account of your childhood! You have me yearning for a pastrami sandwich with a

knish right now! The pastrami sold here is way too lean. I did have an excellent deli a few blocks from where I lived in Kew Garden Hills, Queens. :)

I was born in Queens, moved for several years to LI and moved back to Howard Beach, Queens when I was 10 then to Kew Garden Hills, Queens at 12. These 2 areas of Queens were a lot less urban from where you grew up in Astoria. From the time I was 6 I was very independent, wandering and exploring and playing for hours outside of my homes. On Long Island, my most favorite places were nearby woods, where I loved to sit and read with no sense of time. I don't think my Mom ever had a clue where I was, nor did she limit me. She and my Dad were born and raised in Brooklyn, and had their own freedom in their youth.

When we moved to Kew Garden Hills, I walked with new friends to the 1964 Worlds Fair (my brother worked there). Being in a 2 fare zone, without a subway or in your case, an el, right nearby, I didn't venture with friends into Manhattan and Brooklyn (Coney Island of course) until I was older than you were. I was 14. I loved theater and would save up my allowance, and once a month catch Broadway matinees, balcony seats cost $5.00. Manhattan became my weekend playground, and when I got a little older, one of the places I went to when I cut out of high school, the other place was Queens College which was across the street from my home. I would sit in on much more interesting classes. When I went into "the city", I used to go down to the Village and hang out in Washington Square Park, listening to folk music. Check out the stores in the East Village, or go uptown to the Metropolitan Museum and touch Van Gogh paintings (no one caught me) or play in Central Park. At 15 I went to the Be-In on Easter Sunday in the park, and I fell in love for the first time, and received my first real deep kiss (inside the NY State Theater at Lincoln Center) and these were 2 different guys!

Also at 15 I started to go into the city at night and saw free concerts in Central Park ... the ones I remember vividly, Judy Collins, Leonard Cohen, Linda Ronstadt, and Barbra Streisand's huge concert. After the Collins/Cohen concert, my friends and I decided to see how many cigarettes we could bum off of people (we didn't smoke), and we hit pay dirt at The Plaza Hotel and I asked the doorman if he had any cigarettes. He asked us to wait a minute, went inside this grand hotel, and came out with a carton of Marlboros. We said thanks, proceeded down Fifth Avenue when we saw a homeless man sleeping on the steps of St. Thomas' Church. We woke him up and gave him the carton and left before he realized what happened to him. :) There were also free concerts at St. Mark's Church in the East Village. I saw King Kong at Buruch College on a big screen, haunted Horn and Hardart's Automats, and saw experimental art films for free. This was the late 60s and the time and place was exciting.


The Catskills was where my parents would take me on vacation for 2 weeks out of the year in the summer. They moved up to So. Fallsburg and then to Monticello for a few years when my Dad first retired.

[MercutioATC]

12. She didn't give him a cell phone because she "didn't want to lose it"...

...yet she risked losing her kid if he ran into trouble and was unable to call her. She didn't even tail him to make sure he was O.K.


I'll stop short of child abuse, but I think it's neglect....and completely whacked priorities.

[Breeze54]

15. She knows her kid is capable and I totally get the "not wanting to lose the cell" n/t

[seabeyond]

26. hey, i am down with the lady, but that is a contradiction. trust kid

to do all that walking and traveling and not trust with cell phone.

not pointing finger and calling abusive, .... just contradictive

[Sophia_Karina]

22. yes but

there is another thing here: cell phone is a magnet for thieves. A kid can be in more trouble having the phone and being attacked because of that. I am from Eastern Europe, and that is an issue there: kids are more independent, they carry cell phones from kindergarten on, and cell phone theft is a big issue, with kids being targeted all the time. If a kid knows how and whom to ask for help, he will not be left w\o assistance on a crowded subway or in the bus, even without the cell.

[Xenotime]

47. You are exactly right. She held on to everything that could be replaced...

and gave up what couldn't. Definatly child endagerment

[Lydia Leftcoast]

13. Kids in Tokyo commute by subway as young as age 6

And you know what, there ARE crimes against children in Tokyo. Just as there were crimes against children when I was a kid in the 1950s and 1960s.

I remember two four-year-old girls being murdered, and a six-year-old abducted from a church picnic and murdered. I remember a babysitter being abducted from the home where she was babysitting. There was a rapist of young girls who lurked in the cemetery near our house, accosting girls who walked through the cemetery as a shortcut on the way to school. Early in the 1970s, a small boy disappeared walking four blocks in New York.

Those are the ones I can remember without thinking too hard. I'm sure a search of the press from that era would find many more such incidents.

The difference is that these incidents weren't broadcast 24/7 on the national news. Parents correctly assumed that yes, there was a risk that something bad could happen to their child, but it was a TINY risk.

[Breeze54]

16. "The difference is that these incidents weren't broadcast 24/7 on the national news." - Exactly!

;)

[spinbaby]

27. Tokyo must be a wonderful place to grow up

When I was there, I was struck by how many children were traveling on the trains without adult supervision and by how competent and independent they seemed.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

36. I knew a couple who spent a year in Japan (a smaller city) with their preteen children

At the end of the year, the kids didn't want to come back, because they felt they had more freedom there.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

14. I wasn't that lucky.

I grew up imprisoned in suburbia. There was no place to go and explore, and nothing interesting within walking or biking distance.


I wasn't supposed to leave the house and play with the neighbor kids. Mom was a jailer. If I snuck out of the house quietly to play with the neighbor kids, Mom scolded me for "running off"!!! Horrors!!!


She tried to keep me trapped in the house during the summer. She would sit at her sewing machine and tell me what a bum my father was (they were living together and married for 53 years).


There was no neighborhood pool to go to to cool off, or any recreational center to cool off in. There were no neighbors with swimming pools either. This was cheap, shoddy postwar suburbia built in the early fifties. The distances were too far to walk to the library. We didn't have enough air conditioning in the house -- we only had a couple of window units. For five months of the year it was too hot for me to sleep at night, due to the humidity and the fact that the low temp would be 78 degrees at night.


If I played with the neighbor kids, they would pick on me because they were white trash. I had no decent kids to play with. I went to an after school meeting of the Girl Scouts with a neighbor girl. It was the first time in my life I had never been picked on in a group setting, because there was adult supervision. This was about the fifth grade (green uniforms). Because of this, I begged and pleaded with my mother to let me join. She wouldn't let me.

If I wasn't in the house, mom would go outside, get a bamboo switch and start running down the sidewalk shrieking my name. She looked like a complete psycho.
I and the other kids in the hood would hide on the side of a house and laugh at her for being such a fool. If Dad was home, he would get a bamboo switch and lumber down the sidewalk after me.

I should be so lucky as to live someplace where I could ride the subway and go to interesting places.

[Breeze54]

17. There are tons of things to explore in "suburbia"...your Mom was a control freak.

:hug:

I hope you broke out and rebelled in your teen years! :P

[Manifestor_of_Light]

19. No, there wasn't anyplace interesting to explore where I lived.

You're wrong.

This was the gulf coast -- nothing but swamps and mud. No rocks, no caves, no big trees to climb on the prairie that was covered with suburbia. Just streets, houses, strip centers, businesses--all built after World War II. Nothing with any history or interesting architecture. No culture, no art. Just a bunch of stinkin' refineries at the far end of town that most of our daddies worked at.

When I was in high school I was busy going to school and orchestra practice. The stupid jockettes were six feet tall and always threatening to beat me up because I was smart and female. I was five foot two and had never been in a fight. That was unacceptable. I was an orchestra nerd. I once told a dykey gym teacher I refused to do some exercise that would hurt my fingers because I played the piano and was not going to break my fingers, and to take it up with my mother. I also refused to catch a softball and often sat down out in left field, practically suffering from heat exhaustion. Then the stupid team captain would get mad and take me out of the game. I would say "GOOD!!! THEN I WON'T HAVE TO SWEAT OUT HERE!". That pissed her off. It didn't do any good to complain to the teachers because they sided with the dumb jocks and jockettes. They were anti-intellectual.

I never hung out with the other kids aimlessly -- I was too busy practicing, taking lessons or going to rehearsals. I was taking private lessons in two instruments every week, in the high school orchestra, and also in Medical Careers Club and Latin Club. In high school, my parents could not have grounded me -- I literally had no privileges they could take away. I had no allowance, and no driver's license. I was scared to drive in the big city; I knew I would get killed if I got a license at 16. I was too busy to have time to drive anyway.

Mom would get mad at me for not doing chores, but she wouldn't give me an allowance either. She was a packrat, and wouldn't let us clean up the house and throw anything away. The house was open to the hot air, dirt, dust and pollution, and was always dirty. I had a perpetual runny nose and allergies, and still have terrible allergies, although I live in a house with central A/C now.


I didn't rebel in high school.

I went off to college at 17 and that's when I started partying and finding out what boys were for! Especially the smart ones!

[Breeze54]

21. "I never hung out with the other kids.... aimlessly..." ?

That's what kids DO!!!

I played piano and acoustic guitar and Melodica.

I was in the drama "club" and field hockey (although I sat on the bench) for "high sticking" a lot! :P

It sounds like you avoided "the other kids" by escaping into your music.

Not judging but maybe that skewed your perspective? :shrug:

"I had no allowance, and no driver's license."

Neither did I... ;)

"I was scared to drive in the big city"
I wasn't scared at all and I learned to drive, in the city at rush hour,
with a Chevy Impala stick "on the column" at the age of 15!! :P

"I was taking private lessons in two instruments every week"
So was I ... in a Nun school! :puke:

"Mom would get mad at me for not doing chores,"
So, what Mother doesn't do that?!? :P

I never got an allowance for taking care of where I lived. It was expected.

Free yourself!!!!!!!!

LIVE!!!!

:hug:

[Lydia Leftcoast]

18. Now THAT was child abuse!

:hug:

[BlooInBloo]

20. Fucking gossipy busybody wusses are the only ones who have a problem...

... with a kid taking a (GASP!) subway.

Buncha nattering nabobs.

[distantearlywarning]

25. I was a latchkey kid at 9-10 years.

That experience didn't harm me. In fact, it made me an independent and competent adult.

I would say it depends on the kid, of course, but in this situation I think that what this woman did is just fine. We overprotect children in this country, and I think it does more harm than good in the long run. (For instance, I work with college undergrads, and it's very obvious that many of them have been totally sheltered their entire lives and as a consequence have no idea how to get along in an adult world.)

[Echo In Light]

34. Same here, but I will, perhaps hypocritically, take a different approach w/our daughter

Maybe some will disagree, but I'm convinced that the collective consciousness is somehow far more skewed and unbalanced in this perceived time, and for a host of complicated factors. Not that there weren't plenty of fucked up people making bad/evil choices during the 70s and early 80s when I was a latchkey kid, but it doesn't compare with the frequency of evil shit that occurs on a daily basis nowadays.

[Marrah_G]

41. If we do not over protect we can get in trouble though- it sucks

Parents these days live in fear of DSS. Mine are teens now so I don't worry as much and they have their freedom. But when they were young I was terrified to let them roam the way I did when I was young.

[BoneDaddy]

28. I understand the intention

but the issue is clouded by more than just working on independence. I like that fact but what a risk!!!

[AngryAmish]

29. There is much less crime in America than there used to be

In the 70s, when kids used to run around a lot more than they do now, life was much more dangerous than it is now. Kids had paperroutes at age 11, for example. We just hear more about it.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

30. I live in the suburbs but lived a good part of my life in NYC. I saw the mom and son on The Today

Show last week. I think if I raised my kids in the city, I might have allowed one of my sons to do the same thing at 9. He was exceptionally mature at 9. I feel that there is a greater risk of child abduction in the suburbs than in the city. Too many isolated places here. In the city if a kid gets grabbed, especially the route he was traveling, he'd have plenty of people around. Here, not so many.

That said, some would say that I was/am overprotective with my kids. I allowed their boundaries to expand when I thought that they were mature enough. First, playing outside the house but keeping within our circle, with their friends. Later, going down to our playground with their friends (that is not in eye shot of my home), then letting them go and play with their friends within our development (which is on a lot of property), and later out of the development in nearby streets, etc. I always warned them not only about strangers but about any behavior from adults that they knew that made them feel uncomfortable.

They are now 17 and 21 and they have had cell phones for years, not for them to call their friends, but so I can check-up on them and that they had the ability to get help in emergency situations. My older one, not so much now, except when he uses my car and the time gets away from him. He calls me more than I call him.

As an anecdote to this. About 5 years ago I woke up a little later than usual on a Saturday morning. The house seemed too quiet. I just had one of those "feelings" and called up to my younger son, 12 at the time. No answer. I went up into his room, he wasn't there. I went down to the kitchen and found a note. He wrote that he was leaving home and though there was nothing wrong with us and that he loved us, he was going to be with people who he wanted to be with. Needless to say I freaked. I called the police, and even the FBI. I thought of Internet abduction. A local police officer came here and tried to check my son's computer to see if there was something to be found. He discovered nothing. My son had his cell phone with him and Sprint gave me his last calls, which were to Long Island. I tried the number over and over again but no answer. I also gave the number to the police. I live 50 miles north of NYC, Long Island is southeast from here and east of the city. The police refused to put out an Amber alert on him. A few hours later, he called home. He was in Brooklyn, NY at a Long Island RR Station and wanted to come home. It turned out that he walked to the main route from here, hailed down a car service cab to take him to our local train station, caught a train to Grand Central Station in Manhattan, then took the subway to Brooklyn all by himself. If he had been on the subway more than twice with me, that was a lot. His Dad wanted to go to Brooklyn to pick him up but my son insisted on traveling back home the way he went. He did it with ease. The reason why he left? He just wanted to visit a girl he knew from here who moved to Long Island and he didn't think that we would let him. He intended to come back home the next day. All he had to do was ask, especially since his father often visits a cousin not too far from where the girl lives. :shrug:

[Echo In Light]

35. Yes. We're in small town/rural division area ...

It's too easy imagining somebody quietly entering, seeking, finding, and leaving, and good luck ever seeing them - and the child they abducted - again. You hear about it in local news all the time. And being a small area, people do keep an eye out: our local news often reports sightings of unfamiliar vans cruising school districts...so there is that air of paranoia to consider. However... Justified? With our young daughter, we don't take chances. I firmly believe that the social landscape today is very bizarre and unbalanced to say the least.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

40. My town on the other hand is large and sprawling covering loads of miles, with no sense of

coherence, a population of about 50,000, and we don't even hear about potential problems. We do have a local cable news station that I didn't even know about until my kids were in their teens. I always got/get most of my news out of the NYC stations. They only broadcast the most sensational news stories in my area.

When I related how I warned my children about strangers And people they might know that made them feel uncomfortable, was for a very good reason. I was always vigilant when they played team sports and there monitor their relationships with their coaches. I know that child predators are more likely amongst the people you know than strangers roaming in vans. For years no one heard about child molestations, even though they've gone on through time. It is only within the last 20 years or so that this has been outed.

I am also sure that there have been countless child abductions with strangers that have gone on forever, but never made national news until cable tv came on the scene. We have always been a violent country, founded in violence when the conquistadors landed on the shores, and that energy still permeates our culture.

[Karenina]

59. I recall the first day my kids were more than an arm's length

from me. No leash, No stroller. We were in Topanga Canyon visiting friends and the 4 boys dashed off into the woods. Ellen sensed my angst and asked me about my childhood. I recalled that at 5 I had a free run of about 100 acres. Our neighborhood "tribe" explored every inch of it and we were ALWAYS home before dark. At 9, my sisters and I would leave the house at dawn, saddle up and ride through the woods - square miles. Home before midday when it got too hot. We then discussed our perceptions of how "dangerous" the world had become. She lived in the canyon. I was on 20th St in Santa Monica. If my kids were out in front of our building they KNEW to come inside as soon as they heard choppers or sirens.

I moved to Europe. They then became international travellers...
My youngest was once "lost" in Frankfurt Airport for 2 hours. He was absolutely opposed to flying as an unaccompanied minor at 16. I was flipping out because had the airline staff been more inclined to answer simple questions we could have covered both exits. When we finally found him he had already converted his money. :rofl:

I commend the mom in the story. In my city I often see kids on public transportation. They KNOW where they are going and how to get there. It fosters independence and self-sufficiency.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

61. What a great account! I love the part of your son converting the money!

You did good!


:hi:

[lastliberalintexas]

31. I see it as much an indictment on our cities and culture

When I was recently abroad, I saw kids (individually and in groups) riding the metro all the time. As a female, I felt very safe riding the metro and going around a large European city by myself as well.

Maybe this means we need to do something about our cities, because a mature 9 year old should probably be able to do this.



As a parent myself, the story scares me, by the way. I don't think I could have done it, and I do understand the concerns raised by others. I just find it sad that children in other "advanced, industrialized" nations do have that freedom while ours don't.

[Snarkturian Clone]

32. Ugh. Permissive parents are the bane of my existence. NT

[aikoaiko]

33. most of parenting is about playing the odds.

[PassingFair]

37. I let my 15 year old go to India for 11 months....

Is that child abuse?

If I hadn't let her do this student exchange, she
would probably be living with me at age 40, telling
me that she could have had a LIFE, if only I had
"let her go".

She comes back June 3.

I can exhale then. :)

[blondeatlast]

38. Personally, I wouldn't have allowed this for even my mature 11 year old son,

but I won't judge the mom.

Had the situation turned out badly, however, I'[ll admit I would have judged her VERY harshly. I'm only human.

[cali]

42. well, I have mixed feelings

I'm a country person. I imagine some of the things I let my kid do at an even younger age would freak out some city people. By 8 my kid was splitting kindling with a hatchet. By 9, he was camping out overnight with friends in the woods. He definitely had a rough and tumble childhood.

[blondeatlast]

56. I grew up in small towns. At the age of eight, I would ride my bike two miles to meet a friend

play by the creek and in the wide open spaces. My mom was working outside the home and my older sister was fine with it.

We now live almost in the country and I let the kid ride his bike and walk freely--but public transit (which runs out here), no way on his own. With friends I probably would however.

[riderinthestorm]

60. I'm with you on this.

My kids are in the country too and some of the stuff they do/did utterly freaks out many people when I talk about it. From driving the pickup at age 9 to roaming the Kentucky Horse Park alone while we are at competitions, or galloping the just-broke 3 year old colt bareback on the track - I think that everyone's comfort level is different depending on what is "their" environment. My kids definitely have many, many days on the farm when they leave after breakfast and I don't see them again until dinner but truthfully, they carry cell phones so if they had an emergency or I needed to find them, I could.

I don't know this woman's son and although I wouldn't let my kids take the subway at age 9 (it's just not a daily part of life so I don't have a comfort level with it), I really think it's a pretty individual call.

I will say my kids starting going into Chicago with friends (no adults) by the time they were 12 years old to take art lessons at the Art Institute on Saturdays for example. My oldest daughter took off for a summer of backpacking in Europe when she was 16 with a friend. It's a fine line between between overprotective and careless. I try to cut other people some slack on those choices since I've been on the receiving end of shock and dismay at my own choices about my own kids.

[mondo joe]

45. Agreed on all points. NT

[proud2BlibKansan]

43. Wait a minute. She thought he would lose a cell phone but

trusted him to find his way home on the subway??

:wtf:

[GreenPartyVoter]

44. It's not for my kids.

[aikoaiko]

46. carrying a cell phone (esp with GPS) would have been a reasonable safety measure.

She should happily risk the cell phone for the possible emergency need.

this makes me think the mom is a little wackadoo

[mzmolly]

49. Agreed. Also, if this child can't be trusted not to lose a cell phone, is he REALLY

ready for the subway test?

Good grief.

[The Magistrate]

48. If A Child Of Nine Is Not Capable Of This Modest Feat, Sir, Its Parents Are Incompetents

[MercutioATC]

51. It's not about the child's ability to get home,

it's about a 9-year-old's ability to judge foreign situations that could result in harm without the benefit of experience or adult supervision...or even adult monitoring from afar.

Had the child been harmed in any way, people here would be (rightfully) screaming for the mother's head. The fact that this tale has a happy ending does not make the decision a wise or responsible one.

[The Magistrate]

52. I Roamed The City At That Age, Sir

So did my son: indeed, I am still occassionally learning new details of just how far afield he managed top get at times.

Children are capable of much more than many nowadays seem to imagine.

[MercutioATC]

53. I do understand that, it just seems a rather large risk to take.

Had the mother secretly watched him, I would have had no issue.

As I said, the result could well have been disastrous. The fact that it wasn't does not, in my estimation, make her decision a responsible one.

[The Magistrate]

54. The Odds Of It Being Disastrous, Sir

Strike me as on a par with lightening striking the child while under the parent's eye at a playground.

[MercutioATC]

57. New York is a lot safer now than in the past, but

comparing the chance of being a victim of crime in NYC to that of being struck by lightning seems a stretch, Magistrate.

[Book Lover]

55. I am curious

Which city?

[The Magistrate]

58. Chicago, Ma'am, Mostly

[madmom]

50. When my daughter was 8 she wanted to "hang out at the mall" with her

cousins (alone) in their prosti-tot clothes, I said no. Everyone said I was over protective, today my daughter is in college, single, no kids. The cousins high school drop outs 2 kids each, neither have ever been married all are 24/25 years old.