Free-Range Kids Thread

[Muda69]

Here we go:  Colorado Couple's Adoption Plans Wrecked by Child Neglect Charges for Briefly Letting a Kid Nap in the Car

https://reason.com/2020/10/14/colorado-couple-adoption-plans-wrecked-by-child-abuse-charges-for-briefly-letting-a-kid-wait-in-the-car/

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Let your child nap in the car on a cool day while you run into the hardware store and you might have to say goodbye to your dreams of adoption.

That's what happened to a Colorado couple we'll call Ted and Jen. (Their real names have been redacted to protect their identity.) Last spring, Ted's three-year-old fell asleep on his way to Ace Hardware. He parked where he could still see her as he entered the store, and was gone for just 20 minutes. It was 40 degrees outside, according to Jen.

A passerby called the cops, because many people believe that any time kids are alone in a car they are in immediate danger of kidnapping or overheating. The tragic fact is that every year some children do die in cars. But the vast majority are young children who got into cars without their parents realizing it and couldn't get out, or kids whose parents drove to work and completely forgot about the sleeping child in the back seat. In fact, 4.6 hours is the average time that kids who died in cars were unattended. Children deliberately left in the car for a brief period of time on a temperate day are in very little danger.

When Ted came out of the store, the cop called to the scene said he was going to take the child into custody unless he could reach Ted's wife to see if she trusted Ted with the girl. Jen told the cop that Ted is a great dad, so Ted was allowed to leave with the child, according to Jen.

But Jen's heart was breaking already because she knew that this would probably impact the adoption process they were going through. Jen had had a kidney transplant in her 20s. Her daughter was born premature and spent two months in neonatal intensive care. Another pregnancy was not something they could risk. Dearly wanting another child, they had found an adoption agency, passed the home visit, paid $15,000, and were awaiting a child.

When a child services caseworker came to the home two days later, he looked through the kitchen cabinets and refrigerator, and questioned Jen, who could not stop sobbing. (Ted was at work.) According to Jen, the caseworker told her that the child had been in danger of kidnapping during those 20 minutes (actually, stranger kidnappings are exceedingly rare), or choking (the child was safely strapped in her car seat). The caseworker later returned to question Ted.

Ted, a law enforcement officer himself, tried to explain that there is no actual law against letting a child wait in the car in Colorado, and that the girl had been totally fine. But, says Jen, the caseworker told him, "I have to make it a finding, man." A "finding" means labeling Ted guilty of child neglect and placing his name on the state's child abuse registry, which is accessible to public agencies, hospitals, case workers, and even through background checks conducted by private employers. In most states, the registration process occurs without any trial, and the burden is on the person named to find a lawyer (if they can afford one) and appeal through their state's administrative appeal system (good luck with that).

Ted and Jen tried to convince the adoption agency that they still deserved a child. But with this black mark on their record, the agency did not respond warmly. Eventually, Ted filed an appeal and his registration status was expunged. With clearance in hand, Ted and Jen were sure that now they could adopt.

No such luck.

"We found out that expunged doesn't mean expunged," says Jen. "Your name stays in the registry. It just says 'expunged' on some different screen somewhere." The couple sought help from the county and state, but though her husband was officially no longer a child abuser, it was impossible to take Ted's name off the registry. The adoption agency dumped them—and kept their $15,000 deposit.

When Ted and Jen applied to be foster parents, the state turned them down, too.

"They said, you know, maybe we could foster after 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 years had passed, but they're just making things up as they go along," says Jen. "And I was like, 'What if we wanted to foster teenagers? How does this have any effect on our ability foster them?'" After all, teens are allowed to wait in cars. "But if you're on that registry," says Jen, "you're bad."

The pair are emotionally and financially exhausted. They wish they could just sign a piece of paper saying they will never let a child wait alone in a car again.

"Vague neglect laws give cops and caseworkers more power than the parents themselves to decide what is safe for their own kids," notes Diane Redleaf, Let Grow's legal consultant and co-chair of United Family Advocates, which advocates for more legal protections for wrongly accused families. "It is high time we required child protection authorities to bring child abuse or neglect accusations to court for an impartial determination before they are allowed to place anyone on the registry."

In the end, Ted had to complete a six-month diversion program to get his criminal charge dismissed. Meantime, he was placed on 12 weeks of paid administrative leave while his Internal Affairs department conducted an investigation. He received a formal letter fining him a nominal amount because "getting a child abuse ticket looks bad for our department."

Jen, a state employee, is herself a mandated reporter—meaning she is required to report any children who seem possibly abused or neglected. Over the course of 10 years, she says, she reported four. Two of the families she thinks she would still report, since the kids were in terrible shape. But now that she has seen what can happen when Child Protective Services gets involved, she regrets involving the other two families, and indeed anyone at all, unless the kids are literally in grave danger.

"The system is built to perpetuate itself," she says. At her agency, "we get extra funding for extra caseloads," and she suspects it is the same at CPS.

As for her own future, Jen says she expects she and Ted will never be allowed to adopt. The consequence of one rational decision by a dad will deprive a loving family of a child, and a child of a loving family.

Disgusting.

 

Edited October 14, 2020 by Muda69

[Muda69]

8 and 10-Year-Old Escorted Home by Firefighters After Neighbors Report Unsupervised Kids

https://reason.com/2021/03/10/firefighters-unsupervised-kids-escorted-home-free-range-daniel-hansen/

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Nevada doctor Daniel Hansen was at work when two of his boys, ages 8 and 10, asked their mom if they could play down the street on their dead-end road. Mom said yes, and off they went to collect rocks and poke around in the stream bed.

Firefighters escorted them home.

A neighbor had called 911 to report unsupervised kids. To Hansen, this seemed like a waste of valuable resources, as well as the kind of thing that makes parents second-guess themselves whenever they think their kids are ready for a little independence.

"Before they made it back, the fire department arrived, having received a call from this same concerned neighbor to check on a report of 'unsupervised children,'" said Hansen. The firefighters apologized "but proceeded to report that they had to legally report to the Sheriff Office and that we might be receiving a follow up call or visit from [Child Protective Services]."

So he wrote up the incident and submitted it as testimony to the Nevada Senate Judiciary Committee, which is currently contemplating SB143, the "Reasonable Childhood Independence" bill.

Nevada's is one of five such bills introduced this year. Idaho, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas all drafted similar bills, expanding upon Utah's 2018 "Free-Range Parenting Bill." These new laws say that parents who let their kid engage in activities like playing outside or coming home with a latchkey are not neglectful unless they show disregard for obvious, serious dangers, or if they do not have a reasonable basis for thinking their kid can handle the independence they're giving them.

One change from the Utah version is that the pending bills do not say that a child is entitled to independence only after their "basic needs are met." Children who lack some basics may be neglected, of course, but some of them, unfortunately, are poor—and their parents are doing the best they can. They shouldn't be doubly penalized by not being allowed to play outside while mom works two jobs.

The Nevada law is co-sponsored by state Sen. Dallas Harris—a gay, Black, Democrat mom of one—and Assemblywoman Alexis Hansen—a straight, white, Republican mom of eight who happens to be Dr. Hansen's mom.

But the bill is not only for doctors' families living on quiet, dead-end streets. Harris grew up in Vegas, the child of a single mom who worked at Caesars Palace. She sees the bill as a justice and fairness issue because, as she told the Judiciary Committee on Monday: "Current neglect laws lessen parents' confidence, especially poor and minority parents, in their ability to allow children to be independent." In Nevada, approximately 10 percent of kids are black, but they make up 30 percent of the kids in child protection cases.

Narrowing the vague see something, say something neglect law ensures that a working mom allowing her eight-year-old to bike around the neighborhood, needn't fear being accused of a crime. Poverty will not be mistaken for neglect.

This past decade, as several stories of child protective over-reach went viral—including the very recent case of Ohio mom Shaina Bell, who was thrown in jail for letting her kids, ages 10 and two, wait in their Motel 6 room while she worked her evening shift at Little Caesar's—the public has responded with great sympathy. Undoubtedly, many people are concerned that their own parenting decisions could be similarly misinterpreted.

That's why the Reasonable Childhood Independence bills are being introduced by such a diverse group of supporters, including bi-partisan sponsorship in Nevada and Oklahoma and, last year in Colorado, where it passed the house unanimously and was expected to do the same in the Senate until COVID-19 shut things down.

The bills being proposed would stop this pointless, scary, expensive cascade of government intervention. Living under constant adult supervision should not be a government mandate.

Here! Here!  I hope all these bill pass their respective state legislatures.

Under the current environment my parents would have spent numerous stints in prison for the amount of times I was allowed to be out and about "unsupervised".

 

 

Edited March 10, 2021 by Muda69

[Muda69]

In Oklahoma and Texas, Parents Who Let Their Kids Play Outside Will No Longer Fear Neglect Charges

https://reason.com/2021/04/29/reasonable-childhood-independence-texas-oklahoma-parenting/?itm_source=parsely-api

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Go out and play, kids. It's about to be legal in Oklahoma and Texas.

Both states passed "Reasonable Childhood Independence" bills on Wednesday, ensuring parents that they can let their kids walk and play outside, stay home alone, and engage in other normal childhood activities without being accused of abuse or neglect. These bills just await their governors' signatures.

Also on Wednesday, the Nevada Assembly's Health and Human Services committee held hearings on a similar bill that proved so popular, all the committee members ended up asking to co-sponsor it. (It had already passed the state's senate.)

This is a triple-header for parents and kids.

Let Grow supported this legislation because we have heard from so many parents saying they want to let their kids go climb trees or run errands, but they're afraid someone could call the police and open an investigation. So they keep the kids inside, on the couch. Now, within days in Oklahoma and Texas—and probably within weeks in Nevada—it's Independence Day for families.

The bill, modeled on the Free-Range Parenting bill passed in Utah in 2018, had bipartisan sponsorship in Oklahoma and Nevada. In Nevada, state senator Dallas Harris, a Democrat, co-sponsored the bill. She admitted that she sometimes leaves her nine-year-old alone when she makes a quick Walmart pickup. Other assembly members said they wished the law had been in place when they were raising their kids.

The Nevada bill's co-sponsor, Assemblywoman Alexis Hansen, said, "This is one of the most important things we could be doing to let children grow." Her grown son, Daniel Hansen, testified in favor of the bill, in part because recently his sons, ages eight and 10, had been playing down his quiet street when a passerby called 911 to report unsupervised children.

The fire department came and escorted the children home.

It is precisely this kind of unnecessary intervention the new laws will help to curb, giving child protective authorities more time to focus on actual cases of abuse and neglect.

"The legislation in all three states focuses on clarifying the difference between real neglect and reasonable parenting decisions," said Diane Redleaf, Let Grow's legal consultant. "When parents leave their kids in obvious danger, that's neglect. But when they decide their child can walk to grandma's because mom has two jobs, the law needs to start supporting that parent."

In Oklahoma, state Rep. Chad Caldwell, a Republican, sponsored the Reasonable Childhood Independence bill in part because as a latchkey kid, "I'd ride my bike home from school, grab a snack, and go back out again to play king of the mountain in the empty lot nearby," he wrote in an op-ed. Those experiences gave him the confidence— and fun—he wanted today's kids to enjoy, and his co-sponsor from across the aisle, Jacob Rosecrants, felt the same.

In Texas, Andrew Brown of the Texas Public Policy Foundation shepherded the bill. His state had been home to a couple infamous stories of child protective overreach. In 2014, Austin mom Kari Anne Roy's six-year-old was playing within view of the house for about ten minutes when a woman marched him home and called the cops. Police officers paid Roy a visit, and a week later, child services interviewed each of her children separately. They asked the boy, 12, if he had ever done drugs, and the girl, eight, if she had seen movies with people's private parts—something she had never even heard of.

In Houston the next year, mom Laura Browder was arrested for having her kids wait 30 feet away from her in a food court when she had a job interview there and didn't have time to line up child care. The arrest came after she had accepted the new job.

For struggling moms, said Nevada's Sen. Harris, this bill "provides a little more equity." She and Rep. Hansen worried aloud that their own single moms might have been considered neglectful by today's standards. Statistically, according to a study in the American Journal of Public Health, 37 percent of American children will be reported to child abuse hotlines over the course their childhood. That number rises to 53 percent for African-American kids.

Harris acknowledged how unusual it was to find such bipartisan agreement on a bill. She is a gay, African-American Democrat from Las Vegas. Her co-sponsor, Hansen, is a straight, white Republican from a rural area. Harris laughed when she said, "If you see Rep. Hansen and me as the sponsors of the same bill, you know it is either a really good idea or a really bad idea. We think it's a really good idea."

It is a really good idea, and just in time for summer.

 

[Muda69]

A Mom Let Her 7-Year-Old Play in the Park. Arizona Arrested Her and Banned Her From Working With Kids.: https://reason.com/2022/08/17/arizona-central-registry-park-kids-banned-due-process/

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It was a pleasant November day in Tucson, Arizona, and Sarra needed to procure a Thanksgiving turkey. The COVID-19 pandemic was still raging—this was fall 2020, before vaccines had been made available—and the supermarket's policy was to discourage excess people from entering the premises.

Sarra thus opted to let her 7-year-old son and his 5-year-old friend play at the park while she ran the errand. She instructed the kids to wait for her by the jungle gym; taking note of an adult acquaintance teaching a tai chi class in the park, Sarra told her kids to consult the friend in the event of an emergency. She then left to buy her turkey.

"It seemed like a nice, calm day," says Sarra. (In order to protect her privacy, her full name is not being used.)

Leaving the kids behind was an easy decision, one any parent might have made. The park was safe and the errand was quick.

And yet the state of Arizona has decided that the incident demonstrates Sarra's unfitness to care for children. Leaving two kids to fend for themselves even briefly—in a perfectly safe public park, with an acquaintance nearby—was an act of negligence, in the state's view, and one that warrants Sarra's placement on a list called the Central Registry.

People who are on the Central Registry are prohibited from working with children, even in a volunteer capacity. The Central Registry violates basic tenets of due process in numerous ways: It is run by an administrative agency, the Department of Child Safety (DCS), and the standard for placement on the Central Registry is probable cause—mere suspicion of wrongdoing, in other words.

"That's the standard the government uses to get a search warrant," says Timothy Sandefur, an attorney and vice president for legal affairs at the Goldwater Institute. "That's really outrageous."

The Goldwater Institute, a conservative and libertarian think tank, and the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), a libertarian public interest law firm, have filed a motion on Sarra's behalf to prevent the Central Registry from adding her name to its list—or to remove her name if it's already there. (The list is so shrouded in secrecy that it's hard to tell.) If unsuccessful, Sarra's name will enter the registry for the next 25 years. "It's really shocking," she says.

She was in the middle of shopping when a friend found her in the store and informed her that the police were with the kids. She raced back to the park, where the police arrested her on suspicion of endangering a minor. This was surprising, given that the children were never in any danger whatsoever—and no one had claimed they were.

Though there's not an explicit law against letting kids play by themselves in a public park, Arizona's minor delinquency laws are especially vague. And even in states where the laws are clearer, parents are customarily prosecuted for leaving kids at home, letting them walk to school by themselves, or dropping them off at the playground for a few minutes of unmonitored play. Thus Sarra joined the ranks of the Meitiv parents, Melissa Henderson, Megan McMurry, and so many others across the country who were wrongly punished by law enforcement for entrusting kids with reasonable levels of autonomy.

Sarra ultimately worked out a plea deal, in which the prosecutor would drop the charges if she took a parenting class.

"I was told you just take this one class and they'll drop everything, it will all go away," she says. "But it doesn't really go away."

That's because the police are one matter, and DCS is another. The department operates all on its own and can take action against a parent whether or not the cops file charges.

Moreover, the procedures in DCS trials bear little resemblance to actual courts of law, which have rules of evidence and require a presumption of innocence. Sarra's case went before a DCS administrative law judge with the sole power to decide her fitness as a parent—a "hired bureaucrat," according to Sandefur, who described the treatment of parents like Sarra as fundamentally unfair.

"It violates a large number of constitutional protections that are supposed to ensure that innocent people are not railroaded for allowing their children to play outside for half an hour," he says.

Particularly concerning, notes Sandefur, is the unbelievably low threshold for finding a parent unfit: probable cause. The situation reminds him of civil asset forfeiture abuses, in which police seize property from people merely suspected of crimes. Victims of civil asset forfeiture often have great difficulty recouping their losses, even though in many cases they are never actually convicted of underlying crimes. Police took $8,040, for instance, from a Rochester, New York, woman after raiding her apartment. The cops were investigating her former boyfriend, and never charged her with a crime; they did keep the money, though.

Similarly, parents who were never convicted of child endangerment—nor even reasonably accused of ever putting a child in harm's way—can nevertheless be prohibited from taking care of children in the state of Arizona.

"You have a system that allows the government to blacklist people based on irrational assertions of harming children," says Sandefur.

DCS procedures are especially illiberal in that the department's director can overrule an administrative judge and place a person on the Central Registry even if the judge ruled in the person's favor.

After a "kangaroo" hearing that Sarra describes as a mere formality—it was a foregone conclusion DCS would determine the probable cause threshold had been reached, she says—her name was slated for registration. She appealed that decision, and now with Goldwater and PLF's help, she expects her case to reach the Superior Court in the coming months. If they lose there, they will appeal all the way up to the state Supreme Court, says Sandefur.

In the meantime, Sarra's pending designation as a menace to children hasn't fazed the Sunday school where she teaches.

"They said, 'Don't worry about it, we're not going to listen to DCS,'" she recalls. The Central Registry is evidently so vast that organizations working with children can't even rely on it. Sarra said she saw an estimate that one in every 100 Arizonans is on the list for one reason or another.

"It's so crazy," she says. "Either we're all criminals, or the law is not quite right."

Don't you know, the State has control and makes the decisions for children, not the parents.

 

[Muda69]

Suburban Mom Handcuffed, Jailed for Making 8-Year-Old Son Walk Half a Mile Home: https://reason.com/2022/11/16/suburban-mom-jailed-handcuffed-cps-son-walk-home/?comments=true#comments

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Heather Wallace's oldest son, eight-year-old Aiden, was driving his two brothers crazy in the car as they all returned from karate one afternoon in October 2021. Wallace asked Aiden to walk the rest of the way home—half a mile in quiet, suburban Waco, Texas—so that he could calm down.

For this she was arrested, handcuffed, and thrown in jail.

She was charged with endangering a child, a felony carrying a mandatory minimum of two years in prison.

"It really brought us into deep trauma," says Wallace.

She is finally able to speak out after completing a six month pretrial diversion program to get the charges dropped. But her arrest remains on the books—easily searchable by employers—which is disastrous for someone with a Bachelor's degree in education.

Here is how the events unfolded.

Aiden agreed to walk home; after all, it was something he had done many times. There are sidewalks the entire way, and practically zero traffic.

But 15 minutes later, two cops knocked on Wallace's door. Her son was in their patrol car. Another officer was parked across the street.

A woman one block away had called the cops to report a boy walking outside alone. That lady had actually asked Aiden where he lived, verified that it was just down the street, and proceeded to call nonetheless. The cops picked up Aiden on his own block.

As they stood on her porch, the officers told Wallace that her son could have been kidnapped and sex trafficked. "'You don't see much sex trafficking where you are, but where I patrol in downtown Waco, we do,'" said one of the cops, according to Wallace.

This statement struck her as odd.

"They were basically admitting that this is a safe neighborhood," she says.

The officer then asked Wallace whether she would let her son walk home again, now that she knew about the sex trafficking.

"I still didn't know it was illegal and I said, 'I don't know,'" says Wallace. "That's when the cop replied, 'Okay, I'm going to have to arrest you.'"

He proceeded to do so in front of the kids, handcuffing Wallace behind her back.

By this point, the cops had allowed Aiden to get out of their car and called Wallace's husband, who arrived at home. Then they put Wallace in the cruiser. She didn't have her shoes on, but the cops told her the jail would provide a pair. It didn't.

In the backseat, still handcuffed, Wallace was interviewed by a case worker with Texas Child Protective Services. All in all, it was about three hours from the time the cops showed up to the time—around 8:30 p.m.—that they drove Wallace to the McLennan County Jail, where she was locked up.

"I'm a suburban mom—I didn't know what I was doing," says Wallace. "I got booked at 4:00 a.m."

The next day, Wallace's husband paid her $300 bail and they went home. When Aiden heard his mom come in, he looked up, panic stricken. "I ate your piece of cake!" he confessed. "I didn't know you were ever coming home."

Child services had the family agree to a safety plan, which meant Wallace and her husband could not be alone with their kids for even a second. Their mothers—the children's grandmothers—had to visit and trade-off overnight stays in order to guarantee the parents were constantly supervised. After two weeks, child services closed Wallace's case, finding the complaint was unfounded.

Wallace believes this could be due to the Reasonable Childhood Independence law that Texas passed in 2021 with the help of Let Grow, the non-profit I co-founded. It's part of HB567, a larger child welfare reform bill, and clarifies that parents are allowed to let their kids engage in independent activities as long as they aren't putting them in serious, likely danger.

"I'm encouraged to see CPS follow the law the legislature enacted to protect parents from government interference when they make reasonable parenting decisions," says Andrew Brown, associate vice president of policy at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which worked on the bill.

Unfortunately, HB567 amended only family law, not criminal law. This meant the cops were still free to punish Wallace.

She obtained a lawyer, who told her that if she admitted guilt, she could participate in a pretrial diversion program that would close the case. On the other hand, if she went to trial and lost, she faced a minimum of two years behind bars and a maximum of 20. So she took the plea deal.

Her diversion program required 65 hours of community service, which Wallace completed at an early childhood center. The program mandated that she only work there during the weekends, when there were no kids around for her to endanger. She helped develop the center's curriculum and also did some cleaning.

Meanwhile, she was forced to resign from the pediatric sleep consulting business where she worked, for the same reason: child endangerment charges. There went half the family's income. She found work at a cookie store instead.

To comply with the program, Wallace also had to take a parenting class and eight random drug tests. Ironically, that meant she sometimes had to leave the kids by themselves for an hour.

"We couldn't afford a babysitter," she says.

At the lab, Wallace had to pull down her pants and underwear in front of a supervisor. "Then I'd pee into a cup while they're watching."

Wallace's sister has started a GoFundMe for her. She is in debt after losing her job and paying for the lawyer and the diversion program. She also hopes to hire a lawyer to get her record expunged so that she can work with kids again.

But in her pretrial essay, which required her to admit guilt and remorse, Wallace thanked the officers for teaching her how wrong she was to have her son walk half a mile on a warm day in his own neighborhood. From now on, Wallace wrote, "I will continue to grow more as a parent and a person."

This story is very sad, and infuriating.  It is basically the government stating that parents don't really have the right to raise their children as they see fit, it is government that only allows them to do so.

 

[Impartial_Observer]

My kids often got up and headed outside to play, I’m sure most of what they did was legal. but I really don’t want to know at this point. I remember one time while watching college Football on TV one Saturday afternoon and hearing a commotion in the back yard. I looked out the window to see my son with a deer leg raised over his head chasing one of my daughter’s friends who was hanging out. I went back to watching TV, because it seemed like pretty standard fair at our house…..my daughter’s friend wasn’t allowed to come back lol, her mother was freaked out. 
FWIW, my daughter sent us pics over the weekend of her helping her BF gut and process the buck he killed Saturday. Dressed out about 160, nice buck!

[Muda69]

Want to Protect Children? Don't Embrace "Safetyism"

https://mises.org/wire/want-protect-children-dont-embrace-safetyism

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Earlier this year, Anna Hershberger had the cops called on her because she let two of her kids—ages five and almost seven—walk outside with a trash bag and pick up litter unsupervised. The cop who showed up didn’t arrest Hershberger but did warn her that something terrible could have happened to her children.

Hershberger’s police visit was one of thousands of examples of safetyism in America. Safetyism is the idea, pervasive among schools, police stations, and well-meaning parents, that children can’t so much as walk down the street or play a game without constant adult supervision. If you leave your kids alone for a minute, who knows what might happen?

Many psychologists and parenting experts argue that our cultural obsession with safetyism is depriving kids of the experiences they need to develop a sense of individual identity. Dr. Peter Gray, a research professor at Boston University who specializes in studying how children learn, argues that when kids are free to pursue their own interests free of adult intervention, they acquire “skills, values, ideas, and information that will stay with [them] for life.” In the absence of that freedom, kids don’t acquire the skills, values, and ideas necessary to become their own persons.

Lenore Skenazy (founder of Free Range Kids and president of Let Grow, a nonprofit promoting childhood independence) told me in an interview that constant adult supervision is killing kids’ ability to cultivate real hobbies and passions. Children aren’t allowed to just write a story anymore, Skenazy explains. Instead, as soon as parents see them put pen to paper, they’re plonked down in a creative writing class, where they’ll be under the well-meaning but stultifying eye of a writing teacher drilling them on form and technique. “Write something just for you” becomes “I want to see you practice that use of imagery I showed you yesterday.”

It’s tough to overstate how easily adults can kill a kid’s enthusiasm by trying to instruct them. As Skenazy notes, this approach takes an internal drive (I want to write just for me!) and turns it into an external drive (I need to write five hundred words today to get a gold star from my new writing teacher). Holly Lisle, a professional writing teacher who’s published over thirty novels of her own, says that tons of writers lose their passion precisely when drills and techniques replace self-directed exploration. What’s true of writing is equally true of every interest, from playing jazz to shooting hoops in the backyard.

When we think about what makes us unique individuals, most of us think of interests we’ve cultivated since we were kids. What’s going to happen to a generation whose passion has been trained out of them by well-meaning authority figures? There’s a good chance that all this adult supervision is depriving us of musicians, artists, and entrepreneurs–of the next Lady Gaga or Ralph Waldo Emerson.

It’s not just hobbies, either. Skenazy says that constant adult supervision can “cauterize curiosity.” She warns that, “we’re not teaching [kids] to think. We’re teaching them to await instructions.” Unfortunately, there’s substantial evidence to support her views. One study compared how children from different cultures responded when an adult gave them an opportunity to learn but, crucially, no assignment. The researchers studied forty white, middle-class kids from California and another forty Maya children from Guatemala. Each child was told to sit at a table while a research assistant taught another kid in the room how to assemble a toy. The question was: Would the first kid watch and learn how to assemble the toy too, just out of natural curiosity, or do something else?

The results were stark. The Maya kids watched the interaction and quickly learned to assemble the toy. The California kids were more likely to goof off or just stare at the floor. An NPR story on the study reports, “The Maya kids showed sustained attention [to the toy-assembly] about two-thirds of the time…. The middle-class, American kids did so exactly half as often.”

Why the discrepancy? One big reason is that the Maya kids were raised with a lot of autonomy. They could go to the store to shop, slip out of the backyard to hang with friends, and set their own goals. That kind of autonomy naturally engenders curiosity. When the world is yours to explore, you want to explore all of it. Psychologist Edward Deci, who’s been studying child motivation for half a century at the University of Rochester, says that autonomy stimulates kids’ motivation to learn.

By contrast, American kids have lost much of their autonomy–and, as such, their natural curiosity. When there’s always an adult around to tell you what to do next, your brain adapts to that. Instead of building the muscle of your curiosity, you learn to sit and wait patiently for instructions. As Skenazy puts it, in the United States kids are trained to think, “Is this going to be on the test? If not, I won’t learn it.”

The problems caused by safetyism go deeper than just cauterizing curiosity and killing passion: safetyism strikes at the very heart of our attempts to build a free society. A healthy sense of individualism is essential to creating a libertarian society. A generation raised to never explore or color outside the lines is unlikely to see the appeal of freedom.

Students raised under safetyism are more likely to clamor for big government, because they have no idea how liberating life can be without the stultifying influence of an ever-present nanny (or nanny state). If we want to get back to our freedom-loving roots, we need to turn down our collective hovering and give our kids the space to figure out who they really are.

Here! Here!

We are now raising generation after generation of automatons, not people.

[Muda69]

CPS: Mom Can't Let Her 3 Kids—Ages 6, 8, and 9—Play Outside by Themselves:  https://reason.com/2022/12/08/emily-fields-pearsiburg-virginia-cps-kids-outside-neglect/

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Emily Fields' three kids—a boy, age four, and two girls, ages six and eight—were playing outside. The Fields live in the quiet town of Pearisburg in rural, western Virginia. It was there, on a May afternoon in 2021, that Fields' four-year-old kicked a soccer ball across the road toward the neighbor's cat, which he avoided hitting.

The neighbors yelled at him and took his ball. But it didn't end there.

"My sister had actually been outside, watching them," says Fields, who homeschools her kids. By the time Fields got home, 15 minutes later, her kids and sister were inside. They told her what had happened. Fields walked her son to the neighbors' house to apologize.

"They began to scream and yell," says Fields. "They said that everyone in the neighborhood thought I was a horrible mother, and that my children abused animals, and they were going to call [child protective services] every day until my children were taken away."

The neighbors did indeed call child protective services (CPS). The agency dispatched two caseworkers to investigate the soccer ball incident the very next day.

CPS had also been called to the Fields home three years earlier, when someone reported the kids, then ages two, five, and six, for playing outside while unsupervised.

Those are young ages, of course. But they were not unsupervised, according to Fields, who says she was watching them from the window. Every 10 or 15 minutes, she would pop outside to check on them.

"All around our house and the neighbors' houses is cleared land with few trees and no wells, cisterns, piles of rotting wood to harbor snakes, or anything that would present a true danger to them," says Fields.

She spent much of her own childhood outside, and wanted that for her kids, too. "So I'd let them play in the backyard, and the [contiguous] backyard of a neighbor who's amenable to that," she says.

But one day in 2018, when she and her kids came home from a nature walk, they found two CPS workers parked in the driveway. Fields let them inside the house, where they checked to make sure there was food inside the refrigerator and that nothing else was out of place. Then they told her that the children needed to be supervised at all times, until they turned 13-years-old.

A few weeks later, Fields called CPS to find out if she was being formally charged with neglect and learned that her case had never officially been opened. That was the end of the matter—until 2021.

To investigate the ball-that-didn't-hit-the-cat incident, two CPS workers—one from the previous call, one new one—came to the house. Fields' husband and sister were there, along with the three kids, so "all six of us took this meeting," says Fields.

The CPS workers accused the Fields of inadequately supervising their kids, insisting that they be monitored at all times. They also explained that a third caseworker—who lives in the neighborhood—had seen the children knocking on people's doors a month earlier, during Easter, asking to come inside neighbors' houses.

According to Fields, her kids "had come up with one of those plans that kids come up with to get rich." They asked to fill Easter eggs with candy and try to sell them door to door. Fields had allowed this, she says, on condition that they stick to the 13 houses on their own street.

"At no point were they out of my sight," she says. "And at no point did they go inside."

One of the doors, however, was the caseworker's.

Feeling a bit blindsided, the Fields family did not protest when CPS presented them with a piece of paper—a so-called safety plan—to sign. It read in its entirety:

Quote

 

Initial report related to child safety: Children not being supervised at all times when out doors. One child is mean to animals.

Summary of safety factors identified and any protective capacities that mitigate the safety concerns: Inadequate supervision.

Immediate needs identified by family and/or worker: Children deserve home free of abuse/neglect.

Caretakers' actions/referrals/safety plan: Emily, Sophie [Fields' sister], and Gary agree to supervise the children at all times when playing outside.

Worker plans/actions: If safety plan is violated, a protective order will be filed.

 

In other words, if the Fields ever again let their kids play outside, unsupervised, they might have their kids taken away, or at least face some sort of legal battle.

They signed the plan.

Diane Redleaf, a long-time family defense lawyer, has seen cases like Fields' many times. It all boils down to "amorphous neglect laws," she says. The law often says that children must be properly supervised, but fails to define properly.

"This transfers the decision-making over something as basic as when children can play together in a neighbor's yard to the state's child welfare authorities," says Redleaf. The families' right to raise their kids as they see fit is being eroded.

Let Grow, the nonprofit I run, agrees. We are working in Virginia as well as a handful of other states this year—Connecticut, Michigan, and Nebraska—to pass Reasonable Childhood Independence laws, as we have in four states to date. These laws say neglect is when you put your child in serious and likely danger, not any time you take your eyes off them.

A month after signing their safety plan, the Fields received notice by mail that their case had been closed, as the agency had assessed the Fields as merely a "moderate risk" to their children.

Does that mean they can let their kids, now ages 6, 8 and 9, play in their own yard without risking an investigation, placement on a child neglect registry, or an even worse fate? They have no idea.

The Giles County Department of Social Services did not respond to a request for comment.

Remember parents, you don't "own" your minor aged children. The State does.

 

[swordfish]

2 hours ago, Muda69 said:

CPS: Mom Can't Let Her 3 Kids—Ages 6, 8, and 9—Play Outside by Themselves:  https://reason.com/2022/12/08/emily-fields-pearsiburg-virginia-cps-kids-outside-neglect/

Remember parents, you don't "own" your minor aged children. The State does.

 

SMH.....🥵

[Muda69]

This Mom Was Jailed for Leaving Her Teen Home Alone. Now, She's Suing.:  https://reason.com/2022/12/14/this-mom-was-jailed-for-leaving-her-teen-home-alone-now-shes-suing/

Quote

More than four years after two police officers arrested and jailed a mom in Midland, Texas, for leaving her 14-year-old daughter home alone, the family finally has the green light to sue them both, a federal court ruled last week.

Midland Independent School District Officer Kevin Brunner is not entitled to qualified immunity for allegedly violating the Megan and Adam McMurrys' 14th Amendment rights—and their daughter Jade's Fourth Amendment rights—when he removed Jade from her home and refused to let her call her father. So too may the family sue Officer Alexandra Weaver, Brunner's subordinate, who was deprived of qualified immunity by a lower court and did not appeal.

In October 2018, Megan McMurry left for a brief trip to Kuwait. Her husband was to be stationed there for the foreseeable future with the Mississippi Army National Guard, and McMurry, a schoolteacher by trade, made the trek to meet with a local school to perhaps reunite the family overseas. Her neighbors, Vanessa and Gabe Vallejos, in their gated apartment complex offered to watch her two children—Jade, then 14, and Connor, then 12—while she was gone for a few days.

What should have been a benign trip turned into the beginning of a legal odyssey.

When another neighbor, a school counselor, couldn't drive Connor to school as planned, the counselor asked Weaver to take him. Weaver couldn't oblige, so someone else took him. But Weaver didn't stop there, putting an investigation in motion, alerting Child Protective Services (CPS), and going with Brunner to the family home to do a welfare check on Jade, who did online homeschooling. After Weaver conducted a warrantless search, they removed her from the home and took her to Connor's middle school for an interrogation while refusing her multiple desperate pleas to get in touch with her dad. Body camera footage shows her sobbing.

CPS closed the case after they were apprised of the details; particularly rich is that the cops breached protocol when they refused to contact the parents, which is supposed to be first priority. But the police continued pursuing McMurry, despite that the agency in charge of such matters had cleared her. The cops charged her with two felony counts of child abandonment, after which point she spent 19 hours in jail. She was placed on unpaid leave from her teaching job, supposedly until the ordeal concluded, though she was ultimately fired.

At trial, about a year later, she was acquitted in five minutes. Her battle for a remedy in the other direction, however, has taken years, and it's still barely begun. Though Weaver now works in financial services at a local hospital, Brunner is a lieutenant in the same police department. Last week's court ruling may finally set some sort of public reckoning in motion.

Those familiar with qualified immunity may know that the court's conclusion was not necessarily foregone. The doctrine shields local and state government actors from lawsuits (such as the McMurrys') if there is no court precedent on the books with very similar facts that rules very similar conduct unconstitutional. An officer may violate his own training and still receive qualified immunity. The idea is that civil servants need fair notice when they are violating the Constitution, although it's puzzling that we expect them to read case law and not their departmental guidance.

Potentially problematic for the McMurrys is that not everyone agrees there was a relevant, identical precedent on the books to avail them. But problematic for Officer Brunner, whose case was the only one before the court this time, is that his actions were so egregious that the McMurrys didn't necessarily need applicable case law. It should've been that obvious to him that what he was doing was unlawful.

"Weaver performed an illegal search in front of her supervisor (Brunner). And instead of settling for one constitutional violation (the search), Brunner went on to commit two more (unlawfully seizing JM and violating the McMurrys' due-process rights)," wrote Judge Andrew Oldham of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in a concurring opinion. "After taking custody of JM, Brunner prevented [Jade] from talking to her father and the Vallejos for a significant amount of time. All while [Jade] was crying and confused. Then CPS told Brunner that his safety concerns were baseless. And still, inexplicably, Brunner persisted and pushed for criminal charges against Mrs. McMurry."

Quite the saga. Recourse for the McMurrys is still not a given; defeating qualified immunity merely gives them the opportunity to state their case before a jury. The family may be in luck, however, if it's anything like the jury at McMurry's criminal trial, who will likely hear not only about Brunner's and Weaver's misconduct, but also the harms McMurry suffered as a result: a lost job, a day in jail, and the trauma around that—all for daring to leave a teenager by herself.

Here's hoping that justice will truly be served in this case.

 

[swordfish]

7 hours ago, Muda69 said:

This Mom Was Jailed for Leaving Her Teen Home Alone. Now, She's Suing.:  https://reason.com/2022/12/14/this-mom-was-jailed-for-leaving-her-teen-home-alone-now-shes-suing/

Here's hoping that justice will truly be served in this case.

 

I wonder who those officers were trying to impress.......They obviously didn't give a darn about those teenage kids.....

[Muda69]

Chicago Public Schools Will Call Child Services if You're Late To Pick Up Your Kids From School: https://reason.com/2023/01/12/chicago-public-schools-will-call-child-services-if-youre-late-to-pick-up-your-kids-from-school/

Quote

A Chicago mom who was late to pick up her children from school a few times last year got a nasty surprise: a letter informing her she was under investigation by the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS). While this may seem like an overreaction, parents can come under government scrutiny for minor mistakes—and it can be the result of draconian school policies.

Last September, Tresa Razaaq, a single mother of four, received a letter from the Illinois DCFS after she was late to pick up two of her children from school several times. While Razaaq freely admits she was late to pick up her children, it wasn't a common occurrence—on Tuesday, she told Chicago's NBC 5 that she was late "maybe four times." However, this didn't stop her children's school from involving the DCFS, which sent her a letter informing her that she was being investigated for child neglect.

"My daughter rushed to the car and she's like, 'mommy DCFS came to the school, and the lady made it sound like we weren't going to come home with you today,'" Razaaq told NBC 5.

The investigation started because Chicago Public Schools has a strict "stranded student" policy, which requires school administrators to contact DCFS if the child has not been picked up by 4:30 p.m. and a parent or guardian does not pick up after two phone calls.

"It's more than aggressive, it's harmful," Cathy Dale, a local school council representative, told NBC 5.

Parents can be investigated by child protective services for late school pickups—often because school policy requires it. In Washington, D.C., for example, the public school handbook requires that school employees call the D.C. Child and Family Services Agency to take custody of a child if his parent doesn't pick him up by 4:30 p.m. In 2021, another Chicago mother was investigated for neglect after she was a mere seven minutes late to pick her son up from school—even though she claimed the school itself caused the late pickup by publishing a confusing bus schedule.

Most school districts don't seem to have such a strict policy. However, public school teachers are still bound by mandatory reporting laws that require them to report any suspected cases of neglect and abuse, meaning that plenty of parents still have child protective services investigations initiated by school employees. The Department of Health and Human Services estimates that 21 percent of such reports came from school personnel. But mandatory reporting laws might not actually be keeping kids safer. According to an investigation by NBC News and ProPublica this year, "while the unintended and costly consequences [of expanded mandatory reporting laws] are clear, there's no proof that the reforms have prevented the most serious abuse cases….Instead, data and child welfare experts suggest the changes may have done the opposite."

According to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, as many as one in three children in the nation's 20 most populous counties are expected to be the subject of a child protective services investigation by the time they turn 18. In Cook County, Illinois—where Chicago is located—around 40 percent of children were the subject of an investigation. For black children, the number rises to nearly 60 percent—the second-highest rate among the 20 counties studied.

"Opening up a neglect case only makes sense if a kid is repeatedly stranded," Lenore Skenazy argued for Reason about a similar case in 2021. Calling child protective services over a slightly late pickup, she wrote, is "the moral equivalent of calling child services over a hangnail."

 

 

[Muda69]

Social Media Making Kids Depressed? Send Them Outside To Play: https://reason.com/2023/02/24/kids-social-media-depression-outdoor-play/

Quote

Are smart phones making young people—particularly teenage girls—depressed, anxious, and even suicidal? And if they are, what can be done about it?

Policymakers are considering a variety of options. Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.) would go so far as to prohibit kids and teens from using social media until they turn 16.

I wonder if we are overlooking a big part of the problem, and thus a potential solution. It's called enjoying the world.

If we stopped keeping kids in cars, classes, or on the couch all day, and if we gave them back some free time and free play, they would have an alluring alternative to the screen. When young people don't have opportunities to hang out with their friends in real life, unsupervised, the only place they can have fun and socialize freely is online.

That's concerning. My colleague and Let Grow co-founder Jonathan Haidt has assembled chilling data that shows childhood mental health problems increasing since 2012, the year the smart phone became ubiquitous. As Haidt testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in May: "When you compare rates in 2009—before most teens were daily users of social media—to 2019, the last full year before COVID-19 made things even worse, the increases are generally between 50 percent and 150 percent, depending on the disorder, gender, and subgroup."

For many kids, the choice is between being on social media vs. sitting it out while everyone else is on social media. These are bad options.

If parents and policymakers want get kids off social media, we need to make the alternative even more fun. Thankfully, playtime and exploration are super attractive, when kids actually get to do them.

It may feel like kids prefer the virtual world to the real one, but a 2010 survey asked them point blank which they prefer: playing with friends or playing online. Fully 89 percent chose playing with friends. Playing outside was their favorite activity of all.

All young mammals are programmed to play. While I, too, am currently addicted to my phone, I didn't have one as a kid, which meant that my free time was truly free—to ride my bike, play with friends, read, draw, and spend time in the woods. Lack of access to a movie theater/game device/popularity meter meant that I had to engage with whatever else there was: friends, fun, nature, and even boredom.

Over the course of the past several decades, as children's free time and "independent mobility" have declined, kids have clearly suffered. While this began long before the invention of the iPhone, social media does seem to have had a corrosive effect on at least some young people. Is there a way to fight back? And should it involve government controls? The answer I'd give is twofold.

First, we have to make it normal again for kids to be out and about on their own. That means the police and child services need to stop hassling parents who let their kids walk to school, to the park, and to friends' houses. When we make those activities impermissible, the only world left for kids to explore is online. In keeping kids safe from strangers, traffic, and bullies, we've actually make them unsafe from anxiety, depression, and suicide.

Second, we should also work to popularize programs like Wait Until 8th, where parents jointly agree to wait until their kids reach eighth grade before giving them a phone.

"The idea was: What if instead of you being the only one waiting, there were 10 other families from your grade waiting too?" says Brooke Shannon, Wait Until 8th's founder. She launched her campaign in 2017, "and within eight weeks we were in every state, because every family is wrestling with the same issue."

As for government controls, I am not opposed to a minimum age for kids to get on social media, just like I'm not opposed to a minimum age before they can drive a car or buy cigarettes.

In his lectures, Haidt says that after the folks at Facebook told him they don't allow anyone on their platform until age 13, he turned on his computer and created a fake profile within minutes, just as any kid could do. (Probably faster.) So a good start would be for the companies to actually enforce their ostensible rules.

I also think Let Grow's legal advocacy could make a dent in the problem. The "Reasonable Childhood Independence" bills we've helped pass in four states (with five more pending), clarify that it does not constitute neglect to let your kids play outside, walk around, or be unsupervised for a while, unless you've placed them in serious, obvious danger.

Let Grow's other answer to the problem of kids spending too much time on social media is to give them healthier alternatives: chances to be with friends, in real life, having plain old fun. To do this, we recommend schools stay open for two or three extra hours every day for mixed age, no-devices, free play before or after school. We call this a Let Grow Play Club, and our implementation guide is free. An adult is present, but like a lifeguard, they only intervene if an emergency arises. They don't organize the games or solve the arguments. It's a way of injecting a little 1974 into 2023.

When I asked Patrick, a fourth grader who participates in one of these play clubs, whether he preferred playing online or in real life, he said: "You get to be friends in virtual reality. The sad part is, when you take your headset off, you never get to see them." And his friend Karin added, "In real life you get to see them every day in school. You have actual friends."

Actual friends are key to fighting depression and loneliness. Now the articles are coming thick and fast about fancy schools and influential people limiting social media one way or another—and everyone being grateful for it (after an adjustment period). Fidias, the upbeat YouTube influencer with 1.6  million subscribers, told me he's had someone else posting his own videos for the past two months so he can stay offline and not read the (usually very complimentary) comments because they were "lowering the quality of my life," he said. Now "creative bored-ness fills my life, which is the one thing I was craving for."

Kids need some creative bored-ness. They come pre-programmed by Mother Nature to play. If the only place we allow them any to do that is online, that's where they will go. Give them back real friends in the real world—without adults constantly hovering and organizing things—and you just might have to clang a cowbell to get them to come inside for dinner.

In a few months I plan on taking about a week long backpacking trip, in an area with little to no cellphone service.  I can't wait.

 

[swordfish]

3 hours ago, Muda69 said:

Social Media Making Kids Depressed? Send Them Outside To Play: https://reason.com/2023/02/24/kids-social-media-depression-outdoor-play/

In a few months I plan on taking about a week long backpacking trip, in an area with little to no cellphone service.  I can't wait.

 

Enjoy your time sir!  I love my vacations.

[Muda69]

Cops Harass Parents Who Let 6-Year-Old Daughter Take a Walk Outside, Arrest Dad: https://reason.com/2023/03/09/teaneck-new-jersey-arrest-kids-parents-cps-police/

Quote

This fall, just as Keith Kaplan was finishing up his first term as a town councilman in the New York suburb of Teaneck, New Jersey, he proposed a Reasonable Childhood Independence bill. It states that when parents allow kids to perform age-old independent activities, like walking or playing outside, they are not committing negligence unless the the kids are in obvious, serious, and likely danger.

For Kaplan, the bill is especially important. That's because of an incidence he witnessed involving his friends, their daughter, and the police.

On December 31, 2020, Kaplan received a text from friends who lived a few blocks away. They wanted to know if kids were allowed to be outside alone with parental permission. The police, it seemed, were at their house. Kaplan headed over, too.

His friends had allowed their daughter, who was almost seven-years-old, to take a walk around the neighborhood. A retired police officer had seen her and called the cops to report a child outside by herself in the cold.

The responding officer easily located the girl who was "dressed appropriately," according to his report. He asked for her address, which she gave him. It was a few blocks away, and the cop proceeded to walk her home.

When they arrived, the girl introduced the officer to her mother and father, according to Kaplan. But the officer refused to release her unless her parents presented their identification. When they declined to do so—arguing they hadn't done anything wrong—he called for backup.

When Kaplan arrived at his friends' home, he started filming the encounter. By now, the girl had started crying. Then her father did "what any dad would—he went to hug his crying kid," says Kaplan. "And at that point he was arrested. With handcuffs."

The police report, which was reviewed by Reason, states that the father attempted to prevent the police from taking his daughter into protective custody. "I'm not going to let you do that," he said, according to the report.

Three cops wrestled the father to the ground and then placed him in a police car, according to Kaplan. He was taken away and charged with obstructing justice, a disorderly persons offense.

Later, in his cell, he was interviewed by a woman from child protective services. She determined he was not a threat to anyone, and he was released and given a court date. The court found him guilty and he was fined $133.

Kaplan had already been a champion of childhood independence. While the family wished to remain anonymous, Kaplan drafted the bill in response to the incident. Kaplan's Childhood Independence bill represents his efforts to stop treating every child as if they're in constant danger, and every adult as if they're a potential predator.

It passed by a vote of 4 to 1 in December, and went into effect at the beginning of this year. This makes Teaneck a place where kids can be kids, and parents can breathe a little easier.

A victory.

 

[Muda69]

Parents Investigated for Letting 7-Year-Old Get a Cookie From the Store

https://reason.com/2024/04/02/beth-widner-atlanta-georgia-kids-cps-parenting/

Quote

Beth Widner is a mother who lives in Canton, a middle-class suburb of Atlanta, Georgia. She has four kids, whom she homeschools while her husband, Glenn, telecommutes.

In August of 2018, the Widner kids—then ages 13, 11, nine, and seven—were members of a swim team at their local YMCA, which was about two blocks from their house. One day, after swim practice, the 7-year-old, Jackson, lagged behind while the rest of his siblings walked home, and stopped by the grocery for a free cookie.

A store employee thought it was so unusual to see an unaccompanied 7-year-old that a store employee called 911. Then, instead of letting him leave, the employee told Jackson he had to wait for the police to arrive.

This became part of a pattern; indeed, Jackson's semi-independence attracted police attention on no fewer than three occasions, leading to two investigations by Child Protective Services (CPS).

Widner recently had the opportunity to share these experiences with the governor's office. (The meeting was arranged by the Reason Foundation, which publishes Reason, and Let Grow, the non-profit at which both of us work.) She hoped that her story would inspire support for a "Reasonable Childhood Independence" law in the state. Such laws establish that neglect occurs when parents put kids in obvious, serious danger, not anytime they let their kids out of sight.

We hope to see a law like that passed in Georgia sometime soon. Eight other states have already jumped on the bandwagon, and this year Michigan, Missouri, and New Hampshire will vote on similar bills.

When Jackson refused to tell the authorities where he lived—having been taught not to give such information to strangers—the police deduced he had been swimming and went to the YMCA to learn more. The cops were very cross with Jackson and informed him that being out and about without his parents was a serious infraction. He responded that he would promptly go home "if you would just leave me alone," his mother recalled later.

After the police finally brought Jackson home, they informed his father, Glenn, that it wasn't safe to let a child his age wander around outside.

"You just can't raise kids like that anymore—it isn't safe," said the cops.

Glenn begged to differ, reciting statistics that kids today face no greater risk from stranger danger than previous generations. Nevertheless, the police summoned child protective services.

A caseworker from Georgia's Division of Family and Child Services arrived a few hours later. She told the family, assembled together, that the police report stated that Jackson had been unattended from 8:00 a.m. until 2:00 p.m. The Widners set the record straight—swim practice had ended by 10:45 a.m., and everyone had been back at home well before lunch—and the caseworkers closed the investigation. She even said that her own kids could learn a bit more independence from the Widners, Beth recalled.

But that was not the end of things. Later that year, for Christmas, Jackson received a new bike. On January 2, just before lunch, he asked his mom if he could ride it and off he went. An older woman in the park stopped Jackson, telling him he was too young to ride his bike alone. According to Jackson, he took a few more circles around the park and then ducked into the grocery for—you guessed it—a free cookie.

Soon thereafter, Beth got a call from Jackson, using the new watch phone his parents had gotten him after the August incident. He said the police wanted to speak to her. Once again, cops had detained Jackson for being outside unsupervised.

Beth got to the grocery parking lot within a couple of minutes. She found Jackson seated like a suspect in the backseat of a cruiser. The complaining witness watched as the police let Beth take her son home. Beth wasn't told what to expect further, and she didn't hear from child services. But she later learned that child services had been informed about Jackson's flagrant act of unaccompanied bike riding.

On January 18, Jackson's unabated taste for free cookies turned into a full-blown investigation. While his parents had warned him that he should not indulge his sweet tooth (or independence) anymore, he went to the grocery store after a bike ride once again. As in August, a store employee called the police. The employee fed him chicken and fries—it was lunch time—to stall him until the cops arrived. The police then escorted Jackson home, bike and all. Glenn came to the door to hear what the cops had to say about his son, the cookie recidivist.

One of the police officers accused Glenn of "breaking the law" by letting Jackson go out alone. "What law is that?" Glenn inquired.  The officer replied, "You can Google it." The most senior officer accused him of neglect and "contributing to delinquency of the minor," and told him not only could he be arrested, but he might face felony charges and spend time in jail.

A CPS caseworker showed up two hours later. Unlike the first one, who had complimented the family, this one accused the family of having "a problem with child supervision." When Beth and Glenn asked what specific law they had broken, she said she didn't have it written down.

The caseworker proceeded to question all four children at the kitchen table, then notified the Widners that they would be subject to a "parenting plan" requiring them to supervise the children at all times. The Widners told her that they would not be following the plan. Upon hearing this probably unusual response, the caseworker warned the Widners that she would talk to her supervisor.

After she left, the Widners never heard another word from her, although a few weeks later, two unidentified caseworkers stopped by the house asking to speak to Glenn. He wasn't home and they left.

The Widners realized their freedom to raise their kids as they saw fit was in danger. Fearful that they could land on Georgia's child abuse and neglect registry, Beth and Glenn decided to move the family outside city limits. Jackson, now 12, no longer worries about asking for a free cookie at the store.

But a state law that definitively puts the matter to rest—by stating unequivocally that the police should not harass parents who let their kids exercise some basic independence—could offer further protection.

Police and CPS harassment of a family,  plain and simple.