I Let My 4 Kids Play Outside, On a Sunny Saturday. The Cops Wrote Up a Report

The 10 year old in the story was not unsupervised. She was playing in the vacant lot with older teenage individusls.

Teenagers are left to supervise other younger children for pay all of the time in this country.

It's called babysitting.

Teenagers are old enough to supervise younger children.

The power of change lies with the people. We CAN give our children the wonderful experiences we had as children IF we all stick together. This is going to be a very difficult thing to accomplish unless we can gain control of our government and the mass media, which will probably require forceful resistance or at least passive resistance from the people to return the control of such institutions as media, government and public schooling to the control of parents, as well as the legislation process which is now controlled entirely by special interests groups who buy and place politicians in office..

That is so true. I miss the sounds of kids playing, the grown ups laughing in the yard with each other and sometimes having an impromtu BBQ or getogether of some kind. Us kids woul;d love it!!! Cool, our Moms and Dads are going to make it a night past 9PM !! Us kids would play outside, and eat our hot dogs on the lawn, or our new fort as a separate unit from our folks. And all the older kids helped with the younger kids without being asked; we just did what was right. And all the grown ups did the same!!!

I hear ya' on that!! I am going to show this post to my kiddos and pass the message along, it is interesting all the stories and viewpoints on this thread, very cool indeed !!!

Canadian guy was really mean :(

Those are horrible stats and is probably very true. So sad for the kids....:(

many of the people who enforce all these crazy laws and rules have kids, too. they do what they do for money. money is everything in today's society so we all get what we deserve. only mega-doom will help us to get rid of all that crap. it is our only way to salvation.

On the evening of June 9, 1995, Morgan Chauntel Nick was kidnapped while playing with friends just yards away from her mother during a little league game in Alma, Arkansas. A massive investigation ensued, and continues, but Morgan Nick remains missing.

[link to www.morgannickfoundation.com]

it is never safe. who would have thought in arkansas someone would be upducted especially 17 years ago.

But like most people here when I was young we would go to my brothers football games and I would leave and go down below & play with my friends until the game was over and then meet back up with my parents...this was back in the 80s.

ministry of propaganda?

Why else would you post a 17 year old child abduction case with tremendous fear factor enemating from it??

I couldn't read through all of these post's. I got steaming mad. I have 5 children. 18-3 years old. Yes, they go outside and play. If I'm not with the 3 year old, she can only go out with one of her siblings.

They play with all of the other children in the neighborhood. I live in a small farm village, but I don't live on a farm. I live in planned community in town. Large families are the norm here. My next door neighbor has 5 children, too, with about the same ranges in age.

All of the kids, this summer, went around playing in the neighborhood. My children know my rules. As I tell them, I trust them, but it is my job to check up on them( I call it eyeballing them). I do. I tell them I like to catch them following the rules. Great thing to reinforce positive behavior.

I cannot tell you how many times I fed lunch and snacks to kids that weren't mine as I know other parents fed lunch and snacks to my kids. I always did ask if it was a kid I didn't recognize to call home and ask. One because I didn't want to step on any ones toes, if they had plans, If the kid had any allergies and to let the parent know where there kid ended up in-case they weren't allowed to be that far away from home or they might need them for something. Plus it's just neighborly.

I know that no neighborhood is safe, that's why you teach your children how to stay safe. Stranger danger is one thing, but no one, no one is ever allowed to do anything that makes you uncomfortable, that you think is wrong or plain just goes against what you believe in. If there is even a start of that, just get out and come home.

My kids will play ghost in the graveyard(night time tag with a flash light) They ask before they go and play it with the neighborhood kids.

We have an Ice cream shop about 1.5 a way from our house. It is nothing for one of the Older kids to take one or more of the younger kids up and get ice cream.

I think 12 is around the age that kids are allowed to baby sit. So, what is the problem with one of your older children being out with one of your younger children away from home?

If you can see them or hear them, then you are supervising them, so that shouldn't be a problem.

So yes, it is wrong Social Services to be called for children playing outside.

You could always make up your own religion where children must play outside to honor whom ever you worship and then let social services know that your religious rights are being infringed upon the next time they call.

and again the brainless AC's on this site amaze me...
HELLO OP HERE, a man, live in brooklyn. have 2 girls in their 20's and an 8 year old boy.


this was an article i read.
posted the whole article in the first post....did any of the AC's here even read it.
they are not my kids.
the article is from a MOTHER in middle America.
sheesh!
so stop calling me a bad parent...and funniest of all a bad mother...as i look down at my body i see that aint gona happen ever!

this is to look at why a family's teen daughters outside with their young children over 10 should be bothered by the police.

Last Edited by psyoptics on 08/22/2012 04:53 PM

That is a cute cut and paste to appeal to people's nostalgia that I've seen over and over. I'm sure the generation before that could write up a pretty good one that could show up that one. All the way back to the times when we could write "back in my day the only fun we had was to sit in our caves and bash rocks against our sloped brow".

But that doesn't change the fact that I STILL think there is more to this story that is being let on.

It's about time to get drastic with child molesters. Their punishment when caught? Castration. I would think other molesters would think twice before kidnapping or molesting a child.

The pussification of America. Everything is about safety. Well, fuck safety. This used to be a country of independent thinkers and risk takers. Now it's a country of political correctness and litigation where things that used to be normal are now criminal. All in the name of safety. Pussies, I say!

The kids were obviously "domestic terrorists"

Someone asked a few pages back - what changed?

What changed is that there isn't a parent home all day. In "our" day - moms were home. We may have thought we were running free - but someone was watching. If you got hurt, you could pretty much knock on any door and an adult would be there to help you. Today it's not uncommon for entire streets of houses to be empty of humans.

During the school year, everyone heads off in the morning to work and school. They get home and the kids have 1 - 2 hours of homework, dinner has to made and eaten, the parents are tired, the kids are wired from being inactive all day - but now it's too late at night for kids to be out playing. Some kids do sports and other after school activities which mean getting home even later. People don't get to know their neighbors because they're too busy too. There's just no time for kids to play.

In the summer - parents still have to go to work. They shuffle their kids off somewhere for the day, unless they can afford a sitter. If they're "lucky" enough to be looked after at home - there's no one to play with...and the sitter is too scared to let them out their site anyway.

My nephews live on a block full of kids but they all go to day care - so the boys are on their own until the other kids start coming home. At least in the summer, there's no homework, so the other kids do get some outdoor play time.

If we can get back to a place where families could afford to have only one parent work...we'll start seeing kids outside again.

There is nothing wrong with being cautious.

You sound like a fine well meaning person.

However, some people in your camp actually report parents that allow their children to play outside.

Either we need to criminalize this behavior or curtail the ability of the state to intervene in family issues.

If my children are playing outside - I should not have to worry about a policeman visiting me because of a concerned neighbor. If they are allowed to do that - then there should be a civil court remedy that allows me to get compensation for their harassment.

yes^^^^^^^^^
the city must make it clear there is a 24/7 no children on the street without a parent law and go public with it....
good luck with that and the angry mob of local citizens!

otherwise we still have the freedom to let our kids play outside with out fear the government will take them away...
the oddest thing here is ....
if we do not keep the kids inside they will be TAKEN by the GOVERNMENT, not a stranger....what is stranger then that!

Just keep paying those property taxes so they will have enough funds to figure new ways to tighten the noose.

The main problem with the fear of what might happen viewpoint, which creates this idea that 12 year old kids need to be constantly supervised, is that it is not rooted in the reality of the statistics, on average (not necessarily bad areas though), and even worse it instills fear in the next generation.

If many in this generation are as fearful as they are, fear that is not supported by statistics which indicate violent crime is at the very least steady, even though they did not have fear instilled in them by their parents, instead they were running wild in the streets playing, then imagine how much worse the next generation will be after many kids actually directly get the impression that it isn't safe enough to play outside without supervision due to their parents fearful attitudes. The question is how might that fear manifest when that next generation raises their kids. This whole state of affairs could, though hopefully it doesn't, become self perpetuating. The scary thing is that this fear is not justified by the facts. Steve Pinker has done a very rigorous examination of violence and it definitely trends down on average, though there are obviously local exceptions.

It makes alot more sense to empower kids by teaching them things like running away when strangers, or even "friends", are offering them unusual gifts and treats out of the blue and for no reason, such as alcohol, as this generally appears to be the modus operandi of deviants and perverts. Also a cell phone with a panic button that has GPS functionality is a genius idea if one is really worried and is in a bad area. The reason it is an awesome idea is it gives kids the ability to save themselves if they are in danger. Then kids of the right age can play outside without constant supervision while at the same time being empowered. That is a much better solution than instilling fear. It teaches them that there are ways to actually come up with empowering solutions vs teaching them to be terrified of the world and that they cannot help themselves except through fear and avoidance.