feedback for "Dispatch: Excerpt: Free-Range Kids"

1. I think there's a difference between letting eight and ten year olds bike to each others houses and such and leaving an infant, even for a minute, even under the watchful eye of another mom...there are alot of psychos out there, and frankly, I wouldn't do the latter. However, I wouldn't really judge anyone else, either. People leave infants in daycare and I wouldn't do that either, but I don't judge those who do. I don't get all the judging. No, really, I don't. I haven't experienced that in my circle. I interact with a variety of moms with a variety of styles and backgrounds and we just don't rudely blurt our unsolicited opinions about childrearing to others...viva la difference.
   

   posted by : GP on 6/2/2009 at 9:13 AM Flag For Abuse

2. I think the point is actually that there AREN'T a lot of "psychos" out there. It's been proven that people are evolving to be less violent, more truthful and honest and generally more empathetic to those around them.
   
   Trust your instincts. Or don't... and never leave your house because getting in your car is the most danger you typically put your child in...
   
   Lenore, saw you on the View and I love your blog. Keep spreading the word, I think your message is right on!
   
   
   
   

   posted by : Lin on 6/2/2009 at 10:34 AM Flag For Abuse

3. The odds of your child being swiped by a stranger are tiny.  Your children are in MUCH more danger of being struck by lightening -- several times in a row!  I think it's crazy that as a society, we're all carefully trained to look at each other as potential "psychos", even a mother accompanied by young children.  I don't think it's an innocent matter, either -- the more the media indoctrinates us to believe the myth that our children are unsafe, the more time kids spend indoors watching TV and playing video games.  Letting your kids outside to play is free; there's no profit for advertisers.
   If a child is kidnapped, 99 percent of the time it's by a family member.  

   posted by : NotAfraid on 6/2/2009 at 11:45 AM Flag For Abuse

4. I'll back up GP here: while I probably wouldn't have left my baby in the checkout line (I'd either have taken the extra couple of minutes to get out of line and fetch what I had forgotten or just called hubby and asked him to grab it on his way home from work), but I wouldn't really judge someone else for it, either.  I'm assuming that there were other people around: the checkout clerk, other shoppers waiting in line--it's not like Melissa could have made a mad dash for it with the other lady's baby without anyone noticing.  I've always told my daughter that if she ever gets separated from me in a public place (which is unlikely since I keep a deathgrip on her hand in crowded places) she should look for a police officer/security guard first and if one isn't available to look for another MOM.  I think, demographically speaking, our fellow mothers are probably the least likely to turn out to be serial killers.  It is different now, though.  My husband was just telling me the other day that when he was still pretty young (3rd grade or so), his parents let him and his younger brother ride their bikes several miles to school through the middle of Queens.  My family moved around a lot when I was a kid, but we always lived in a quiet suburb, always on a cul-de-sac and I was allowed to walk around the neighborhood to friends' houses at age 5 or so.  Now WE live on the cul-de-sac in a quiet suburb and I don't let my 5-year-old past our mailbox!  There's so much more media now to cover it when something awful does happen to a child, that even if those crimes against children aren't necessarily more frequent than they used to be, it FEELS as if they are.  Personally, I try to err on the side of caution without necessarily keeping my daughter in a complete bubble.

   posted by : Mother Knows Best on 6/2/2009 at 11:59 AM Flag For Abuse

5. I remember during the summer, being told I HAD to spend time out doors doing my own thing. Granted we lived in the sticks & played mostly in our back yard but a highway was less than a mile away.  I want to be a "free range" mom and give my child freedom to walk to & from school with friends and other "scary" activities (when he's older), but I have to admit to being nervous.  We live in San Diego now & while it is a nice city, it is still a city.... Of course w/ the job market the way it is who knows where we'll be in a couple of years.  I'm trying to walk the boundry between safe & smothering: when do I allow him to walk somewhere on his own, do I put him in pre-school to give him a chance to interact w/ other kids (& risk bad caregivers) or keep him "safe" at home?  I guess we have to all make the decisions as we go...

   posted by : Babydragons mom on 6/2/2009 at 12:14 PM Flag For Abuse

6. I admit that it's easy to get caught up in the fear mongering, but I agree that kids need more freedom.  All of the terror over Halloween is a prime example.  People have stopped going to their neighbor's houses, stopped accepting homemade treats, and taken most of the fun out of the holiday, all over fear of razor blades and poison in candy.  However, there has never been an actual documented case of razor blades being hidden in candy by anyone other than the child themselves, playing a prank on parents or other kids, and the couple of famous incidents of halloween poisonings involved parents poisoning their own children's candy: http://www.snopes.com/horrors/poison/halloween.asp.
   I spent most of my childhood outside running around with a group of neighborhood children, and nothing bad ever happened to any of us.  I'm all for making childhood safer, and fully support making kids wear bike helmets and teaching them how to deal with danger, but locking them inside and hovering over them is just not productive.  
   I get the same gasps from new parents (and non-parents) when I let my 14 month old try things he hasn't quite mastered and he falls down.  I'm always right there if he's ever in any actual danger, but what toddler doesn't fall down from time to time?  The only way he's going to figure out how to do things is to try and fail a few times.  He doesn't even seem to notice, unless the tsking observer has a particularly dramatic reaction.  
   Independence is an important skill to encourage in children.  Without it, though your child may make it through childhood ok, they may not make a very effective adult.

   posted by : Kidsaresmarterthanwethink on 6/2/2009 at 12:31 PM Flag For Abuse

7. I enjoyed this excerpt. I live in Chicago, and last week I walked to our neighborhood Starbucks. There were tables full of people outside, including moms with kids, but rather than ask any of them to watch my boys while I ran inside to get a coffee, I unloaded them both from the stroller and brought them in with me, even though doing so is such a pain. I've also thought of leaving them buckled in the stroller in front of the store, where I can see them thru the windows while I'm inside, but have never done this. Honestly, I'm more scared of another mom or some well-meaning citizen reporting them than I am of anyone taking them. I mean, really, how is anyone going to unbuckle my almost 3 y/o and my 18 m/o and take them while I'm watching from 40 feet away? And there's no way anyone could push our stroller away with both of them in it without me being able to catch them. In one of the suburbs, though, a mom was actually arrested last winter and I think even had to (or almost did?) face trial because she left her sleeping toddler buckled in the carseat while she ran inside the school to get her older kid. Crazy!
   
   Anyway, all that is to say that I'm way more concerned about being dragged thru legal hell because someone else thinks that I'm endangering my child than I am about the 1-in-a-million psycho. Which, in a way that reflects our society, is just as sad as being scared by the psychos.

   posted by : ChiLaura on 6/2/2009 at 3:15 PM Flag For Abuse

8. Thank you for this very sane excerpt (and book, which I'm totally going to buy). I'm with the poster above in that I'm obviously scared in the abstract of all the terrible things that are statistically unlikely to happen, but on a day-to-day level am much more afraid of being reported/arrested because some busybody is judging my parenting.
   
   One morning, I left my 7-month old in his car seat, for the first time ever. It was raining, he was recovering from a bronchial infection -- I felt weird about even considering it, but all I needed to do was go to the ATM outside the Safeway -- about 15 yards away and within direct eyeshot of my car. I looked over my shoulder every 3rd second as I completed the 2-minute transaction. And yet, I walked back to my car, a woman who had been standing by her own car ran up to me and yelled, "Really? You know that's illegal, right?" She had been watching me the whole time -- I think she wished I had been shopping for an hour inside the store so her tirade could have been that much more self-righteous.
   
   I said, "Yes, I know," got into my car, and drove away. I felt like saying something much more Jerry Springer-esque, like, "Bitch, you don't know my life!"
   

   posted by : hando on 6/2/2009 at 4:06 PM Flag For Abuse

9. Hando.
   I do that all the time...if the car is locked, you have the keys, and you're just getting cash, WTF?
   Insane. Is it really illegal? I didn't know.

   posted by : screwballed on 6/2/2009 at 4:28 PM Flag For Abuse

10. I think leaving the baby at the front of the store in line is a very weird example.  I would never do that.  Not because I thought the other mom would steal my kid, but because that's an inconvenience to someone else.  The woman had her hands full with a toddler and an kindergartner.  And what if the baby just happened to start screaming the second the mom walked away.  What's the poor woman going to do? 
    
    As for the rest of the free-range stuff, I'm all for it!

    posted by : KT on 6/2/2009 at 4:37 PM Flag For Abuse

11. I love it and try to be this kind of parent, though it difficult when you see the media reports all of the time.  I let my 2 1/2 yro and 1 yro play in the back yard that's fenced in with no serious dangers like a pool, without me a few minutes at a time.   Sometime I just have to run and get the phone or pee, you know?  And depending upon the store and my place in line, I would consider asking the mom next to me to watch them while I ran for milk... really.  And I've done the ATM thing too.  I hope my children will be self-reliant and will be able to ride their bikes to the playground and a friend's house while being street-smart... and while keeping my teaching in mind.  I think we are doing them a disservice by coddling them so much... by all means, but responsible, but giving your child freedoms will help them and you in the end.  Can you imagine sending them to college and still having to do everything for them because they haven't done for themselves?  Or how about them moving back in because that's where they feel most comfortable living in this mean world?

    posted by : adjm on 6/7/2009 at 11:35 AM Flag For Abuse

12. The article is about being judgmental of other mothers. This is something I think is just awful in our parenting culture. Note in the responses here how nobody is really thinking about what could have been going on with that mother in the checkout line that day. She could have been totally exhausted and running on fumes. For people to pretend they themselves as mothers are perfect is absurd. And that's what being judgmental is really saying - "why can't you be a perfect mother like me?" I can guarantee the woman who was so outraged at this other mother begging her for help so she could make her stressful trip to Costco shorter and easier, makes bad decisions too in other ways. Like for one thing, raising a child with no compassion for others. As for women helping other women even if they are strangers, if that never happens where you live then I feel sorry for you. Here in NYC people are really cool about that. Strangers will keep an eye on your stroller (and even the baby) if you are dying to use the restroom and have to squeeze into a cafe bathroom that can barely fit a person much less a stroller. Strangers help carry strollers up subway steps. Remember it takes a village.
    
    

    posted by : notperfectandproud on 9/12/2009 at 11:13 AM Flag For Abuse