Mom Arrested for leaving 9 yo in park

She didn't have no alternative place to go - she had been going to the McDonald's, where her mother works, but asked to go to the park instead.

She apparently walked from the park to the McDonald's for lunch every day.

As for the 'can't get to you,' that's why she had a cell phone, I presume.

Kind of hilariously, if you trace back to the original news story, someone in it is all, 'you can't leave a child alone these days, you never know who's out there, waiting to snatch a kid,' which pretty neatly makes The Atlantic's point.

It's not an ideal situation, but if the mother had been home and the kid went to the park to play all day and just came home for lunch, well that sounds like 'olden times.'

A sensible nine year old going to the park alone to play (probably in a group) for a while is fine, but I do think using a public park as a babysitter crosses the line. Some kind of child care needs to be arranged somehow rather than deeming this okey dokey. Because young kid known to be at the park all day alone so no one will know she is missing for 4 hours, that does have potential for trouble. Minor children should be in childcare, and modern society should provide a way for that to happen. I am not saying string the mom up. I am saying give her a child care solution,

In Edmonton, we have the Green Shack program at the school parks. Hire high school students over the summer to run the programs at the park and do various activities there. Effectively a free child care alternative run by the city. It's not an eight-hours long deal to allow for moms to just walk to work, but it can be useful if you can co-ordinate a little with other parents.

Devil Ledbetter said:

I have a question for everybody: If you took your kids to the park daily, and you noticed a 9-year-old kid playing unsupervised for three days in a row, and on the third day you asked her what was up, and she told you her mom left her there while she worked, would you really "mind your own business" and not involve the authorities?

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I think the eight hours is too long. For an hour or so? Maybe. Depending on the kid. And depending on the park.

Devil Ledbetter said:

But this isn't just about the potential for kidnapping. There is potential for serious injury, getting lost, getting sunburned, getting beat up by other kids or the child herself behaving inappropriately with no one around to guide her. Not every "risk" to a child boils down to "some random bad guy might snatch her." But The Atlantic indulges in just that kind of lazy, binary reasoning when it compares road accident vs. child snatching stats.

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I had to defend myself when I was young. I'd been outside for hours, riding bikes with friends. I did not run home. The boy who tried to hit me with one of those 18-inch souvenir bats wasn't grabbed by his father until I'd put him on the ground.

SIDE NOTE: I fully expected the father to come at me. He must have seen what happened because he didn't say squat to me. To this day, that tells me something good as well as something bad about him.

The dangers you describe exist. Problem is, they always have. The mom in the story was wrong. But arrested? I think that, too, is binary thinking. The child had a cell phone, and was apparently familiar with finding her way to her mother (I understand this latter is in question).

I don't believe The Atlantic is right. But I'm closer to that side than to the other.

At what age is it OK? Because there is an age where it's OK for kids to spend all day without adult supervision. Maybe 9 isn't there yet, but it's not that far off. By 13 or 14, parents are hiring them as the babysitters.

I think there is a difference between spontaneous childhood activities, often with other kids--and just being put somewhere. IMHO, if the kid just needs to be put somewhere, leaving her home is legal in SC.

I don't question that the mother made the best choice she could, but we should offer working mothers better choices.

veinglory said:

I think there is a difference between spontaneous childhood activities, often with other kids--and just being put somewhere. IMHO, if the kid just needs to be put somewhere, why not at home? That's legal.

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We had a wave of "home alone" incidents some time back that trend against you, I think. However, I don't recall the ages of the children in those incidents.

Yeah, I rephrased that a bit.

But as I understand it, it is explicitly legal in SC to leave a 9 year old home alone. I haven;t looked it up recently though. I might have the state wrong.

clintl said:

At what age is it OK? Because there is an age where it's OK for kids to spend all day without adult supervision.

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I'd like to know this too. My mom started leaving me home alone for long stretches when I was 8. By the time I was 9 she would sometimes go help my dad run their business for close to 8 hours and it wasn't any kind of problem. Of course, I was at home, not a park, but I have a hard time seeing that a park is that much worse.

ETA: Of course, my question was sort of answered while I was getting food, lol. But I still don't understand how it can be legal for a child to be home alone and illegal for them to be at a park alone. There are plenty of hazards in a house, and no one there to help them if they fall into one either. A park sounds equally safe to me.

Well... I see a pretty clear difference between being behind a locked door with AC, toilet etc--and in a park. I was a latchkey kid long before I was allowed to hang out alone in parks.

Clintl asks the right question, and I'd add to it, why is it not safe now, when it was safe back when gas was 29 cents a gallon? Seriously. How many of us grew up in a time where we'd disappear for hours, without the "lifeline" of a cell phone? Crime is back down to those rates these days, so why isn't it safe? Don't respond based on perceptions. Respond based on the numbers.

And here's a little bit more about the case, from Free Range Kids. ETA: this is the same link as in the story. Posted before reading the link, but after I read other stories.

The thing with free range kids is they were generally suburban with a home base that provided all amenities and they were in a group of familiar kids whose family was known to the parents. I really think this is not the same. If she was in a group of known associates with access to a home, I would be cool with it.

Eh, she shouldn't have done it, but calling the cops is ridiculous. At that age I was supervising my little brother alone for an afternoon when my mom couldn't find a sitter. CPS has no place in this.

Devil Ledbetter said:

I saw this statement in the comments of the article, but not in the article itself.

While that's better than not having a cell phone, a cell phone hardly takes the place of adult care at age 9. I mean, why don't we just all buy our kids cell phones and forget about making any kind of actual childcare arrangements?

But this isn't just about the potential for kidnapping. There is potential for serious injury, getting lost, getting sunburned, getting beat up by other kids or the child herself behaving inappropriately with no one around to guide her. Not every "risk" to a child boils down to "some random bad guy might snatch her." But The Atlantic indulges in just that kind of lazy, binary reasoning when it compares road accident vs. child snatching stats.

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Serious injury would apply if her mother was home and sent her to the park to play. She wasn't alone in the park - it says the park was crowded on a regular basis (more than 40 kids). Someone runs for help, same as it ever was.

Getting lost? She's nine, not four. She asked to be left in the park, and walked from the park to the McDonald's and back, so I'd presume she's not prone to getting randomly lost. If she did find herself in an unknown area, well she's got a cell phone, or she could ask someone.

Getting sunburned I just can't see - 'she needed supervision because she might get suburned? I mean you tell her to put on sunscreen before you leave and/or give her more at lunch. That's hardly a 'you need to have kids within sight because...' thing past toddlerhood imo.

The Atlantic went there because that's where everyone went. The McDonald's thing was in another article; I didn't read the comments. The adults quoted were all about 'it's so dangerous these days, you never know who's lurking.' That's their point. This is what people worry about, and it's bananas. People worrying about the other stuff have less of a platform than did people decades ago, who said, 'go outside and come back when the streetlights go out,' because now there are cell phones.

clintl said:

At what age is it OK? Because there is an age where it's OK for kids to spend all day without adult supervision. Maybe 9 isn't there yet, but it's not that far off. By 13 or 14, parents are hiring them as the babysitters.

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Hell, people hire 11-year-olds as babysitters, yet I've seen people online (not here) saying they don't let their 11-, 12-, 13-, and even 14-year-olds cross streets alone, or go out of their sight when out or go into a public restroom alone or etc. People are odd.

veinglory said:

Well... I see a pretty clear difference between being behind a locked door with AC, toilet etc--and in a park. I was a latchkey kid long before I was allowed to hang out alone in parks.

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Here, most decently-sized parks have toilets, and while obviously the park isn't air conditioned, there are mentions of it having water activities.

veinglory said:

The thing with free range kids is they were generally suburban with a home base that provided all amenities and they were in a group of familiar kids whose family was known to the parents. I really think this is not the same. If she was in a group of known associates with access to a home, I would be cool with it.

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I dunno about the hotspots of the free-range movement per se, but what I grew up with and what I know with lots of kids now seems free range compared to a lot of what I hear - and it seems just how it goes among more urban populations (in my experience). It's just the nature of the beast when kids aren't driven everyplace and end up taking public transportation and walking to school and such by themselves at 'young' ages. I was in the market last night and passed a clerk answering a like 9- or 10-year-old boy's question about the different remaining varieties of something on the shelf. The kid was alone, presumably been sent to fetch stuff, same as I was, same as I see kids of that age regularly. A bit ago a smaller kid was in line in front of me, by himself, buying a baguette and stopped to ask for another way to bag it because it'd started raining. Two cashiers got in on the deal and were all 'that's so cute how conscientious he is.' Yes, that's errands, but the same kids are found on the bus, train, going out with their friends to the coffee shop, movies, etc.

I'd just point out one thing here.

McDonald's does not pay well.

There ARE places where the cost of unsubsidized child care is more per child per year than 40 hours at minimum wage will get you. SC is probably not one of them, but there are women who do NOT have childcare options.

cornflake said:

Serious injury would apply if her mother was home and sent her to the park to play. She wasn't alone in the park - it says the park was crowded on a regular basis (more than 40 kids). Someone runs for help, same as it ever was.

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This is the thing I don't understand. There may be a few more hazards at a park than at home (or maybe not, depending on the park and home), but at least there's presumably someone around to help if she gets hurt or has a problem. It would seem to me like a half dozen to one and six to the other sort of situation.

When I was growing up insert wheezy grandma voice here, that's what the public park was for during the summer--to leave the kids there all day, generally supervised by the teenaged lifeguard. Most kids rode their bikes there, which involved crossing a gasp, busy intersection.

My ex is hyper-vigilant with my kid. He's 11 and doesn't even feel comfortable go down the block (doesn't even have to cross the street) to the 7-11 because he's so used to being completely supervised at all times. This level of supervision results in people not feeling comfortable or confident in what should otherwise be an every-day sort of situation. Parents who hover and over-attend their kids should not be surprised when at 19 they don't feel like they should be living on their own.

I'm not the custodial parent, but I figure that he'll do the "I wanna live with mom!" thing at 15 or 16. At which point he will learn the independence he's going to need to be a functional adult.

I agree that leaving her kid at the park all day was a terrible idea. Mostly because kids can get hurt at parks. I used to babysit at a park while my mom and her friends played softball, and not a single day went by that someone didn't end up crying and needing a bandaid. Running, climbing, falling, pushing, blah blah blah. I'm not saying a nine year old has to be monitored all the time, but they should have access to a parent if they get hurt.

That being said, my mom left me home alone at nine with my brother after school. I was perfectly okay with that, and I would be okay letting my kids do that. It was only about an hour, and we came home and watched cartoons and it was no problem. We had fun with it. But there's a big difference between at home (with a locked door) and sitting in a park all day. How did that kid eat? What did she drink? What about sunscreen? If you're outside all day long, wouldn't you get sunburns, or dehydrated?

That being said, I do also think that kids need independence. They need to be away from parents in a safe way. Leaving me alone in the house for an hour was fine. When we were older, we stayed home alone during the summer, too, which was also fine. I was six the first time my mom left me home, and that was only for fifteen minutes while she went to the neighbors to pick something up. I remember being scared, but I'm glad she did it.

I have friends nowadays who have kids who are already ten and eleven who have never been home alone. Kids who aren't allowed to walk home from the bus stop alone. That sort of thing bothers me. Kids need time away from parents. It's part of growing up. They'll never learn to get used to it and be comfortable if they aren't given the chance.

I also know that I was babysitting at eleven and twelve. I know kids now who are thirteen and fourteen and can't be left with younger siblings because they're not responsible enough to watch over them. That's absolutely insane.

We need to stay within the parameters of basic safety, but it's important for kids to be held to responsibilities and to be able to be away from parents.

kaitie said:

I agree that leaving her kid at the park all day was a terrible idea. Mostly because kids can get hurt at parks. I used to babysit at a park while my mom and her friends played softball, and not a single day went by that someone didn't end up crying and needing a bandaid. Running, climbing, falling, pushing, blah blah blah. I'm not saying a nine year old has to be monitored all the time, but they should have access to a parent if they get hurt.

That being said, my mom left me home alone at nine with my brother after school. I was perfectly okay with that, and I would be okay letting my kids do that. It was only about an hour, and we came home and watched cartoons and it was no problem. We had fun with it. But there's a big difference between at home (with a locked door) and sitting in a park all day. How did that kid eat? What did she drink? What about sunscreen? If you're outside all day long, wouldn't you get sunburns, or dehydrated?

That being said, I do also think that kids need independence. They need to be away from parents in a safe way. Leaving me alone in the house for an hour was fine. When we were older, we stayed home alone during the summer, too, which was also fine. I was six the first time my mom left me home, and that was only for fifteen minutes while she went to the neighbors to pick something up. I remember being scared, but I'm glad she did it.

I have friends nowadays who have kids who are already ten and eleven who have never been home alone. Kids who aren't allowed to walk home from the bus stop alone. That sort of thing bothers me. Kids need time away from parents. It's part of growing up. They'll never learn to get used to it and be comfortable if they aren't given the chance.

I also know that I was babysitting at eleven and twelve. I know kids now who are thirteen and fourteen and can't be left with younger siblings because they're not responsible enough to watch over them. That's absolutely insane.

We need to stay within the parameters of basic safety, but it's important for kids to be held to responsibilities and to be able to be away from parents.

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As noted above, she walked to the McDonald's where her mother worked for lunch.

I don't know how they are other places, but I've never seen any park here, even the wee ones, without a water fountain.

cmhbob said:

Clintl asks the right question, and I'd add to it, why is it not safe now, when it was safe back when gas was 29 cents a gallon? Seriously. How many of us grew up in a time where we'd disappear for hours, without the "lifeline" of a cell phone? Crime is back down to those rates these days, so why isn't it safe? Don't respond based on perceptions. Respond based on the numbers.

And here's a little bit more about the case, from Free Range Kids. ETA: this is the same link as in the story. Posted before reading the link, but after I read other stories.

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I think the main problem is that people see a lot of TV show and news stories about stranger abductions and pedophiles. We have this fear that if we let a child out of our sight for twenty seconds, someone will grab them and run off and they'll be molested or murdered.

The thing is, the vast, vast majority of molestations and murders are by family or known people--not strangers. These are the stories that get the publicity, and there's a sense that the numbers have gone up, even though as far as I'm aware, they haven't. People are just more aware of it now.

In my opinion, we're sheltering children too much because of fears of things that are literally in the one in a million chance of happening, which can seriously lead to problems. Kids need independence and responsibility, both of which can be gained by trusting them to be on their own, or watching siblings, etc. In other words, we're doing something that, to me, seems to have guaranteed consequences out of a fear of something that will likely never be an issue. Not to mention assuming bad guys who hurt kids are always creepy strangers in a park ignores the fact that most of the time, it's someone close to you.