You've heard about the parents who keep having their kids seized for letting them play outside alone? That sort of thing scared the crap out of me as a single mom. I knew what I could trust my daughter to do and not do, but I never knew when some busybody would take it upon themselves to decide she was unsafe.

I'm 55, and I remember when I just turned 6, walking half a mile to school on city streets to school, home again for lunch, back to school, then home again. When I was 7, I spent the summer walking by myself to the pool in a nearby park and spending the day there. By the time I was 8, it was 3/4 of a mile (different school). By the time I was 10, I was negotiating a city bus to school every day.

Why is it that our kids are so mature in so many ways, but we no longer let them do things on their own -- and allow other people's judgment about what's safe for them trump our own?

I've been sitting here at age 67 reminiscing the many times I rode to elementary school on a bicycle that had a wire basket for school books.
I haven't seen a bike with a basket for ages.

Unfortunately, there is now a strange bias of fear about children in the culture. I think of it as the Precautionary Principle gone crazy and I'm not sure of all it's sources. One, however, seems to have been this fear of child molestation and abduction which started up in the early '80's. The blogger mentions the actual facts "Statistically, the boy would have a greater chance of being struck by lightning than being abducted. But the fear is that child molesters wait behind trees and mailboxes all day to pounce upon wayward children."

I remember thinking "If that many kids were abducted by strangers, I should know a family that was affected." Then I discovered that most of the abducted kids were abducted by a divorced/estranged parent in a custody battle. And that's how that meme got embedded in the culture.

Fortunately, there's some backlash against this - see Lenore Skenazy's blog "Free Range Kids." She got in trouble for letting her 9 year old ride of the NYC subway himself.

I used to walk to and from school. Watertown, Massachusetts. The old James Russell Lowell School. (Which, I understand, no longer stands.)

If a school doesn't want to let kids walk to-and-from alone, I wouldn't want to send my kids there (if I had any).

How meek America has become.

I walked to school every day through the 5th grade. It was the norm back then, if you were within a certain distance of the school, no bus for you.

Edit for clarity - every day from first though fifth grades

In Las Vegas there are a lot of 15 mph school zones. Unintended consequence is that the high school students just dart out in traffic with no regard for cars. They don't learn personal responsibility when they are young as a result. Pedestrians need to have respect for 3000 lb moving objects and take responsibility for where they put their bodies- the earlier the better

I went to what today would be called a magnet school. It was 4 miles from my house. I had to take a bus, but many tomes I rode my bike to school, carrying my books and a trombone. When I was 5, I was a free-range child. I wandered about as I pleased until I started getting hungry. By the time I was going to high school, I was used to being on my own and able to get anywhere by bus, by bike or by foot.

Ok let me show my age. My two sisters and I had to walk about a mile just to catch the bus my mom 2 as kind on rainy and snow and ice days. Mom's story was she had to walk 5 miles to school and when the snow was too deep they walked on top of the fence post (later I figured it was not true fence posts are about 8 feet apart). I'm 52 now with my little girl 6 years old and would freak out if I lived in the city and she played in the front yard. I thank my lucky stars I'm 26 miles from neatest gallon of milk where I know everyone in at least a 5 mile radius.

I was born in 75. I walked almost a mile to school alone each day, starting at age 6. I walked with another 1st grader. When I was 5 I walked with a friend's 8 yo brother. The crime rate is lower today but we're more sacred.

We moved to Hawaii when I was 5, and in 3rd grade I got kicked off the bus for kicking the bus driver's seat (for 2 weeks, I think it was). My route to and from school was bus, bus, launch, and bus. The launch was a boat that went across Pearl Harbor, before they built the bridge.

So here was this little 8-year-old, me, already branded a trouble-maker, now walking home from school in Honolulu.

It worked out OK, and I even stopped being disrespectful to bus drivers, too. Win-win.

[completely unrelated to this, my sister was born about that time, in Hawaii, and she is almost exactly the same age as Barry. Strangely, the two birth certificates look VERY different from each other.]

I was at more risk from the school bullies than I ever was from local sex predators.

Must have been a slow news day

When I grew up there it was truly a vibrant fun place to live. Then, Coleman Young, the first black mayor was elected. He told all the people who didn't like the way he ran the city to "Hit 8 Mile Road." (City limit). They did.

I always walked home from grade(elementary) school. I seem to remember it being more than a mile.
Kudos to this kid for his spirit of self-reliance. He is gonna be a handfull for his parents. :)

Still a lot of rebelliousness around: http://wtop.com/montgomery-county/2015/0...