?Free-range children? taken into custody again in Maryland - The Washington Post
How times have changed.
How times have changed.
I've been following this train wreck for awhile. CPS essentially told the parents, you shall do as we dictate to you to do or we are going to come after you, even if you do nothing against the law.
But... free range children just taste better!
Starks said police were dispatched after a stranger saw the unaccompanied children in the park near Fenton and Easley streets. He said police took the children to the CPS office.
So unaccompanied children in a park is something that people call in to police on? Unless they were doing something illegal, I don't get it. I must be missing something.
Time to start teaching the kids to say "Am I being detained? Am I free to go?" or print cards for them so they don't even have to talk?
We used to roam "Miles" from home. Kids played outdoors sun up to well past sun down.
Times and people have changed.
There are so many obvious reasons for these changes but to avoid having to hit myself with a ban hammer I will leave this at Nuff Said.
Like others said above, we were outside all the time. At 6, we were probably just a few houses away but I remember walking home from school, that was a long way from home for a kid, when I was in the 1st/2nd grade. As we got older, our universe expanded -- especially if we had bikes in working order (and we didn't wear helmets--can you imgine?) Our parents would probably be eligible for the death penalty these days.
If we showed up to the trails by the creek to ride bikes wearing any kind of safety gear.......well.....we would get our butts kicked and bikes thrown in the creek.
There was a good sized wooded area outside the 4th turn at the Motor Speedway just full of trails and 2 intersecting creeks. You could almost get lost in there. It was a right of passage to emerge bloody and bruised with a bent bike.
I can't honestly say I even remember the existence of safety gear when we were kids, other than football helmets and pads if you played organized ball. If it did exist, nobody I ever knew wore any. Well, I guess unless you count the machete that I taped to the sissy bar on my stingray bike. It was protective gear against the bigger kids that liked to pick on us younger kids.
Well, obviously I never "used" the machete on any of them, but I think it was enough to make them think that I was a crazy little , and that they probably shouldn't hassle me.I lost count of how many times "Big" kids ran me off into the trees or the creek and laughed maniacally as they rode away.
Never tried the machete but I did use a broom stick on one seriously demented kid. Not on him but through the spokes. He was busted up pretty good. Left me alone after that.
Bully's have been around since the 1st sunrise over the 1st dirt pile. The ones I grew up with thought nothing of kicking you square in the jewels. Report them......are you nuts. We dealt with it. It was a character builder not a reason to kill ourselves.
Times certainly have changed.