By All Means Let's Arrest Her….

Seems to me we are going at this all wrong. I have often wondered what happens to the children of the working class poor during the summer:

http://fox10tv.com/2014/07/17/child-goes-to-park-alone-mother-arrested/

When I was that age, I was riding my bike all over the place.

Of course, that was before the PC police. The mother will probably be fired because McDonalds was mentioned. Ain't that some shit?

This is ridiculous. Like Eric said, when we were that age we were going wherever we wanted unsupervised. I used to take the bus down to the library, walk over to Bayview park (about 4 miles)  to play tennis with my brothers, and basically do whatever I wanted to do EXCEPT for sit around inside the house.

If we were inside during the Summer we'd better be sick.

Most of the time our mother didn't have a clue where we were. We could have been lying to her every day about where we were. She didn't have a car to go chase us down with anyway.

Eric is right, the poor lady will probably lose her job over this. A 9 year old isn't a baby anymore. If it was a 5 or 6 year old it might be different.

It makes us think that Child Protective Services has gone overboard, but I only know what was presented to us.

Just as soon as a case worker overlooks something because he/she is understaffed and overworked, a child will be abducted and abused.  Everybody will then be calling for the head of the "lazy staffer".

It is a sad commentary on the world we live in...

Eric wrote:

It makes us think that Child Protective Services has gone overboard, but I only know what was presented to us.

Just as soon as a case worker overlooks something because he/she is understaffed and overworked, a child will be abducted and abused.  Everybody will then be calling for the head of the "lazy staffer".

It is a sad commentary on the world we live in...

I'm almost sure that if a social worker had been assigned to watching our house when me and my brothers were kids that we would have all been tossed into the foster system. Gee, mom sent us outside in the hot sun and when we were bad she took dad's belt out of the closet. Being bad consisted of pretty much any argument or fight that interrupted mom's busy day.
If we wanted soft drinks we collected old bottles and took them to Bob's grocery store to exchange the deposits for full bottles.
So if the sun got us thirsty, we took care of it ourselves.
So did most of the kids in our "not so rich" neighborhood.

It's too bad the soft drink companies stopped putting deposits on their bottles years ago. About half my income when I was a kid came from soda bottles. I guess people must have been pretty bad about littering back then because you could usually find 8 or 10 of them within just a few blocks of home. At 3c a deposit you could get at least 3 full cokes for 10 bottles. Seemed fair to me.

I have mixed feelings on this one..... it's not like it use to be when we were young. It is different. We rode our bikes to the local park during the summer, they had supervised activities. We rode our bikes or skateboarded to Bayview Park, again the park was supervised and life guards were always on duty. If mom checked up on us, and she did, we had better be where we were suppose to be. There were plenty of kids and we always went in a group, never alone.

In this situation, one child left at a park is not the safest situation.


Should she have been arrested, no.

soon the gov will issue each household a social services guardian to make sure parents are raising their kids the way the gov wants them to.   

Some people don't now how to raise kids and need a guardian. The child was too young to have been unsupervised and a mile away is too far. If the child was left alone in the house it would have been the same thing. What was done years ago would not pass today.

I agree with Joani... and when I was nine I was not only out causing mayhem all around the county, but I was responsible for taking care of my younger cousins. I'm sure others here were likely responsible for younger siblings and what not at that age as well. As Joani said, it was a different time, not to mention a different place.

Different time alright..we become a nation of pussies running to the cops for every little thing. Like those bozoes have a clue. Shoot it , jail it, or fine it are about the limit of their cognitive processes...

TEOTWAWKI wrote:

Different time alright..we become a nation of pussies running to the cops for every little thing. Like those bozoes have a clue. Shoot it , jail it, or fine it are about the limit of their cognitive processes...

Oh I don't think she should have been arrested... WTF is she supposed to do? She probably makes $7/hour working part time at McDonalds. How is she supposed to pay for day care on that wage when she surely can't even make ends meet for essentials like housing and food?

Right on the mark, Riceme. The one thing I have discovered working with moms like this is that they are constantly in survival mode. They fear that if they look to churches, schools or secular organizations for help, they are too often turned away or afraid they will be turned in to social services. They learn to distrust everyone and hope that luck will be with them in regards to the safety of their children. What she needs is not arrest, a court case, punishment and the removal of her child but some assistance caring for her child and some parenting coaching. She was attempting to be self-reliant, a worthy quality.

We are arresting and punishing the wrong sorry people. My dad says that in a society in which all women and children feel unsafe ANYWHERE, the men aren't doing their job. If child predators were the ones frightened..instead of mothers and even the police….then the idea of arresting this mother becomes absurd. Like it or not, this is a mild version of what is going on in India where women are being punished - even killed- when the real culprits go unscathed.

As an mom with children 35 years younger than me, I too saw a tremendous gap between the freedom I had, riding for miles, building tree forts, crawling around in drain pipes and exploring creeks that my children have scarcely enjoyed unsupervised. We crawled around unsafe construction sites, fell out of trees and tried to make little fires with the caps from cap guns and magnifying glasses, jumped of roofs with homemade parachutes from the good sheets.… and was life ever good. While the concept of kidnapping was in the deepest recesses of our minds and we knew of bad guys, nothing ever bad happened to us kids. We were free and safe…and having the time of our lives.

We were bruised, scabbed and scraped up pretty much all of the time…and horrors of horrors…. at times we even broke bones and needed stitches!  

My mother essentially told us to go play and come in when the street lights came on.  Who knew all of our mothers were such criminals.

I completely agree with you, SS. Not only was she trying to be self reliant instead of depending on the system, but it seems she might have been trying to teach that same quality to her child. Again, this is a different time and place from when we were all kids, but every child is different. I was very responsible and reliable. My brother was a terror who caught the alley behind granny's house on fire while he was killing ants.

Your dad sounds like a smart man, SS.

We'll said, SheSurfs.

SheSurfs wrote:

Right on the mark, Riceme. The one thing I have discovered working with moms like this is that they are constantly in survival mode. They fear that if they look to churches, schools or secular organizations for help, they are too often turned away or afraid they will be turned in to social services. They learn to distrust everyone and hope that luck will be with them in regards to the safety of their children. What she needs is not arrest, a court case, punishment and the removal of her child but some assistance caring for her child and some parenting coaching. She was attempting to be self-reliant, a worthy quality.

We are arresting and punishing the wrong sorry people. My dad says that in a society in which all women and children feel unsafe ANYWHERE, the men aren't doing their job. If child predators were the ones frightened..instead of mothers and even the police….then the idea of arresting this mother becomes absurd. Like it or not, this is a mild version of what is going on in India where women are being punished - even killed- when the real culprits go unscathed.

As an mom with children 35 years younger than me, I too saw a tremendous gap between the freedom I had, riding for miles, building tree forts, crawling around in drain pipes and exploring creeks that my children have scarcely enjoyed unsupervised. We crawled around unsafe construction sites, fell out of trees and tried to make little fires with the caps from cap guns and magnifying glasses, jumped of roofs with homemade parachutes from the good sheets.… and was life ever good. While the concept of kidnapping was in the deepest recesses of our minds and we knew of bad guys, nothing ever bad happened to us kids. We were free and safe…and having the time of our lives.

We were bruised, scabbed and scraped up pretty much all of the time…and horrors of horrors…. at times we even broke bones and needed stitches!  

My mother essentially told us to go play and come in when the street lights came on.  Who knew all of our mothers were such criminals.

     Instead of punishing this woman how about some HELP to assist her in order that she can continue to WORK... A trait that TOO many have abandoned!... Now this is a case where a helping hand should be extended...

I am amazed that people think it's ok to send your child out in the world unsupervised and to unknown places?It's just as amazing as people thought back then it was ok to take a belt and beat them until they were black and blue? A parent has the responsibility to protect their child. Not throw them to the wind and hope they come out ok. The thought of a child jumping off a roof with a sheet tells you they don't have the sense to be unsupervised. There are plenty of supervised programs available during the summer as well as subsidized child care. Parents are just lazy.

koolkat wrote:

I am amazed that people think it's ok to send your child out in the world unsupervised and to unknown places?It's just as amazing as people thought back then it was ok to take a belt and beat them until they were black and blue? A parent has the responsibility to protect their child. Not throw them to the wind and hope they come out ok.  The thought of a child jumping off a roof  with a sheet tells you they don't have the sense to be unsupervised. There are plenty of supervised programs available during the summer as well as subsidized child care. Parents are just lazy.

Didn't get that impression from most of the posts.... Correct especially in these days about an unsupervised child but the circumstances have to come into play in this matter...The mother was working to help support her child and yes she should have done things differently believe that most have a problem with the arrest part of the story...

KK, no one was saying it was ok to send the child out unsupervised; they were saying that this mother needed some assistance so that wouldn't happen anymore, with some side commentary about how much better life was when kids had more freedom - safely.

Further, there is nothing to indicate this mother was lazy. In fact, she was attempting to work while others in her situation choose not to which should result in some support, not an arrest.

I'm in favor of an agency providing child care and after-school programs for low income families. Maybe the churches could do it without taxpayer involvement, I dunno.

I'd rather see proper child supervision happen at our expense, while a single parent works... than see the single parent sit at home collecting welfare.

Anybody think this is a terrible idea?

Not at all. I know many agencies provide childcare for low income families.

A working parent might not make much more on minimum wage than just sitting at home, but free child care would provide peace of mind while the parent works.

Also, that parent gains valuable work experience that has the potential for them to be eligible for promotions or a better job opportunity.

Joanimaroni wrote:

Not at all. I know many agencies provide childcare for low income families.

Actually, there aren't many agencies that provide childcare. There is one here in Pensacola and the waiting list is a year long. The funds come from the Feds and are one of the programs that has funds cut thanks to the republicans.

Those damn republicans.......

Eric wrote:

I'm in favor of an agency providing child care and after-school programs for low income families.  Maybe the churches could do it without taxpayer involvement, I dunno.

I'd rather see proper child supervision happen at our expense, while a single parent works... than see the single parent sit at home collecting welfare.

Anybody think this is a terrible idea?

Not at all... taxpayer money spent to help those that are or want to work....how about getting some of that money from those that sit on their asses and are able to work but make the choice to just collect the checks?....

Joanimaroni wrote:

Those damn republicans.......

Who's been in charge of the Senate and White House?.... probably Bush's fault again....