We’re seeing more and more of this, and it concerns me. Parents are being arrested and children are being taken away from their parents because they were allowed to go to a playground across the street, to walk home from school or, God forbid, something comes up and the parent isn’t home when the child comes home from school. In this case, a mother who let her four year-old play at a playground 120 feet from her home was arrested after neighbors called 9-1-1. The kid was in a gated apartment complex, and at a playground. If there was reason to believe that the child was unsafe, someone could have simply talked to the mother. Instead, she was arrested and charged with felony child endangerment. Although the charges were later reduced to a misdemeanor, CPS has ordered that the child be within the mother’s visual site at all times. Facing six months in jail and three years of probation, she was offered a plea deal of thirty days in jail and one year of probation. She rejected the deal because any plea of guilty would be one step closer to having her child removed from her care. What do you think about this? Yes, there are dangerous people around, but we should acknowledge that some places are more dangerous than others. Today’s society doesn’t allow that however, since that would amount to discrimination against those who live in dangerous places. I think that even if you believe that a four year-old should not be allowed to play at a playground, most would have to acknowledge that criminal charges are way out of line. I don’t remember much about being four, but I know that I was left alone enough that I was sprayed by a skunk after I mistook her babies for kittens. That even made it into the local papers because I was teased about it often growing up. I do know that, while I was in the early grades of elementary school, I would often walk home from school, a distance of just over a mile, sometimes through the woods. We played in the river, which was the size of a creek, and we never had parental supervision there. Yes, I know that we live in different times, but they are not that different everywhere. There are places in the country where children are just as safe as they were during my childhood, the biggest dangers being the existence of child protective services and a vastly different way of looking at things, including who children actually belong to. How far should we be willing to go in order to keep children safe? Should we never allow them to go outdoors until they reach the age of eighteen? One of the most dangerous places that our children go is to school, yet parents can be jailed for not endangering their children by sending them to school. Does that make any sense? Children are taken from their parents for reasons such as the one in this story, yet this child is probably far safer with his parents than in a children's home or foster home. When I owned an ambulance company, one of our paramedics had her son taken by CPS for two weeks because he slipped out the house while she wasn't looking, and a neighbor saw him in the back yard while his father was mowing the lawn. Considering that to be unsafe, the neighbor called the police, who called child protective services. No one was harmed. Long before any of these people arrived, the boy's father had spotted him in the yard and brought him back inside. Nevertheless, he was in foster care for two weeks, and the boy's parents had to spend thousands of dollars in legal fees. What does that do to a four year-old?
That nasty neighbor, who isn't a kind one by the way, should have gone out to stay with the child and watch him/her for a while until the mother comes out. That would be the neighborly right thing to do. She thinks she did something heroic! She actually destroyed her neighbor by having the child be separated from her mother. Now in another perspective, if the mother is bad to being neglectful, the neighbor should have, at least, shown grace to her by watching the child and showing love and kindness the child might be deprived of by his/her mother. Either way, neighborly, good deeds should not separate humans from intelligence. Applying this to myself, what wrong could happen if I approached the child, smile at her/him, push the swings gently, affirm the child that she's going to be fine and Mommy will come soon. And I think, I would gain friendship with my neighbor,too, regardless. And some days, exchange casserole dishes and recipes with... I do hope that the child and mother will get reunited again. And with much lessons learned and much stronger in the future.
Approaching a strange child in a playground is not always the best solution. Neighbors used to watch out for all kids, and they knew how to phone a parent, or knock on their door. These kind of neighbors are rare today. The fact that everyone has a phone, and the ease which which one can dial 911, this is usually people's first choice.
I think your laws are very strict. Although I hate negligent parents, but I don't think it is not right to take away their children just for simple misdemeanor like leaving the child in the playground alone. With crossing the street, it probably needs a harsh reprimand but still not a reason to take away the children from the parents. Over here, those issues are handled by the DSWD (department of social welfare and development). They only take away the children when the parents are caught abusing their kids. But other than that, children here are free willing like free range chickens.