My home county of Arlington's Department of Human services has published what it calls "the minimal acceptable standards for the supervision of children developed by professionals in collaboration with the community." According to these guidelines, eight-year old children "Should not be left alone for any period of time. This includes leaving children unattended in cars, playgrounds, and yards." I not only played in my back yard unattended at age eight, but, if I remember correctly, was free to wander around my neighborhood unaccompanied by an adult so long as I came home before dark, and in New York City (Queens) no less. Somehow, I survived unscathed, as did each and every one of my peers.
[By the way, I'm not arguing over whether it's good practice to keep your eight-year-old supervised, I am instead arguing that its absurd to claim that allowing an eight-year-old to play in the yard unsupervised does not meet even a "minimal acceptable standard" for supervising children.]
UPDATE: I learned of this from a mother who was charged with criminal misconduct for leaving her child asleep in a car for five minutes while she ran an errand:
I left my daughter in the car to go into a store for a few minutes. Passerby's called the police. She had fallen asleep and I knew I'd be back in minutes and was unaware this is unlawful [because, as we shall see, it's not]. I was away approximately 5 minutes but the officer wrote a summons for me to appear in court.
Summons: I was charged with a Class 1 Misdemeanor, Contributing to the Delinquency of a Minor. The officer had the discretion not to cite me but he did.
Case Outcome: My case will be dismissed if I complete a parenting class and 50 hours of community service.
VA Law: The VA General Assembly several times considered bills that would prohibit children being left in cars. This bill has not been passed in VA however, it has passed in other states. My lawyer told me in the Commonwealth of Virginia, they lump infractions into basically Misdemeanor or Felony. The trial proceeding determines the outcome. In my case, the section of law I was cited with 18.2.371 is a broad interpretation of rendering a child in need of services, in need of supervision, or abused or neglected. If it involved the temperature of the car too hot/cold then it could have been a more serious charge.
I think it was an abuse of the police officer's authority to have charged the mother with a crime when the Virginia legislature had specifically decided NOT to make the behavior in question a crime. Moreover, states that do have laws banning leaving children in cars usually specify that the child must be left alone for at least ten minutes. So the legislature failed to pass a law banning the action in question, and in jurisdictions that do ban it, the mother would still have been in compliance. Yet the "justice" system still charged her with a crime. Unbelievable.
When I was very small, I rode my tricycle unttended, around and around in circles on the carport. It squeaked loudly, so my mom only had to check on me if the squeaking stopped.
Except for the first day, walked to and from my elementary school, unaccompanied by any adult- there were 2 or 3 boys my age who usually walked together.
But that was before paranoia took over.
That was up hill to and from school, wasn't it?
Wait until Obama signs the UN treaty on children (can't think of the name off hand). All parents will become criminals at some point, at least if they try to exercise any control over their children.
It wasn't until I was 11 that I started catching cicada killers for sport.
Yeah, but did Queens survive the horde of 8 year olds?
To be clear, I am not saying you are incorrect in the ultimate conclusion that it was an abuse of discretion to cite her, only that you haven't supported your conclusion with anything resembling legal reasoning.
Obama discussing Souter, just got off phone with him.
Obama just rolled up in on press secretary's briefing unannounced.
But in all seriousness, I walked to and from school unaccompanied (about a mile with snow a rarity) and wasn't expected to appear back home until 6pm for dinner. So did most other kids. That was the norm back in the 60s.
Today it's different, and the "norm" is over-reactive over-protective constant supervision. I don't think this is a good thing, and neither do the folks at Free Range Kids. I'm guessing that the pendulum may swing back...
And, BTW, Mac spare us the Obama/UN scare meme, unless you meant it as a joke.
Well, it is if you take 'justice system' seriously. Otherwise, not so much.
I guess that means sleep goes away too. Unless we take shifts. Pity the poor single parent on that one.
Let's assume the parents have common sense (even if we disagree about what an appropriate level of independence is), and if they don't, at least it cleans out the gene pool for the rest of the species.
God, nothing scares me more than when legislation is aimed "to help kids". It's like people have to run over other folks in their desire to appear the most "pro-family".
Heck, it was the norm in the 80s in most of the country. I look at the elementary and junior high schools I went to and see empty bike racks, fat kids, and hundreds of people waiting in their cars to pick their kids up. Ridiculous amount of waste there.
Actually yeah. Most kids who die in car crashes now are not in car seats and car seats have probably saved thousands of children from death and even more from severe injury.
But to the greater point I agree. I leave my 2 year old unattended in our back yard evey once in a while. I am within earshot and check on him every couple of minutes, but he and sometimes his friends play alone in our back yard or at a friend's back yard. I would not leave my kid alone in a car like the woman did, but it is silly to charge here with a crime.
One of the reasons drive-thru restaurants are so popular is that mom doesn't have to get out of the car and take the kids with her. I have left my sleeping infant in the car alone when I stepped into the convenience store at the gas station to get beer. I figure its actually safer for him to be in a locked car than for me to carry him across the traffic in the driveway.
Try spanking a kid in a public place if you want CPS at your door.
Old fart can't get your peace and quiet? At least the hordes of unsupervised children aren't watching TV. How are children supposed to learn how to interact socially if they're supervised every minute of every day? They need some supervised study which you won't see because they're hidden in school or at home, but they need independent study to put the lessons into practice.
There may be a legal defense based upon how "in need of services, in need of supervision, or abused or neglected as defined in 16.1-228" has been construed. But the poster has not deigned to examine the law.
Yes we are lucky to be alive, and I am in particular. My brother isn't, but probably would have been if carseats existed in 1955.
There. Fixed the statute.
Nick
They just pass these laws as a pretense at caring, and then abuse them to steal children away from poor people to get more funding for their departments.
One day police departments will be able to raise funds by using malls as 'bad parenting traps.'
I may be alive because there were no childseats in the 1970s.
My dad got into a serious crash with me in the backseat. I (or so I was told years later by my mother) slid in between the front and rear seats, which prevented me from being crushed to death.
So a lack of childseats and safety belts probably saved my life back in 1974.
Which might be a statistical blip, but requiring child seats for 12 year olds because it might save a single child's life once in a decade is also a statistical blip.
As to being unsupervised. With 2 acres of garden and living in the country with a hundred acres of farmland and a similar amount of forest surrounding the house, there was no chance my parents could ever keep eyes on me 24/7 unless they shackled me to a wall which would have been a crime back then (and maybe still is).
So there's nothing a priori wrong about a little community involvement. If mom here was leaving her 1 year old strapped in the car seat, asleep, while she dashed into the store, that would indeed be a bit unwise. What if she's delayed? Slips on a wet floor on the way out, sprains her ankle? At the least, that 5 minutes will stretch out to 20 or 30 before she can get back to the car, or send someone there. Even if nothing evil happens (sun, hot car) it could be a terrifying experience for a 1-year-old to wake and find himself strapped in and apparently abandoned for half an hour. On the other hand, if we're talking about a 7 year old, who already knows where her mom's going and can be sensible enough if mom doesn't get back for a little longer than she expects, it would be silly.
The problem is the heavy-handedness here. If the cop knew her, knew the neighborhood, and just said Hey Mrs. Foo, I see you've left little Jenny in the car seat while you ran into the drugstore. Can I just speak to you about that? You know, we have to go through this training in the academy, and they showed us some films...I realize this is a rare possibility, but have you thought about what might happen if you were a little delayed getting back? It's happened to others. Let me just suggest you think this out a little more, okay?
If Mrs. Foo is at all reasonable, a little light reminder or caution, delivered with all due respect for her responsibility, and for the burdens of motherhood, would probably go a long way. Certainly has the best chance of actually changing her behaviour while not embittering and angering her so that the damage done to the civic contract far exceeds the potential harm to the child.
I dunno why things work that way nowadays, in most aspects of parenting. We are involved, as a community, in the parenting of other children it seems in only the most cloddish and ineffectual ways, whatever our intentions. Regrettable in the extreme. You can see why other cultures think we're idiots.
But I fully agree about the age of the child. My mom left us in the car ALL THE TIME to go into the store, or wherever. I usually had my head in a book. I think it's fine if the kid knows where the mom is and can get herself out of the car if needed. It's not fine for a child small enough to be in danger if she gets out of the car, or too small to get herself out.
No summons yet..... Heck once and a while we have even had to make quick errands with the 9-month-old asleep in his crib.
Also, my wife worries when my son goes outside on a cold day without a coat. My response? "He'll be back, don't worry."
She committed the terrible crime of carrying a 1 year old and bags of groceries at the same time.
http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/
Sincerely,
Corkie the Dog
available at www.telegraph.co.uk
I spent hours outside unattended as a 4-8 year old, when growing up, going up and down the street and playing in the woods, and all it did was make me more physically fit.
But now my parents could have been hauled up on child neglect charges.
I live in Arlington, and my neighbors let their kids play in their backyards unattended all the time. Can CPS now abduct the kids under a child-neglect theory?
Disgusting.
Maybe the negligent folks are the ones pushing for these laws?
Hell, most of us over 35 or so have never been in a car seat. I guess were lucky to be alive.
Yes we are lucky to be alive, and I am in particular. My brother isn't, but probably would have been if carseats existed in 1955."
Well Arthur, I'm sorry about your brother and glad you made it. But why stop at mandating car seats? Why don't we just go ahead and outlaw cars while we're at it? Think of all the lives we could save....
I'm not a libertarian, I love the site but think most of the prevailing philosophy here is kind of silly. But whatever breeds this philosophy that children cannot be exposed to anything without-- not just supervision but-- direct control, must be stopped.
Btw, this is not a new-- look at post yesterday about how the FCC needs to 'protect children' from the horrors of the word "shit".
Certainly this has evolved to where people think parents should be thrown in jail for going inside to pay for gas, or allowing pre-school aged children walk across the street, etc etc.
What if, what if, what if ... what if, instead of leaving him safely in the car, she gets him out, and slips on the ice while carrying him, and the fall kills him?
While not all parents are good parents, there is pretty intense evolutionary pressure towards making sure your kids survive. On the balance, parents will make better parenting decisions that legislatures.
I was technically under supervision of my teenage brother when I ran in front of a car and would have likely done the same thing if I'd been walking with either of my parents.
I think we need to accept that tragedies sometimes happen and not radically alter the liberties of families everywhere.
Reminds me of the last time my grandson pompously (as only a kid can be pompous) reminded me that I had used a "bad word."
He got sent out with a shovel and a bucket to clean the "bad word" out of the dog yard. It's fun to be a curmudgeon, sometimes.
I called the child abuse hotline once in Memphis because my neighbor's 2-yr-old was in the street. The first time I saw him I took him home, rang the doorbell, and told his mom that she really needed to keep him out of the street. The second time I got him out of the street and then dropped a dime. Perhaps this will offend hard-core libertarians, but I think you do have to draw the line somewhere.
No, there isn't, but it's best if people don't leave kids alone in cars, too. My friend's 2 year old nephew was killed when left unattended in a car equipped with automatic windows. Yes, the unthinkable happened with that window, and they found him like that. A fluke, and today cars are likely failsafed against that, but the only failsafe is attention, and even that sometimes doesn't work, I guess. I ran loose when younger like many of you, and probably coulda bought it any number of times, in any dozen of ways.
The quote says passersby called the cops, who arrived and then dealt with her. So, it was a few minutes at least that she was gone, enough to draw attention. I might agree that a few words from the cop would go a long way, and I wouldn't favor a citation unless the cop finds she's clearly not getting it.
I left my dog in my truck once, on a hot summer day, and ran into the hardware. I knew it'd be only "2 minutes", and it was, but sure enough there was an elderly lady waiting for me next to my truck, very cross with me. I agreed with her, tucked tail and left. She was right.
To keep things in perspective, cars killed more people than terrorists in September of 2001.
Furthermore, I wonder whether fewer people would die in flu season if automobiles were outlawed.......
So really, we could save the lives of children, the elderly, and pretty much everyone else by outlawing this particular device which poses a pernicious danger to human life!
Actually being in the car isn't as much protection as one would think. If kids get choked by the automatic windows, often times they can't talk, scream, etc. I don't have fatality statistics but I have heard of a number of surprising close calls even when the parent was in the car.
Regarding power windows, what is needed is to be close enough to hear the sound of the window, have no districtions (like the radio), and be paying attention. In those cases, really the only thing you might hear might be the sound of the window motor.
Don't most automatic windows have a lock mechanism controlled by the driver?
If my kid did that now, 30 years later, I'm sure I'd be hauled off to Gitmo.
In this case, she was convicted of a crime that, as a matter of law, she didn't commit. It should have been an easy win, but her attorney didn't make it happen. I've heard too many stories like this and I am not sure what the solution is.
Or what if a freak meteor strike kills them both, plus everyone else within 40 meters of the car? The point you may be missing is that not all risks are equally risky, and some are avoidable and some are not. In some cases leaving your kid in the car is a perfectly reasonable very small risk. In others, it's not. It takes judgment to sort them out, and usually experience.
While not all parents are good parents, there is pretty intense evolutionary pressure towards making sure your kids survive. On the balance, parents will make better parenting decisions that legislatures.
Without doubt. But who's talking about legislatures, eh? I'm talking about the personal experienced judgment of other adults, normally other parents. We all start off being parents with good instincts, thanks to evolution, except for those of us who are pathological, but that doesn't fully carry the day. Experience matters.
And so the point of my post was that the community has much more experience than any one individual, and it's a good and useful thing if that experience is used to help new parents out, not just in advice for doing what's good, but in warnings about doing what's not good. I think it makes sense for a 50-year-old parent of four who sees a 22-year-old with her first baby doing something a little dumb to speak up, so long as it's done with due respect and sufficient informality.
It is precisely this kind of personal contact that can actually be a useful form of community involvement, that famous fatuous goal of the squishy left. It can save children and families from a certain number of tragedies that would ensue if we lived in either in the egoist's paradise, where no one interacts with anyone except by invitation, or the collectivist's paradise, where all interactions are moderated by the giant all-powerful State.
The difficulty in this case, as I said, as I see it, is not the community involvement, but the incompetent and futile form in which it took. If this woman needed a warning about unnecessarily risky behaviour -- and she may or may not, you'd have to know much more about the situation and the woman and the child to know for sure -- then it would be fine to have given it to her. But not, I think, in the way it was given. That clearly did not accomplish anything useful.
I think these laws are big democratic government at its worst, but they're the natural result of social norms that are big, electronic-age society at its worst. In short, we perceive our world too much through the distorted lens of reported news, and then we act on those perceptions. And as they say in the news business, "If it bleeds, it leads."
School shooting? Ban guns. Sensational child rape-murder? Enact Megan's laws and never let your kids out of the house. Terrorists blow up the World Trade Center? Sacrifice more lives than were lost that day, plus a couple of trillion dollars, trying to prevent it from recurring.
In those cases, the government is largely responding to what it perceives as popular demand. And that demand is perfectly rational if we don't contextualize reported news with our experiences in the local worlds we actually inhabit.
It might be wrong to blame the beat cop here. He may only be enforcing what he was told to enforce, especially given the policy of local child protective services. Cops don't have unlimited discretion. They generally must follow departmental policies. That means your gripe is probably with the cop's supervisors and/or with Child Protective Services. If you want change, you have to complain to the right people.
Also, the statute (available here) is broad enough that this is probably (and unfortunately) a jury question. The statute makes it a crime to leave a child "in need of services [or] in need of supervision. . . ." If the prosecutor can get testimony that an eight year old left alone in a car is "in need of services [or] in need of supervision," the case goes to the jury. And, unfortunately, it looks like the prosecutor could get that kind of testimony in Arlington.
Also, there is no rule of statutory construction that says that a general law is inapplicable to a specific situation if the legislature is considering a bill specifically outlawing that situation. As to laws in other jurisdictions, that's an OK argument, but I wouldn't want to hang my hat on an interstate version of expressio unius est exclusio alterius (the express mention of one thing excludes all others).
All that said, Bernstein is right as a matter of common sense. Unfortunately, "that's just stupid" is not a legal defense to a charge that the prosecutor won't dismiss.
If his correspondent wants to challenge the application of the law to what she did, she has the right to take it to trial, maybe even a jury trial. That's the key check against prosecutorial stupidity. "That's just stupid" sometimes does work with a jury, especially a jury of parents who think, "there but for the grace of God go I." I can see why she would give in and take the classes. I might advise a client to do the same thing because of the risk of a conviction. But it's her choice.
On a somewhat related note, fellow defense attorneys have advised me not to take my kid to the local children's hospital. They say the doctors there lack the judgment to distinguish between a normal accident of childhood or unorthodox parenting on one side, and true neglect or abuse on the other. Worse, once the doctors get their mind set that it's abuse, nothing will change it. So you take your kid there at least some risk.
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