Free country? Not if you think your kids are old enough to walk to school AND learn a lesson.
A Tennessee mom, Lisa Marie Palmer, learned this the hard way, after she made her kids walk to school when they missed the bus.
Wait a minute — she made her kids WALK? Outside? To school? How could they possibly do THAT, I’d like to know. It’s unheard of! Of course this is a crime!
As the local Times Free press reports:
It “appeared as if she was driving ahead of the children and allowing them to walk and catch up to her vehicle and to proceed with that action until the children reached the school,” [ Marion County sheriff’s deputy Chris] Ladd states in the report.
Ladd estimated the girls already had walked about a mile and a half and still had about two more miles to go.
Surely no child has ever walked more than a few houses down the street.
And if, as the mom claims, she was “watching” them — ah, that’s hardly an excuse. Because the very WORST part was that Ladd could imagine something terrible happening to the kids — and the mom being a few crucial yards away!
“Temperatures were cold, and traffic was beginning to become heavy with citizens heading to work,” Ladd states. “Mrs. Palmer was in no position to reach her children safely in the event of an emergency.”
There you have it. The Sheriff’s Deputy has put into words the precise crime of our era: Daring to let a kid out of reach, ever. Officially, children are only safe when their mom (or proxy) is near enough to yank them away from the bad man. Because, what if???
So, dear readers, I hope you weren’t planning to do anything else with your lives besides stand next to your kids anytime they are not in school. Do this, and you will be punished!
At that point, Ladd cited Palmer for child neglect and began trying to arrange for the girls to get the rest of the way to school.
Because both those moves were so extremely necessary. The kids need help walking, the mom needs help learning how to parent. And the state rushed in to provide both! It cares so much about making this family do things the right way. And of course here is only ONE right way. (Hint: It’s not yours.) – L
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73 Comments
define “cold”. in my part of upstate new York too cold to walk to school is a wind chill below 0. if police are now allowed to decide what is too cold, too hot, too windy ,too wet, etc we might as well just hand our kids over to government trained caretakers the moment they’re born since parents have obviously become too stupid and brain dead to make any decisions and should from this moment on be thought of only as walking breeding machines.
Reality is becoming much too much like an April Fool’s joke. I can’t tell them apart anymore. I pity the mother trying to discipline her children now or to teach them anything else. What have the kids learned? Maybe that if they don’t like Mom’s rules they can turn her over to the police. I know a case where this actually happened, in another country. The consequences were devastating.
Coldness aside, this is going to depend a whole helluva a lot on the age of the kids involved. The article doesn’t give the ages. It just says “young girls.” To me that means under 9 or so, but the media sometimes refers to teenagers as “young children,” so it is hard to tell. If these are truly “young girls”, this is at best an extremely inappropriate punishment for what appears to be age-appropriate behavior of dilly-dallying resulting in missing the bus and is pretty negligent considering they were walking along the fog line of the road. If they were older, it is simply bad parenting.
For those who will read this little blurb here and not the entire article, Lenore leaves out the part where mom doesn’t have a valid driver’s license. Since the cops can’t let an unlicensed driver take the vehicle away, Dad was called. Dad brought grandpa, who is not having his first brush with the law and decided to get into an altercation with the cop, resulting in his arrest and the discovery of drug paraphernalia in his pocket. Not exactly model decision makers any of them so I may actually defer to the cop’s opinion as to the safety of this situation in this instance.
If you ‘registered’ your child at birth, they are the property of the state and can take their property back whenever they like. More people are starting to figure this out. Why did singer Adele not register her child? She knows something..
“Age appropriate dilly dallying?” Not where I come from. You do what your parents tell you to do or else they are within their rights to create an experience that guarantees you never again scoff them off ever again.
My son age 3 was bad about taking his shoes off in the car, numerous times I told him to stop it but he kept on, that is until the day he did so on a 95’F day just before getting out of the car in a parking lot. I said nothing as he exited the car and stepped onto the hot pavement barefooted and as he dashed for the car to get his shoes I locked the doors so he couldn’t get them and proceeded to scold him for disobeying my orders.
He never did it again. (No his feet were not medically burned, it just hurt like heck.)
Sometimes you have to make the experience very unforgettable for them. The government needs to butt out of parent’s business or else if a grandpa goes after a police officer they get what they had coming to them.
As another commenter noted, some pertinent facts were omitted from Lenore’s blog post: That the mom did not have a driver’s license and that the grandfather – called to the scene to potentially drive the kids the rest of the way – got into a fight with the cops and was arrested for possession of drug paraphernalia. Quite a winning family there.
I looked up the location on Google Streets and there is no sidewalk or even a shoulder – these kids were having to walk alongside a narrow two-lane road. Here is the Google Streets view of the intersection noted in the news story:
https://www.google.com/maps/@35.1542856,-85.554039,3a,75y,29.71h,83.17t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sGmex9tdBTYpyO0S4r8BJgg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1
I get some static from other parents because my son (age 8) walks a mile home from school by himself. But he’s on the sidewalk the whole way, and he’s worked up to it over the last school year with me meeting him partway either on foot or with the car. But I would not ask him to walk three miles right next to a narrow two-lane road.
Also unmentioned were the ages of the kids. There’s a big difference between 5 and 10.
Finally, the mom could have taught her lesson but still avoided this mess by simply walking the kids instead of half-a$$ed following them in the car. “OK, kids, you missed the bus, and I am not going to drive you. You are going to walk your butts to school. I will walk with you, but you are getting to school today only through use of your own two feet.”
I think these willful-disregard-of-inconvenient-facts posts undermine the free range kids movement.
Please tell me this is an April Fool’s joke!!!
Off topic, but zero tolerance rules get kids in a lot of trouble just for having something that resembles a weapon but the CIA left C4 explosives behind on a school bus.
@Mike I used to walk street like that, so your pics brought memories. It was oftentimes only way back from hike. It is not dangerous nor difficult to walk on grass or side of that.
However, what I disagree most with is this: “Finally, the mom could have taught her lesson but still avoided this mess by simply walking the kids instead of half-a$$ed following them in the car.”
I really don’t get this attitude. It is never stated fully outright, but people seem to dislike whenever mom takes easy way for her. As if parenthood was supposed to be series of symbolic small personal sacrifices no matter how pointless. You are supposed to take the harder way instead of equal but easier one. If she dont, people seem to seek punishment for something unrelated.
“I think these willful-disregard-of-inconvenient-facts posts undermine the free range kids movement.”
In many previous posts, I would agree.
But, father arguing with cops has nothing to do with neglect charge through. Nor does mother being a bit lazy by taking the car. Mother driving car without license is road laws violation and should be punished that way – but has nothing to do with neglect. This is just throwing things in to justify neglect charge on general “you should dislike that person” grounds instead of by arguing “it was really neglect because”. That is not justice nor rule of law.
Ignoring the rest of the “winning family” comments on this post, I’ll just direct my comments to this:
“I looked up the location on Google Streets and there is no sidewalk or even a shoulder ”
Thanks for that, its puts it in perspective and you know what I see? A good 100 feet plus on either side of the road with NOTHING THERE! How the heck is this dangerous? Its like walking through a field. Sorry, but there is NOTHING wrong with walking a road like this. I don’t see a problem, and its safer than many cities since its wide, its open, and you can see cars coming from a long way away. Even those line of trees would be shelter if some crazy driver was swerving down the road, but wait, now I am getting into the “emergency situation” mindset.
So with a deep breath I will sit back and see a nice country road to walk down. Sure it will be a little long to get to school, but it might just make an impression on the kids to get ready in time for the bus.
@andy
“But, father arguing with cops has nothing to do with neglect charge through. Nor does mother being a bit lazy by taking the car. Mother driving car without license is road laws violation and should be punished that way — but has nothing to do with neglect.”
Yeah, it sound like the cops’ policy is: these people have been troublesome before so let’s hassle them over everything and anything.
@MichaelF
“So with a deep breath I will sit back and see a nice country road to walk down.”
Yeah, that place looks more rural than where I live. Which is saying something.
Not like walking the LA Freeway.
Charges ought only to be what is clearly against the law- driving without a license, in this instance.
Like the one person said, the no license and arguing with cops actions, while troubling in and of themselves, have nothing to do with why the police showed up in the first place. The road looks fine to me.
Why should the mother have to walk, she’s not the one who dilly dallied. As the one said, the idea is to make an impression on the kids that they won’t forget because sometimes kids are stubborn and won’t listen to reason otherwise.
I do wish to clarify–the example I gave, that was around 4 years ago, and it was over probably within 8 seconds. I said to my son “hurts doesn’t it” and “are you going to keep doing things your way or are you going to obey me from now on?”.he said “obey” and with that I unlocked the door. I simply let him experience the discomfort of his choice by not intervening when I saw he was barefoot and about to step on hot pavement.
Sometimes kids are stubborn and-or don’t pay enough attention until they experience the natural consequences of their wrong choice. The idea is for them to see what happens when you make the wrong choice and to respect that your parents’ directives are not optional in terms of the obedience towards them.
Eh, I think I could find a better case to champion than this one. Everything about this story is messed up. From the reason the deputy was concerned to the whole kerfuffle that happened after.
“But, father arguing with cops has nothing to do with neglect charge through. Nor does mother being a bit lazy by taking the car. Mother driving car without license is road laws violation and should be punished that way — but has nothing to do with neglect. This is just throwing things in to justify neglect charge on general “you should dislike that person” grounds instead of by arguing “it was really neglect because”. That is not justice nor rule of law.”
No, it shows a series of bad decisions so, since I don’t know these people, I am not going to automatically assume that THIS (making the children walk) was the one good decision the family made that morning.
When Lenore allows her 9 year old to take the subway alone – a pretty borderline age for taking the subway alone and something that not all 9 year olds are capable of – I make the assumption that he was responsible enough to do so because Lenore is an otherwise responsible person. If Lenore had given that story with a whole host of other facts that include a series of really bad decisions be everyone involved, I would not necessarily make the same assumption about her ability to make the decision as to whether her child was ready.
“A good 100 feet plus on either side of the road with NOTHING THERE! How the heck is this dangerous?”
Actually, there is about 2 feet between the road and someone’s yard. My child is generally taught not to walk through people’s yards.
And the cop states that they were walking along the fog line of the road, not 100 feet or even 2 feet off the road – and we have absolutely no evidence whatsoever that that is not true. Not surprising at all considering grass is generally wet in the morning this time of the year down here in the south and walking 3.5 miles in the grass would result in sopping wet feet long before you get to school.
@Donna “When Lenore allows her 9 year old to take the subway alone — a pretty borderline age for taking the subway alone and something that not all 9 year olds are capable of”
It was expected from us around age 6-7 for going to and from school – by bus or train. Still expected in many parts of the world. Sending 9 years alone through subway is not borderline age, it is when majority of kids absolutely should be able to do so. I would go so far as to say that when 9 years old cant go alone by public transport, then something went wrong – either too much helicoptering or child special needs.
The road is equally dangerous whether parents are from white trash family or middle class family. If one gets charged for sending child through there, so would (or should) the other. Walking through grass right next to road would be perfectly socially acceptable where I live and road laws allow you to walk behind while line unless the road is marked accordingly. So, it really should boil down to childrens age and how often/fast cars go through there, not to whether grandpa owns small pipe.
I don’t fault Lenore for “leaving out facts.” The report above mirrors the associated press article which was posted on yahoo and presumably picked up by many other news outlets.
And having a young dilly-dallier at home who some days only makes the bus because the driver honks the horn out front…my guess there were many stressful mornings even without a missed bus prior to the walking instance. Seems the punishment is appropriate.
As far as the other charges that were not mentioned — they weren’t in the title of the article because that would not be inflammatory and cause clicks. So it seems clear that the media thought the charge of neglect in this instance was outrageous enough to sell.
Ridiculous that the article doesn’t mention the age of these “young kids”. I’ve seen the description ‘young girl’ for a 19-year-old, so I assume these kids could be anything between 4 and 18…
“It was expected from us around age 6-7 for going to and from school — by bus or train. Still expected in many parts of the world.”
Wait… children in many parts of the world are expected to ride the NY subway to school? The fact that children ride the local subway has no relation whatsoever to whether or not it’s reasonable to let a 9-year-old ride the NY subway.
“Walking through grass right next to road would be perfectly socially acceptable where I live”
Same problem here. What does this have to do with whether or not it’s socially acceptable in Georgia? And it doesn’t matter… the kids were observed on the roadway, not in the grass.
Three-and-a-half miles is a long walk to school, when mom is right there with an automobile. Child neglect seems like a stretch, the more appropriate charge seems to be truancy… but like Donna, I can’t rule out that neglect might be appropriately charged in this case.
I can tell you that other than staying out of the legal crosshairs of things I’m not much concerned about what SOCIETY thinks is appropriate for how I parent MY children, nor should I have to be. If I wanted their opinion, I’d ask it. Too many things are classified as “neglect-abuse” these things and people are too nosy.
My only comment is that 3 1/2 miles is a lot for anyone to walk in the morning, and would take almost anyone with a normal pace at least an hour, and, depending on the age of the kids, even longer. Whether the mom was right or not (and there were a lot of other things going on, according to the article), her choice in punishment was poor *for that instance*.
When my Mexican neighbor’s oldest girl, 11, chose to leave her three younger siblings in front of the school waiting for a ride and walk home–a whole 2 kilometer, a little over a mile– along a two-lane federal highway, she arrived home to find nobody there, so she came over and raided my refrigerator. What happened when the word got out? Hardly a shrug. Too bad American kids are considered too delicate and vulnerable.
-I am 67. Once a little girl(in a suburb of Vancouver-)of about 11 rushed to me-and asked me to give her a hug.
In that same city, I said hello to a Mom, and her little gir(l about 11) put both her hands on my shoulders.
James,
I would argue that in many parts of the world the potential for harm is worse on their version of public transportation than a NYC subway. Kids go to school in 2nd and 3rd world nations, also. Even in Japan school aged girls get groped on subways. For someone that has lived in NYC or other metro area the idea of taking the bus, BART, or subway is common knowledge. If Lenore had just moved to a metro area and expected her child to conceptualize the set of skills needed to ride the subway for the first time I might have had some concerns, but not where she had lived there for many years at that point. I was driving grain trucks and full size tractors with equipment attached when I was 11. Would I expect a ‘city kid’ to do that? No, but where I grew up it was a pretty commonly accepted and expected life skill at that age.
After reading the entire article, they sound like a deadbeat family. Making your children walk 3 1/2 miles to school in the cold weather seems like a rather harsh punishment for running late. It’s unnecessary to charge her with neglect, but to me she has questionable judgement.
@CO: “After reading the entire article, they sound like a deadbeat family. Making your children walk 3 1/2 miles to school in the cold weather seems like a rather harsh punishment for running late. It’s unnecessary to charge her with neglect, but to me she has questionable judgement.”
Yes, I agree that there was no need for police involvement, but I also really don’t like the sanctimonious attitude of some adults towards children who make human errors and run late or forget something from time to time. Kids are people, too! If I, like the woman in Tennessee, wasn’t a licensed driver, then of course my kids would have to walk to school, too, if they missed the bus. And if I didn’t feel like they were ready to walk it alone, I’d get up off my ass and walk with them — not break the law by following them in a car that I can’t even legally drive. Not great judgment, in my opinion.
Doesn’t a recent US Education Law contain a provision that a parent can decide a child is capable of walking to school? A law introduced by a Congressman from Utah?
Has it been repealed already?
Driving without a license is the only issue here for the cops to address. That’s it.
I don’t agree with the parenting choice, but it’s not a matter for the authorities.
It just isn’t.
I certainly hope that all libraries will pull “Little House on the Prairie” off of their shelves. Laura talks about being excited because the new school is “only” three miles away!
Do midgets need escorts? Government is stunting growth of children turning too many into emotional midgets
How old, and how cold?
Or is this just about 3 miles being too far for any kid to walk?
Sounds like she was trying to apply “natural consequences” for the kids’ missing the bus. Makes sense to me.
Depending on these kids’ ages, this is almost a helicopter mom since she drove ahead of the kids and watched them the whole way.
Though, they did say she was driving without a license, so that makes me wonder whether there is a lot more to the story. It sounds like very strange behavior, honestly. If my kids were big enough to walk 3 miles to school, and I wanted to make sure they actually got there, I’d probably go to the school and wait there. Maybe they didn’t know the way?
“Little House”–yes, we love watching that show, and the differences in how they parented then is startling. In the one episode (Season 4, early) a group of girls goes swimming without any adults and one of them drowns, and no adult is blamed at all. I sure wish I could have lived then–with the A/C and electronics, however (ha ha).
“Harsh punishment for forgetting”–sorry, but I don’t agree. In my experience it’s not human-prone forgetfulness at play so much as it apathy and not taking a matter seriously enough, and/or perhaps thinking “big deal, mommy can just take us” and not giving respect that mommy has to get to work or whatever (or, in her case, being unlicensed she perhaps is trying to not break any laws if she can help it). Maybe I’m a jerk, but I just don’t give much latitude for kids to be forgetful and wishy-washy about these things. I expect them to remember and be diligent, period, no excuses.
One can tell me all day long “they’re kids, they’re going to forget” and I’m still going to be saying “nope, can’t happen, they’ve got to do better than that.” If it takes a painful experience for them to remember, then so long as it doesn’t involve REAL abuse (like burning their hands on a hot plate) then so be it.
As for not having a sidewalk, in many places it is normal for kids to walk without sidewalks. Even in our modern suburb, there are stretches of road with no sidewalk which my kids have walked along as tots. The presence or absence of a sidewalk should not be a determining factor IMO. If the area is so dangerous that you must have a sidewalk to be safe walking, then that is on whoever is responsible to build sidewalks.
I don’t think you can say that a school-aged kid is unsafe because he was walking in the neighborhood. If the neighborhood is that unsafe, someone in power is responsible, not the kid or his/her parents.
I could see my kids putzing around because if they missed the bus, they would get a ride from Mom. Of course I have threatened significant consequences should that happen. Right now we live 5 miles from their school, so sending them walking really would not work for us, but at a certain age I could see making them walk 3 miles. It’s not that far. Assuming they were dressed for the weather and stuff.
Then again, you have news stories about the horrors of high schoolers having to walk a whole mile from MdD’s back to school, so maybe I’m the weird one. 😛
Sorry, but she should have either drove them or let them walk. I think it was lame to follow them in a car as the walked. I don’t think she should have been charged with neglect though.
This is just another reason for decent cycling infrastructure. Running late? Cycle faster.
Marion County is 498 square miles. 77% of it is classified rural. It has 28,000 people in it. That’s 56 people per square mile. I’d bet nearly everyone walks on roads without sidewalks. But there seems to be some sentiment here that a place with 56 people per square mile is too congested to have kids walk on the road? Behind Mom’s car? And 3 – 4 miles is too far for kids to walk? What? Will their legs fall off?
If there are the average 2 children families, there are 7000 families. Assuming that each family has 2 cars, that’s 28 cars per square mile. They aren’t ever all on the road at once so what is “congested” as the cop says? A car every minute or so?
And just what does whether or not Mom has an active driver’s license have to do with anything? Particularly the topic? And even more what does Grandad’s history with the police have to do with anything?
And the temperature? Over the couple of days before/including April 1st, the “cold” temperatures were a low of 42 and a high of 73. Ya gotta be kidding. That’s “too cold?” For Walking?
Get over it guys. Mom has ever right to do whatever she wanted. CPS and the Police need to stay out of parentlng.
What else do you expect from the pigs? They’re pigs.
Mom did not have a license, so she didn’t have the option of either doing things the way she did or just driving the kids to school. She should absolutely be cited for driving without a license.
“I would argue that in many parts of the world the potential for harm is worse on their version of public transportation than a NYC subway.”
Of course it is. And in many parts of the world, the potential for harm is less, and, there’s probably some parts of the world where the risk is roughly equal, but the specific dangers are different.
The point is, saying “I can do X, therefore you can do Y”, if X and Y are not related to each other, doesn’t make any sense.
“Doesn’t a recent US Education Law contain a provision that a parent can decide a child is capable of walking to school?”
No.
“Has it been repealed already?”
No, it just doesn’t do what you think (wish?) it does.
You left out this part of the story…
“Palmer didn’t have a valid driver’s license and couldn’t be allowed to drive the girls on to school. When Palmer’s husband, Brandon Palmer, and his father, Douglas Palmer, arrived, officers asked for a valid driver’s license from them, according to the report.
Douglas Palmer refused and began to argue with officers, using what Ladd described in the report as obscene language “with the children observing his every word and action,” Ladd states. The man then accused Ladd of being “the cop that beat me up last time,” and then started to take off his seat belt and get out of the car.
Ladd said Douglas Palmer then grabbed at his waist, where the officer said he saw a fixed-blade knife in a sheath. A struggle ensued and the elder Palmer was disarmed and handcuffed.
During a pat-down search and a search of the vehicle the two men were driving, the officers reportedly found drug paraphernalia in Douglas Palmer’s pants pocket but no drugs. He ended up being booked on charges unrelated to the girls walking, officials said.”
Oh good grief. I just returned from a National Park where I “made” my eight year old go on an almost five mile hike. Up a mountain. With the constant risk of bears and mountain lions. Oh, and it was in a desert mountain, very hot and dry. He could have dehydrated. Or fallen off a cliff. Or we, his old and somewhat overweight parents, might have had heart attacks from exertion, and he would have been left alone to fend for himself over our rotting corpses. THINK OF THE DANGERS!!!
@Vincent Iannelli, MD Maybe she left it because grandpa shennigans are not relevant to whether neglect charges are appropriate? Charging mom with “neglect” because you want to retaliate against her father in law or because you think lawful punishment for driving without license is too small would both be clearly an abuse of power. That would be sort of thing you want punish cops for. Not any of it happened, there is no real reason to suspect that cops were like that.
It is better to assume that what is actually under dispute is whether making the child walk that road is neglect or not. In that dispute, Leonore tend to be on the “yes they can walk” side – and it is only consistent to keep that up even when mom in question clearly deserve punishment for driving without license or when grandpa is not trustworthy.
If their kids cant walk that road without neglect charge, nor can yours or mine. You cant make it neglect for people who have more then x unrelated smallish offenses and acceptable for the rest of us. That is not how it works.
“So, it really should boil down to childrens age and how often/fast cars go through there, not to whether grandpa owns small pipe.”
Whether she should be charged with neglect absolutely should be based solely on those factors (although the rest could certainly be taken into consideration by CPS). I never stated otherwise.
However, were the kids 5 or 12? Is this a quiet street during the work time commute or a main artery into Chattanooga from the more rural areas? How much of a danger was the mother creating by her own idiotic behavior (there is no way mom could pull completely off the road each time she stopped and waited for the kids – unless it is also believed to be socially acceptable to park a car in someone’s front yard – so she was blocking part of the roadway each time she stopped and also likely traveling far under the regular speed limit when moving)?
We don’t actually know the answers to any of these questions. Due to the other clearly bad decision-making otherwise present in this particular situation, I am not going to insist in my outrage that those questions will be answered in a manner that makes the cops wrong and the mother right. I might in other scenarios where the parents otherwise seem to make responsible decisions, but not in this scenario when they otherwise don’t.
“The road is equally dangerous whether parents are from white trash family or middle class family.”
You are the only one making class and race assumptions about the family. I said nothing other than they appear to lack something in the decision-making arena of life. That is something that can occur in both poor and rich families alike. (Now the fact that they are driving a gold caddy does indicate that they are poor and somewhat more likely black, but those things didn’t weigh into my not being willing to jump to the knee-jerk reaction of “cops bad, parents good” as everyone else here).
“It is better to assume that what is actually under dispute is whether making the child walk that road is neglect or not. In that dispute, Leonore tend to be on the “yes they can walk” side — and it is only consistent to keep that up even when mom in question clearly deserve punishment for driving without license or when grandpa is not trustworthy. ”
I think it would be more accurate to say that Lenore’s argument tends to be “the parents are best situated to decide whether their kids can do X” (whatever X is). A history of poor judgment on the part of the parent(s) would, in fact, be relevant to a discussion on that topic.
Then there’s the matter of evaluating credibility. If you already know that all law-enforcement officers are lying, child-hating tools of the power-crazed state bureaucracy out to seize children out of happy, functioning families, then you don’t need to know more about anyone involved, you already know who’s lying and who’s telling the truth.
Tell the whole story:
They were walking on the fog line (white outer stripe) of a busy street with no sidewalks.
Three miles during rush hour.
Changes the picture, doesn’t it?
The only relevant point is the walking to school. Not every family makes good choices but the neglect issue is over walking to school. Natural consequences, etc… I bet the kids won’t miss the bus now.
“I think it would be more accurate to say that Lenore’s argument tends to be “the parents are best situated to decide whether their kids can do X” (whatever X is). A history of poor judgment on the part of the parent(s) would, in fact, be relevant to a discussion on that topic.”
Exactly. And there is actual evidence that mom DIDN’T believe that they could do X. If she believed they could do X, there is no reason to drive a pace car.
“The only relevant point is the walking to school.
So a 4 year old walking a dog for 3 miles down the fog line of the road is equal to a 14 year old walking a dog for 3 miles down the fog line of the road in your opinion?
“Natural consequences, etc… I bet the kids won’t miss the bus now.”
Possibly or possibly the children are too young to bear 100% of the responsibility for getting to the school bus on time and mom was expecting something beyond their developmental abilities and is punishing them for not living up to her unrealistic expectations, making mom a jerk. Or possibly it was the first time all year that they were late to school and their only conclusion from the whole thing is that mom is a jerk. Or possibly mom woke them up late and then blamed them for missing the bus when they couldn’t get things together fast enough despite their best efforts and all they learned is that mom is a jerk.
See that is where the family’s history of poor judgment comes into play. I am going to be less inclined to come to the conclusion that you are a reasonable person and not a jerk if you are kinda acting like a jerk at the time.
Look, I didn’t say walking 3 1/2 miles was a problem for kids at all times. I said 3 1/2 miles when the kids are trying to get to school is a problem. Yes, my kids probably walked/hiked/climbed more miles at young ages at amusement parks, but we had all day. Not a short time in which to get to school before being so late it wasn’t worth it. I don’t know the area, so I can’t speak to the safety of walking in the street.
The other question is: why was mom driving at all, if dad and grandpa were there? Couldn’t they have taken the kids to school? Or was this lateness a pattern mom was trying to break?
Wait, driving a Cadillac suggests they’re poor?
@Donna I don’t think encounter with cops would go the same way if they would be rich and looked rich. The area around does not look rich. As for race, I used “white trash” because it means “looked down group of poor people” which is different then just “people without money” and does not make me racist. Mom not having license associated with me with poor too, through now I am not sure why. Rich people are more likely to buy their way out of trouble that made them loose license I guess.
I don’t think grandpa behavior should be all that much relevant to moms behavior or decision making. Driving without license reflects badly on her, but many good people have disturbed family members and grandpa seems to be that way. It sux enough to have such people in family, no reason to add to it by judging her for him being erratic.
I would not assume the kids would be terribly late to school because of walking. We don’t know how long they normally sat on the school bus or how early it deposited them at school. My kids get picked up about 7:30am and school starts at 8:30. If they left home at 7:30 as the bus was rounding the corner in the distance, they would be able to walk 3 miles to school without missing much. If they were a little late, that would be a natural consequence of missing the bus.
Also, the mom was watching, so presumably if the kids found it too much, she would pick them up and drive them the rest of the way. Assuming that they really were too young to walk it, which is not clear at all.
Neglect would be to let them stay home and watch the tube/play Nintendo (or whatever the current thing) all day.
Hmmm, last year I took my children (then 11 and 6) on a 5 day, 45 mile hike. Over really rough terrain and they had to help handle donkeys along the way. (THe donkeys carry your stuff, not your behind.) Sign me up for parental neglect.
And I don’t blame her for following along in the car. She wasn’t being punished (and if she’d walked, she would have to walk home again), they were. Walking when you miss the bus is a great punishment.
I cringe at these stories of neglect that involve walking to school in the *cold*,
but I’m bothered that they didn’t give the ages of the girls and that mom didn’t have a valid driver’s license.
My kids biked to their elementary school daily. Today it was below freezing and the forecast calls for rain. My daughter wanted to bike anyway even though I suggested she walk. I KNOW if it’s raining at dismissal she will be asked by other well-meaning parents if she wants a ride. She prefers the bike for these encounters as she can bike faster and not deal with this nonsense. She has proper outerwear and gets home faster, except when she’s stopped by drivers asking if she’s OK. If she forgets something at school, I do not give her a ride back to retrieve the item, but have her bike back to school which is over 3 miles round trip. This is a teachable moment that she should take the time to be organized with her supplies. She has biked back once this year and has not forgotten any key materials since.
Might I mention that when John Adams was Envoy to France, during the Revolution, he sent his 14-year-old son, John Quincy, for two years to act as the aid to the new Envoy to Russia. John Q had learned French in his previous two years in France with his father and French was the language of the Court of Catherine the Great, a language the new envoy did not speak. By the way, John Quincy Adams became President of the United States.
Today our adult age college students are traumatized by chalk slogans written on the walks of their “safety zone” school campuses.
Then there was this gentlemen who just passed away at age 102 who was forced by his grandfather to walk barefoot in the snow in order to toughen up his feet when he was 6-years-old.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/04/04/crow-tribe-elder-joe-medicine-crow-dead-at-age-102.html?intcmp=hplnws
Can you imagine what authorities and the gestapos at CPS would have done to his grandparents today? I mean, being made to walk barefoot in the snow at the tender age of 6 scarred this gentleman well into adulthood to the point where he received only a Masters Degree and died at the tender age 102.
The funny thing is, there is nothing so paralyzing to kids as the fear of cops taking them away from their mom. My kids were scared to sit in the car alone for years, because of the time a cop told me off for leaving them for 3 minutes.
These kids now have to deal with a lesson much more severe than walking a few miles to school on a cold day. They have learned that their every misstep could devastate their family and turn their lives upside down. Great lesson.
My mom did this when my brother was in school. He got suspended from the bus and she met him at the school and proceeded to make him walk home. She waited until all the buses had left so there wasn’t any worry about blocking traffic. She followed him for almost 1.5 miles before she let him get in the car. The school called that evening because they heard she was making him walk and allowed him back on the bus the next day. They didn’t feel it was a just punishment from her. She told them to let her parent her kids. The school is around 20 miles from my parents house. She never planned on making him walk the whole way just enough so he knew that what he did was wrong and it had consequences. My mom’s rule for missing the bus was always whatever it took in time for her to take us to school and get back home we owed her is extra work times 2 that weekend. I don’t even remember any of us missing the bus because we knew mom meant it. Extra work usually meant pulling weeds or deep cleaning something.
“My kids get picked up about 7:30am and school starts at 8:30. If they left home at 7:30 as the bus was rounding the corner in the distance, they would be able to walk 3 miles to school without missing much.”
…Is it normal for a school bus to need an hour to cover 3 miles??
Papillo – If the bus went straight from their house to the school, those 3 miles would probably only take a few minutes. But the bus probably winds up and down many side streets and makes many stops to pick up more children before arriving at the school early.
That’s the downside of taking the bus, so many more stops makes a short distance take much longer. In college, if I had access to a car, I could drive to work in 15 minutes. If I had to take the bus, it took 1.5 hours because of all the stops.
“Is it normal for a school bus to need an hour to cover 3 miles??”
They don’t normally drop the kids off right as school is starting.
When I was in high school, the school district used the same buses for junior high school and high school. They didn’t want the high school kids on the same buses as the junior high school kids, but the junior high school and the high school were on the same schedule. The buses went around and picked up all the high school kids, and dropped them off at the high school an hour before school started, then went around and picked up all the junior high school kids and dropped them off right before school. After school, the buses were waiting at the junior high school as classes let out, and took all the junior high school kids home, then went to the high school and picked up all the high school kids. Some buses were at the high school only 20 minutes or so after school ended, others didn’t show up until almost an hour after classes ended.
By the time my daughter was in school (a nearby but different district), things had changed… the junior high schools were now “middle schools”, and ran on a different schedule from the high schools. On the other hand, students might be attending magnet programs, meaning their school was not the one in their neighborhood. So each of the magnet schools had a hub and spoke system… there was a bus that went from each of the magnet schools to each of the district’s high schools. From there, the magnet school kids can take the regular buses from the high school to the neighborhood stops. (In my daughter’s case, she just walked home from the high school)
Factor in loading time (at each stop, the school bus stops, activates the traffic control lights, then opens the door, waits for each child to get on board and find a seat before deactivating the traffic control lights and proceeding) and unloading time, an hour for a three-mile school-bus trip doesn’t sound unusual.
JKP: Yes, I understand *how* this could be the case, but that still doesn’t tell me how often this happens. Also because I would think kids within 3 miles of the school would be less likely to take the bus :-/
(Sorry guys. Your school bus systems always sound so hopelessly inefficient to me, it just surprises me every time…)
Unless she was heavily pregnant or disabled why was she in the car? If she had made the kids walk to school and she had walked with/ahead/behind them (preferably dressed in something that would embarrass the hell out of them when their friends saw her) or had stayed home I’d say it was a good plan, but driving ahead of them in the car is just lazy and teaches them nothing.
At the beginning of the school year, when I was walking my dog each morning, I’d spot a kid who would miss his bus almost every day and make his single mother scurry around so she could drive him to school and get to work on time. Then, for a couple of weeks his grandparents came to take care of him while his mom was away. The kid missed his bus as usual and I watched his grandfather walk ahead of him while he whined and slumped a half block behind for the two miles to school. The next day, same thing. The day after that he and his grandfather were walking at a much faster pace and chatting. The day after that he was up in time for the bus and chose to keep walking with his grandfather instead of getting on. By week two grandpa had two other neighbor kids walking to school with them. I have not seen the boy being driven to school since. Some days he catches the bus, some days he walks by himself and some days he walks with friends. That is how the lesson is taught.
Why the mom drove instead of walking? Possibly she had to go to work (or other destination) and didn’t have time to walk all the way there and back before leaving for work. Possibly she has a physical reason why walking 6 miles isn’t something she can reasonably do.
We don’t know that she was actually going to make the kids walk all the way to school. If she was in a time crunch, but still wanted to teach them a lesson, she could have made them walk halfway and then driven them the rest of the way.f
There’s just so much we don’t know about this situation.
“Wait, driving a Cadillac suggests they’re poor?”
Maybe it is just a local thing, but the only people who drive caddies around here are 110 years old, blacks and rednecks. I don’ t think I’ve ever seen a soccer mom in her 30s in a caddy, but they are regularly seen in the ‘hoods and trailer parks. Often with rims and booming stereos.
“I used “white trash” because it means “looked down group of poor people” which is different then just “people without money” and does not make me racist.”
First, I didn’t say you were racist. I said you assumed a race that was not given. Nowhere in any article that I read said that they were white. They could be white, black or a combination thereof. Although the last name would indicate otherwise, they could even be hispanic, middle eastern or some other ethnicity. But the term is also extremely derogatory. It is as close as you can get for white people to the N-word.
However, your comment was not simply “these people are poor.” While I don’t disagree with you that these people are likely poorer, economic status is completely irrelevant to the evaluation of this situation. The whole scenario is just wrong whether they are dirt poor or Bill Gates. I don’t think ANYONE would have been allowed to continue to obstruct traffic while their children and dog followed behind them and none would have been allowed to continue to drive without a license. Whether a rich person would have gotten the ticket or not depends largely on the cops involved.
“Mom not having license associated with me with poor too, through now I am not sure why. Rich people are more likely to buy their way out of trouble that made them loose license I guess.”
It just said mom didn’t have a valid license, not that her license was suspended. These are two different things. They could have misspoke and meant that her license has been suspended, or they could mean that she simply doesn’t have a valid license for some reason – never had a license, changed states and didn’t get a new license, failed to get her license renewed.
“It sux enough to have such people in family, no reason to add to it by judging her for him being erratic.”
Except that they brought grandpa into the situation – I assume to drive one of the cars home from the scene since mom can’t drive. If grandpa is known to be belligerent to cops – and this is not the first time he’s had an altercation with the cops by his own comments – then bringing him to a situation involving cops shows a lack of judgement. Doing it when your kids are also present and are going to have to watch grandpa get taken down by the cops shows an even greater lack of judgement. Now it was dad who brought grandpa, not mom, but something tells me that mom is not a rocket scientist while dad is an idiot.
Re: transport and ridiculous laws…:
“I [female and middle-aged] now have three criminal convictions for the Australian crime of riding a bicycle without a helmet – why heck with my criminal record I can’t even visit the United States!”
http://freedomcyclist.blogspot.nl/2016/04/no-one-hates-cyclists-like-australian.html
Maybe it is just a local thing, but the only people who drive caddies around here are 110 years old, blacks and rednecks. I don’ t think I’ve ever seen a soccer mom in her 30s in a caddy, but they are regularly seen in the ‘hoods and trailer parks. Often with rims and booming stereos.
Interesting. The only Cadillacs I see have MD plates, or a suit jacket hanging in the rear window, and are driven by people who look like they’d have a good handshake and spend their weekends at country clubs.
Seriously? This is an article? In support of the mom? Umm why? Why did the kids miss the bus? Dilly dallying? Says who? When you’re a parent you need to take responsibility and if these girls are as young as I believe they are then the mother is most definitely to blame. Did she really think this would go unnoticed by people driving by and not be reported? Stupidity. And who shows up to a scene, knowing a police officer is present, and mouths off to them while having drug paraphernalia on your body? I mean seriously.