150 feet & 6 years old by himself - maybe, depends on kid's personality (plays well alone or looks for (shudder) fun)

150 YARDS & 6 years old - hell no. I'd need a scope to make sure it was my kid.

Playing w/8 year old sister at those distances and nothing changes for me.

150 YARDS & 6 years old - hell no. I'd need a scope to make sure it was my kid.

I think every parent has their own comfort zone, but I don't think 150 yds is that crazy. In fact I'd say it's pretty common in places where families have a lot of land.

I tried clicking around her website, and I couldn't find out exactly where in Austin she lives. But I myself grew up in a pretty rural and wooded area. When we moved into our house (so I would have been 5), my dad took me around and showed me EXACTLY how far I was allowed to roam when exploring (to the end of our private drive on one side and to the point where the woods butted up against another neighborhood in back).

I pulled up our property and its surroundings on Google Maps just now -- and those boundaries were about 400-500 ft (so, about 150 yards) from our front door. So I don't think 150 yds is that crazy for a six year old.

That is how you raise new prey for predators.

Fail to do with the officials say, and they will take your children from you, to be sodomized in the foster care system. Obviously an improvement to the sort of agent who's unaccountable to the public.

Sofar, in another post, the blogger describes a neighborhood with a bunch of open space and nobody outside. It made me wonder if she lived in Meuller.

Another reason to teach children to say 'I don't answer questions without my parents present'. Nothing good can ever come of an unrecorded, unwitnessed interview with a government 'investigator', no matter who they are with. Nothing. Just as adults should never agree to this, neither should children.

I'd be interested to know under what circumstances CPS got to question the children separate from their parents. I'm not sure there's any legal basis for doing this, so it must have been with permission. Or under duress, by threats. It's always a bad sign when the state's actors have to resort to the Corleone approach to do their work.

Even if they have some legal basis for doing this, they won't get far if the children have been taught not to answer questions.

It's a sad day when pre-teens and their parents have to lawyer up when CPS comes a'knockin'.

llater,

llamas

Is this story getting any attention in the local Austin press? I think if the local community could pipe up and express how ridiculous the cops and cps are being, it would go a long way to renormalizing children playing outdoors.

When I was 6, I walked to and from school everyday and had my run of the neighborhood before dark. So way farther than 150 yards. This was suburban Southern California, and I was expected to know how to safely cross streets, etc.

Soulda charged the nosy neighbor with kidnapping

Sofar, in another post, the blogger describes a neighborhood with a bunch of open space and nobody outside. It made me wonder if she lived in Meuller.

That makes sense. It would fit her description of basically having a subdivision with its own little park, which is where her kid was playing.

We've now gone from a society with helicopter parents to a helicopter society.

I'm doing my part to fight it by ignoring your children entirely.

That makes sense. It would fit her description of basically having a subdivision with its own little park, which is where her kid was playing.

I was also going to say that it fit my perception as the kind of neighborhood in Austin that would have busybody neighbors who would call the cops on a mom, but then I remembered that it was in my neighborhood that a "concerned citizen" called the cops on his 68 and 72 year old neighbors for smoking pot in their own home. Sigh.

other upshot of this, is you need to teach the kid that they should have run away, screaming at the top of their lungs from any stranger trying to take them somewhere, EVEN IF IT'S A WOMAN.

It's a sad state of affairs when a kid no longer has the run of the neighborhood... but it's reality, now. At that age, I guess I'd set the boundary at the edges of the 2 neighbor's houses on either side, least 'till they are 10 or so, then gradually increasing as they get older.

But then where my kids lived, a sketchy neighbor moved into the house next door, and my ex then didn't permit my daughter to go that way -
When that family was evicted, the house's owner had to gut it.

so each situation may require different things... out in the sticks more, it may not be neighbors, but rattlesnakes... you still have to explain to your kids.

Especially when a friend just showed me pics of a rattlesnake crossing the road towards the elementary... NOT out in the sticks, right in a dense pack suburb.

AND THEN? Guess what happened? they didn't kill the snake, they made sure no cars hit it.
WTF?
My friend was incredulous, but she also didn't know what to do. I suggested next time, just hit it with the car, rather than risk losing track of it once it is on school grounds.

Risk. Humans pretty much don't have a clue.

Like Janet C, I walked to school every day from K thru 6. Half mile for K, a full mile for 1-6. Each way. Uphill going home, tho. Occasionally it snowed.

;-)

From 7th on I had to ride a bus, and in hindsight, that was probably more dangerous on various levels: the other kids, and the other drivers.

I went to kindergarten when I was four. It was two blocks. I think the first couple of times my mother walked with me, after that I walked by myself.

This isn't so much a government problem -- the police were called, responded to the call, and left, while CPS went too far but also in the end just walked away. This is a culture problem. Don't fucking call the police on your neighbors over bullshit. Don't fuck with your neighbors' children over bullshit. Default to leaving people alone, in the absence of a real and serious problem. That's the problem -- lunatic neighbor lady is the problem, not the patrol cop who got a call and answered it.

When we moved to a new school district before I entered the fifth grade, we were about four blocks away from the school. However, my parents didn't trust me and my brother to walk that far without getting into trouble, so they dropped us off at the house of a friend of theirs and we had to walk with their children about 3/4 of a mile to get to the school.

After the Christmas break, my parents thought we were okay enough to walk to school on our own. However, on the second day, we got ready to go to school and locked the door before we realized we had left the TV on. (We didn't have a key to get back in. I don't know why.) The next day, we went right back to being driven to the friend's house.

Apparently the helpful stranger and the CPS investigator took this Onion poll seriously:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/should-parents-who-let-kids-play-outside-unsupervi,36939/

Here are some international pics of kids walking to school. The text is in French, but the pics speak for themselves:

http://positivr.fr/risquer-sa-vie-pour-se-rendre-a-l-ecole/

I posted this article in one of your links threads a couple of days ago. I'm glad you posted it.

Where do people get the idea that some evil minion is just lurking to steal a kid? It's idiotic.

Of course, the media feeds it. "Child Abduction Facts - every 40 seconds in the United States a child becomes missing or is abducted". Isn't it great how they mash those two completely unrelated things together? Abductions by strangers make up less than 0.1% of those cases - but admitting that would hardly be scary...

As others have said, this family was damned lucky. Letting CPS interview the kids alone? Without a lawyer? Anything could have gone down, and it would have been the word of the CPS drone vs. a young, confused kid.

I think the parents should now have the courage to let their kids play outside - just like normal - and should explicitly tell the neighbor to mind her own damned business. Anything else, and they have let evil win.

It's crazy. I agree. The fact is, nobody minds their own damn business anymore.

It doesn't just extend to children. On a cool September morning, I went to drive my son to school. Since it wasn't hot at all, I left the windows of my car partially down, and left the dog in the car with her leash tied to the gear shift.

Unfortunately, I forgot to lock my door. Unfortunately, I was in the vicinity of a self righteous imbecile, who decided that she should take matters into her own hands.

The dumb bitch actually let the dog out of my car. Since we just moved to a new city, my poor dog had no idea where she was, where home was, or what she was supposed to do. She took off at a full run, (all caught on tape mind you) while the stupid twat just stood there with a smirk on her face.

My dog was hit by a car and killed later that afternoon, while I was still looking for her.

The police have termed it " a low priority".

If I ever find the bitch responsible, I'm going to be dragged away in cuffs, because I'm going to beat her with a lead pipe.

People should just learned to damn well mind their own fucking business.

Children, or animals. They have no fucking clue, in most cases.

The sad part is people who actually DO abuse their children are usually smart and saavy enough not to get caught, unless the victim stands up for themselves, and usually not even then.

a_random_guy: "Child Abduction Facts - every 40 seconds in the United States a child becomes missing or is abducted".

Well, obviously that kid's parents need to pay closer attention.

Facts my rear: 90 per hour. Five hundred forty a day. One hundred ninety seven thousand a year. Ninety percent of all statistics are bull, and ninety nine percent of the people won't check.

Sorry, it's been a long day and I should use a calculator. I'm way off.

That would be 90 per hour ties 24 times 365 or about 130,000. Not remotely believable unless we include kids who wander off at the mall, kids who don't come home immediately when called, and kids snatched up by non-custodial parents, and the miniscule number of actual abductions by strangers, which make the news and linger for days if not weeks.

"... it was in my neighborhood that a "concerned citizen" called the cops ..."

It can be worse Astra. A 'concerned citizen' called the cops on my father for attacking everyone in a local biker bar. She told them how he broke a chair over the bar tender's head and stabbed a few people with a pool queue. Thankfully the cops started laughing when they got to his house. While in good shape for his age my father is in his 60s and weighs about 140lb. He writes software for a living. The idea of him breaking a chair over anyone's head is bizarre.

But given that the 'concerned citizen' neighbor is psychotic she has been harassing my parents for years and doesn't look to stop anytime soon.

Some lady just moved in on my street a couple weeks ago and is clearly anti-kid. If she's sees us out front with the kids in our driveway or the street immediately in front of our house (it's a block-long dead end street at the end of another dead end so the only traffic is from the people who live on it so very minimal) she glares and gives dirty looks. When I had my middle child outside playing in the driveway last week while the other two were sleeping she happened to be driving by. She stopped, rolled down her window, and said if she ever saw the kids outside playing in the driveway, supervised or not, she was calling the police because that's dangerous to be so close to a road and they would get hit or kidnapped and that kids make too much noise in general. She said if they were unsupervised she was picking them up and taking them to the police department. Apparently she is missing the irony in threatening kidnapping my children to prevent them from being kidnapped. She'll probably call the police if she hears them playing in my fenced backyard too. From the brief conversation I had with her, she is of the opinion that children should be silent and hidden away at all times. I find it funny she has chosen to stop and threaten both me and our next door neighbor's wife when we've had our kids out front without our husbands present, but has never said anything to them beyond glaring. She's the obnoxious busybody everyone in society seems to be becoming.

MarkD, I get more than 130,000 per year.

At one "every 40 seconds" that's 3 children who "[become] missing or [are] abducted" every two minutes. Or 90 an hour, as you pointed out.

90 an hour x 24 hours means 2,160 per day - or, 86,400 seconds in a day (60 seconds x 60 minutes x 24 hours) divided by 40 = 2,160.

365 days per year times 2,160 gives us 788,400 per year.

The US Census Bureau gives the size of the US population aged under 10 as roughly 40.6 million.

This means that just under 2% of the juvenile population "becomes missing or is abducted" every year.

Assuming no (or few) repeat customers, in the first 10 years of a child's life, roughly 20% of his age cohort "becomes missing or is abducted" - that's 2 out of every 10 playmates and classmates he has.

I think they're stretching the definition of "becomes missing" just a bit ... or we have some really absent-minded parents in this country.

Now, on to abduction...

Using a_random_guy's figure of 0.1% of the missing actually being abducted, that means that there are 788 abducted children every year - out of 40+ million children under the age of 10. That's less than 0.002%.

Unless I've done the math wrong. Then we should all listen to the media and panic.

...Meanwhile, horrible child abuse goes unreported, uninvestigated, and unpunished every single day--how?

My guess is that this brand of hysteric overreaction is prevalent in wealthy communities where the town can afford a big police force but has very little actual crime. So the police have to justify their existence by writing a lot of speeding tickets, catching jaywalkers, and responding to complaints like this one.

Either that, or they prefer to target law abiding citizens who who are easy to deal with and don't pose any actual risk. Same with the CPS.

Or maybe society and is more concerned about the welfare of upper-middle-class white kids in the suburbs than kids in the ghetto--even though that concern is clearly backfiring.

The solution might be reallocation of police and government resources and some common-sense prioritization of which cases get investigated. As in, first lets take care of the kids being beaten and raised in crack dens before we waste a lot of time and money on the ones who are just playing outside.

@ wtf

I'll be your alibi.

Thanks Bob. My kids are crushed, it would seem only fair to crush her, like the insect she is.

Bunny, file a harassement complaint with the police now. No, they won't do anything, but if you complain first you might have a leg to stand on if she does pull something whacked.

wtf - I'm so appalled at what happened to your family. I can't imagine.

and i agree with nicolek - file a complaint the next skeevy thing she does. it might actually help the situation for a cop to explain to the woman that nothing wrong is happening here with kids playing outside. it can't hurt anyway

Dont wait, file now. She told you she plans to kidnap your children.

That is a crime

I agree with those who say Bunny should file with the police... but since crazy lady has done it twice, it might be worth trying to get audio/video. Otherwise she can deny it easily. Since it's outside, something could be "caught on tape" while you are taking vids of the kids. Check laws in your area about recording though.

Also, I'd remind (repeatedly) your children never to get in a car with ANYONE unless it has been cleared with you FIRST. So, no going home from school with Johnny if you don't know about it first. Similarly, no getting in a neighbor's car without your permission.

She can't take them to the police without their cooperation... unless she really IS kidnapping them, in which case, she will be turning herself in! Also, the kids will have to say, "My mom says I can't go with you without her permission first." And that is sort of the opposite of neglect and endangerment.

Thank you Goose. She is greatly missed.

Thanks! I think we'll go talk to our next door neighbor this weekend (the one also being harassed) about filing a report. She happens to be married to a detective and two other neighbors on our street are cops. For the most part, my housing development seems pretty lax about letting kids run around and ride bikes unattended (a big selling point for us), but now this lady moved in and it looks like she's going to be a problem for everyone. She's about 60 and has California plates on her car, so that might explain her crazy.

I wonder why the investigator didn't say something different, like "hire babysitters more often" and/or "keep them within 50 feet of your house."

And, unfortunately, Gooseberry (a parent) had some very good points in the comments. I'm not sure where the flaws are, if any.

Quote:

Hold on, let me get this straight...

Your six-year-old was playing outside by himself, then walked off from where he was playing with a STRANGER? Yes, at least they ended up at his own house. But has it not occurred to you that he was willing to walk off with a stranger? And your son was able to travel 150 yards with a stranger...without you seeing it? A stranger re-located your son 150 yards and you didn't even see because you couldn't keep an eye on him through a window?

Lady, I'd be counting my lucky stars that THIS was the lady who decided to approach, speak to, and re-locate your child because she brought him home. IF your child is truly old enough and educated enough to play by himself a football field and a half away from home, then he should have KICKED and SCREAMED and told that stranger he didn't know her and she'd better bugger off--THEN he should have RAN home to you and told you a stranger approached him. It's obvious, you haven't prepared him for these situations.

And yes, CPS unfortunately has to follow up on ALL reports and complaints. We can't let any truly abused or neglected children fall through the cracks. After all we do, they still go unnoticed.

Finally, I'm calling BS on the whole "poor us, we have to stay inside for the rest of our lives or until we can move!" Pick up your laptop, grab a book, pack a box of crackers into your bag, and walk to the park with your child. No one is forcing you to stay in your house (and do you not have a backyard???) they're asking you to watch a child who obviously is too little to fight back and not properly instructed on how to deal with strangers yet. SO what? Go to the park with him next time. You can still ignore him, but at least you'll notice (I HOPE) a STRANGER approach him before your son fails to NOT WALK OFF with them (who's to say this neighbor couldn't have walked him toward your house, then shoved him in the van at the last minute?) and takes him down the street.

Sorry, I get that you were embarrassed, but you dropped the ball. This country might be relatively safe, and sure MAYBE nothing would ever happen to him. But my gosh...why take the chances? Watch your kid.

I'd be thankful to have such a concerned, watchful neighbor. You don't know how lucky you are.

Posted by: Gooseberry | September 17, 2014 at 01:24 PM

" You can still ignore him, but at least you'll notice (I HOPE) a STRANGER approach him before your son fails to NOT WALK OFF with them (who's to say this neighbor couldn't have walked him toward your house, then shoved him in the van at the last minute?) and takes him down the street."

Do you perchance let your kid ride in a car? 250,000 kids injured or killed in auto accidents 2011.

Go to a swimming pool?
About 2000 kids drowned in 2011.

Eat crackers?
About 125 kids a year choke to death.

Stranger abduction?

115 for all of 2011.

Is innumeracy pretty much standard in the US? :

Do you really think stranger abduction is this horrendous risk?

The stranger most likely to abduct your child works for the government. And they are abducting them lawfully.