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This was not a road with sidewalks. ...this was a busy highway with no safe place for people to walk.
Would it be acceptable if the child had been hit or killed?
I'll have to check the link to see if they show the road. However, just because it's called a highway doesn't necessarily mean it's what people often think of as a highway. In southern California, a lot of "highways" actually just look like normal streets.
An 8 year-old can certainly walk a mile. I did when I was a kid.
However, the world has changed a lot and it is a lot less safe than it used to be. I would not have any child of mine walking unaccompanied along a mile of public streets. My child regularly did long walks, but it was in my company and along safe hiking trails.
It's illegal to walk or ride bike on highways in Hawaii, which may have had something to do with it. In general, Hawaii is a dangerous place to be a driver or pedestrian, it is the #1 state for drunk drivers. That said, dropping your 8 year old on the side of the highway in any state will probably get you in trouble with the law, which seems like a good thing.
"Abandoned?" Spare me the melodrama. He was told to walk home, and I presume at 8 years old he knows the way to his own home from his own school. That's not abandonment, that's telling your kid to walk home. Were our parents "abandoning" us when they shoved us out the door and told us to go play?
My dad never pulled over and told me to go play on the side of a highway. Sometimes he'd say "go play in the road," but even back then we recognized that as a joke.
I walked home from school every day. I was given a ride to school by my dad but he didn't get off work til 3 and we got out at 2:30. My mom worked 3-11 so she wasn't home. If you lived less than 2 miles from school there was no bus service. I enjoyed walking home. There was a big group of us and we would walk home together. Fridays were the best. The bank on the way home had cookies out every Friday so we'd stop in and they gave us cookies.
8 is young to be walking alone. At my grade school the younger kids at the end of the school day (10 mins before dismissal) were walked up to where their older brother or sister was in class. That way they could walk out together. The main road is a busy 4 lane highway but we stayed on the side. It is amazing how much things have changed in 15 years.
I think a lot of people aren't reading the story. The dad picked the kid up and the kid was being punished in school. When the father asked the kid what he did, the kid answer "I don't know" (turns out it was name calling) so the dad pulled over on the side of the highway, told the kid to get out, walk home, and think about what he did. Father returned about 5 minutes later, but some bystander found the kid crying, took the kid back to the school and the police were called.
So let's just be clear that this isn't a kid walking home from school on his own, it's a father dropping the kid off on the side of a highway as punishment.
The best part was this quote in the father's side of the story:
Quote:
A family attorney questioned why De Mond was even charged when Hawaii law allows parents to discipline children by spanking them.
“It seems odd to me that he would have knowingly endangered the child’s mental and physical welfare. He obviously was not expecting his child to be run over or absconded with or whatever,” said attorney Brad Coates.
Yet despite the father's belief that the child wouldn't be absconded... that's exactly what happened in the "roughly 5 minutes" before the father returned. Fortunately it was someone with good intention, but this easily could have ended badly.
On top of that, using this as punishment is putting an obviously distressed child in a physically dangerous situation that they may not be familiar with. Everyone here is making the assumption the child knew the way home. If this was punishment and being dropped off on the side of the highway, I don't know that most 8 year olds are familiar enough with high way exits to know how to get home.
It's one thing to have your child walk home from school. It's entirely different to leave them on the side of a highway as punishment.
I think a lot of people aren't reading the story. The dad picked the kid up and the kid was being punished in school. When the father asked the kid what he did, the kid answer "I don't know" (turns out it was name calling) so the dad pulled over on the side of the highway, told the kid to get out, walk home, and think about what he did. Father returned about 5 minutes later, but some bystander found the kid crying, took the kid back to the school and the police were called.
So let's just be clear that this isn't a kid walking home from school on his own, it's a father dropping the kid off on the side of a highway as punishment.
The best part was this quote in the father's side of the story:
Yet despite the father's belief that the child wouldn't be absconded... that's exactly what happened in the "roughly 5 minutes" before the father returned. Fortunately it was someone with good intention, but this easily could have ended badly.
On top of that, using this as punishment is putting an obviously distressed child in a physically dangerous situation that they may not be familiar with. Everyone here is making the assumption the child knew the way home. If this was punishment and being dropped off on the side of the highway, I don't know that most 8 year olds are familiar enough with high way exits to know how to get home.
It's one thing to have your child walk home from school. It's entirely different to leave them on the side of a highway as punishment.
I tried to rep you but couldn't. Anyway, that's what I was trying to say. I wonder how many people who think this was OK would find a small child crying on the side of a highway alone and just leave him there. I doubt they would, no matter what they say.
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