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Old 06-03-2014, 01:05 PM
 
Location: San Antonio, TX
11,495 posts, read 26,767,263 times
Reputation: 28030

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My mom used to put me out of the car on the side of the road any time she got upset with me. I don't remember how old I was when it started. Sometimes it was pretty difficult to get home, depending on where she left me. The times when I had to run across the feeder roads or the highway exits were the worst (no crosswalks, not a great town for pedestrians). One time she put me out of the car out in the country and I was walking home in my school shoes. By the time I got home, the shoes had rubbed my feet raw, my socks were shreds, and my shoes were full of blood. (My mother had to replace the shoes and that was kind of funny.) Other times, when I was 11 or 12, she'd get embarrassed by my baby sister throwing tantrums in the grocery store and leave us there. The grocery store was three miles from home which wasn't bad except it was a long way to go carrying the baby. Eventually I started accepting rides home from anyone who offered me a ride, my dad found out, and he made her stop doing it.

My point is, from the child's point of view, it's pretty darn scary to suddenly be kicked out of the car and see your parent drive away, then have to navigate streets you've only been in when you were in a car. I do think it's abuse. It's different if the school is in the neighborhood and there are no main roads that the child has to cross, but even then you're relying on your "village" of neighbors to make sure nothing happens to your child on the way home, and neighbors just don't look out for each other like that anymore.
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Old 06-03-2014, 01:17 PM
 
Location: Jamestown, NY
7,840 posts, read 9,156,115 times
Reputation: 13779
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mnseca View Post
He abandoned his young child on a the side of a highway to find his own way home. That is not the same as a kid walking home from school. Kids who normally walk home from school have a regular route, schoolmates, and crossing guards. That was true even back in the old days when I was a kid. And even back then, it would have been inappropriate for a parent to simply pull over and dump their 8 year old out on the side of the highway and then drive away as a form of punishment. It's not old school, it's just plain bad parenting.
I totally agree. Where I live you always see Amish kids walking to and from school along the highway, but they aren't walking alone. They're always in a group of at least 3 or 4. It's not the walking or even the distance, but leaving the kid alone on the side of the road and driving off that's inappropriate. It's an open invitation to trouble.

I grew up in the country in the 1950s, and no, we weren't allowed to walk the two miles into town all alone when we were in elementary school. We had to go with other kids.
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Old 06-03-2014, 01:24 PM
 
Location: Jamestown, NY
7,840 posts, read 9,156,115 times
Reputation: 13779
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hedgehog_Mom View Post
My mom used to put me out of the car on the side of the road any time she got upset with me. I don't remember how old I was when it started. Sometimes it was pretty difficult to get home, depending on where she left me. The times when I had to run across the feeder roads or the highway exits were the worst (no crosswalks, not a great town for pedestrians). One time she put me out of the car out in the country and I was walking home in my school shoes. By the time I got home, the shoes had rubbed my feet raw, my socks were shreds, and my shoes were full of blood. (My mother had to replace the shoes and that was kind of funny.) Other times, when I was 11 or 12, she'd get embarrassed by my baby sister throwing tantrums in the grocery store and leave us there. The grocery store was three miles from home which wasn't bad except it was a long way to go carrying the baby. Eventually I started accepting rides home from anyone who offered me a ride, my dad found out, and he made her stop doing it.

My point is, from the child's point of view, it's pretty darn scary to suddenly be kicked out of the car and see your parent drive away, then have to navigate streets you've only been in when you were in a car. I do think it's abuse. It's different if the school is in the neighborhood and there are no main roads that the child has to cross, but even then you're relying on your "village" of neighbors to make sure nothing happens to your child on the way home, and neighbors just don't look out for each other like that anymore.
I agree. That's just plain wrong, and the part in red is what kids will do.

No offense, but your mother sounds like a cruel and possibly mentally unstable person.
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Old 06-03-2014, 01:34 PM
 
1,677 posts, read 2,480,213 times
Reputation: 5511
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hedgehog_Mom View Post
My mom used to put me out of the car on the side of the road any time she got upset with me. I don't remember how old I was when it started. Sometimes it was pretty difficult to get home, depending on where she left me. The times when I had to run across the feeder roads or the highway exits were the worst (no crosswalks, not a great town for pedestrians). One time she put me out of the car out in the country and I was walking home in my school shoes. By the time I got home, the shoes had rubbed my feet raw, my socks were shreds, and my shoes were full of blood. (My mother had to replace the shoes and that was kind of funny.) Other times, when I was 11 or 12, she'd get embarrassed by my baby sister throwing tantrums in the grocery store and leave us there. The grocery store was three miles from home which wasn't bad except it was a long way to go carrying the baby. Eventually I started accepting rides home from anyone who offered me a ride, my dad found out, and he made her stop doing it.

My point is, from the child's point of view, it's pretty darn scary to suddenly be kicked out of the car and see your parent drive away, then have to navigate streets you've only been in when you were in a car. I do think it's abuse. It's different if the school is in the neighborhood and there are no main roads that the child has to cross, but even then you're relying on your "village" of neighbors to make sure nothing happens to your child on the way home, and neighbors just don't look out for each other like that anymore.
That's awful. And completely wrong. No child should have to go through that.

I think that's the point that a lot of people are missing. It's not the distance. 1 mile is not that far. The kid wasn't walking a normal route to or from school, he was forced to exit a car along a potentially dangerous roadway and find his way home. Obviously, if he knew how to get home and walking along this highway was no big deal, he wouldn't have been standing there crying and willing to jump in the car with a stranger. If this father had been arrested for letting his kid walk one mile to school, I would have a different opinion.

It's fine to discipline your kid. What is unacceptable is to put them in harm's way to do it.
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Old 06-03-2014, 01:50 PM
 
17,815 posts, read 25,544,071 times
Reputation: 36267
Quote:
Originally Posted by Drover View Post
"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?

Where I lived, there were crossing guards within one block of the school. We were on our own the rest of the way. And we still managed to make it without fearing for our safety.

Whether you think it's "bad" parenting isn't the issue. Is this criminal?

And what year was that, 1967?

An 8 yr old should not be walking that far alone ANYWHERE these days.

Way too young.
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Old 06-03-2014, 02:01 PM
 
14,376 posts, read 18,295,877 times
Reputation: 43047
I've never been to Hawaii, but I've heard some really strange stuff about crime and whatnot there - based on the stuff people have told me, I don't necessarily think the judge was off-base with her reference to "predators."

And a mile is nothing. But getting dumped a mile from home at the age of 8 in a suburb is a lot different from getting dumped on a busy road with no sidewalks, or a country road with no sidewalks, etc. My parents had me walking roughly a half mile from the bus stop (near my mother's place of work) from the time I was 7 - through a suburban area filled with people who were known to me. I wandered all over various beach towns on my own from a very early age. Again, I was in a place I was familiar with and surrounded by people who were looking out for me (and any other kids who were wandering on their own). There were sidewalks, crosswalks, other people I could ask for help, payphones, etc. However, I also lived in a rural area as a kid, and my parents never even let me near that road - too many people not paying attention who didn't stay on the road all the time. I ran all over the backwoods of our property, but knew well into my middle school years to avoid the road.

I don't know all the details of the situation, but I think a local judge probably knows far more than any of us. And all I know for certain is that I wouldn't have taken the kid back to his school if I'd been the one to find him - I'd have just called the police as soon as I found him and waited with him right there.

The father says he wanted his kid to think about his actions. Well, why couldn't he do it in his room at home or elsewhere? When I got obstreperous or stubborn with my parents, I was sent to spend my time in the bathroom. Nothing to do there, plenty of water to drink and a potty for my convenience. No books, no toys, no snacks. What I think was the father felt disrespected and decided to do what he did out of irritation - never a good reason.
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Old 06-03-2014, 02:38 PM
 
Location: Foot of the Rockies
90,316 posts, read 120,345,034 times
Reputation: 35920
This child was not asked to walk home from school. His father picked him up at the school, where he was attending after-school daycare. Obviously, the child lived more than a mile from school, b/c with a mile to go, the father made him get out of the car and told him to walk, for disciplinary purposes.

Some concerns I have about this form of discipline:

Did the child know the way home? Had he ever walked it before? Did he know HOW to walk along a busy highway? Even if this road goes through a fairly rural area, from other reading I have done on this issue, it has a 50 MPH speed limit, meaning the actual speed may be more like 60 MPH or so. That is a dangerous position to put a young child in.
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Old 06-03-2014, 02:44 PM
 
Location: Chicago
38,707 posts, read 102,846,403 times
Reputation: 29967
Quote:
Originally Posted by seain dublin View Post
And what year was that, 1967?
I wasn't even born yet in 1967. Which is why I posed the question how we got to this point in just one generation. ""

Quote:
Originally Posted by seain dublin View Post
An 8 yr old should not be walking that far alone ANYWHERE these days.
Why not?

Quote:
Originally Posted by seain dublin View Post
Way too young.
Why? What's so different about today than just a couple decades ago when 8-year-olds basically roamed free?

Last edited by Jaded; 06-04-2014 at 09:20 PM.. Reason: fixed quote
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Old 06-03-2014, 02:44 PM
 
43,011 posts, read 107,739,078 times
Reputation: 30711
Ha. My mother grew up in rural West Virginia. Her bus stop was 2 miles away from the farm. She walked in four feet of snow uphill both ways. Seriously though, she did walk a couple of miles to the bus stop. The family farm dog, a boarder collie, walked her to the bus stop, and he was waiting for her when the bus returned. Guarding her safety was one of his jobs in addition to bringing the cows in and out of the far pasture in the morning and evening.

What hedgehog describes is outright abuse and neglect. Maybe this father would have become hedgehog's mother if he hadn't been caught so young in this boy's life. Eight years old is too young if he had never walked that route from school regularly. If he was a regular walker and just happened to be getting a ride from his father that day, it would be different.
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Old 06-03-2014, 03:02 PM
 
2,294 posts, read 2,770,833 times
Reputation: 3852
Quote:
Originally Posted by Drover View Post
I wasn't even born yet in 1967. Which is why I posed the question how we got to this point in just one generation. ""


Why not?

Way too young.
Why? What's so different about today than just a couple decades ago when 8-year-olds basically roamed free?[/quote]

You've ignored the real issues. This wasn't the child walking home as usual. This was a child being left on the side of the road as punishment. It changes everything

You want to know what was so different? If an 8 year old walks home a generation ago, it's along a route that the parents have probably walked with the kid. That's not the case here. Dropping a kid off on the side of a highway that you drive on is NOT the same thing.
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