Why I'm Afraid Of My Neighbors

Danielle and Alexander Meitiv of Maryland are back in the news this week. You might remember their names from back in December, when their parenting practices first fell under the harsh microscope of media scrutiny. That's when their children, Rafi and Dvora, were picked up by local police after a "concerned citizen" feared for their safety as they walked home from a neighborhood park... without adult supervision.

After that incident, the Meitivs were investigated by Child Protective Services and found to be guilty of "unsubstantiated neglect". I'm not certain you can get more vague than that.

On Sunday, another "concerned citizen" saw the children walking alone (an alarming sight, I'm sure) and called the police.CPS seized the children, keeping them in custody for more than five hours with no notice to the parents, leaving the Meitivs frantic with worry.

Not frantic that some psycho killer had snatched their children, however. They are aware that the sort of abduction that CPS, local police, and nosy neighbors want the Meitivs to obsess over (like all good parents) is incredibly rare and always has been.

"Unfortunately, our first thought was CPS and police. I never thought they were abducted by a stranger. Our first fear was, 'Holy cow. Could the police have stopped them?'" Danielle Meitiv explained in an interview with Today.

The Meitivs want to raise their children as "free-range kids", which might evoke images of barnyard poultry, but is really just the kind of freedom those of us over 35 remember as "normal childhood".

Most of us remember roaming neighborhood streets unattended, striking up games of tag and touch football with random neighborhood kids, riding our bikes with reckless abandon, most of the time kicked out of the house by our very own well-meaning (though probably exasperated) parents. We played in each other's yards and local parks and sometimes right in the middle of the streets.

And you know what? The neighbors never called the cops.

I can remember being sweaty and breathless and tracking mud into a neighbor's house because she was kind enough to let me use her bathroom... and then instead of calling CPS, you know what she did? She fixed me a glass of ice water.

I can also remember playing for hours on end outdoors, wandering through yards, muddy and sweaty, and another neighbor offering me a peanut butter sandwich, which I scarfed down with hungry pleasure and resumed the serious business of playing... unattended. I wonder if my mother worried that I didn't wander home for lunch that day. Still no one called CPS.

Why has America gone bat shit crazy over the subject of unattended children? Parents hover and obsess over their kids as if something dreadful and horrible is waiting to pounce on them the minute their guard is down. And if they don't hover, there aren't well-meaning strangers to offer ice water or peanut butter sandwiches, instead those strangers seem to watch from behind parted curtains ready to call the police on "abandoned" children.

As the Meitivs' attorney stated, "We must ask ourselves how we reached the point where a parent's biggest fear is that government officials will literally seize our children off the streets as they walk through our neighborhoods."

What's truly astonishing is that the parents doing the hovering and the "concerned citizens" doing the tattling are the grown-up kids that were left to their own devices... left unsupervised in cars, to walk to the store alone, left to ride their bikes through neighborhood streets and swing from the park's monkey bars. They are my generation, the ones whose parents pushed them out the door to play outside for hours on end without cell phones or organized extracurricular activities or helicopter adults. They are the parents and well-meaning neighbors who were given the freedom they are now determined to deny today's kids. They call the police to make arrests that would have branded their own parents criminals.

When did the danger of what the neighbors might think or do in regards to our children become a more real danger than what strangers might do to them? One call to the authorities from a tattle-tell neighbor could cause moths of stressful investigations and allegations and possibly a loss of custody from otherwise good parents. Unfortunately, in cases of accused child neglect, the parents are considered guilty until proven innocent. Stranger danger almost seems trivial compared to the constant threat of nosy, self-righteous, "concerned" neighbors.

Because I tell you with all sincerity... I am much more afraid of my neighbors.

Why My 11 Year-Old Can't Walk To The Store

Source= http://www.flickr.com/photos/audre

My youngest child suffers from chronic boredom (probably like a lot of other eleven year-olds out there). Last Friday, she sulked all over the living room while I folded laundry. I offered her several suggestions for entertainment, like cleaning her room or helping me fold the laundry. She rejected all of my ideas. (I know. I was shocked, too.)

"You could go outside and play."

Suddenly her eyes lit up at the idea, and I thought I had scored a home run.

"I know! Can I walk to the store and buy a candy bar and drink?"

I hesitated just a moment too long for her youthful impatience, and it wasn't because of the lack of nutritional value in her snack choices.

"I'll use my own money..." She was hopping up and down and using her praying, please-I-beg-you hands. If I had been her father, she would have fluttered her eyelashes, but she knows that crap doesn't work on me.

"Why don't you wait until I finish with the laundry and then I can walk with you?"

Her sulkiness immediately returned. The look in her eyes was the kind of you-just-don't-get-it that reminds me she's only two years away from being a teenager.

"Can't I walk by myself?"

The store is just a couple of blocks away, and we live in a low-crime area. I could probably watch her walk most of the way there from the corner of the yard... if I acted like I was studying the begonias and pretended she didn't know I was watching her. She's a pretty responsible kid, and she's often completed her own transactions at stores, so I wasn't particularly worried about her ability to count money or speak politely to the cashier.

But still I said, "No."

"Why not?" she drawled in the whiniest voice possible.

I could have made up an answer that sounded good, but I went straight for brutal honesty.

"Because someone might see you."

Which sounds like a stupid reason, but I read the news.

Most recently I read about the Maryland parents of a 10 year-old and six year-old that walked less than a mile home from the park. The parents are currently being investigated by Child Protective Services for child neglect.

Before that there was the Texas mother investigated by CPS for allowing her 6 year-old son to play on a bench 150 yards from her house. She was able to see her son from the front window.

Before that it was the Florida mom who was arrested for allowing her 7 year-old to walk to the park alone.

I could keep going. There have been plenty of these types of cases plastered all over the news. Kids playing outside unattended, or walking to the park or the library or the store, they are spotted by overly-concerned busy-bodies and the police state steps in to make sure that the children are never left unsupervised ever again.

Even though I'm pretty confident that my daughter would be safe walking to the store, that she would probably even remember to look both ways before she crossed the street, I didn't want to risk some overly concerned onlooker to judge my daughter's independent walk as an act of parental neglect. I don't want to risk losing my kids in a worst case scenario, or (in an only slightly better scenario) having our lives turned upside down by an official investigation by Child Protective Services.

So I care what other people think.

When I was growing up, I roamed the neighborhood for hours without any cell phone contact or visual confirmation from my parents that I was even still alive. And no one ever called the police or CPS or any other government agencies.

In fact, when I was eleven (the very same age as my boredom-stricken daughter), my mother would send me a good three quarters of a mile away with a note to the store keeper to please let me buy her a pack of cigarettes. And he did... and then I walked home... and no one even gave me a second look.

Seeing kids outside in spontaneous play or just wandering aimlessly is pretty much a thing of the past. We live in a fear-driven culture that believes children are incapable of being safe without adult supervision and that a creepy mass murderer is lurking behind every light pole to steal our offspring. Even though, statistically speaking, that's just not likely to happen.

Parents lament that children these days are growing up too fast. Usually they are referring to their exposure to images of violence and sexual themes. They are probably right, in that regard.

However, I see children being constantly held back from growing up. With constant hovering supervision (or the expectation of that constant supervision and gods help you if you slack off), we don't allow our children to gain small amounts of age-appropriate independence.

The feelings of confidence and responsibility my daughter could gain from an unsupervised walk to the store to purchase cheap junk food are priceless.

We can't expect to hover over them and shelter them and orchestrate their every social interaction for their entire childhoods and then send them out into the world at eighteen, expecting them to be capable, responsible, and careful adults. There is no magic wand that is waved over them on their eighteenth birthday that creates an instantly mature human being. Well-adjusted and competent adults are created from children allowed small moments of responsibility and independence as they are capable of handling it.

No baby bird soars into the air on it's first step out of the nest. Most often they do a lot of wild flapping and awkward flying from limb to close-by limb.

If we constantly obsess about our children's safety, we miss providing them with natural opportunities of individual achievement and mild risk which are necessary elements for developing their confidence and a healthy sense of identity.

The overly-supervised risk-free lives of so many children may help explain why so many young adults who are 22 or 28 or 32, still live at home, or haven't had a serious relationship, or started their careers. They haven't been properly prepared to make their own decisions or act independently of the ever-present supervision, where every decision is made for them and their environment has been stripped of any real risk. They didn't have a chance to flap their wings.

So today when my darling daughter interrupts me in a fit of boredom, I'm suggesting she walk to the store and buy some junk food... because I want her out of my house by the time she hits thirty.

If you see her walking up the street by herself, please don't assume she's being neglected. I'm not a horrible parent (at least not on most days). I'm just letting her flap her wings.

And I'll just be over here studying the begonias.

To The Mom At The Park Trying To Ignore Her Kids

To the mom at the park trying to ignore her kids,

I see you.

I see you there in your yoga pants with the hole in the knee and the baggy milk-stained t-shirt.  I see your unwashed hair pulled back in a pony tail. I see the bags under your eyes.

I see you shoving Cheerios at the baby strapped into the stroller to keep her quiet while you try to read your book.  I saw you barely glance up when your little boy cried "Look at me, Mommy!" from the top of the slide.  I heard the exasperation in your voice as you told him, "Not right now" in response to his request to be pushed on the swings. You stayed right there glued to your book.

I see you.

Other people see you, too. The older grandmotherly woman across the way shook her head in disappointment when you barely acknowledged the dandelions your son offered, clutched in his grimy fist.

And the perfectly groomed Pinterest mom with her perfectly groomed toddler has rolled her eyes at you at least a half dozen times as she hovers and coddles and shadows her dimpled child all over the playground, thoroughly engrossed and involved with her every toddler whim.

I can almost hear her silent judgement. "What is wrong with you, Lady? Put down the book and pay attention to your children.  They are growing up right before you.  You should savor Every. Single. Moment."

But I see you.

Not just the worn down look and the exasperation, either.

I know that you are here for just a few minutes of reprieve.  To lose yourself between the pages of your brain junk food novel instead of being constantly lost in the unfolded laundry and the random piles of Legos and the incessant needs of your wee ones.

I have been where you are now.  Barely maintaining my frail grasp on sanity and sense of self, tired from sleepless nights of teething and nightmares and stomach bugs.  I've been pulled to my wits end by temper tantrums over car seats and week-long refusals to eat anything but macaroni and cheese and wild, desperate hunts for that one missing shoe when I'm already running 15 minutes late. I've answered the same question what seems like 50 times and longed to not have a child constantly attached to my leg, my hip, my breast.

I see you.

And I see the you that Pinterest Mom and Grandmotherly Woman just can't seem to see.  I see the you that reads Goodnight Moon five times every night because it's the only way your son can fall asleep.  I see the you that rocks her teething baby until her arms are so tired she thinks they might fall off.  I see the you that kisses away boo-boos and bandages imaginary bruises with magic Sponge Bob Band-Aids.  I see the you that sings to her babies in the car.  The you that creeps into their bedrooms at night just to watch them breathe... just to marvel at the delicate spiderweb veins that spread like lace over their sleeping eyelids. The you that strokes their hair and whispers "I love you to the moon and back" in their ears as they sit on your lap.

I see you.

I understand that you ARE there for your children and that is why you so desperately need to be lost in that book, for just a few minutes to step back and breathe and recharge your own batteries.  You've come to a safe place where your kids can be distracted by monkey bars and Cheerios so you can temporarily pretend you aren't Mama. I understand that this time on the bench almost, but not quite, ignoring your kids is what will keep you going for the next few hours, for the next few weeks, for the next 18 years.

So you read that book, Mama.  Lose yourself for just a few more minutes before you're lost again in the monstrous yet beautiful task of raising your little ones. You aren't alone in this.

I see you.

I understand. You're doing a wonderful job.