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No kid is more safe due to a smartwatch, but it makes mom and dad feel better. This enables and enforces fear mongering by the population. It is a false sense of security for mom and dad to a problem that is smaller today than at anytime in the past. In fact, it is usually mom or dad that kidnaps the child in the first place. Child abduction rates are down over the ages, especially when one considers the growth of the population over this same time. [freerangekids.com]

--
"I'd like a truck" - Kid to Santa Claus

You can be too careful
That's why the TSA is NOT a civil service (by law) protection organization
To prevent excess costs going to the airlines.

Check out
http://www.freerangekids.com/
for some examples of excessive "can't be too careful"

It was a cute name started by this anti-overprotection website:

http://www.freerangekids.com/ [freerangekids.com]

Wow..that's just freaking scary!!

The first thing on that site, a "seal" on the top right says "Children Deserver some Unsupervised time".

Aside from the extremely young (infants, etc)...I would think kids need MOST of their time unsupervised, to allow them to learn to play, use imagination, etc...

Is this really what parenting has come to in this modern day?!?! Is every single activity planned out, organized and supervised!?!?

If so...sheesh...glad I'm not a kid today!!

It was a cute name started by this anti-overprotection website:

http://www.freerangekids.com/

In many states the police are being smacked down for this behavior.

http://www.freerangekids.com/v...

The specific case you mention was in court on Jan 10, but I can't find the outcome.

This part of the law is just designed to prevent isolated municipalities from nutty interpretations of existing law.

There have been a few recent examples of private citizens reporting unaccompanied children to the police.

I don't think you appreciate the scale of this problem. Yes, only "a few recent examples" probably reached the attention of the national media, but they are indicative of a much more widespread and more common problem. This site is obviously biased in one way, but it's dedicated to tracking stories like this. It's pretty common to see some rather outrageous intervention at least every couple weeks or so... somewhere in the U.S.

Generally, the kids are walking short distances (~1 mile).

Or an 11-year-old sitting alone in a car outside a store.

Or, ya know, an 11-year-old playing alone in his own yard unsupervised. Parents arrested on felony charges. Apparently your kid doesn't even need to be walking alone.

Once the police get involved, they often feel the need to charge someone, and generally find a way to fit "leaving your 8 year old child unattended for 20 minutes" into some form of neglect or endangerment. I'm not sure if any of these have resulted in actual conviction, but they have certainly resulted in handcuffings, arrests, and (perhaps most importantly) court fees.

This shows a gross misunderstanding of the worst issue for most parents. Yes, some parents end up held in jail for a day or something, and there are court fees.

But that's the relatively mild part and only the beginning of the nightmare that often follows. In many cases, Child Protective Services removes the kids from the parents, from anywhere to a few days to weeks to months in some cases. And even when parents fight to get their kids back, they are often subjected to various indignities -- mandatory parenting classes where they are taught how "not to neglect" their kids, periodic "check-ins" by CPS services at their homes, who have been known to find ridiculously minor "violations" or "concerns" (like a cluttered living room where kids have been playing -- too messy for CPS).

Poke around a bit and read the kinds of things that can happen. Also, keep in mind that hundreds of thousands of kids are removed by CPS to foster care in the U.S. every year, statistics compiled from CPS show that in somewhere around 1/3 of cases (about 100,000 kids), investigations eventually show that there was no credible threat at all to kids. That's not even covering cases where there was an "apparent" threat that was determined not to be significant enough to warrant removal -- these are thousands and thousands of cases where CPS takes kids and later says, "My bad. Turns out the removal wasn't really necessary." (Actually, of course, they never admit it that in those words. But they basically determine whatever evidence was used to justify removal was incomplete, a misunderstanding, or just a bogus report.)

And let's not even get into the stats on abuse and neglect in foster care, which tends to happen at higher rates than in homes with parents. So CPS is often removing kids from a safe house without investigating thoroughly and putting kids in places where they are more likely to be harmed. (Obviously, CPS also takes action in many, many cases every year where there IS serious abuse, and they should be commended for that -- but tell this to any parent whose child is taken away for no apparent reason.)

Perhaps this is getting a bit off-topic from TFA, but these are related issues. We have a culture that tends to assume any child alone (and by "child," states now often mean kids up to

No, if that were the case they would instead repeal the old law.

Which they're not doing. A recent case: http://www.freerangekids.com/m...

On Nov. 18, Maria Hasankolli of Wallingford, CT, came home in the early hours of the morning after visiting a relative at the hospital. She overslept while her 8-year-old stepson got himself ready for school — and missed his bus. The boy, Lucan, decided to walk to school on his own, two miles away, and was about halfway there when a business owner spotted him and called the cops. The cops drove Lucan to school, then went to his home, woke Hasankolli and clapped her into handcuffs.

She was driven to the police precinct, had her mug shot taken, and was given a $2500 bond. Her court date is this Wednesday. The charge?

Risk of injury to a minor.

However, the REAL problem is that helicopter mummsy and daddsy are TERRIFIED that pedobear will rape little timmy and throw him away in an old icechest, because Fox News said so.

It's not just Fox News, and it's not just pedophiles. If you've been keeping up with the news in recent years, you know that the newest trend is for do-gooders to call the police when they see even a 9 or 10-year-old walking alone (e.g. back from the park) or sitting in a car reading while Mommy's doing some shopping.

And guess what happens in too many cases? Parents get arrested for neglect. Children sometimes get removed for a while by protective services and parents may need to fight to get them back.

I'd be much more scared of police or child protective services kidnapping my child than "pedobear," because that's certainly the case. (In case you think I'm exaggerating, look up the stats. Roughly a HALF MILLION kids are removed by CPS for short or long term every year in the US... And CPS's own stats admit that in a full 1/3 of those cases, after review there is NO evidence of abuse or neglect... Not counting the cases where the claims are questionable, just the removals where the removals are completely unwarranted.)

Also, here's a blog that keeps track of some of the more egregious stories in the news.

Helicopter Parents. Protecting them from everything and anything.

Let them play in the mud, eat their own boogers, scrap their knees, eat bugs, roll in the grass and leaves even though the dogs poo there, etc.

When you grow up in a plastic bubble, everything is your enemy.

You wrote almost exactly what I was going to say, but I was also going to add that the attitude goes way beyond what kids do or don't eat. The problem is that even if you want to be a sane parent (vice a helicopter parent) the law is being written/interpreted such that you have no choice. Here in Maryland, a parent is being charged with neglect for letting their child walk home from the park. The weirdest part is that the law being used to charge them is one which prohibits locking a child in a building alone. Being outdoors is being equated to being locked inside. There are a bunch of similar stories reported at http://www.freerangekids.com/

"I just think that today's society has been slowly conditioned to a phobomanic state.. It's afraid of the most minor things and demands crazy overcompensations for them."

This, this, this!! As you say in another post, the best risk-mitigation on the roads is the driver. And considering the many millions of miles driven every year vs the number of accidents -- accidents are but a statistical blip.

And it's not just cars suffering from phobomania. Today's FRK had some horrible examples of how those crazy overcompensations actually make us LESS safe:

http://www.freerangekids.com/y...

http://www.freerangekids.com/boy-6-suspended-for-making-gun-gesture-with-hand/

When I was a student lo those many decades ago, we had ID in high school and college, but it was used solely for admittance to student-only affairs like dances and concerts. Basically, to keep party crashers out of special events.

Despite the lack of daily IDs, locked doors, or security guards, we all managed to survive and graduate.

Methinks it's not so much security theatre as the school systems getting into the helicopter-parenting business, because by now the helicopter-parent generation is also running the schools. And as we all know, our special unique little snowflakes might MELT if they were subjected to the Real World or left unguarded for a single instant.

http://www.freerangekids.com/

My son's elementary school has 800 students, and despite perfect weather almost every day, exactly two (2) of them bike to school: my son and a kindergarten girl from our neighborhood. Every morning we pedal past a long line of moms in idling SUVs waiting to drop of their kid.

Did you know that some US schools prohibit their students from biking to school. Some cops have threatened to charge parents who allow their kids to ride bikes unescorted with child abuse.

You can read about many other stupidities here: http://www.freerangekids.com/