Why kids can’t walk home alone

A story from my childhood came to mind as I read a recent ABC News report about a mother who was arrested after her son was seen walking alone to the Dollar Store a half mile away from his home.

Brittany Patterson of Mineral Bluff, Georgia, was at a doctor’s appointment with her other child when her nearly 11-year-old boy left his house and was spotted by himself. Somebody alerted the police, who took the boy home.

A few hours later, the cops went to Patterson’s address, cuffed her in front of her kids, dragged her off to the police station for a mug shot and charged her with willingly and knowingly endangering “her juvenile son’s bodily safety.”

The Division of Family and Child Services demanded that Patterson comply with its safety plan, which required her to download a GPS app to track her son’s location.

She refused, God bless her. And it wasn’t long before her “crime” and the debate over “free-range children” became a hot topic on social media.

As a columnist, I’ve reported for 30 years on the evolution of the growing — and unjustified — fears parents have about the safety of their children.

More and more, “free-range” parents who attempt to give their kids some of the freedom they had as children face the wrath of family, neighbors and local authorities.

When I was a kid in the ’70s, it was much different — and much better.

I was free to go all over the place on foot or on my bike, just so long as I got home on time for dinner and arrived home at night when the streetlights came on. We kids were on our own all the time, and our parents weren’t terrified if we were out of their sight.

When I was just 6, I disappeared from my house and took off alone to a mom-and-pop convenience store three blocks away.

My older sisters Krissy and Kathy, 7 and 9, respectively, were supposed to be watching me while my mother was downstairs doing laundry. But to get me out of her hair, Krissy gave me a coin she had made from a piece of cardboard and told me I could get candy with it at the little store.

Naturally, my mother was upset when she saw I was missing. But I was found in short order, and no neighborhood worrywart ratted out my mom to the cops. That was because back then there were only three network television channels and parents’ fears weren’t being stoked 24/7 by sensationalistic news stories about kidnapped children on cable news channels.

Despite today’s increased parental paranoia, being kidnapped is no more likely for kids now than it was in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s. Consider: There are roughly 40 million elementary-school-age children in America today. Each year, about 115 children are kidnapped, according to Child Watch of North America — whereas nearly 140,000 are injured in car wrecks every year.

In spite of that reality, our TV and cable news media have spent decades exaggerating and inflaming fears about the safety of our children — and pretty much anything else that gets ratings. Thus, we’ve evolved into a fearful culture that’s afraid to allow our children the freedom to roam and discover and learn on their own.

God help any parent today whose 6-year-old might slip out of the house with a paper coin his sister made for him!

Email humor columnist Tom Purcell at Tom@TomPurcell.com.