Summary
Brittany Patterson, 41, was shocked to face a criminal charge for alleged reckless conduct when her unsupervised 10-year-old son walked less than a mile from their home.
Although authorities offered to drop the charge if she agreed to always supervise her children, Patterson refuses to sign, insisting she did nothing wrong and will fight the charge, which could lead to up to a year in jail.
Her lawyer argues that parents should have discretion over their children’s whereabouts, questioning if constant GPS tracking is now expected. Patterson was released on $500 bail.
I hope she wins. This is pathetic
When I was a kid, I literally walked 43 miles from my home one day. Took 15 hours. I just had my parents pick me up when I got to the pizza place - no big deal.
When the authorities make a misstep, they often keep going for fear of looking weak and leaving space for future exploitation
I uaed to walk 4 miles to school and even further back (because i walked with a friend to their house and then to kine on the way home) instead of taking the bus. I would keep my bus money and use it to buy drinks and stuff. This was only 20 years ago. Much has changed.
When I was a kid in ft worth I used to ride my bike across town and all over downtown and nobody batted an eye
Same experience and same metro-area… It was the 90s, but still, I’d be gone on my bike across town for hours. I lived in Grapevine.
My time was early/mid 70s
Yikes.
In 1997; I was walking about 2 miles to and from school. Unsupervised. I had a house key on my neck and was a latchkey kid in third grade. I obediently walked to and from school directly from home; meeting the crossing guard a half mile from school twice a day; as I had to cross a major 4 lane divided highway.
The elementary school closest to us is about a mile away. Kids in my neighborhood walk to school.
What the hell is wrong with letting a kid walk a mile away??
Probably somebody got elected on a “protect the children” and did this to prove it. It’s not like it effects the jackass responsible for it. It’s performance child protection and it’s pretty common.
This really feels insane, even for this day and age. Which makes me think we’re probably not getting the entire story.
If true, it’s downright silly. Back in the 80’s, we were out of the house unsupervised for hours. Parents just about encouraged you take candy from friendly strangers or to hitch a ride in their cool white van with ‘Free Puppies’ written on it. As long as you made it home without broken bones, they didn’t care. Ask anyone from my generation.
80s were the best. Too bad the consequences of the 80s are so horrendous.
Things about the 80s were pretty great, but the widespread parental neglect is probably why following generations are having this reaction.
But that was us, and we KNOW it was ok!
I think it’s all on the parent saying they didn’t know where the kid was, the kid saying his parents didn’t know where he was.
I wonder how my parents would have responded when I was little, “in the woods”? “Up the street at one of the neighbors”? Or “I don’t know”?
I mean when I was a kid in the late 80s/early 90s on weekends my parents generally had no clue where I was as long as I was home by dinner. and if I wasn’t going to be home by dinner then to call and say so. payphones were everywhere, just call and let them know.
I mean hell I remember one time my friends and I were in some store a good 5 miles away from home and my parents happened to be shopping there at the same time. my mom comes up to me and says “I saw a tshirt you might like, do you want it?” and showed me the shirt and I said sure and that was it “see you later tonight”.
That’s great. We weren’t near civilization so on a bike somewhere in the neighborhood or somewhere back in the woods.
My parents put a huge bell on the side of the house and basically said be home for dinner, make sure you hear the bell.
A mile is nothing … what the actual fuck? I used to be gone for hours god knows where.
I had a bike. I can assure you, I went MILES away. At 10, I was probably riding 1-5 miles to friends houses or to neighborhoods for selling whatever nonsense my scouts program was selling.
Just be home when the street lights come on!
When I grew up, we were “free range kids”.
Or, as they were called then, kids. This modern stranger danger and always track your kids is insane, everyone be living like the sky is falling every ten seconds.
Keeping a population in a state of perpetual fear is by design. It’s the first and an essential step to being able to manipulate people into voting against their own interests
It also serves to keep people isolated, and prevents kids from forming lasting relationships that can later be used to discuss and compare issues and organize.
My family had a healthy idea of limits, closer to the “free range” philosophy, before such a term was required.
Our neighbors across the street, however, were the prototype for helicopter parents.
While my sibling and I gained confidence and navigational skills by biking around our confusing neighborhood before the days of GPS, the neighbor’s kids weren’t allowed to go down the street unsupervised. My siblings and I stood alone on the corner bus stop, but the neighbor’s mom sat in her car and only released her kids when the bus had arrived.
At the time, my parents made fun of theirs for holding such a tight leash. We also pitied the kids because they panicked about being “lost” when my siblings brought them on a walk around the block.
But now I see kids sitting in cars at bus stops as the norm. And of course, stories like the above article go to show that the helicopter style has won (for the time being.) The people who were raised to fear everything outside their front yard are now parents themselves.
My mom has done the sit in car while waiting for the bus to come thing before and its super annoying. Mind you the bus stop was like 60m away from the house. It actually took longer to drive because of the time it took to take the car out of the garage and get in but my mother insisted. For the past three years I have just stopped listening to my parents and just leave the house without saying anything. Its to ask for forgiveness than permission. I have been biking to neigboring cities and they don’t even realize I left. I have also been able to force them to let me bike to school because I have work right after my morning classes and biking is the fastest way to get to work.
I used to have to walk a mile to the friggin school bus stop, shit is ridiculous nowadays.
How we have lost perspective. When I was that age I was forced to walk to school, a distance of about 1.5 miles.
Forced, mind you, because if you were considered “too close” to the school you were not eligible to ride the bus. Other than the land directly adjoining the school grounds, the roads I had to use also did not have sidewalks. The number of children killed, maimed, or injured by this during the years I attended that school were, to my knowledge… zero.
I too had to walk to school, but with sidewalks! I do feel if there’s a house, it should have a sidewalk.
Love sidewalks.
My kids not only had sidewalks but after enough complaints we got the city to clear the snow when needed!
Shit dude I remember walking further than that, at that age…crossing a busy 4-lane (state) highway (without a crosswalk or a sidewalk)…to buy pogs and rent video games.
That was only…30 years ago. Holy shit that was 30 years ago.
Can I offer you a cane in these trying times?
laughs in lower back pain
Nah man, I’m good, I can walk just as far now to the nearest dispensary. And there’s sidewalks and crosswalks. And some cars that’ll stop themselves if they’re about to hit a pedestrian.
They asked me to put my hands behind my back and all that stuff, and I realized what was going on.
Because she was too dangerous to be cuffed normally, or not cuffed at all?
Als I hate this doubly for the kid. Your mom getting arrested for your slightest sign of independence will fuck you up.
That poor kid. I already was upset thinking about them having to see Mom get arrested. I didn’t even consider the fact that the youngest is probably blaming himself.
Als I hate this doubly for the kid. Your mom getting arrested for your slightest sign of independence will fuck you up.
This so much. So much bullshit is being done to “protect children” and it actually hurts them.
Cuffed normally is behind your back. You only get cuffs in front with some prisoner transfers where you also have leg shackles and a belt. Cops routinely have a pleasant and peaceful interaction turn violent and it isn’t worth risking harm to anybody by not equally applying a handcuff and search policy.
Often it is department policy that anyone arrested is handcuffed. Some stipulate that anyone who goes in the back of a squad car gets handcuffed as part of detaining someone.
Town of 400? Was she a flight risk. Could they not have asked her to come by and remand herself? Do keep in mind this is a non-violent crime. This was for show, to make a point or simply to be cruel.
The police here are probably just two of the 400 people with no oversight.
When the deputy was complaining about her child wandering downtown, It paints a very different picture if there’s only a general store a Dollar general and a gas station.
The only thing I can imagine if the police aren’t being dick heads, is that the kid was getting into trouble. Maybe he was stealing or being perceived as stealing. Because he was being homeschooled maybe he was down there and they were pissed off because he was truant but can’t really be truant.
Wikipedia says the village is not even that big and only had a population of 223 in 2020. It is basically two highways coming together with a couple other streets.
The officers likely were not one of the people in town. A town like that is too small to have dedicated police. The country sheriff’s department has people patrol and respond to specific areas of the county.
I doubt the kid was stealing. They picked him up by the cemetery. Not much to steal there. He was probably just dicking around like pretty much every 11 year old in a small town does because there is not shit to do.
Bootlicking bastard. How dare you defend the cops for handcuffing this poor mother whose crime is apparently letting her kid have a childhood? “Peaceful interactions turn violent”? Pizza delivery drivers are more likely to have violent and fatal interactions with the public than cops, should they handcuff us “just in case” before handing us our order? God you bootlickers disgust me. Not ONE of your positions is upheld by facts. It’s all “feelings”, feelings like “the cop felt unsafe so he unloaded 2 full clips into a black kid playing tag”. It’s all a big tower of fascist feelings.
Happened in the woke liberal capital of… * checks notes *
… Georgia?
Small townrural Georgia, no less!I crossed out “small town” because Mineral Bluff is too small to even count as incorporated. Literally all that’s there, in terms of businesses, is a gas station, a Dollar General, and whatever the Hell this is.
This is the size of village where everyone knows everyone. It makes no sense other than a squabble.
That used to be true in the area. My family has lived there for generations. It has seen a lot of change and now it’s full of tourists and cabin rentals. It used to be very remote and disconnected from Atlanta but a governor from the area built a nice highway to get people to the mountains and it isn’t all locals now. A lot of people retire there and begin demanding changes to laws. You may be right about a squabble though, mountain towns have family fights that go on for decades.
They don’t have villages in the US for some reason. Only small towns, towns and cities.
Unless you are using a specific definition I’m not familiar with this isn’t true. There are definitely places officially reffered to as village rather than city or town.
It certainly isn’t common.
Most of the “small towns” would be villages everywhere else, but it feels like it’s shameful in the US. Maybe some places decided to roll with it.
It’s pretty common in NY state and other areas of New England. Outside of that area however, the term is rarely used outside of shopping centers, apartment complexes, or HOA governed planned housing communities.
That’s informative. I wasn’t aware that there was a regional dimension to it.
👯♀️
That’s what happens when you have a general store and a Dollar general comes in next door. They sell anything you can’t get at the Dollar general store and then advertising space.
America: where young people are coddled until they’re 18 then it’s either sell your body, sell your soul, or both multiple times over just to survive.
Or get sold into sexual slavery, and if you get pregnant by your rapist, fuck you, you’re having his baby.
The coddling is a fairly recent thing. People born in the late 90s is who it started with, about the time that 24hr
propagandanews channels became a thing.
I’m confused… shouldn’t this be happening in one of those liberal nanny states where big government is supposed to be all up in your business?
Oh, right… those people need to tell you how to raise YOUR kids, but don’t you dare tell them how to raise theirs…
