What does it get for a parent to be detained?
Amazingly much.
Scott and Heather Wallace of Hewitt, Texas, encourage their three kids to play outside on their own to create democracy.  ,
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One evening, driving home from judo training, 8-year-old Aiden misbehaved. But, half a mile from home, Heather stopped the car and told him,” Move the rest of the way on your own”.
He’d done it earlier. But this time, before he got home, people called the police.
” There’s a little child walking down the sidewalk”, she told 911. ” He’s a great destination for somebody to kidnap”!
Aiden was picked up by the police and driven away.  ,
His parents explain their situation in our new film.
” You were n’t worried about ( Aiden )”? I ask them.
” Not at all”, says Heather.  ,
Scott adds,” It’s a safe community”.
It’s correct. Their village is among Texas’s safest, according to information from the FBI.  ,
Unfortunately, the officers arrested Heather! They kept her in prison immediately.
” It was terrifying”, she tells me. ” I was really waiting, crying”.
The cop told her,” To have an 8-year-old… walk by himself, that’s a big problem…. We do n’t know who’s in that white van” . ,
That’s just dumb, says Lenore Skenazy, author of” Free-Range Kids” . ,
“99 % of white vans are people coming to correct your bathroom or mow your lawn,” according to the statement.
She says naive internet mislead us about what’s truly dangerous. According to news reports,” 460, 000 children are reported missing every season” using Justice Department data!
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But that just means:” 460, 000 children are late for dinner, stayed at university and forgot to tell their daughter…. The concept of’ missing’ is missing for an afternoon” ! ,
Robberies by strangers are incredibly uncommon. Just being in a vehicle is 400 times more risky.  ,
” You do n’t see people saying,’ I could put Johnny in the car, but what if we’re T-boned”? Skenazy points out. We’ve developed a society that views children outside and fantasizes about the worst-case scenario as well.
The officer who picked up Aiden argued the worst-case:” You have a lot of crazy citizens out around”, he told Heather. ” I do n’t trust my child out of range ( of ) about 20 or 30 feet from me”.
Twenty or 30 foot?
” It was a lot of his mind”, Heather tells me.
Police officers may operate on their views.  ,
Local prosecution went yet further. They indicted Heather, claiming she placed her son in “imminent danger of death” and acted “against the peace and dignity of the state” . ,
Really!
When her boss heard that, Heather lost her job.  ,
I was a child, so it’s a shame that authorities were n’t so obsessed with man risk. I walked half-a-mile every school time.  ,
Violence was much worse then. Yet including recent upticks, murder has dropped quickly over the past 30 years.  ,
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What’s changed is advertising frenzy. Any serious affair, everywhere, appears immediately on our telephones. Frightened, foolish, math-illiterate authorities say, better safe than sorry.
Then Scott and Heather say that, too.
” Did you drop your children off again”? I ask.
” No”! says Heather. ” We’re scared”.
” It’s not that we do n’t think it was the right decision”, says Scott,” But what they decided for us was not very affordable. ( Now ) we do n’t even leave them in the car to go into the convenience store” , ,
” Not because someone’s going to take them”, Heather adds,” but because someone’s going to see and call the police” ! ,
Lenore Skenazy has persuaded eight states to pass” youth independence” rules. They state that allowing children to complete things on their own is not misuse.  ,
” You do n’t want the government telling you when you can let your kids do things”, she says. You are more knowledgeable about your kids than they are.