Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Montgomery County neglect inquiry shines spotlight on ‘free-range’ parenting

Montgomery County neglect inquiry shines spotlight on ‘free-range’ parenting - The Washington Post:
"Two days after the story of their children’s unsupervised walk home from a park became the latest flash point in an ongoing cultural debate about what constitutes responsible parenting, Danielle and Alexander Meitiv were still explaining their “old-fashioned” methods of child-rearing.
They eat dinner with their children.
They enforce bedtimes, restrict screen times and assign chores.
They go to synagogue.
More controversially, they let their 10-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter venture out together to walk or play without adults.
“How have we gotten so crazy that what was just a normal childhood a generation ago is considered radical?”
Danielle Meitiv asked in the living room of her Silver Spring home as yet another news crew dropped by to question the couple.
She and her husband are facing an investigation for neglect, they say, after allowing their children to walk together unaccompanied from a Silver Spring park along busy Georgia Avenue toward home, a mile south.
They made it halfway before police picked the children up, alerted after someone called....

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