I'm not from this planet, help me out

[CitizenBBN]

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/05/29/hawaii-man-gets-probation-for-making-kid-walk-1-mile-judge-calls-it-old-school/?intcmp=latestnews

OK, maybe it was on freeway or something, or he was 4 years old, but my guess is this was a perfectly normal parenting action that no one my age would even blink at as a child, and now it's prosecuted as some kind of abuse or neglect?

Maybe I'm wrong, but seems to me permissive parenting has gone as far to the "nuts" end of the meter as progressivism in general, if not farther. You leave you baby in the car and go shopping you should be whipped, I'm all for protecting kids, but making a kid walk a whole mile (which my fat ugly ass does on a treadmill in 10 minutes as a fast walk) gets you potential jail time? What do you get for sending them to bed without supper? Does a spanking get you shot? Is making you milk cows or mow the yard now forcible labor?

Maybe kids had more sore butts in my day, but they were a lot better behaved in stores. Can't imagine why we are raising massive numbers of people who feel entitled to everything and have no sense of discipline or responsibility.

PS when I was a kid I walked nearly that far every day to school and back, the bus didn't even come to my street b/c it was so close to walk and it was almost a mile. It's not that far. Key west is only 1.5 miles wide, I walk it in 20 minutes in a stroll.

[Doc]

Good. My initial thought was you were going to criticize the parent! A few things

1) Kilauea isn't LA or Chicago or even Lexington. Its freaking Kilauea. The population density is probably 5 people to the square mile.

2)
Watanabe said times are different today, given child predators and traffic.-yeah, traffic is different. Now instead of one car an hour its double that. As for child predators, there have been child predators since the days of cave man. They were around when I was a kid which was 50 years ago. Yep, I recall watching the creepy film in elementary school about the guy in the van offering candy or asking you to help him find his dog! (And in an unrelated story--Roman Polanski is reportedly moving to Kilauea HI)

3) Like Chuck says, when I grew up there was no bus service for kids who lived less than a mile from school. We walked or biked, rain or shine. When we moved to KY, when I got kicked off the bus for behavior problems my ass walked home (from middletown to Hurstbourne which is a pretty good haul for a 6th grader). I sure did tell my folks either because had I my dad would have beat me till he got tired of doing so then my mother would have taken over!

4) Next, I expect Gloria Allred to step in and offer her service pro bono to the kid to sue the father on behalf of the child for emotion distress and punitive damages for the lifelong mental anguish that this will undoubtedly cause.

[suncat05]

My Dad, good paratrooper that he was, would have made me do it at doubletime.
Honestly, why did this even go to court to begin with? This issue, to me, is clearly a parental disciplinary situation, not something that law enforcement and the courts need to be involved in. This was a private parental/child situation that has no business being in the courts. At all. Period.
I would love to talk to that Judge. Or, maybe not. She sounds like a liberal pansy girl that doesn't get what parenting really is.

[Darrell KSR]

I won't criticize the judge's action until I know the age of the child.

Pet peeve -- the story says the age of the child is "unclear." Is it "unclear," or "unknown?" How is it "unclear?" Did they give the age in minutes, but say there may be some adjustments to it, making it difficult to ascertain, or unclear? Did somebody write the age down on a piece of paper, and the paper got wet, and the ink smeared, making the age unclear to read?

But I digress.

I walked home from school farther than that when I was in the 6th grade in Mobile, Alabama, through some sketchy areas (not that my home was in a much better area), including through some woods. Found a bunch of heroin needles, knives and matches one day out in the woods as well. I actually did it myself with another neighbor the first time, when we missed the bus, and he knew the way home and I didn't, but after that, would sometimes choose to walk home myself. They had a delayed bus departure time at the school, and sometimes I'd just jump the fence with teachers chasing me, and leave at the first departure time, and would beat the bus home.

My father hitchhiked across the country when he was 12 years old. Skipped six weeks of class in Hickman Elementary School. Conned/scammed people picking him up into giving him money and food. Said the most scared he has ever been in his life was when he said something about an overturned truck on the interstate outside of St. Louis, about where it had been earlier in the day, forgetting that wasn't consistent with his story, and the driver figuring it out. Guy started screaming at him, and kicked him out on the interstate.

I survived all of my adventures. So did Dad. Doesn't mean that because we did it, though, that it was right. We've learned a lot since those days.

I'd want to know more particulars before I'll criticize. There's a large part of me that applauds the Judge's action for teaching a parent too stupid to know what is appropriate and what is not appropriate a lesson where he may not repeat that kind of mistake again. And there's another large part of me that finds the prosecutor and Judge's actions silly, and reprehensible on their own, if the kid is of sufficient age and maturity to handle the walk home in the environment in which it was reached. (I think that part has been adequately covered already in this thread; just wanted to present the other side.)

[suncat05]

So this Judge has an issue with this guy's parenting skills? Just like others here, I would like to know the child's age.
I still don't like this idea of the state interfering with parental prerogatives with regards to disciplining their own children. I have a hard time believing this guy is a bad parent. Especially since it was said that he'd not been in any trouble before this incident. But the age of the child is what I would like to know.
And truthfully, we don't know the whole, entire story, because news rags don't ever print ALL of the details. The Judge may have been correct in her judgement, but hey, I'm from Missouri, so show me.

[CitizenBBN]

Darrell that's why my qualification about age. Obviously if the kid was 3 or 4 or something, or it was on an interstate overpass, OK I get it. But I was walking when I was in 4th grade, that's 8 years old. After moving to lexington from home where I helped out shoveling silage around big sharp corkscrew conveyors and hay rakes and bushhogs and tractors with spinning PTO shafts. Then I got on my minibike with my 22 rifle and went back on the farm shooting by myself.

My $10 says this was just the latest example of the lowering of any standard of behavior or responsibility or maturity for anyone not 40 years old, and even they seem to get a bigger pass every year. But I would like to know the exact age and road route just to go from "probable" to "definite".

Oh and like Doc says, child predators weren't invented in the 90s. there's a reason there's a 60s song about a stranger with candy in a black sedan (Vehicle by Ides of March). I was told about strangers as a kid in the 70s, it is hardly a new thing. You were just expected to be smarter and more responsible.

Now it seems a foregone conclusion that no child or teenager could possibly be held accountable for any of their actions. I get they can't always be 100% responsible, but we don't have to reduce it to 0% either.

[CitizenBBN]

OK, found a far better article on the subject. Kid was 8, and it explains how this turned into a big case. Even has what appear to be pictures of the road in question.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/05/30/father-fined-200-sentenced-to-one-year-of-probation-for-making-his-8-year-old-son-walk-a-mile-home-from-school/

Judge for yourselves. I get now how it got to be a court case, still dont' see it as a prosecutable case. If I hadn't given my mom a straight answer I'd have been grateful to be out of the car and walking home, would beat the alternatives. Walked farther than that on busier roads at that age all the time, the only issue is someone saw him crying and freaked out.

But at least now I know how it got to be a case they thought they had to prosecute.

[KeithKSR]

Nanny State. I'd bet money the district where the kid attends school is like most in the US and doesn't provide bus transportation within a mile of the school.