Not the first time this has happened either, here’s another similar case in Atlanta: https://abcnews.go.com/US/mother-boy-killed-hit-run-driver-probation-community/story?id=14158040
Not the first time this has happened either, here’s another similar case in Atlanta: https://abcnews.go.com/US/mother-boy-killed-hit-run-driver-probation-community/story?id=14158040
He was with his older brother, who is 10.
And if a 10 year old is perfectly capable of walking to school (literally according to everyone), a 7 year old with their 10 year old brother should also be perfectly fine walking TWO BLOCKS without the worry of being killed by a driver.
And 4 lane roads should be banned in urban centers. It’s fucking ridiculous to have a goddamn highway in an area where children and families should be able to walk home safely!
…No…
A 10 year old is not old enough to be responsible for a 7 year old, full stop. Most experts consider around 12 to 13 the minimum maturity for a child to be capable of being responsible for another child. 10 is definitely too young to be looking after another kid, wtf are you talking about.
I really hope you don’t have kids…
The experts say:
National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (UK)
Ottawa Safety Council (Walk Alone Program, Canada)
American Academy of Pediatrics (USA)
They also put this poster together:
Every country has the same general consensus.
Kids and grandkids. And I was also once a kid with a younger sibling. And I see young kids walking to our local school on a regular bases.
If someone is still walking their teenager to school, they should probably stop 😮
Kids shouldn’t be raising kids.
Fuck cars, but 10 year old children shouldn’t have to be responsible for other children. They shouldn’t have any responsibilities yet.
I agree that kids shouldn’t be raising kids.
But these kids were simply walking a few hundred meters from the store to their home in broad daylight, while on the phone with their father, and were old enough to be doing so.
This would be considered completely normal in any other country.
It’s also important to note that I don’t believe any city, state, or country has minimum age laws for kids to walk. Staying at home alone or in a car? Yes, but not walking (or playing outdoors, or riding a bike, etc.)
So for the courts to charge the parents with child neglect and manslaughter seems wildly unbalanced.
A 10 year old is not old enough to be responsible for a 7 year old, so no, they weren’t old enough to walk home together. The 10 year old walking by themselves would have been safe, adding a 7 year old made the situation unsafe.
The dirty secret of the capitalist nuclear family is kids are always raising kids while the parents are busy at work or doing housework or struggling to recover from work. It’s not really the parents’ fault.
We obviously have different perspectives, and experiences, but maybe we can distill this.
Say your property was massive. Would you be OK allowing a 10 and 7 year old play together, or would you want an adult to be there?
I think most people would be OK with that, even in a much smaller front yard, or a cul de sac, or park.
Assuming no predators (humans or animals), the only real concern is cars. And it’s maddening that we won’t allow kids to be kids because of cars in any given community.
Just the other day, there was a story if a teenager getting hit and killed by a car on school property. Cars are the problem. Nearly 100% of the time.
And it’s not the parents or kids’ fault that they want to interact with their community outside of a vehicle. We are punishing the wrong people, in my opinion.
It’s obviously not the kids fault and we are punishing the wrong people. The parents are just doing something their parents probably did.
But parents shouldn’t give 10 year olds responsibility over 7 year olds, and I’m very firm in that belief. Even if it was on their own property. Kids get messed up by being forced to be responsible for other kids, and the other kids get messed up by having kids be responsible for them. It’s a toxic dynamic that’s baked into our society.
Kids shouldn’t raise kids, not even for a small walk to and from the corner store.
This is the reply I gave someone else, and it addresses your points, too.
I’m going to leave that as my last reply.
Reread what you wrote.
A 10 year old being able to walk home is not the same as that 10 year old also being responsible for a 7 year old
This isn’t rocket science.
Of course, there are always special circumstances when a child should have constant adult supervision (developmental delays, medical needs, etc.), but this wasn’t the issue here.
But according to experts, if younger children (under 8) should be with an adult or older sibling, and if 10 is old enough to walk alone, then 7 with a 10 year old is fine to walk 300m home. It would make both kids safer and more visible, since they are in a “group”.
If the kid was 4 or 5, then that would be different, for sure.
But why is blame being shifted onto the victim here?
There is no reason whatsoever that an older kid and their sibling shouldn’t be able to safely walk two blocks to their home.
This wouldn’t even be a topic for discussion anywhere outside of the united states or for anyone who was a kid before the 90s.
Incorrect.
Being old enough to walk home alone is not equivalent to being old enough to escort a younger sibling on top of that.
That’s literally additional responsibility.
You are effectively going:
“If 4 is greater than 3, and 4 is greater than 2, then surely 4 is greater than 3 + 2 as well!”
You are stacking multiple simultaneously responsibilities together.
A 10 year old as just barely maybe responsible enough to walk alone, and even then I would caveat that that’s based off them walking home alone in a safe environment
There’s a huge difference between a 10 year old walking home alone on a quiet street vs busy road.
But even setting that aside…
And then if you think a 10 year old is old enough to watch over a younger sibling, barely…
Both responsibilities at the same time are now more than that
Responsibilities compound, this isn’t complicated.
I would say 12~13 bare minimum to simultaneously watch over a 7 year old, alone, while also being in a higher danger area (like a 4 lane busy road)
For a safer scenario, like a quiet street or at the park, I’d say 11 to 12
For a very safe scenario, like watching them at home or in your own yard, then yes, 10 is fine.
You can’t just take each variable individually and say it’s fine, and then assert the same is true when you compound them all together.
God, I really hope you don’t have kids if you seriously think it’s cool to let a unsupervised 10 year old watch a 7 year old near a busy road, that’s exceptionally negligent, lol
Cite a source, please.
What do you base that on?
But for clarity, this was two lanes, a large grass island, and another two lanes with cars going in one direction. They would have only been crossing two lanes, as do other pedestrians in that area. And a motorist seeing two kids about to cross should be able to assess the situation and slow down.
But the point is being missed: kids are being killed by drivers in “safe zones” like school areas, adults killed waiting inside bus shelters, adult pedestrians killed with the right of way at intersections, etc.
The problem are the cars, not the age of the kids.
We can’t keep prioritizing cars, leaving no room for pedestrians and kids to move freely, then blame the victims.
Even in areas where adults are walking their kids through a crosswalk, cars are killing them all.
Age doesn’t matter if the problem affects everyone from 7 to 70 year olds.
LOL. My kids are in their twenties, and when they were that age, it was completely normal for their friends to walk over to our place, or for them to walk to their friend’s place. Or them going to the park with their younger siblings or to play outside.
I have two elementary schools nearby, and it’s totally normal to see young kids walking to school on their own.
And when I was a kid, this was also normal.
And all over the world, this is normal.
What’s not normal is the shift of responsibility from drivers to victims. And this is coming far too common, and needs to be called out at every chance.
Imagine unironically thinking that if a person jumps out on a busy road in front of a moving car and gets hit, somehow thats the driver’s fault.
How many layers deep inside your echo chamber are you?
The answer to this is not to let your seven year old child go wander out into traffic on a road, thats an insane kind of response.
You don’t get to go “Well because we don’t have enough crosswalks, better just let kids kill themselves, cuz they outta just be allowed to”
That’s an absolutely insane kind of response to the issue.
Cars sucking does not excuse the mother’s behavior here. Stroads being dangerous literally means her behavior was negligent. A lack of crosswalks or safer alternatives does not excuse her behavior.
You’re logic is on par with going “Well this mom let her seven year old wander around on a pier on a lake unsupervised. Her kid fell in the water and drowned. But really the city shouldn’t have made the lake that deep so really the mom isn’t at fault here. Kids should be able to safely wander around unsupervised on piers on lakes without worrying about drowning. In a perfect world every pier is built in a way that makes it impossible for kids to fall off them and drown. So yeah, the mom did nothing wrong”
Do you see how insane that sounds? No mate, that’s not how the real world works.
I’m going to leave this here as my last reply, and I do hope that you take the time to read it: Children’s Independent Mobility: an international comparison and recommendations for action (PDF)
And I quote the following findings and recommendations from the authors:
Note the following responses below, starting at kids age 7. It’s not a coincidence that the countries who give their kids more mobile independence, are also the ones who Unicef ranks as having the greatest well-being and achieve higher education levels:
Then I hope you can take some time to read this post, which was written specifically about this child’s death, and how authorities dealt with it.
And I quote:
I will close by saying that while it may sound “insane” to let kids have responsibility and independence, the reality is, this is normal in most of the world.
@pixxelkick @Showroom7561 a 10 year old should be able to be safe outdoors, c’mon…
See, for Instance, the Nederlands, kids go to school by bicycle.
https://youtu.be/2fU3nhGrp3Q
I’ve seen toddlers in public transport (yes with an adult, but one for 10 kids or so), in Switzerland.
“Should be able to” doesn’t mean jack shit in terms of fault here.
The reality is, it wasnt safe. Yeah, it would be nice if it was safe.
But it wasn’t safe, and any parent that isn’t a negligent idiot would know it’s not safe, this is literally the Fuck Cars lemmy, so you should know how dangerous a 4 lane road is.
And thus you should know not to let your kids out unsupervised near one.
I don’t give a shit how safe we would like ot to be, the functional inference of "was this mother negligent or not* isn’t based off how safe we’d like it to be
It’s functional of how safe/dangerous it actually is at the time.
It’s like if a mother let’s her kids play unsupervised in a fucking hurricane and you try and argue “well there shouldn’t be a hurricane”
No one should give a shit, there very clearly, obviously, and demonstratebly was a fucking hurricane, so don’t fucking let your kids play in it. Don’t be a fucking dumb ass, supervise your children in potentially dangerous situations.
If this was some like a quiet neighborhood 1.5 lane sleepy street I’d be on the mom’s side more here.
But it was a fucking 4 lane busy road
Yes, that should be obviously negligent behavior to literally anyone with 2 braincells to rub together.
Fuck cars, but also fuck negligent parents that let their kids play near fucking traffic.