I realize that the world has changed–when our children were growing up, they would ride their bikes to the town swimming pool or to the town general store where they sold penny candy. They understood that they needed to be home by the time the streetlights came on. I realize that the world has changed, but some of the changes are ridiculous.

On Thursday, Hot Air reported the following:

Brittany Patterson lives in a rural part of Georgia with her four kids. Her husband is a superintendent at a school in Montana and is away much of the time. Last month, Patterson had to take one of her children to the doctor’s office. She left her 10-year-old son Soren (he’s nearly 11) at home with her father, the boy’s grandfather.

At some point, Soren decided to go for a walk to a local gas station where he knew his best friend’s grandmother was working. He didn’t ask permission, he just went. Someone saw him walking along the road and called police.

The article quotes an article from The Free Press:

Lenore Skenazy, a parenting advocate who runs the nonprofit Let Grow and first reported Patterson’s story, told me that her case shouldn’t have even required police involvement.

The female stranger who first saw Soren walking down the road asked if he was okay, and was told yes, but the stranger called 911 anyway. “When the sheriff answered the call, that should have been the end of it,” Skenazy said.

The article at Hot Air continues:

Instead, local law enforcement picked up Soren and brought him home. A few hours later, police officers showed up and arrested Brittany Patterson.

…She was taken to the police station, stripped and put in an orange jumpsuit. She was initially told the charge was “reckless endangerment,” but there is no such offense in Georgia. The actual charge was reckless conduct, a misdemeanor which could land her in jail for up to a year. Patterson’s lawyer David DeLugas points out that under Georgia law parents can leave a child aged 9-12 with a caretaker for up to two hours. She left Soren at home with his grandfather for 90 minutes. And since she didn’t give him permission to walk to the store, there was no criminal act here.

The article at Hot Air concludes:

The world has changed a lot since we were kids but 10-year-olds will always need to wander off and explore things on their own. The fact that most kids have phones and can call for help if they get in trouble makes this a relatively low-risk activity these days. It’s part of growing up and not something that needs to be remedied with arrests, threats of jail and government mandated supervision of kids.

The cops in this case really just need to back off…

This is ridiculous. There is a find-my-friends app on most cell phones that can track the location of a child. What kind of a world has drag queens doing library story hour and won’t let a 10-year old walk down the street by himself?