I often walked to school in my second grade. I went to pick up my friend Mike and we two 7 year olds passed the wooden train bridge, down the hill, slid through the park, crossed a four-lane road to school.
We were wearing our jackets when it rained. Sometimes we ran to make the early bells. I can still hear our mom’s notes:
Exercise is good for you.
Just stick together. You’ll be fine.
And of course:
Don’t be late!
We made our own 25-minute pilgrimage. Many of our classmates have completed their independent journey to school.
You may have done the same thing. If you weren’t walking to school alone, maybe you’d biked to a local park or won a tadpoles net in Community Creek. Perhaps you walked the family dog. Some of you have boarded the metros themselves. You were a child and did something without adult supervision.
We called it childhood.
The tragic case from North Carolina made me think about adolescent independence.
On May 27, her mother and her two sons were at the Food Lion grocery store in Gastonia, west of Charlotte. According to reports, she agreed to return to the seven and ten boys to a nearby home.
The seven-year-old, named Legend, was about to cross a four-lane road outside the crosswalk when the Jeep Cherokee attacked and killed him. The driver was stopped on the scene, not speeding. She is not facing charges.
Witnesses told local television stations that the legend “strode into traffic because my brother tried to hold him down.” The boys’ mother said it was the first time they had them cross the street on their own.
Gastonian authorities have charged parents with involuntary manslaughter, felony child negligence and misdemeanor child negligence. They were put in prison on $1.5 million bonds, and the judges were recently reduced to $150,000 each.
Authorities emphasized that the boys were not being monitored.
“In such cases, adults must be responsible for their responsibility to ensure a safe environment for their children,” Gastonia police said.
Safety is essential. But what about developing resilience and independence for children? You cannot wrap them in bubble wrap until you are 18 years old. Life does not come with such guarantees. All criminal charges in the world do not erase misfortune.
I can’t help but think that when the boys returned home safely, no one would have made a fuss. Many observers would have praised their parents for strengthening valuable lessons about independence and friendship. They will lament the fact that today’s children are so restrained, and agree that walking around the house is better for boys than staring at the iPad.
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When a child dies this way, it is common to point to his finger. It helps us handle horrible situations and streamlines the way we never make similar decisions. We are sure this will never happen to us or our children. We’re “not bad” so it’s fine.
But that is false comfort. Good people always happen to good people. And some of those bad things are merely accidents. Wrenching, confusing, tragic – but all the same, just an accident. We need to resist the desire to paste blame. After these types of tragedy, the punishment should not be our North Star. Our judicial system must leave room for blessing.
We may wish to close. These cases may want to be wrapped in a neat bow with a “bad” parent behind the bar. But this isn’t this week’s movie, everything is very black and white. The world is full of nuances and dissatisfaction. We should not encourage criminal charges to make us feel good or from misguided claims about so-called “accountability.”
When my son was at St. Petersburg Elementary School, I saw my parents walked second grade to school halfway through and then letting them handle the last four or five blocks themselves. Those kids are “unsupervised” for at least five minutes. That level of independence makes some parents feel uneasy, that’s fine. That’s a choice. However, choosing to give a child a small amount of independence should not turn into a crime just because tragedy strikes.
No one considered my mother and father to be the criminal who let me walk to school when I was seven. They chose to give me autonomy. Like many other parents, they thought this decision would help me grow and prepare me for the next step in my life. Putting them in prison would not have made the world better or safer.
Even in a risky world, parents need a room for their parents.
