Be a Worry-Wart -- Or Else

Parental rights advocate Lenore Skenazy reports that a court in British Columbia has recently ruled against a woman who'd been reported for -- get this -- letting her eight-year-old son be at home alone for a couple of hours each day:

"A social worker visited the home and told the mother a child under the age of 10 could not be left alone. She asked the mother ... to agree to a 'safety plan.' When the mother refused, the social worker asked to speak to the boy, but the mother again refused."

If I ever meet that mom, I will have to give her a crown. She refused to make a safety plan, because she raised the safety plan. Her son is clearly capable of being on his own for a few hours -- as are almost all 8-year-olds -- because that's how she brought him up.

And she is not alone. In most of the world, kids start getting themselves to school, by foot, bike or bus -- on their own -- at age 7. Yet the social worker ordered the British Columbia boy to be supervised for six months.

Skenazy correctly identifies the rationale for the woman's legal trouble as "worst-case thinking," which the unaccountability of social workers gives the force of law. She sums things up as follows:

[T]he state is insisting on mind control. You must think obsessive negative thoughts and act on them, "saving" your child even from the dangers of having a snack, doing homework and watching some TV.

In other words, this is a manifestation of what I once called "primacy of others' imaginations" in another context.

-- CAV