Hysterical Ninny Costs Mother Her Job

In Texas, a woman was arrested, indicted, and ended up losing her job, simply because someone called the police when she told her her son he had to walk home half a mile as punishment for misbehavior.

Naturally, in this age of precautionary thinking, the most ridiculous, arbitrary, worst-case, make-believe scenarios won out over common sense -- and likely, the personal experience of everyone involved.

I walked around for miles as a kid, and I bet my experience wasn't unique.

I almost want to make a white van my family vehicle after reading this ridiculous story. (Image by Backroad Packers, via Unsplash, license.)

He'd done it before. But this time, before he got home, someone called the police.

"There's a little boy walking down the sidewalk," she told 911. "He's a perfect target for somebody to kidnap!"

Police picked Aiden up and drove him home.

...

Based on data from the FBI, their town is among the safest in Texas.

Nevertheless, the cops arrested Heather! They kept her in jail overnight.

"It was terrifying," she tells me. "I was just waiting, crying."

The cop told her, "To have an 8-year-old ... walk by himself, that's a big problem ... .We don't know who's in that white van." [bold added]

Fortunately, parent advocate Lenore Skenazy is on the case. Skenazy has helped eight states enact so-called "childhood independence" laws to curb such nonsense.

Sadly, one of those states is Texas, whose own such law passed three years ago.

This does not come up in the column I point to, but it isn't really surprising that this happened anyway: Although such laws may well plug a legal gap that opens parents up to such harassment, they can't completely solve what is ultimately a cultural problem.

One hopes the law will vindicate the parents legally, but the fact remains that this family has already gone through hell, thanks to an abuse of law enforcement comparable to swatting, however well-intentioned the 911 caller might imagine himself to have been.

-- CAV