Here's Your MetroCard Kid

[angelmom]

I'm not making fun of anyone. I also thought it was an April fools date because it was written on April 1st, and yeah, there was some outrageous stuff written by this lady (such as taking away the cellphone), but I don't think letting the kid let himself find his way home that outrageous. As someone pointed out before, we don't know how far of a distance this kid traveled.

Maybe I'm just a little tired of the back-seat parenting that goes on here. It's criticize criticize criticize.

"I wouldn't do that with MY child."

Great, good for you. But other people do, and if their kid gets kidnapped or killed, that's their damn fault. You can't charge a person for every stupid thing they do that you don't like.

And no angelmom, I'm not referring speficially to you. And no, I don't have kids yet. And no, when I have children I will not change my mind. I won't live in this world fearing shadows and jumping when people say boo. My mother did it to me and it's taken me 20+ years to grow out of her hammering me down with HER fears.

Don't do this to your children.

There is a big difference between being afraid of shadows and using some plain old common sense. Like I said, in GA there is a law about kids being left home alone. They are supposed to be 10. I think that law had to be passed for a reason - some people think that 5 and 7 year old kids are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves while mommy goes out on a date with her new boyfriend. She'll only be gone a few hours, right? So if they shouldn't be home alone, then I think the subway is probably not the best plan.

And no one said she should be charged. She did this, she wrote about it, and then she got all offended when some people called her a bad mother and a moron. Oh well. When you write for the paper, you get called that and worse all the time. Hell, you get that just posting on a message board. If she can't take the heat, maybe she shouldn't be writing about such personal things. Maybe it will cause her to reassess the priority she puts on her cellphone vs. her 9yo son. Maybe she will just grow bitter and nasty. Who knows?

I thought the whole point of this board was to discuss things. And yes, since a lot of it involved horrific crimes against children, there is a lot of criticizing of parental skills (or lack thereof). It's kind of a natural leap. Sometimes I agree that we take hindsight too far and jump all over people. Personally I try to give people the benefit of the doubt. Sometimes I am just too blown away to even post.

BTW, I know you say you will never change your mind when you have kids. I have also seen you post that you don't plan to have children, but if you do, I'd love to be a fly on the wall. It's not so much as changing your mind as being completely taken over by a different personality. You might not change your mind on this issue, but you will change. I guarantee it.