Free Range Parenting Law in Utah

"...provided the child is 9 years old."

In Charlotte we walked to school in 1st grade, and they let us ride bikes to school in 3rd. In 5th grade we were armed crossing guards.
Okay, crossing guards.
 
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"...provided the child is 9 years old."

In Charlotte we walked to school in 1st grade, and they let us ride bikes to school in 3rd. In 5th grade we were armed crossing guards.
Okay, crossing guards.
I walked home 2 blocks from kindergarten. I wasn't supposed to, but I was a bit headstrong.

Did you have one of those cool chest/belt things with the big badge? I think they were yellow and/or white and I think the badge said Safety Officer. I forget how we used to fold them into a neat package with the badge on top. :D

It was a lot like this...
images
 
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Well, finally....but it's sad it took a law to let kids be kids.
I traipsed the woods and rode a bike all over my county growing up. Rode my bike up and down all the roads collecting glass bottles for the deposit. Rode my bike three or four miles to the fields in the mornings during hay season. Sat for hours upon hours by myself in a farmers truck at the gas station on the corner selling watermelons in the summer. Walked a hunnert miles on and around Gardner Webb campus. My friends and I built a fort about a half mile into the woods (it was actually very impressive) and we camped pretty much all summer. We would go ten days to two weeks without sleeping indoors.
Dodged enough trouble, got caught in my fair share, too during all that.
Kids need stuff like that...
 
Well, finally....but it's sad it took a law to let kids be kids.
I traipsed the woods and rode a bike all over my county growing up. Rode my bike up and down all the roads collecting glass bottles for the deposit. Rode my bike three or four miles to the fields in the mornings during hay season. Sat for hours upon hours by myself in a farmers truck at the gas station on the corner selling watermelons in the summer. Walked a hunnert miles on and around Gardner Webb campus. My friends and I built a fort about a half mile into the woods (it was actually very impressive) and we camped pretty much all summer. We would go ten days to two weeks without sleeping indoors.
Dodged enough trouble, got caught in my fair share, too during all that.
Kids need stuff like that...
THIS is why we home schooled and went from a few acres around us to thousands when my eldest was around ten. With a stick, pocketknife and a dog the boys would be gone all day on adventures.
 
I think they were yellow and/or white and I think the badge said Safety Officer. I forget how we used to fold them into a neat package with the badge on top. :D

It was a lot like this...
images

Exactly like that, except ours were white back in the '60's. The color orange hadn't been invented yet.
 
Yep. I did the walking and biking, etc.
 
Walked just under a mile (just checked on googlemaps) in 2nd Grade in 1968.

The color orange hadn't been invented yet.

According to Calvin's Dad (from Calvin & Hobbes), color was invented in "the '30's."
 
I think most of us who grew up in the 70s or 80s walked home from elementary school, and rode our bikes to whatever mini-adventure we were on that day.

But let me ask the fathers (and mothers) here who don't live in rural areas - how many of you are letting your 7, 8 or 9 yr old child walk home from school? Or letting that same child ride their bike more than a block or two away, unsupervised? Or in general, letting young children out to play with other kids in the neighborhood, unsupervised?

For those who aren't permitting your young children to engage in these unsupervised activities, how many are taking that approach ONLY because of real or imagined legal liability?
 
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Back in the day, it was standard procedure for parents to throw you out of the house.
Go outside and play!
I'm not saying parents don't still do this, but our parents meant for hours at the minimum, or all day preferably. If you were to wander out of the neighborhood, an area consisting of usually about 5 square miles, you came back in an told them where you were going. The response was usually be back before dinner/the street lights come on.

A bicycle was freedom. So we'd ride down to the train tracks and the tressel over the river (forbidden but we did anyway) or to the playground. At the playground we'd get on the swingset, back then they had 10' long chains holding the swings, and we'd get them flying and then jump off. You could get 20' of air no problem. When we got bored with that, we'd pull off a manhole cover to the water sewers and go down there with our 2 D-cell flashlights. They sewers were only about 3' in diameter but when you're 3' tall it wasn't a problem. Then we figured out how to get our bikes down there.

The creek was a constant companion. We'd catch tadpoles and take them home. One time I brought home a water moccasin. Mom wasn't too happy about that. She told me to kill it but I took it back to the creek and let it go. He's probably still there.

And then I got a BB gun....
 
Exactly like that, except ours were white back in the '60's. The color orange hadn't been invented yet.

Safety Patrol. I did that in elementary school, too.

I grew up most of my childhood in Hillsborough. I walked or rode my bike everywhere until junior high. Didn't care for growing up there when I was a kid, but looking back on it, I had a pretty good childhood there.
 
What I want to know is why people feel they need a law GRANTING them such "freedoms" in the first place?

If they were to have worded it properly, they should have taken a few pointers from our own federal constitution..."Legislators shall make no laws..."
 
I remember when the buses put on tire chains to get the kids to school.

and THEN, we moved to Brazil and I went to school in a cinder block with no heating (not that we needed that) nor air conditioning (which would have been DREAMY!). We drank like sailors from the 7th grade and talked politics in bars every weekend. Growing up in a foreign country, under a military dictatorship and getting a really good bead on American freedom from the other side....PRICELESS.
 
when we lived in MA, my wife was a teacher. She got regular email updates on sex offenders living in the city. That map scared the crap out of her. So many normal looking people that were perverts.
So she was a bit tighter regarding the kids going to the park.
Traffic was not conducive to letting kids ride around either.

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