I founded the "Free Range Kids" movement to get parents to let their kids go. It's great for children, but society hasn't gotten the memo.
Lenore Skenazy is host of the reality show "World's Worst Mom" on the Discovery Life Channel. She is also a blogger at Free Range Kids and Reason.
Over the summer, a South Carolina mom who sent her 9-year-old to play in a popular park was arrested for not supervising her child. She was held overnight in jail, and her daughter spent 17 days as a ward of the state.
Just this week, I got an e-mail from a mom in Maryland. She'd left her 10-year-old in the car, watching her 1-year-old, while she — the mom — ran into the grocery. Someone called the cops.
The authorities act as if these children are "lucky" they made it out alive. But the facts don't bear that out. Childhood abduction is exceedingly rare. As of 1999, the latest year for which we have statistics, the number of American children abducted in what's known as a "stereotypical kidnapping" was 115, according to the Department of Justice. Of those, 40 percent, or about 50, were killed in a country of 72 million children under age 18.
So, that is my prescription now for America, including — especially! — its cops and case workers: Instead of imagining the worst, send your kids out to do something you did at their age. You can even have them wait in the car a few minutes.