Joshua Krause
Activist Post
By all appearances, Daniel and Alexander Meitiv are smart, responsible parents who want to instill independence in their children. They don’t like to throw caution to the wind, but they do believe that kids should be granted some freedom, so that they may learn how to take care of themselves from an early age.
They practice what’s known as “free range parenting” as opposed to hovering over their kids and showering them with fear and paranoia like most parents do these days. Unfortunately, their attempts to instill responsibility and self-reliance in their children has met with resistance from the society they live in.
Last December, Daniel and Alexander Meitiv ran afoul of the nanny state, when they had the gall to allow their children to walk home alone from the park. “We wouldn’t have let them do it if we didn’t think they were ready for it” they claimed. What they didn’t realize was that in America, the State knows what’s best for children, parents be damned.
“The world is actually even safer than when I was a child, and I just want to give them the same freedom and independence that I had — basically an old-fashioned childhood,” she said. “I think it’s absolutely critical for their development — to learn responsibility, to experience the world, to gain confidence and competency.”
On Dec. 20, Alexander agreed to let the children, Rafi and Dvora, walk from Woodside Park to their home, a mile south, in an area the family says the children know well.
The children made it about halfway.
Police picked up the children near the Discovery building, the family said, after someone reported seeing them.
The Meitivs say their son told police that he and his sister were not doing anything illegal and are allowed to walk. Usually, their mother said, the children carry a laminated card with parent contact information that says: “I am not lost. I am a free-range kid.” The kids didn’t have the card that day.
Yes, you read that right. Some ex-Stasi busybody couldn’t stand the sight of children roaming the streets without their leashes and dog tags, and reported them to the police. I’m not sure what’s more offensive; the fact that this person thought that kids can’t walk alone in broad daylight, or the fact that he or she thought she could use the police as her personal truancy squad. Surely they have something better to do than rounding up wayward children?
What’s even more infuriating is how the police responded to the incident. When you live in a nanny state, the government talks down to parents like they’re the children.
Alexander said he had a tense time with police on Dec. 20 when officers returned his children, asked for his identification and told him about the dangers of the world.
As you might have guessed, that wasn’t the last of it. It never is when you’re dealing with the horde of busybodies that run our society. They are relentless. Not only do they treat your home like they own it, but they will hound you and your family, no matter where you are.
The Meitivs say that on Dec. 20, a CPS worker required Alexander to sign a safety plan pledging he would not leave his children unsupervised until the following Monday, when CPS would follow up. At first he refused, saying he needed to talk to a lawyer, his wife said, but changed his mind when he was told his children would be removed if he did not comply.
Following the holidays, the family said, CPS called again, saying the agency needed to inquire further and visit the family’s home. Danielle said she resisted.
“It seemed such a huge violation of privacy to examine my house because my kids were walking home,” she said.
This week, a CPS social worker showed up at her door, she said. She did not let him in.
She said she was stunned to later learn from the principal that her children were interviewed at school.
Unfortunately, this isn’t an isolated case. Last September a mother from Austin was hounded for letting her 6-year-old son play outside a mere stone’s throw away from her house. And this case from Maryland is remarkably similar to what the Meitiv parents are dealing with.
It always starts with a tattling busybody reporting your kids, which then escalates to a visit from the police, who then call Child Protective Services. They’ll provide you with a “safety plan” that you’ll need to sign, and if you refuse to do so they’ll take your kids away on the spot. They’ll proceed to interview your children without your permission or presence, and they’ll continue to break you down and investigate every aspect of your life until they are satisfied.
And if they aren’t satisfied? Good luck. Your your kids now belong to the State, where they will be pumped full of psychotropic drugs, and possibly sent to a foster home inhabited by known sex offenders. And all while they completely fail to investigate and prevent real cases of child abuse.
This is the system we live in. Where raising your children in a healthy environment, and teaching them to be independent, means they might be kidnapped by the government to be drugged and raped.
If you ask me, Child Protective Services should be renamed the Child Predator Service, because that’s the only thing they’re good at. Preying on our children.
As unfortunately pathetic as these cases of over arching can be, I pity the social workers, who either have to take the child away from the thousands of delinquent, abusive, neglectful parents and be called a monster, or leave the child in a home where they are severely abused or killed and they’re a monster. I actually agree that 6 is a little young to be walking alone, with only a 10 year old’s accompaniment on a busy street, my kids were allowed to walk home at 9, which i think is a good balance.
If it was only kids being taken away from “delinquent, abusive, neglectful parents” we wouldn’t need to be having this conversation, would we? The problem is that CPS around the country have lowered the bar to what constitutes abuse to the point where any and all kids can be seized — which is exactly the result the policy was designed to bring about.
Maybe you think they’re a little young, but you don’t know them, and they aren’t your kids, so what you think doesn’t matter.
The children are in the custody of their parents, who are in the best position to make choices in their best interests. If their parents, who know them best, are extremely likely to love them, and to have their best interests at heart, have decided that it’s an acceptable risk then in the absence of evidence to the contrary it is not our place to second guess them.
Raise your own kids according to what you believe, and let others do the same.
This new attitude is all bullshit! I’m 51. When I was nine and ten, my buds and I used to run ALL DAY and range for miles, (Admittedly, I grew up in an affluent portion of west St. Louis county) and there was never a call…not one in years. NO cell phones, pagers, location chips etc. I had a GREAT childhood. This world is devolving into hell knows what. (Heaven sure doesn’t, since it stems from hell and the minions).
Yes! Our only restriction was that we had to be with a friend or sibling at all times.
Same here, Invierno. I walked a mile to and from school every day when I was five. I was hunting (yes, real guns), fishing, swimming, and just exploring from ten years old on, nearly all alone, and consider it the idyllic childhood. I had to ask permission, let my mother know where I was going, and be home by dark. Oh, and have all my chores done first!
CPS & the Police had better stay out of my neighborhood. Kids walk about all the time without their parents. You know what neighbors do-we look out for them, we make sure they are safe, even if they aren’t our children. We don’t call the police and say hey, some kids are walking alone you’d better come check them out and go have a sit down with the parents.
CPS is on steroids across the country. Check out this site: Medical Kidnapping-http://medicalkidnap.com/. CPS have become the Gestapo for the government and America has become a police state.
Children not allowed to walk home? The United States of Insanity.
CPS is a weapon. It consists of nothing but liars and devils and demons to break down and destroy the families (strength) of its enemies. They’ve already destroyed mine by force, fraud, and deceit. There are no words to express the disdain I have for that wicked abomination or those who make that dead, lifeless body to walk and speak and destroy.
Social Worker schools; they churn out nothing but 100% Grade A busybodies and control freak scum! I know something of them also.
When they get their talons in you, they never want to let go. Only when their workload becomes too much for them will they let go.
When behavior is monikered…the perception of said behavior comes under scrutiny. CPS generally makes decisions relative to individual situations rather than grouping behaviors/situations creating the opportunity for one’s bias to determine the outcome. So when society monikers its own behavior in relationship to CPS, the meaning of the behavior can only be understood in a way that produces outcomes based on bias. Better to parent based on your own perceptions/beliefs than attach to group think….. which raises the red flag.
“Monikered”? You mean like Moniker Lewinsky?
We, as a nation, have allowed these groups, ( or, more accurately, individuals within the groups) to become corrupt and devolve into a parasitic body that needs to continually invent new ways and reasons for their existence, otherwise they would be out of jobs.
Many of the security agencies have become the same way.
Even if we are able to eliminate crime altogether they will find a way to make you need them, (or make you THINK you need them)
CPS gets lots of money for kids.
They didn’t walk home “alone”; they walked with one another. The Buddy System.
You need to change that headline.
Not allowing children to mature and grow naturally is helpful when creating a nation of dependant sheep who cannot care for themselves or their families. CPS is a corrupt organization with no actual use to our society. Get the hell rid of it. Or let more children suffer.
Catherine Austin Fitts has what she calls “The Popsicle Index”. It’s the percentage of parents in any given neighborhood who feel that where they live is safe enough for their child to go alone to the nearest store to buy a Popsicle. The higher the number, the safer the neighborhood. What we’re seeing now is the government setting the Popsicle Index at zero for us, regardless of reality. In a way, isn’t that a tacit admission that the entire police state apparatus is a colossal failure and should be scrapped in favor of a new approach?
What is also sickening about this. In Texas over the years children abused one too many times wind up dead and they were previously on the CPS caseloads. The common response from CPS workers is they are overloaded and backlogged. So what about this nonsense? This caseload would only take away from real abused, neglected and exploited children.