On Oct. 31, Brittany Patterson, a 41-year-old Georgia mother, was arrested and accused of endangering her son—all because the unsupervised 10-year-old walked less than a mile away from home. Patterson told NBC News in an interview, “It’s not a super dangerous or even dangerous-at-all stretch of road. I wasn’t terrified for him or scared for his safety.”
Nevertheless, the sheriff’s department went to the family’s home, where Patterson was handcuffed, arrested, booked on suspicion of reckless conduct, and forced to post $500 bail.
Parenting expert Dawn Friedman responded to the arrest by declaring, “We used to allow children some freedoms that we no longer allow them. And I don’t think that’s to their benefit or to ours.”
Lenore Skenazy, the founder of Free-Range Kids, weighed in. “The crime was that she didn’t know where her kid was for a little while because she’d left them at home. And to her surprise, he didn’t stay home. It’s just so normal. And to make that into a crime is insane.”
Sadly, this case of a government body superseding parents is anything but unique.
Government-run schools have way overstepped their bounds all too often, becoming a child’s co-parent. A good example is California, where AB 1955 was voted into law in July. This outrageous legislation bars school districts from requiring staff to notify parents if their child decides to change their gender.
In a similar vein, the San Francisco school district has determined that teachers don’t have to notify parents before teaching intimate gender identity lessons.
The Turner School District in Kansas City let a 4-year-old preschooler take home Jacobs New Dress, a picture book in which “a little boy wears girls’ clothes and even competes with his friend Emily to be a princess.” (It’s no secret that there is an effort by LGBTQ groups to push gender identity dogma on schoolchildren nationwide, and all too often, the government is a willing ally.)
“Satan Clubs” are popping up all over the country. In Bakersfield, CA—a fairly conservative part of the state—the leader of the after-school club asserted that devil worship shouldn’t be a problem, explaining that he felt the need to counter “Christian-based clubs.”
What can parents do about this?
School choice is one way to escape public schools and indeed, parental freedom continues to expand. While there were setbacks in Colorado, Nebraska, and Kentucky this past Election Day—mostly due to poorly written laws and being outspent—Florida, Arizona, Utah, and Ohio either created universal or near-universal private school choice programs or expanded existing programs to be universal or near-universal during this past legislative session.
To continue reading, go to:
https://www.forkidsandcountry.org/blog/the-sandstorm-minimizing-the-state-as-co-parent
