The article really glosses over the fact that the kid was 5yo walking to a pond. It mentions it at the very start and then never brings it up again. That's the part that got me: the mom gave her 5yo permission to go to a large body of water unsupervised.

I'm a parent of three and strongly believe in letting your kids roam around (indeed, I live on acreage and taught my kids about the venomous snakes and spiders in our area, and then let er rip). But a 5yo who specifically asks to go back to a large body of water unsupervised is a bit too much for me.

Reason always strikes me as an opinionated libertarian media outlet, and this article really feels that way to me, where they keep playing up the "walking on the street" type stuff, the "we're too afraid of kidnappings" part, but not the fact that a 5yo unsupervised at a pond is by far the most dangerous part of this entire story.

Even as a kid of the 80s, I never saw 5yos out and about unsupervised, let alone by a pond. 5yo is possibly preschool.

Religious conservative, likely politically so, whose college degree was in family science at BYU—a degree Mormons steer their daughter into for her Mrs Degree—with experience in conservative politics at the state level who is responsible for passing a law giving parents a lot of freedom to let their little kids run around by basically saying "unless they're in immediate danger, YOLO"? So of course a reasonable judicial system tried to find a way to stop this wild behavior perpetrated by a woman with self-dealing political sway.

Article does not pass the vibe check. Letting your PRESCHOOL age kid go to a pond alone is pretty damn irresponsible, and Reason is trying to gin up anti-gov't feelings when this is probably the best possible outcome. Mom gets slapped on the wrist for fucking up in a way that just barely skirts a law she helped get passed and politicians were too stupid to think about before passing.

Myself and my siblings all lived on a fairly large rural farm with 2 large bodies of water that we always hung around unsupervised from about 4 y/o onwards. We loved catching bullfrogs and watching the fishes and stuff. Our mom gave us very strict/scary warnings about never going in and being careful, but other than that we were pretty free thankfully. 5 y/o with a good warning seems totally fine.

That depends? My first swimming lessons were in Kindergarten when I was 4-5. We were visiting public baths "unsupervised" (they still had lifeguards of course) by the time I was 8.

Assuming the kid wasn't even planning to enter the water, I see no inherent problem here. We seem to be operating on the assumption that unsupervised children will immediately succumb to sudden and irrational urges to kill themselves in creative ways.

I understand ponds can be dangerous, and every year kids drown in various bodies of water, but you're probably more likely to get hurt by a vehicle crossing the road... so should the limit be "the road". Can the destination change the verdict?

> So of course a reasonable judicial system tried to find a way to stop this wild behavior perpetrated by a woman with self-dealing political sway.

Wow that's a lot of assumptions baked into one sentence.

Even if we concede that it is irresponsible, which would very much depend on the individual child, it should not be a crime.

I walked home along a river (path) as a 5 and 6 year old, home from school in the UK.