When ‘free-range’ was just being a kid

My mother was one of the strict ones, the kind who believed James Bond movies would cause our morals to decay, that going barefoot would cripple us and earning a grade less than an A would crush our dreams — and hers.

We had bedtimes and chores and followed more rules at home than at the Catholic school we attended. We were the good kids — or

else.

Yet as restrictive as she was in many respects, she was also surprisingly liberal in others. She subscribed to the concept of free-range child-rearing, which is to say she believed in cultivating in us a spirit of independence and an ease with and appreciation for our world.

My mother, like most mothers in those “Leave

It To Beaver/Brady Bunch” years, saw the benefit of giving children the freedom to explore and to play without constantly hovering or scheduling every moment with soccer practice and ballet. We rode bikes for blocks through our neighborhoods, walked to school, played in nearby parks, all untethered from the apron strings.

No one called it free-range back then. No one called it neglectful or eccentric, either. It was called childhood.

I thought about my almost entirely wonderful childhood (I really did miss going barefoot but have since made up for that) this week when a friend expressed her outrage over the continuing saga of the Meitiv family of Silver Springs, Md., who has been taken to task and taken to court over its adherence to the free-range concept of child-rearing.

Rafi Meitiv, 10, and his 6-year-old sister, Dvora Meitiv, you may have read, have now twice been taken into custody by police and the local child protective services agency for walking alone in their neighborhood.

In the latest incident, which occurred Sunday evening, a man walking his dog reported seeing the children walking home alone. The children were not lost, not in distress or in fear or apparent danger. They were about 2½ blocks from home, according to local news sources, but the man called police anyway.

“The police coerced our children into the back of a patrol car and kept them trapped there for three hours, without notifying us, before bringing them to the Crisis Center, and holding them there without dinner for another two and a half hours,” the children’s mother, Danielle Meitiv, wrote on her Facebook page. “We finally got home at 11 p.m. and the kids slept in our room because we were all exhausted and terrified.”

My Albuquerque friend, who also has two children about the same age, was terrified, too. And furious.

“This is ridiculous!” she raged. “We see reports and crime statistics that say it’s actually safer today (true, according to national statistics). Child abductions are very rare (true again). Abuse is more likely to happen within the family (yup). Now, police and child protective services are going after parents who let their kids go to the park and play without supervision? I grew up without adult supervision. We are losing our individual freedoms, folks!” But in the same breath, she admitted this: “I am a parent, and I live in fear of letting my kids ride their bikes alone around my neighborhood, although I see other kids doing it.”

Such is the paradox and paranoia of modern-day parents, who want the same childhood they had for their children yet fear today’s world too much to let go, despite data showing that our communities are safer, for the most part. It just doesn’t always feel that way.

I get it. We love our children and want to protect them. But life isn’t an episode of “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.” And yet it is messy sometimes. Bad things happen, no matter what we do. We buckle up our children in car seats and still someone rearends us on the freeway. We wash our kids’ hands with antibacterial soap and still they get sick.

There’s a difference between teaching “stranger danger” and danger of everything and everyone, and we’re not so sure we know how to discern between the two.

And what of the village it takes to raise a child? What of that man walking his dog? Rather than ask the Meitiv kids if they were lost or needed help, he pulled out his cellphone, called police and then followed them.

What of the officers who got the kids into a squad car then held them for hours with no food and no bathroom breaks? Why not listen to the kids, drive them home and speak to the parents?

And what of the Meitiv parents themselves, who had already become national news for a previous free-range episode in December when their kids were taken into custody for playing in a park alone? Should they hold firm to their beliefs or consider a more cautious approach?

Somewhere there’s a happy medium, and it’s different for each family. Regardless, it’s important to remember that keeping kids safe should not mean keeping them scared and in a constant state of terror. That’s no childhood at all.