Quote:
Originally Posted by 1overcosc
Ugh, tell me about it.
Jennifer Keesmatt, the chief planner of the City of Toronto, wrote a opinion piece in the Toronto Star, advocating for the apparently revolutionary idea of getting your kids to walk to school... alone. She made her 9 year old walk to school alone after spending about a year accompanying her and lets her take the TTC alone. The number of people who wrote in accusing her of abusing her child and saying she shouldn't be a mother was faith-in-humanity crushing.
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Um, maybe my memory is imperfect, but I only remember on one occasion my mother picking me up from school. I didn't have far to walk, but it was routine for kids to walk over 1 km to school when they were quite little. In those days, there were lots of kids and the bigger kids accompanied the little ones. We taught each other how to be safe on the streets. Those were the days when families mostly only had one car so being driven was out of the question. I remember in later years, school buses were picking up more and more kids closer to the school. A time when we were willing to spend more for this and the safety issue was becoming more of an issue. It is now extreme.
I just read that it is considered child abuse to leave a child home alone for a short time even at age 15. Wow! Have times changed.