The list is longer than an ant’s walk across the Sahara Desert.
What brings this to mind is a recent national story about Brittany Patterson, who was arrested and is now facing possible jail time because her 10-year-old son (who turned 11 days after the “crime”) walked by himself to the Dollar General store less than a mile from the family’s house in Mineral Bluff, a small town of 300 in Fannin County, Georgia.
The sheer idiocy of this story began when the Fannin County Sheriff’s Office obtained a warrant and arrested Brittany on “suspicion of reckless conduct” charges on October 30. She was handcuffed in front of her family, taken to jail, and is currently out on a $500 bail.
The back story is that another one of Patterson’s sons had a doctor’s appointment, so she gave the offending child, Soren, the choice of going to the doctor’s office with them or staying at home on their 16-acre property, where his grandfather, who uses a wheelchair, was also present.
Like any red-blooded boy his age, Soren would rather be hog-tied than go to the doctor’s office with his mom and a sibling. When she left for the doctor’s, Patterson didn’t see Soren and assumed he was playing outside.
(Brittney and Soren Patterson)
Rogue Juvenile
Instead, after she left, Soren hightailed it down what his mom says is “not a super dangerous or even dangerous-at-all stretch of road” to do what 10- and 11-year-old boys do at any such store: gawk, mess around with various trinkets and toys, and end up with candy or a soda.
However, on his way, a busybody driving by saw the youngster walking on the side of the road and called the sheriff’s department to report that a kid walking down the road was, unlike the busybody, minding his own business. The call started the chain of events that led to the warrant and Patterson’s arrest.
(As a side note, why did it take three sheriffs’ vehicles at the Pattersons’ house to arrest a mom in rural Georgia because her son walked down a public road to town? The arresting deputy was a female version of Barney Fife without the looks or humor. She was arrogant-to-rude, demanding, and lecturing about child-rearing, which one suspects she is ill-equipped to provide. And what is going on in the County Attorney’s office? Have they solved all the real crimes in their fine county? But that’s another busybody story.)
The day after her arrest, a case manager from the Division of Family and Children’s Services arrived at the Patterson residence for a “home visit.” He or she even interviewed Patterson’s oldest son at his school. Several days later, after telling Ms. Patterson that everything seemed fine, the Division of Family and Children’s Services presented her with a “safety plan” and told her she must sign it and put a GPS tracker on Soren’s phone if she wanted to vacate the charges.
Activate Mama Bear Mode
By then, Patterson was rightly in full mama bear mode, and remains so. She has told the county attorney and Child Services Division that they can pound sand and has hired an attorney to fight the charges. Her GoFundMe page has raised nearly $60,000, and public sentiment is overwhelmingly on her side. Like most states, Georgia has no age requirement that fits this situation, and “reckless conduct” has no legal teeth or even a fixed definition – it’s a catch-all trap for anything and everything.
However, this case is a prime example of what has happened throughout the American landscape over several generations. We’ve exchanged childhood for the illusion of safety and parental convenience. Young kids need to interact with other kids and play outside — even in games where they might get hurt occasionally, like dodgeball. They must acquire skills and be introduced to common sense by doing “stuff,” mostly independently. Moms and dads are integral to this, but sometimes, that means stepping back as well as stepping up. It’s an intuitive balance.
But we don’t just see this with kids. Adults also have been drowned in “do’s and don’ts” by experts continually found wanting — or lying for money or notoriety— in behavioral psychology, health, pandemics, medicine, outdoor activities, work, and social interactions. The busybodies never stop because normal people don’t stop them anymore. And worse, much of the garbage advice finds its way into the law, or the busybodies with the “do as I say” temperament end up in government – and increasingly in law enforcement. I fear the worst of them end up on boards of public schools and HOAs.
Of course, the media drives this. It’s an epidemic of people telling other people how to live and what to do. My late mother – a wise woman – used to complain decades ago that there were a lot of folks who wanted to know ”what the other guy was doing – and stop them!” She was ahead of her time. My late brother and I spent countless unaccounted hours on the sides of mountains, in the desert, corrals, swimming pools, and hanging out doing nothing with our buddies. And the neighbor girls were hanging around outside as well.
The Years of Living Dangerously
Childhood isn’t always safe. It just isn’t. Look at the animal kingdom. It is just as unsafe for the young of other species as it is for humans. It’s just the way the world works. But the alternative is not to grow up with everything you need to thrive.
My brother barely clasped my hand at the last moment on a sheer cliff face in the Franklin Mountains to stop my fall when I was about eight or nine years old. I rushed to find help when he fell bottom-first and wound up immobilized on a giant cactus. We collected venomous wasps and spiders with glee and pried under rocks, looking for rattlesnakes or their discarded rattles. Our friends did the same. And, when we had air guns or .22 rifles (when we were 11 or 12 years old, maybe?), we went can-plinking and bottle-busting.
Like today, there was no shortage of creeps and bad people around back then. The difference is that my dad and all the other dads told us what to do, where to kick (guess), and how to spot the evildoers. I don’t know if being a kid is any more dangerous now than in the past, but we for sure spend more time worrying about it now. I suspect our constant fear and public concern cause more angst than actual threats do. Here is one more thing—there was a common understanding that the neighborhood adults looked out for trouble and didn’t need the police to confront problems except in extreme cases.
We need to add this to incoming President Donald Trump’s agenda. We need a national movement to demand common sense and responsibility from our self-appointed or taxpayer-funded authorities. To do this, it’ll take very vocal, loud, and fearless citizens, like Brittney Patterson, telling our masters and busybodies, “Go pound sand.”