Abby Schachter of The Weekly Standard laments the growing need our society feels to police our children and the death of the free-range parents.

“You know, I’d really had a nightmare about this, but I didn’t realize they would do it. I didn’t think they would. The kids must be terrified.” So exclaimed Danielle Meitiv of Silver Spring, Maryland, to free-range-parenting godmother Lenore Skenazy. The “they” in this case are the authorities—police officers and child protective services workers—who, for all intents and purposes, kidnapped the Meitiv children on their way home from the park on a clear Sunday afternoon in April.

The police picked up the kids, assuring them they’d be driven home. The children were two and a half blocks from their house and knew exactly where they were and how to get home. Instead, police kept them in the back seat of the cruiser for several hours, without allowing the kids to call home or themselves calling the parents to alert them. The children were transferred to the nearest Child Protective Services Crisis Center, and after another couple of hours the parents were finally notified. The Meitivs rushed over to the center at 11 p.m. and were reunited with their son and daughter.

Mrs. Meitiv was especially scared because this was not the first time her children had been picked up by police. When it happened last December, they were brought home, but subsequently the parents were charged by Child Protective Services, the children were interviewed without their parents, and mom and dad were found responsible for “unsubstantiated child neglect.” Considering the dozens of parents across the nation who have had much worse brought upon them for allowing their children to be outside unattended—arrests, foster care, probation, huge legal bills—the Meitivs’ sentence was on the light side.

Read the article “Policing Children: Free-Range Parents Are Going to Need Lawyers” on weeklystandard.com.