> "This law makes it so that allowing children normal independence is legal."

now we just need to make it normal (i.e., socially acceptable). it's hard because no matter where we stand in the sociosphere, we're always on the lookout for danger and enemies. that's the yang to our yin, the opposing force that elucidates our core identity.

while life is full of quite unlikely but life-threatening risks, it's crippling to be constantly finding, worrying about, and trying to mitigate all of those risks for our kids. we can't, and it shouldn't be expected of us.

parents need to provide the broad strokes (don't jump off a cliff, swallow random pills, or run blindly into the street) but kids need the room to test the minutiae of those boundaries (can i jump off the monkey bars? is this rural dirt road ok to run into? is it ok to eat 10 of these flintstones vitamins at once?). that's what growing up is all about.

otherwise our kids won't be able to cope with the inevitable dangers they will face later in life. on some dimensions, they need to be tested in minutely-increasing increments so they develop confidence in emergency situations ("camp" in the living room, then in the yard, then with a scouting troop, then with friends, then alone) but they don't need to be--and can't be--prepared for every danger in the world.

you can't fly without risking a fall to the ground.

It's sad to me how many parents fail to prepare children for the world.

As a non-parent (and do not want kids), I feel I have a jaded view on this. Yet, I was once a child.. so I should have some, I guess. I taught myself to shave, learned about sex myself, taught myself to drive, etcetc. I love my parents, but frankly they didn't teach me anything in life outside of passive observations of their behavior. I learned about bickering from them though, in leagues. heh.

I don't get why more parents don't want to be the kind that are so dependable, the child will call them when they're too drunk to drive home at 16yrs old. Or the kind that explains to their kids that all drugs are not equal, some are far worse, some are not bad. Or hell, not just that some drugs are bad, but why some are bad.

So many parents seem afraid to be the one who teaches their child first about the "tough" things in the world like sex and drugs. Yet, the tough things in the world should come first from them, imo. I just don't get it.

> So many parents seem afraid to be the one who teaches their child first about the "tough" things in the world like sex and drugs. Yet, the tough things in the world should come first from them, imo. I just don't get it.

I am a parent, dad of two girls: 4 and 9. I completely agree with you.

I have a rule that I will never lie to my kids when they ask a question, and that I'll always answer to the best of my abilities. In the rare case where I feel like they're not ready for the answer, I'll tell them that. So far it's worked well.

A couple of months ago we moved ~1k miles. My nine-year-old rode in the moving truck with me for 10 hours, and most of that time was spent discussing sex. Most of her questions were initially about the mechanics of the act, but as I explained things she ended up being just as interested in the emotional and social aspects. That conversation spawned several follow-ups where she had more questions after she thought about things. The only aspect I stopped short of explaining in full was pornography - she's aware of its existence, but not the reasons people participate in it or view it... and that's hard to explain to someone who hasn't yet experienced the impact of hormones during puberty.

The way I see it, my kids are going to learn about the world one way or another. I see only positive consequences of being the trusted source of information and guidance when they first encounter it, regardless of how difficult the conversations may become.

> The way I see it, my kids are going to learn about the world one way or another. I see only positive consequences of being the trusted source of information and guidance when they first encounter it, regardless of how difficult the conversations may become.

Yup, and that's exactly why I struggle to understand why so many parents avoid it.

Some I think mean well, but vastly underestimate when their child will discover the worst of humanity. Especially in the internet age, at school or at home. It's a complicated world.

Looking back on my own childhood, unfiltered internet access really changed my life. Yes, I got into some things that weren't appropriate for my age, but it also turned me on to programming and tech in general. In the end I turned that into a lucrative, successful career. I can honestly say that internet access was more of a factor in my life than school.

In light of that, I give my kids the same thing. Instead of filters, I just keep logs of network traffic and occasionally grep them for keywords that I think might warrant discussion.

Oh yea, I wasn't suggesting filtering the kids - I wasn't saying anything in that context. I meant, the internet is going to get to kids regardless of how much we try to filter them. If a child isn't seeing it at their home computer, it'll be via word of mouth, or with a friends phone. That's all

Good points, but one issue is that you can actually have CPS take kids unreasonably even if most parents believe in letting children run free.

All you need is someone to report you, and for the agency to have an incentive to err on the side of taking kids away.

Very true. I used to volunteer with an advocacy group that helped parents whose kids were wrongly taken by CPS and what I saw of the system scared the crap out of me. It does some good work but the sheer stupidity of some of the employees, the arbitrary powers and lack of due process was the stuff of nightmares.

There's a number of stories about children being taken from parents for dubious reasons, who end up dying in foster care:

Removed from parents because the father smoked marijuana at night when the child was asleep, child murdered by foster care parent with a history of violations: http://fox43.com/2014/11/06/2-year-old-taken-away-from-paren...

Removed from parents for "drug use and homelessness", died from neglect in foster care: https://www.abqjournal.com/1113809/caregiver-arrested-in-dea...

Removed from parents because baby had a bruise from when he bumped his head while feeding, died in foster care: http://fox40.com/2017/08/17/after-baby-dies-in-foster-care-b...

I read that last one and I'm not sure the "free range parenting" bill would even cover that. That was a case of, baby had a bruise and a doctor arbitrarily decided it was a willful injury by the parents. A process as aribtrary and random as that seems pretty broken and after that the foster process failed catastrophically. But I doubt "free range parenting" shuts down the entire process of removing kids from environments that are detected (rightly or wrongly) as directly physically abusive.

It is frightening. And it varies significantly by state.

For example Utah (where I foster) has 2.8 per 1,000 children in foster care, while neighboring Nevada has 6.7 per 1,000. New York has 5.0. California has 6.2. [1]

The ever-conservative Utah legislature puts a very high priority of children living with their legal parents. As long as there's no imminent health risk (abuse, hard drug use, severe neglect), parents virtually always keep custody.

I really wish it were like that in more places.

Traumatic situations for children should not be taken likely. But being forcibly removed into state custody is also a very traumatic event. You've got to be confident that the latter is the lesser evil.

[1] http://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/6243-children-in...

As someone who has been a foster parent and worked with a sort of advocacy group as well, I can tell you it isn't any better on this side.

My friend had a babysitter report her to CPS because there were stuffed animals in her 7-month old's crib, which apparently contradicts some guidance. CPS closed the investigation without doing anything, but not before causing a lot of unnecessary worry.

> My friend had a babysitter report her to CPS because there were stuffed animals in her 7-month old's crib, which apparently contradicts some guidance.

I can confirm that a wide variety of medical sources strongly recommend that there be nothing but a proper infant mattress and fitted sheet designed specifically for the mattress in an infants crib, to reduce SIDS risk. 7 months is within the age range to which I usually see the recommendation applied, but out of the highest-risk period.

I bet having a babysitter represents a higher probability of harm to the child than a stuffed animal ;)

> which apparently contradicts some guidance

This isn’t just “some guidance”. Its the American Academy of Pediatrics guidance which shows stuffed animals, pillows, and blankets increase the risk factor for SIDS.

This guidance is beyond suspect. It falls into the category of "drink 8 glasses of water a day." Doctors parrot it, but they have no foundation for saying this and no one knows when/why they started saying it. But they all say it.

Any serious medical professional worth a damn will immediately question the SIDS "guidance." If you don't know what causes something, you can't treat it. You don't blindly run around doing things and hope it helps. You have to find out the cause to find the cure.

This is exactly the kind of FUD that people are fighting when dealing with crazy CPS zealots.

Edit: If SIDS is suffocating from an obstruction, then call it suffocation by obstruction. But it's not suffocation by obsstruction. The current theory is that it's suffocation due to brain malfunction. Putting a toy in a crib isn't going to cause a brain malfunction.

> The current theory is that it's suffocation due to brain malfunction.

Law requires hazardous chemicals be sprayed on the bed mat to protect(?) the child from fires. Try stuffing your face in an infant mattress and see if you notice the smell.

A lot of medical guidance comes from busybodies who have no ability to perform cost-benefit analysis (e.g. pregnant women and caffeine). SIDS risk is around 0.5 per 1,000. The major cause of the decrease since the 1980s seems to be the decline of smoking. Everything else is noise for something that's already low probability.

Do you have a source for this claim?

References like https://www1.nichd.nih.gov/sts/campaign/science/Pages/backsl... and articles like https://www.npr.org/2011/07/15/137859024/rethinking-sids-man... make it likely that the increase in sleeping children on their back is the bulk of the reduction. And that the fact that blacks are less likely to take that recommendation is the reason why the black community has twice the death rate of whites.

This is something that I have a personal interest in. My nephew died of SIDS months before the recommendation about sleeping positions was reversed back in the early 90s. My sister did not smoke. She did put him to sleep on his stomach.

>A lot of medical guidance...

>busybodies who have no ability to perform cost-benefit analysis

Not just medical guidance. All sorts of rules, laws, regulation and other BS is the result of these people.

SIDS has decreased (~70%) since 1980s, but Accidental Suffocation has increased (perhaps due to improved diagnosis of ASSB vs SIDS of the same underlying events) to become about as prevalent as SIDS.

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/128/5/e1341.fu...

Ok, sure, but let the parents know instead of calling CPS, right?

Not to mention that calling CPS would probably be a career-limiting move for a babysitter. What parents would want to risk hiring that babysitter after something like that?

There is a difference between a new born and a 7 month old. The latter is extremly unlikly of suffocating on a blanket or a stuffed animal and calling CPS in this case is abhorrent. There is certinaly a step before you call someone to take there kid away

The context is taking their children away from their parents under the pretext that the parents are unfit to raise them. Can we agree that "a professional association of physicians made a recommendation which the parents violated" does not constitute "unfit parent"? SIDS is also increased in babies who sleep in a separate room; presumably we're not condoning robbing everyone who has a nursery of their children.

> The context is taking their children away from their parents under the pretext that the parents are unfit to raise them. Can we agree that "a professional association of physicians made a recommendation which the parents violated" does not constitute "unfit parent"?

Being aware of a parent disregarding widely disseminated recommendations of the medical community on a death risk is certainly reason for a third party to be concerned about fitness. It may not equate to unfitness, which corresponds well to the lack of any CPS action when the report was investigated.

The threshold for reasonsble reporting to a investigative authority should not be certainty of a violation.

(Now, I would expect a babysitter to attempt to resolve this with the parents first.)

> Being aware of a parent disregarding widely disseminated recommendations of the medical community on a death risk is certainly reason for a third party to be concerned about fitness.

Absolutely not. Way over the line.

And driving your kids around in a car raises the risk factor of getting killed with a bumper in their face, but that seems fine. We're completely blind to the relative risks we face and focus on the one in a million when one in a hundred risks are everywhere.

I challenge you to find one documented case of the death of a child, of any age, from any number of stuffed animals up to 5 being allowed in the crib during sleep :)

I once spent a bunch of time chasing references from the AAP and others, and could not find anything like that (because I was trying to decide whether to allow a stuffed animal in the crib with my baby). The stuffed animals seem to just be lumped in to the abstract category of "soft things" but all the cases of kids actually suffocating were from other soft things, most notably soft bedding.

I did see one case of a child dying from having a whole crib full of stuffed animals (so the stuffed animals were effectively bedding), hence the limit of 5 for the challenge.

Even so, the extent of the interaction there should be "that is potentially dangerous, you should stop" -- it's not exactly a strong indicator of being unfit parents.

We had a bullshit CPS scare in San Francisco when our first was born that involved 2 CPS inspectors having to come inspect our house and verify that we had "at least a dresser drawer" to put the kid in. It was entirely stupid (we were renting a 3-story townhouse off 8th and Folsom, which was nosebleed expensive even in 1999), but still incredibly stressful for us, because CPS had no compunctions about telling us what the consequences of noncompliance would be.

You have kids and you realize how traumatic even a single night of custody interruption would be, and then you think about what the reality of due process in these situations is.

Good reminder that not all laws are restrictive, or more specifically, some of the best laws restrict the state not the individual.

Yeah, see Bill of Rights.

I think what baffles the mind is, that a state law is required to ensure this in the land of the free. How did things evolve to a state where this is necessary?

Both frustrating and terrifying as a parent of young kids. I'm fortunate enough to live far enough off the beaten path that nosy neighbors aren't my top concern, but it still just seems asinine for cases like the ones mentioned in the article to even result in investigation, much less losing my kids (even temporarily).

The law seems like a common sense balancing of issues--protect children from obvious abuse but ensure there's plenty of room for them to grow up into robust adults. Kudos to Utah for trying to be reasonable about it.

(Personally I think most people should do a few things that scare the crap out of them while growing up--it's the only way to learn your limits.)