The time of free-range children is coming to an end. Remember when it was okay to walk alone to a friend’s house or go to a park? Now, those simple independent pleasures are considered bad parenting – potentially even criminally so. At least it was for Brittany Patterson of Georgia, who was arrested because her ten-year-old son walked less than a mile to town.
On October 30, Patterson took her eldest son to a medical appointment. She would have taken her youngest, ten-year-old Soren, had he been there when they left. Soren decided to walk to Mineral Bluff on his own, a town of only 370 people and not quite a mile from where he lives, to shop at the Dollar General store. The family lives on 16 acres with Patterson’s father. Her mother and sisters live just two miles away.
A woman saw Soren walking, asked if he was okay, then called authorities and…
