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Civil Liberties

Parents of Kids Taken Away By CPS: They Were Terrified

Has this incident made the Meitiv children any safer?

Lenore Skenazy | 4.13.2015 10:08 AM

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Here is what Maryland Free-Range Mom Danielle Meitiv had to say about last night's ordeal with the police and Child Protective Services. She wrote on Facebook:

The police coerced our children into the back of a patrol car and kept them trapped there for three hours, without notifying us, before bringing them to the Crisis Center, and holding them there without dinner for another two and a half hours. We finally got home at 11pmand the kids slept in our room because we were all exhausted and terrified.

Has this incident made the Meitiv children any safer? When the authorities picked the children up a short distance from their house and took them away without telling their parents, what were they being protected from? Why is this not simply a case of kidnapping?

Families should have legal protections against such abuse. The Free-Range Kids & Parents Bill of Rights is one solution. Bring it to your next town meeting. Write to the town paper. Hand it to the mayor. Modify it any way you'd like—its basic premise is simple and very necessary:

Children have the right to some unsupervised time, and parents have the right to give it to them without getting arrested.

Spread the word.

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NEXT: Why Can't We Build Things Anymore? Because Government Is Terrible

Lenore Skenazy is president of Let Grow, a nonprofit promoting childhood independence and resilience, and founder of the Free-Range Kids movement.

Civil LibertiesCultureFree-Range KidsParenting
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