Brittany Patterson lives in a rural part of Georgia with her four kids. Her husband is a superintendent at a school in Montana and is away much of the time. Last month, Patterson had to take one of her children to the doctor's office. She left her 10-year-old son Soren (he's nearly 11) at home with her father, the boy's grandfather.

At some point, Soren decided to go for a walk to a local gas station where he knew his best friend's grandmother was working. He didn't ask permission, he just went. Someone saw him walking along the road and called police.

Lenore Skenazy, a parenting advocate who runs the nonprofit Let Grow and first reported Patterson’s story, told me that her case shouldn’t have even required police involvement.

The female stranger who first saw Soren walking down the road asked if he was okay, and was told yes, but the stranger called 911 anyway. “When the sheriff answered the call, that should have been the end of it,” Skenazy said.

Instead, local law enforcement picked up Soren and brought him home. A few hours later, police officers showed up and arrested Brittany Patterson.

After establishing that Patterson’s father was at home with her children, Officer Robertson told her: “Okay, turn around for me.” 

“Why?” asked Patterson, furrowing her brow.

“Because you’re under arrest,” the officer replied.

She was taken to the police station, stripped and put in an orange jumpsuit. She was initially told the charge was "reckless endangerment," but there is no such offense in Georgia. The actual charge was reckless conduct, a misdemeanor which could land her in jail for up to a year. Patterson's lawyer David DeLugas points out that under Georgia law parents can leave a child aged 9-12 with a caretaker for up to two hours. She left Soren at home with his grandfather for 90 minutes. And since she didn't give him permission to walk to the store, there was no criminal act here.

Perhaps realizing they don't have much of a case, authorities are trying to bully Patterson into signing a "safety plan" that would allow the department of family services to monitor Soren's whereabouts.

The week after her arrest, she was presented with a “safety plan” from the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services. Under its terms, she would correct her “inadequate supervision” by downloading an app on Soren’s phone to monitor his location as a case manager stood by as a witness. Patterson must designate a “safety person” to watch over the kids whenever she leaves home without them, and inform all household members any time she leaves the residence. And, with a case manager watching, she must tell Soren how important it is that he stay on the property.

Patterson hasn't signed but some version of this may eventually wind up in the plea deal she will eventually be offered.

All of this seems quite crazy to me. Soren lives in a town of about 225 people. What danger can he really get into walking to the gas station? I grew up in Arlington, VA which, when I was 10, had a population of 156,000. Every weekend I would leave the house in the morning and go bike riding with my best friend. Sometimes we'd go to his house. Sometimes we'd ride in the streets around the neighborhood, but frequently we would make a game of riding as far from home as we could. I doubt we ever went more than 2 miles but we would try to ride until we were in a neighborhood we didn't know. We might be gone for an hour or two by ourselves. There were no cell phones.

Alternatively, I had a friend whose home backed up to a wooded area that contained an abandoned gas station. The area near the gas station had become a kind of unofficial dump for the neighborhood and was full of all sorts of old appliances and junk. We would spend hours in the woods building forts out of literal garbage. We thought it was great but clearly all of our parents belonged in jail.

The world has changed a lot since we were kids but 10-year-olds will always need to wander off and explore things on their own. The fact that most kids have phones and can call for help if they get in trouble makes this a relatively low-risk activity these days. It's part of growing up and not something that needs to be remedied with arrests, threats of jail and government mandated supervision of kids.

The cops in this case really just need to back off. Here's a local news report about the arrest.