Moms Talk: Children Walking Home Alone

I know I said I wanted to , but one story this week is particularly hard to ignore: the kidnapping and murder of an 8-year-old New York City boy named Leiby Kletzky.

I’ll spare you the gruesome details, but the gist of the story is that Leiby really wanted to walk home from his summer day camp all by himself, to flex that burgeoning sense of independence that many kids feel around that age. Stories in the New York Times have reported that Leiby wanted to walk to a Judaica bookstore, where he would meet his family. But he got lost and the stranger he asked for help turned out to be the last person he should have turned to. Police say that the 35-year-old man, Levi Aron, kidnapped and killed the boy in a panic when he realized that so many people had mobilized to look for the missing child. Aron reportedly told police that he was afraid to bring Leiby home.

The Times also reports that Kletzky’s parents are beside themselves, racked with guilt for what happened when they relented and allowed their son to strike out on his own, even for the short walk through their neighborhood. I’m sure their sad story is prompting many parents to reevaluate their own decisions regarding the independence of their children and to ask themselves whether their kids are truly safe on their own, even if they are close to home.

I think that absolutely no blame rests on the shoulders of Leiby Kletzky’s parents, and my heart goes out to them for what they are going through. They made a judgment call based on what they knew of their son and their neighborhood, and we can’t blame them for what one disturbed, unhinged person has confessed to doing to their son.

But of course this tragedy will have parents everywhere thinking twice. It’s true that the world is a different place now than it was when we were children, and yet there have always been crazy, troubled people in this world who are a threat. My husband and I grew up in different places and we were both given some freedom to move about town on our own. He walked home from kindergarten by himself when he lived in Cleveland, and I remember being around 10 or 11 and walking around my small western New York city with my friends. Neither of those behaviors were considered odd or unsafe in the early 1980s when they happened. But they strike me as two scenarios that would almost never happen today because, as they say, times have changed.

Our children are too young now to worry about how we’re going to make this decision when the time comes. But readers, how did you decide when to let your children have the freedom to walk home on their own?