9 Year Old NYC Kid Takes Subway Alone -- Bad Parenting?

[alfred russel]

This is an old story that I dug up after reading an interview with this lady on the same topic. After the garden hose debate, I'm interested in people's thoughts. The Manhattan subways aren't exactly vice city anymore, but they aren't Walt Disney World either. Also, it was nice to leave her son with quarters to call if he got in trouble, but can you find a pay phone these days?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23935873/from/ET/

Mom lets 9-year-old take subway home alone
Columnist stirs controversy with experiment in childhood independence
   
Video
  A 9-year-old's subway ride
April 3: Izzie Skenazy wanted to travel home by himself, so armed with a fare card, a subway map and $20, his mom sent him off on a New York City adventure.


Once upon a time in New York City, it wasn't a big deal if pre-teen kids rode the subways and buses alone. Today, as Lenore Skenazy has discovered, a kid who goes out without a nanny, a helmet and a security detail is a national news story, and his mother is a candidate for child-abuse charges.

A columnist for The New York Sun, Skenazy recently left her 9-year-old son, Izzy, at Bloomingdale's in midtown Manhattan with a Metrocard for the subway, a subway map, $20, and told him she'd see him when he got back home. She wrote a column about it and has been amazed at the chord she struck among New Yorkers who remember being kids in those more innocent times.

"So many people – the ones who aren't castigating me as crazy – are all regaling me about the first time they took the subway," she told TODAY's Ann Curry on Thursday in New York. "And for most people, it's a great, happy memory. People love that independence."
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Izzy, who is now 10, nodded in agreement and insisted it was no big deal. He had been nagging his mother for a long time to let him ride home alone, and finally she agreed to let him take the downtown Lexington Avenue subway and then transfer to a crosstown bus to get home from Bloomingdale's.

"I was like, 'Finally!' " Izzy said of his reaction when his mom finally caved in to his nagging. "I think that it's a really easy, simple thing to get home."

And that was Skenazy's point in her column: The era is long past when Times Square was a fetid sump and taking a walk in Central Park after dark was tantamount to committing suicide. Recent federal statistics show New York to be one of the safest cities in the nation – right up there with Provo, Utah, in fact.

"Times are back to 1963," Skenzay said. "It's safe. It's a great time to be a kid in the city."

The problem is that people read about children who are abducted and murdered and fear takes over, she said. And she doesn't think fear should rule our lives.

As she wrote in her column about Izzy's big adventure: "Half the people I've told this episode to now want to turn me in for child abuse. As if keeping kids under lock and key and helmet and cell phone and nanny and surveillance is the right way to rear kids. It's not. It's debilitating — for us and for them."

When she said goodbye to Izzy in the handbags department, Skenazy didn't even leave him with a cell phone. Instead, she gave him a couple of quarters so he could call home on a pay phone if he got lost.

Dr. Ruth Peters, a parenting expert and TODAY Show contributor, agreed that children should be allowed independent experiences, but felt there are better – and safer – ways to have them than the one Skenazy chose.

"I'm not so much concerned that he's going to be abducted, but there's a lot of people who would rough him up," she said. "There's some bullies and things like that. He could have gotten the same experience in a safer manner."

"It's safe to go on the subway," Skenazy replied. "It's safe to be a kid. It's safe to ride your bike on the streets. We're like brainwashed because of all the stories we hear that it isn't safe. But those are the exceptions. That's why they make it to the news. This is like, 'Boy boils egg.' He did something that any 9-year-old could do."

Addressing the same subject in her column, she had written: "These days, when a kid dies, the world - i.e., cable TV - blames the parents. It's simple as that. And yet, Trevor Butterworth, a spokesman for the research center STATS.org, said, 'The statistics show that this is an incredibly rare event, and you can't protect people from very rare events. It would be like trying to create a shield against being struck by lightning.' "

She said that people ask her how she would feel if one of those terrible and rare events happened to her son.

[CountDeMoney]

The kid's lucky Siegy wasn't on that train, or it'd have been like a Sears sale: Children's Jeans, Half Off.

[Monoriu]

9 year old, boy, normal hours is fine.  If girl, then delay by 2-3 years.  If after midnight, not ok. 

[Pedrito]

Borderline good.

If the kid's as smart as he seems, I'd brainwash him about being extremely careful, but I'd let him go.

L.

[CountDeMoney]

Remember, it is New York City.  9 year olds will stab you in the face there.

[Pedrito]

[Voice of Hooper] [points to a scar on chest] Mary Ellen Moffat. 9yo New Yorker. She broke my heart.

L.

[Alatriste]

Borderline. I have a hard time imagining myself letting a 9 years old kid take the subway alone but this one seems highly intelligent and anyway his mother knows him and the city much better; the decision about when to let him take the subway was hers to take.

I think the thing most Europeans would find odd is, he didn't have a phone! Most kids here do already have a phone at that age, and certainly most fathers would give them one if they were free to take the subway alone.

[syk]

Borderline. Possibly wouldn't do it myself but hey, why not.

[Josquius]

10 is perhaps a bit young but for a 12 year old + or round about there its no big deal.

[Caliga]

Question: is there any lead on the seats or on the railings/handles? 

[Neil]

10 is perhaps a bit young but for a 12 year old + or round about there its no big deal.

And we could adjust that down a little based on how the US is safer than Europe.

[saskganesh]

a native 9 year old New Yorker should have the street smarts (or subway smarts) to pay fare, read a map and stay away from bad people.

mum should be commended for enabling her son's autonomy and initiative.

[PDH]

This woman should be killed and her child dissected for medical research.

[DontSayBanana]

Actually, I think the decision to send him with a couple of quarters instead of a cell phone just waiting to be stolen was fairly clever. @Alfred: The question is: can you find a working payphone anymore.

[Valmy]

a native 9 year old New Yorker should have the street smarts (or subway smarts) to pay fare, read a map and stay away from bad people.

mum should be commended for enabling her son's autonomy and initiative.

This.

There are always alot of people around on the subway in NYC, a kid with good sense should be able to ride it just fine.