Maryland 'free range' parents charged with child neglect for letting kids walk home alone

Danielle Meitiv is the new face of "free-range parenting." Last December, police in Silver Spring, Maryland, picked up Meitiv's two children — Rafi, 10, and Dvora, 6 — as they were walking home alone from a park a mile away from the Meitiv house. On Feb. 20, Montgomery County Child Protective Service informed the Meitivs that they had been found responsible for "unsubstantiated" child neglect. The parents went public this week, after consulting a lawyer.

The finding, which Danielle and Alexander Meitiv are appealing, typically meaning that CPS hasn't ruled out neglect but couldn't definitively find "indicated" neglect, Maryland Department of Human Resources spokeswoman Paula Tolson tells The Washington Post. CPS officials, explaining their ruling, cited a law that children 8 and younger can't be left alone (or without a reliable person 13 or older) in a motor vehicle, building, or enclosure. CPS can monitor the Meitivs for at least five years.

The case has gained international attention, and plenty of outrage from parents who agree with the philosophy of letting kids build self-reliance and responsibility by being allowed to experience the world with decreasing amounts of adult supervision. It has also angered parents who don't subscribe to free-range parenting. "We are parenting the same way our parents raised us — and I'm guessing most of the viewers' parents raised them," Danielle Meitiv said in one interview.

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Meitiv also makes her case in the KUSA-TV video below, but the station also found one woman who agreed with the CPS decision — a rarity in the debate over the "walk heard round the world." —Peter Weber