Dy0LXAN.jpg' alt='Leave Us Alone 1975' title='Leave Us Alone 1975' />Why I Let My 9 Year Old Ride the Subway Alone. I left my 9 year old at Bloomingdales the original one a couple weeks ago. Last seen, he was in first floor handbags as I sashayed out the door. Bye bye Have funWhat does Dustin Lynchs song Love Me Or Leave Me Alone mean We have the answer. Conexant Hcf 56K Modem Driver more. Englishman Robinson Crusoe, stranded alone on an island for years, is overjoyed to find a fellow man, a black islander whom he names Friday. But Crusoe cannot. And he did. He came home on the subway and bus by himself. Was I worried Yes, a tinge. But it didnt strike me as that daring, either. Isnt New York as safe now as it was in 1. Xaml Designer Tool. Its not like were living in downtown Baghdad. Anyway, for weeks my boy had been begging for me to please leave him somewhere, anywhere, and let him try to figure out how to get home on his own. So on that sunny Sunday I gave him a subway map, a Metro. Card, a 2. 0 bill, and several quarters, just in case he had to make a call. No, I did not give him a cell phone. Didnt want to lose it. And no, I didnt trail him, like a mommy private eye. I trusted him to figure out that he should take the Lexington Avenue subway down, and the 3. Street crosstown bus home. If he couldnt do that, I trusted him to ask a stranger. And then I even trusted that stranger not to think, Gee, I was about to catch my train home, but now I think Ill abduct this adorable child instead. Long story short My son got home, ecstatic with independence. Long story longer, and analyzed, to boot Half the people Ive 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. Its not. Its debilitating for us and for them. And yet How would you have felt if he didnt come home a New Jersey mom of four, Vicki Garfinkle, asked. Guess what, Ms. Garfinkle Id have been devastated. But would that just prove that no mom should ever let her child ride the subway alone No. Designer Choice Ceiling Fan Remote Manual. It would just be one more awful but extremely rare example of random violence, the kind that hyper parents cite as proof that every day in every way our children are more and more vulnerable. Carlie Brucia I dont know if youre familiar with that case or not, but she was in Florida and she did a cut through about a mile from her house and midday, at 1. Thats the story that the head of safetynet. Katharine Francis, immediately told me when I asked her what she thought of my son getting around on his own. She runs a company that makes wallet sized copies of a childs photo and fingerprints, just in case. Well of course I know the story of Carlie Brucia. Thats the problem. We all know that story and the one about the Mormon girl in Utah and the one about the little girl in Spain and because we do, we all run those tapes in our heads when we think of leaving our kids on their own. We even run a tape of how wed look on Larry King. I do not want to be the one on TV explaining my daughters disappearance, a father, Garth Chouteau, said when we were talking about the subway issue. These days, when a kid dies, the world i. TV blames the parents. Its simple as that. And yet, Trevor Butterworth, a spokesman for the research center STATS. The statistics show that this is an incredibly rare event, and you cant protect people from very rare events. It would be like trying to create a shield against being struck by lightning. Justice Department data actually show the number of children abducted by strangers has been going down over the years. So why not let your kids get home from school by themselvesParents are in the grip of anxiety and when youre anxious, youre totally warped, the author of A Nation of Wimps, Hara Estroff Marano, said. We become so bent out of shape over something as simple as letting your children out of sight on the playground that it starts seeming on par with letting them play on the railroad tracks at night. In the rain. In dark non reflective coats. The problem with this everything is dangerous outlook is that over protectiveness is a danger in and of itself. A child who thinks he cant do anything on his own eventually cant. Meantime, my son wants his next trip to be from Queens. In my day, I doubt that would have struck anyone as particularly brave. Now it seems like hitchhiking through Yemen. Heres your Metro.