Md. parents under fire after letting kids walk home alone

SILVER SPRING, Md. (AP) - A Montgomery County couple says they're being investigated for neglect for allowing their two children to walk home from a park by themselves.

Danielle and Alexander Meitiv say the county's Child Protective Services began investigating them after police stopped their 10-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter midway through a mile-walk home on Dec. 20 in Silver Spring. Police say they stopped the children and drove them home after someone reported seeing them.

The Meitivs say they're responsible parents who are teaching their children self-reliance and responsibility, and that the investigation infringes on their parental rights and invades their privacy.

"We wouldn't have let them do it if we didn't think they were ready for it," Danielle Meitiv told The Washington Post, adding that her children have previously paired up for walks around the block, to a nearby convenience store and to a library about three-quarters of a mile away.

"They have proven they are responsible," she said. "They've developed these skills."

Meitiv, a climate-science consultant, told WUSA-TV that the world is no more dangerous than when she was growing up and parenting was more relaxed.

"I grew up in New York City in the '70s and nobody hesitated to let their kids walk around," she said. "The only thing that's changed between then and now is our fear."

Child Protective Services declined to confirm whether they're investigating the Meitivs, but pointed to Maryland law, which defines child neglect as failure to properly care for and supervise a child. The law covers dwellings, enclosures and vehicles.

Alexander Meitiv, a physicist at the National Institutes of Health, told The Post that he had a tense conversation with police when they brought his children home Dec. 20, asking him for identification and telling him about the dangers of the world.

He said that Child Protective Services showed up a couple hours later and required him to sign a safety pledge agreeing to not leave his children unsupervised until the following Monday, when the agency was planning a follow-up.

When he refused and said he needed to talk to an attorney, the Meitivs said the agency representative then said the children would be removed if he didn't comply. He then signed the paperwork, he said.

The couple said the agency called again after the holidays, saying they needed to visit the family's home and inquire further. Danielle Meitiv said she resisted, calling it "a huge violation of privacy."

The couple said they later learned that her children were interviewed at school without their permission or knowledge.

"And when they were talking to them, they were painting a picture of a world that is very scary," Alexander Meitiv said. "They were asking my son ... what he would do if he was grabbed by a stranger. Telling them, 'You know there are creeps out there that are just waiting to grab children if they're walking by themselves.'"

The family is set to meet next week at the agency's offices in Rockville.

Alexander Meitiv said that what the agency may consider to be neglect, he and his wife feel is "an essential part of growing up and maturing."

"We feel we're being bullied into a point of view about child-rearing that we strongly disagree with," he said.