In Silver Springs, Marlyand, a couple is taking a more lax approach to parenting.

They have two children, 10-year-old Rafi and 6-year-old Dvora who enjoy more freedom than most people do at the age of sixteen.

Their parents let them walk around their neighborhood unaccompanied by an adult to places such as the library, parks, or friends’ houses.

The children are usually within two blocks of their house, but they’ve gone as far as a mile. It reminds some people of the “good ol’ times”, but to other people it’s a very real issue to the health of the children.

The parenting choice is no longer just a difference of styles; the parents are being investigated by the Child Protective Services for neglect.

It’s absolutely ridiculous that American society has the necessity to paint the world as an overwhelmingly negative and cruel world.

The children were questioned at their school by the police who went out of their way to let Rafi know that, “This is a bad world with some people who wait to snatch up little kids like you”.

Two parents in the neighborhood have also called the police when they saw the children roaming together, all of these people enforcing a view that children have no place in the world without parents.

The shocking part of the entire story to me is how quickly the American view of the neighborhood has changed within around 50 years, without a sharp change in the amount of crime.

The rate of crime in America and violent crime in particular is at an all time low, and the amount of sexual predation against children has not increased in the last 30 years.

People are not parenting or thinking objectively about this situation through their reason. Instead, the parents of the neighborhood are being ruled by their fear.

Generations ago, this type of behavior was not strange, but perhaps the opposite could be said. The children of today who only happen to leave their house to visit their friends three houses down are not receiving the strong sense of independence that our ancestors had generations ago.

It manifests itself in very real and concrete sacrifices. We’ve been raised to imagine the world in a type of everyone vs me mentality. Strangers are no longer “friends you just haven’t met yet”. Strangers are now danger.

This whole statement isn’t to say that there’s no danger in letting your children walk the neighborhood alone, but rather to say that we can’t allow the smallest amount of fear to rule how we behave in our community.

It’s time again that the American communities find an optimistic outlook and behave in a manner that allows children to experience the world.

In reality, the neighborhood is often a safe place for a child to be, especially when accompanied with another. Rafi and Dvora are gaining skills that can only be learned in the community.

It’s important for children experience the world from their own perspective early on, and it’s also important they learn how to behave with responsibility from a young age.

Keeping a child chained up in his/her house might be the safest option, but that’s not really living. It’s time we let children reclaim their throne as the kingpins of the neighborhood.

It’s time for the kickball games and street hockey to be welcomed again, and most importantly it’s time that parents allow their children to experience the world before the age of 18.