The Meitivs (Today Show photo.)
The Meitiv kids of Maryland, whose parents free-range them, were picked up by the cops yesterday and kept in the back of a patrol car for three hours. This happened once before in January and the parents are getting tired of it.
From Lenore Skenazy's Free Range Kids site:
The kids, ages 10 and 6, were supposed to come home at 6 from playing. At 6:30, Danielle says, she and her husband Sasha were pretty worried. By 8, they were frantic. Only THEN did someone from the CPS Crisis Center call the parents and say that the police had picked the children up. The kids are at the Crisis Center. (Danielle thinks that the center must be a place that is open on weekends to intake kids from dangerous situations.)
"It was dark!" said Danielle, her voice sounding shaky. "You know, I'd really had a nightmare about this, but I didn't realize they would do it. I didn't think they would. The kids must be terrified."
"What did CPS tell you had happened?" I asked.
"They wouldn't tell me anything about my children."
Husband Sasha Meitiv, raised in the Soviet Union under complete state control, told his wife he was less surprised. "He said, 'You don't understand how cruel bureaucracy can be,'" said Danielle.
