The article I read stated that the 12 year old chased the car and the mother let her back in. If that is in fact true, mom had a few minutes to gather her thoughts and had it been me I would have asked both of them "are you ready to behave now? Both of you get back in this car and don't make a sound the rest of the way home."

I've given this a bit of thought since yesterday. I saw New York and thought "what was she thinking" but there are small communities even in large cities. My husband's family is from Chicago. In the burbs my sister-in-law lives in, if you didn't know any better you'd think you were in a small town.

My knee jerk reaction to 3 miles was also a bit extreme. Until my husband reminded me that in our own community, and many others we've lived in, your dwelling must be more than three miles from the school for the bus to pick you up. We live just under two miles from the high school. The school bus must stop at the stop sign right in front of my house every day but we have to drive our kids to school every day. In fact three years ago a co-worker got a frantic call from his daughter, her friends had gotten in an arguement with the school bus driver and he kicked pulled the bus over on the highway and kicked her friends off the bus several miles from their home. She knew her friends did not have a cell and the driver would not allow her to get off the bus with her friends so she called her dad to let him know what was going on. It was winter, bitter cold and gets dark very early. I was positive that the driver would be punished but he was not.

When I was growing up we were that age when we no longer had a baby sitter in the summers while my parents were working. Heck, I was babysitting full time for two kids at 10. On the days that I wasn't my friends and I would walk or ride our bikes over five miles to get to our local beach to swim for the day. If we were lucky one of our parents would pick us up there after work. We did some pretty stupid, dangerous things without parental supervision. Well in all honesty I was a bit of a coward, always afraid my parents would find out and prevent me from going so I followed the rules, but my younger brother is lucky to be alive 100 times over. This did influence my own parenting.

My children would spend the summers with my parents. I did not allow my younger three (daughter and twin sons) to go to the beach unsupervised until they were 14 because they over estimated their swimming ability.

This story brings up some interesting points. As with anything else we take thing from our own life and make a judgement about the situation.