Special to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

After reading No Child Left Alone: Getting Government Out of Parenting by Abby Schachter, I find myself expressing a wide range of emotions. There were times where I found myself laughing at the absolute absurdity at how the government likes to put a protective bubble over America’s youth. Then there were times I found my blood boiling at how government bureaucrats have the audacity to not only undermine parental authority, but to pretty much take the fun out of being a kid. Abby Schachter is part of the Free-Range Kids Movement, which believes in letting kids be kids by letting them take the same risks that many of us took when we were kids. What risks? I don’t know. Climbing trees, going to the playground by themselves or simply playing in the front-yard, while their mother sits back in a lawn-chair reading a book.

Yes, these very joys that many of us experienced in our own childhoods could have actually gotten the police and Child Protective Services called on our parents if we had experienced them in this day and age. I don’t even have kids and I find this infuriating. I remember my parents telling me about the time that they had to walk several miles to school by themselves. These days they probably would find themselves in CPS custody and their parents thrown in jail. Simply riding my bike down the block or playing outside by myself could have gotten my parents thrown in jail.

It’s even harder for boys who like to play rough sports or boyish games such as Cops and Robbers. When I was in the second grade, me and several of my classmates would get together and play what we called “A Football Fight.” My homeroom class didn’t have a football, so we all ignored the part of the game that required a pigskin ball and we just rough each other up on the field. How we got away being so rough at the time was astounding. Today, I can’t even imagine the reign of crap that would have fallen on us and possibly the entire school if we had done anything that resembled a “Football Fight.” I can’t even imagine how schools these days would react to a game called “Smear the Queer” where the object was to tackle anyone holding the football, which means that you could have up to ten guys trying to sack you. I loved playing that game in the fourth grade, though I think our homeroom teacher told us that we had to stop for safety reasons. Today, we probably would have found ourselves suspended. Hell, the very name itself probably would have enraged school administrators.

The people who really put my blood pressure out of whack are the Nanny Staters who have the nerve to use the so-called Childhood Obesity epidemic as an excuse to control the eating habits of America’s children, while making it more difficult for these same children to pursue activities that actually burn calories. Instead they would rather give children food that I wouldn’t even feel comfortable feeding to some of the vilest scum at Guantanamo Bay. In one particular incident, the mother of a preschool student had packed her daughter a lunch that included a Turkey sandwich, some photo chips, a banana and some apple juice to wash it all down, had it all thrown away by some smug bureaucrat who said that it didn’t meet the school’s health standards. He also had the nerve to send a nasty note to the mother, telling her that she owed him money for the chicken finger meal that he bought to replace her daughter’s lunch. If my mother had gotten a note like that, she probably would have sent back a note that said something along the lines of “I know how to feed my son, thank you very much. Since you were the one who took it upon himself to throw away the lunch that I went through the trouble of fixing my son, you can go ahead and shoulder the costs of that meal.” I think my dad’s response would have been much more colorful. To me this yet another reason why we need to privatize schools.

I have only this to say to all the busybodies of the world, especially to that nosy neighbor who called the police on the lady who was sitting outside with her kids. Yes, there was an actual lady in my hometown of Houston, who called CPS on a mother who allowed her kids play in her yard, while she read a book on a lawn chair. If you think you could do a better job of raising other people’s kids, then why don’t you try it yourselves. I don’t mean by sending them to a foster home and having other parents do it. I mean for you to take the time out of your lives to feed, clothe and provide the education to these kids that you don’t think their parents are doing a good enough job at providing. So how about it? Yeah that’s what I thought. Also, stop trying to take the fun out everyone’s childhood. Climbing trees, going to the playground and playing rough sports is part of being a kid. So, unless you see a kid who is in immediate danger, I would suggest minding your own business.