A Virginia mother was convicted of allowing her 5-year-old son to walk outside in their gated community alone.
Karyann Parkinson and her son Sam were out walking together as the child collected goose feathers on June 5. Parkinson, who was weeks from giving birth to her fifth child, allowed Sam to go out on his own to look for more feathers, she told The Washington Post.
It was about a half mile from their home to the pond where the geese live.
“I gave him permission to go,” she told CBS News. “I told him, ‘Go there. Come right back.’”
“I didn’t send him to play at the pond,” she said, according to Fox News. “I sent him down the path that happens to go past the pond to collect goose feathers... I know that a lot of people have seen the headlines and seen ‘5-year-old alone at a pond.’ And I think if I saw that in isolation, I’d probably be alarmed, too.”
“But what this was, was a 5-year-old on a pathway that he’s very familiar with in his neighborhood that he loves, the only place that he can remember ever living. And it just got turned into this whole situation where a lot of people were suddenly intervening and feeling like this was a really drastic parenting choice,” she said.
She said she and her husband believe it is important for children to “encounter reasonable risks, to do anything that they feel confident doing within safe parameters,” adding that her son knows how to safely cross the street, get home or ask a neighbor in their Williamsburg, Virginia, area for help because she has taught him to do so.
But not all apparently agree.
About 30 minutes after Sam went out, a security guard brought him home after a neighbor saw the 5-year-old outside alone and called security.
Parkinson, who graduated from William & Mary Law School the month before, told the guard that her son was safe and had the right to be in his neighborhood by himself.
“The security guard said, ‘Well, we don’t permit children to be out in the neighborhood alone.’ And I said, ‘Is that in an HOA [homeowners association] bylaw? Because I really don’t think that’s against the rules,’” Parkinson told CBS News. “And he said, ‘Well, if it’s not against the rules, then it’s against the law. And I’m gonna call the police.’”
Two weeks after the incident, police had a warrant for her arrest, charging her with contributing to the delinquency of a minor. She was convicted last month, the Post reported.
Parkinson was sentenced to six months’ suspended jail time after she refused a withheld finding that would have required her to admit there was enough evidence to find her guilty and accept a misdemeanor charge.
“That would have been saying that what I had done was a crime, and … that would’ve violated my principles and my convictions as a parent,” Parkinson told the newspaper. “And I think it also would have let down other parents who need to know that normal childhood experiences are not a crime.”
Because of the conviction, CBS News noted that Parkinson cannot do things like volunteer at her son’s school until he’s in the sixth grade.
Parkinson is appealing not only the conviction, but also a substantiated finding by the James City County Department of Social Services, which added her and her son’s names to the Virginia Abuse and Neglect Registry. They will remain on the registry for seven years.
Virginia state law said it is criminal if a parent willfully fails to provide a child with necessary care, but in 2023, the state’s General Assembly clarified that a child cannot be considered abused or neglected for engaging in “independent activities without adult supervision,” as long as those activities are age-appropriate and are not “so grossly negligent as to endanger the health or safety of the child,” the Post reported.
Parkinson said that while some in the Reddit community worried about things like kidnapping, the chances are small.
“There’s a teeny-tiny percentage chance that something bad will happen when your kid is walking somewhere or riding their bike. But there’s a bigger chance that you’re going to get into a car accident when you’re driving your kid to the dentist,” she told the Post. “And we don’t arrest moms who say, ‘Get in the car, we’re going to the dentist.’”
Parkinson’s husband, Dalin, also noted that while some may worry about letting a child near a body of water unsupervised, he didn’t share those worries because his son is a competitive swimmer, he told the newspaper.
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