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Teens babysitting is now illegal in Florida. Well, not technically, but practically so. A mother has been charged for leaving her 14 year old to watch her other kids (9, 11, 12) for a few days while she was on a work trip. She hired an adult babysitter to check on them twice a day too.
The youngest accidentally dropped a weight while working out, the type of accudent that can easily occur under adult supervision, they called 911 to get him medical help, and the cops proceeded to arrest the mom upon arriving back home. For the children's safety, they have now been placed with the father who is facing domestic abuse charges and has a restraining order against him, a very safe place indeed.
Here's another summary real quick of the important parts https://x.com/niah_x03/status/2115452369043652617
I've talked about this topic before here on themotte, how children and teens are now treated as completely incapable babies and this will be enforced not just socially but through the law. If it's not immediately clear I think this is ridiculous. When I was a teen, my older sister (15) was babysitting other people's kids. There's even a popular book story from the 80s about young teens and tweens (yes, some were 12!) in middle school babysitting children as part of the babysitters club. And it's not just fiction, people did that in real life. For the younger folk here, this hysteria about leaving a teenager to watch over younger children as neglect is very new and very modern.
I've talked before about how my parents and grandparents would play all around the neighborhood in their own childhood, and yet now even walking in a gated community is deemed too dangerous. At this point I can't even let my own children have independence even if I wanted to (which I do), they literally are not allowed to grow as normal human beings used to because the cops might show up cause they're out on the front yard!
It is just another part of the helicopter parent hysteria as I've talked about before as well. There are young adults now in college who need their parents to walk them through basic life, come visit to do the laundry, and clean for them! We need less "parenting" and more freedom so kids can actually be mature instead of still crying for their mommies in college! Tweens now aren't even allowed to go to another aisle in the grocery store
I once had a great 25-26 year old intern recent graduate who still had her mother trying to butt in once when something happened at my work. She's lucky I'm very forgiving and understanding of her situation and I know that she was embarrassed about it too (I even helped her find a better living situation) but it's another example of how a lot of parents are so crazy nowadays like that!
And again, it's legally enforced now. It's so legally enforced that they'll take your kids away and give them to an abuser with a restraining order! Is this really the society we're stuck with now, where our children are increasingly coddled in their teens, sometimes into their 20s and 30s, never expected to grow up or learn responsibility?
Text of law (rearranged for intelligibility):
Jury instructions:
Example rulings:
2023: Sleeping in the same bed as an infant while you are high on methamphetamine is culpable negligence.
2022: Walking a four-year-old down the middle of a low-speed residential street while you are fall-down drunk is not culpable negligence.
2019-06: Picking up a one-year-old by its feet and plopping it onto a couch head-first is culpable negligence.
2019-02: Failing to seek medical attention for three weeks after an infant incurs obvious severe injuries in falling from a bed is culpable negligence.
2017: Allowing a four-year-old to descend stairs alone when it has previously done so safely is not culpable negligence.
This case is horrifying to read about. It's complicated by the fact that the parents obviously abused the child, but the prosecutors must have downgraded the charges because they didn't have enough airtight evidence. I'd imagine that the parents miiight be able to get out of charges if they failed to seek medical attention for an actual accidental injury.
The mom got off lightly with a plea bargain, the dad never should have went to trial, he got the book thrown at him, obviously.
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