Whatever Happened to Kids Going Home at Dusk?

In our city, there is an ordnance that school age kids have to be home before 10 pm unless they're with their parents or another responsible adult. (If the adult isn't one of the parents, the police will call the parents and ask who their child is supposed to be with. If that isn't the adult with them, then the kids are taken home by the police and a parent needs to be home to receive them.) Pretty ran into this ordnance when she used to go out jogging at night. I wrote a discussion laughing about that years ago here on myLot. Pretty looks much younger than her age and the cops kept stopping her and asking why she was out after 10 pm... When it was the same cop three nights in a row, Pretty got mad and told the guy she was legally an adult and she wasn't out looking for a date so the cops needed to leave her alone. I felt sorry for the guy. I think he wanted to ask her out but she wasn't interested... She has a mouth on her when she gets mad enough. I've noticed most kids of school age don't listen to their parents anymore. I would have turned Pretty over my knee if she talked to me the way those kids talk to their parents. (And now I sound like those OLD people who complain that kids are going to heck in a handbasket because they don't mind. At least I still keep my mouth closed, even if I do say things like that on myLot. )

Many kids now rule the house not the other way around.

In my country, it is illegal for kids from the age of 8 to 14 to be out loitering on their own in the public area. The parents and the kids can be disciplined if caught.

When my kids were young, we lived in an area where kids would be out very late. It's dusk until about 11 pm this time of year, so dusk is already too late for kids to be out.

We had to go home when the street lights went on. If not, our mothers would yell out the window for us.

Oh! I would never be comfortable as a parent or guardian to let such young kids of 8_12 years stay out home beyond dusk. My daughters are 21 and 18, but still the curfew is 8 PM max. If they have to stay any longer in some cases, they have to picked up by either us or some other parent in the group.

My kids were only allowed in the back yard when it got dark.

It is insane. Back in the Stone Age when we rode dinosaurs to school we were kicked out of the house all day but had to return by the time the street lights turned on or the neighbor whistled.