Mother charged after 5-year-old walks to pond alone: ‘I know what he’s capable of’

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Parkinson is appealing her conviction along with a substantiated finding against her by the James City County Department of Social Services, which has added her and Sam’s names to the Virginia Abuse and Neglect Registry, where they’ll remain for seven years, she said.

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A representative of Child Protective Services in James City County, when reached by phone, declined to comment.

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When asked about the case over the phone, Green declined to comment on specific details. The James City County Police Department did not directly comment on the case but provided an incident report to The Post. It did not contain a narrative of events or many details.

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Parkinson is not the only parent who has been accused of wrongdoing for letting their children do things on their own in recent years, according to media reports.

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In Georgia in November, a Fulton County Division of Family and Children Services investigation substantiated claims of neglect and abuse against a couple who allowed their 6-year-old son to scooter home from a playground about a quarter-mile away. Those claims were later cleared after appeal.

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In Texas, a mother spent a night in jail and resigned from her job after she was convicted in 2022 of endangering a child for reportedly making her 8-year-old walk a half-mile home to calm down.

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And in Maryland, parents were cleared of neglect charges in 2015 that followed their decision to allow their two kids – then ages 10 and 6 – to walk home alone from a park in Silver Spring.

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The Maryland case sparked public conversations about parenting, said Lenore Skenazy, a founder of the “free-range” parenting movement and president of the nonprofit Let Grow, which makes the case that independent children develop into well-rounded adults. Skenazy first reported on Parkinson’s case.

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“There’s a real disconnect between letting your kid do something normal that you trust that he can do, and you know him and your neighborhood, and abusing a child, which is the worst thing in the world, right?” Skenazy told The Post in an interview. “So, why are they mashed up?”

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Parkinson’s case has sparked debate on social media about whether she should have been charged, and if it was okay to let her child roam free in the first place.

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“This seems like an overreaction, but sending a five year old out alone to a body of water is a terrible idea,” wrote one Reddit commentator.

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Others online raised concerns about the potential for kidnapping.

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Skenazy says that’s a highly unlikely scenario.

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“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 said. “And we don’t arrest moms who say, ‘Get in the car, we’re going to the dentist.'”

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Parkinson said that after Sam walked home with the security guard, a James City County police officer arrived. That officer called Child Protective Services officials, who arrived with additional police units and another security guard, Parkinson said.

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Her husband, a marriage and family therapist, had been out with their oldest daughter, who is 14. She called and asked him to return home.

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Virginia law criminalizes the willful failure of a parent or guardian to provide a child with necessary care and considers violation of that law a felony. Virginia’s General Assembly passed a bill in 2023 clarifying that no child can 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.”