Do You Care Where Your Children Are?

Around these parts, a nice quiet suburb, we've recently come upon a new phenomenon.

Hitchhiking.

I guess it makes sense in a fairly homogeneous neighborhood, where even if you don't know everybody, you may know someone who knows someone who knows the person you don't know. Sort of. Meaning, the town has gotten bigger, and there are a lot of people you really don't know. Plus the world is a crazy place.

Culturally, hitchhiking has become accepted practice in certain circles. (To be specific, it's rides within Town, either home or to school)Yet, those circles are blending into other circles, and often I see Non- Hasidic High School boys thumbing rides on the corner (or the middle of the street, it seems not to matter how dangerous it will be for the traffic patterns if you get a car to stop for you wherever you are)

A few years ago, I posted my disgust at parents who send their kids off to school for practice or parties with the instructions "to get a ride," when it would be fairly simple to arrange that in advance and not put other people on the spot. Essentially, shipping kids off not really knowing how they will get home likely contributes to the perpetuation of irresponsible adults we seem to be creating. (It probably also goes along way to explaining the proliferation of "good enough" way of life, where the minimum required effort is expended in many aspects of life including caring for our kids). However, in that situation, you have a pretty good idea that your kid will get a ride with a classmate's parent or sibling.

But maybe not. Maybe, these are some of the kids on the corners sticking out their thumbs waiting for anyone to stop and offer them a ride. I'm curious if these parents ever ask their kids how they got home. It is possible that some of them would be appalled to learn that their kid was hitchhiking, but then that would require asking them how they got home. If there is a situation where a kid gets out early and chooses to thumb a ride home, or gets up late and misses his ride to school, then that is the parents' responsibility to be aware, that like other safety issues we try to teach our kids, they have to talk about hitchhiking and whether or not it's okay to do it.

If I wasn't afraid of being arrested, I'd love to pick up one of these kids, and take them to some random destination and tell them to get out of the car. Because really? Once they're in the car, they are really, to a great extent, at the mercy of the driver.

We need to be willing to tell our kids not to do something, and back it up by willingly chauffeuring them to where they need to go