Dear Abby: Nudist children and a leap of logic?

[cereta]

DEAR ABBY: My next-door neighbor lets her two children, a 6-year-old boy and a 7-year-old girl, run around naked all the time. This includes playing in her front yard and in the street.

I don't want to seem like a prude or cause problems in the neighborhood, but let's face it -- there are perverts everywhere. At what age is it no longer acceptable for children to be nude in public? -- TAKEN ABACK IN MONTANA

DEAR TAKEN ABACK: Children over the age of 3 should not be out in public with no clothes -- and no child should be playing outside that way without supervision. For that matter, clothed or not, for their own safety children should not play in the street.

Your neighbor's lack of attention is irresponsible and inappropriate. If you can't make her see the light, then child protective services should be consulted.

Comments

[cereta]

Am I missing something? Is there something in the letter that indicates that they're unsupervised that my Norco-addled brain is missing? I get the "in the street," maybe, but frankly (a) my neighbors let their kids play in the street while the parents are watching all the time, and (b) franky, I played in the street with my brothers and friends all the time - we lived on a low-traffic dead-end, and besides, the circle made a perfect baseball diamond.

I know I'm sensitive to Abby leaping to conclusions, especially where parenting is concerned, and for that matter, I agree that the kids are too old to be running around nekkid outside of a yard with a high fence, but I have to say, she wouldn't last a day in my neighborhood at the rate she'd be calling DCFS.

[madripoor_rose]

Well, I'd hope if the caregiver-parent is there, the kids wouldn't be in the street. But we don't know if it's running up and down the middle of the street, or two steps off the grass and getting yelled at and immediately brought inside by the watching parent.

I gotta say I agree with this one. Kids that age shouldn't be running around naked in public, either, whether a parent is watching or not.

(may have some bias here over my dog being killed in October when my father turned his back for a second.)

[cereta]

I agree that kids shouldn't be running around naked at that age. I'm just kind of WTFing at calling CPS over that and/or kids playing in the street. I may be jaded, though. If I called DCFS every time a kid under 10 was in the street around here, my house would be getting egged daily. I cringe when the little ones run out, but the parents or older kids generally bring them back to the lawn.

[madripoor_rose]

I probably wouldn't call about the kids being in the street, but hm. If I saw the kids constantly running around completely naked, in the middle of the street unattended with cars honking at them, I'd probably have a word with the mom, and seriously think about calling if nothing changed.

The problem with these letters are that we're not there, and we don't know what's *really* going on.

I'm also thinking the Abby reply is more to do with the kids being naked than playing in the street. omgpervs! in tone.

[redbird]

I suspect that in this case "in the street" means on the sidewalks near their house or in other people's front yards, in the sense of "they live on our street," not on the part of the paved street that cars use. I am also inclined to think, from "let's her children," that the neighbor is supervising at least some of the time: this isn't "my neighbor can't get her kids to keep their clothes on," which would be a different letter. (That may be what is actually going on, but it's not what the letter says.)

[likeaduck]

*shrugs* We have no information from the letter about the kind of street we're talking about (beyond the state and that there's a next door neighbour close enough to see that the kids are naked in the front yard). Small towns or rural areas are hugely different from urban or suburban neighbourhoods both in terms of how busy the traffic is and how public a front yard might be or feel.