I agree. At six I never let my kids be in the front yard without me being outside too. But sometimes I would step inside to get something in the house and they were alone in the yard. But as they got older, I felt ok about letting them be outside with me being inside by the window, and then in time I was Ok with them just checking in with me while I did other things, or me getting up to look outside to see that they were at the neighbors. After a while, I let them be away at neighbors or in fields or green areas with their friends unsupervised. This was more like around age ten or eleven by now. I still worried, and still would talk to them about staying together, run if anyone starts approaching you, never go outside our neighborhood, that type of thing. But I knew it was not healthy to stare at them all day long. Evil can strike quickly. Look at the case of Somer Thompson or even Jaycee Dugard. Just took one moment to get them.
I guess I am saying that while I disapprove of letting a child have as much freedom as they gave Jenise, I can also see where this just evolved over time. Because she always came home, up until that day. She always made it home so they had no reason to think that the amount of freedom or supervision that she had the day before had not been enough, and so on, and so on. Her path to unsupervised time was accelerated. But in their minds, it was Ok because she always came home safe until that one time when she didn't.
