Raising Independent Kids Shouldn’t Be This Hard

SSPL / UIG / Bridgeman Images September 8, 2026, 12:17 PM ET Share Save This past June, a Virginia mother named Karyann Parkinson took a bike ride with her 5-year-old son and stopped by a pond inside their gated community to collect goose feathers from the grass. The two of them rode back home, whereupon Parkinson’s son asked his mother if he could walk back to the pond by himself to fetch a few more feathers. Parkinson, who was eight months pregnant with her fifth child, studying for the bar exam, and—perhaps most pressing—making lunch, agreed. The walk was relatively short, along a sidewalk 10 feet from the road and across two intersections with crosswalks, which Parkinson knew her son could navigate successfully (he had done so six times that morning).