Free-Range Kids

Lenore Skenazy | 11.11.2024 4:40 PM

It was dinnertime on October 30, 2024, when police handcuffed Brittany Patterson in front of three of her four children and drove her to the station in Fannin County, Georgia. She was then fingerprinted, photographed, and dressed in an orange jumpsuit.

Hours earlier, around noon, Patterson had driven her eldest son to a medical appointment. Her youngest son, 11-year-old Soren, intended to come along but wasn't around when it was time to leave.

"I figured he was in the woods, or at grandma's house," says Patterson, who lives on 16 acres with her kids and her father. (Her husband works out of state). There is no shortage of family in the vicinity. Patterson's mother and sisters live just two minutes away.

Soren, however, was not playing in the woods. He had decided to walk to downtown Mineral Bluff, a town of just 370 people. It's not quite a mile from his house. A woman who saw him walking alongside the road—speed limit: 25 in some places, 35 in others—asked him if he was OK. He said yes.

Nevertheless, she called the police.

A female sheriff picked up the boy and called Patterson. "She asked me if I knew he was downtown........

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