Two weeks back, Danielle and Alexander Meitiv of Montgomery County, Md., received a call from Child Protective Services, three hours after the police had taken their two children, aged 10 and 6, in custody. Police were holding them at the crisis center.

The children were not abused, not lost, and even then this extraordinary intervention happened. Actually, a concerned pedestrian saw the children walking alone and called 911.

In the last four months, it was for the second time that the Meitivs’ children were reported to authorities as they walked home from parks about a mile away.

The Meitivs are part of a movement called ‘free-range parenting’. It is a reaction to over-involved and hovering ‘helicopter’ parenting.

According to the free-range parents, allowing the kids more independence will be helpful in teaching them self-sufficiency.

The Meitivs have trained 10-year-old Rafi and six-year-old Dvora the navigation of basic routes home by themselves. It was quite similar to the way in which the previous generations of kids used to do on foot or bike, and were taught basic safety precautions.

This case has received national attention, that too for good reason. When the children get old enough to be unsupervised, both in and outside the home, that age is the one that confronts all parents, as well as state and local officials.

It is very difficult to tell in Maryland, that where exactly the law stops and parenting begins. According to the state laws, kids have to be at least eight years old to stay home alone. And in case one child is babysitting another, then he should be at least 13.