Mother Faces Jail Time for Forcing Son to Walk 5 Miles to School

February 20th, 2012 - By Brande Victorian

Remember the guilt trips grandparents used to try to give when they talked about walking X number of miles through the snow and over the hill to get to school? Well if that happened today, their parents might get locked up, as an Arkansas mother is facing up to one year in jail and a $1,000 fine for making her 10-year-old son walk nearly five miles to school.

Normally Valerie Borders’ son, Nequavion, takes the bus to school but when his bad behavior forced him to lose his riding privileges for the fifth time, the mother chose to teach her son a lesson by making him walk to school. But one morning Nequavion happened to be spotted by a security guard while crossing a bank parking lot and when the police were called, they took the boy to school, then contacted the mother and charged her with endangering the welfare of a child. According to Jonesboro Police spokesman Sgt. Lyle Waterworth, Valerie’s punishment crossed the line.

“You ask yourself the question, ‘is that safe for the child?’ And if you wouldn’t want your child doing it, we probably don’t need somebody else’s child doing it,” he said.

‘There were a number of things that could have happened to the child. The child could have been injured or abducted.”

I’m assuming this spotting must have occurred in a mostly deserted area, otherwise there was no reason for the security guard to stop the boy and assume anything suspicious in the first place. It seems like the police are sticking their nose in where it doesn’t belong and that could have huge consequences for the mother. If Valerie didn’t discipline her child and he got into worse trouble, I bet the officers wouldn’t be so concerned about his well-being then.

What do you think about this case? Was the mother’s punishment out of line? Should she get jail time?

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Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.

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  • Penderland

     At what age are children old enough to walk down streets and parents not be charged with a crime?  How far can you allow, or make, a child to walk and not be ticketed, 4 miles, 400 yards, 4 blocks? Does America really want policemen randomly picking our children up off of the street because the kids are walking, and then ticket the parents for neglect? I have a daughter that wakes up at daylight in order to run 3 to 5 miles nearly every morning, before riding to school; because she loves to run. Am I in danger of facing charges? Possibly I should explain to my daughter, “that today’s society likely does not approve of her running that far, so she should instead, stay at home to burn her brains on video games while getting fat. Since that is acceptable to society, mom and dad will not get a ticket.” If you have ever allowed your child to walk 4 miles or 4 blocks, then possibly you should run on down to the police station and turn yourself in.  The charge is absolutely ridiculous and the public should be outraged at such police action. 

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  • cake211

    This is old school discipline. You can’t even call it “punishment”, it’s CONSEQUENCES and ACCOUNTABILITY training. Granted, the mother had a lapse in judgement because it ain’t like back in the day when we had communities that cared about each other. Back in the day, I could easily see an officer making that boy continue on his walk to school because he understood the importance of parental discipline as a prerequisite to respecting authority figures. 
    In this situation, the police are completely undermining that parental authority. I don’t think officials needed to “mind their business” because I’m glad that they did check on the boy- but they straight BSing to call this a level of endangerment that requires jail-time and $1000 fine. They need to save that jail-space for the undisciplined youths that are murdering each other and are still able to walk free.

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  • Youngdt1998

    What a crock!  My mom used to do this to me all the time cause I constantly missed the bus..

  • writingmomma

    The problem today with government officials or others stopping you from being a parent is, kids don’t respect your authority, or any other authority for that matter. These kids today have NO boundaries. They can do and say whatever they want and some nosy person gets involved and stops the parents from being able to parent. At 10 years old, this little boy was old enough to walk to school on his own. I am sure that at 10 years old, he knew not to be getting in trouble on the bus in the first place. So, why should his mother go to jail for trying to make him learn a lesson? If she would have whipped him, she was going to jail. If she makes him walk, she goes to jail. Send his little @ss straight to the Judges house and let him/her raise him then. I am sick and tired of people telling us how to raise our kids, then they want to stick them straight in a mens prison or kill them when they don’t “halt” or “spread’um to their authority. Yes, she should have trailed him to school in a car. But, baby by the time he got there, his feet would let him know not to get into any more trouble on the bus. But, sending this woman to jail for a year? I doubt it very seriously if that would help this child. That little boy would be so upset and lost at his mother being gone, he would really become a problem then for DCFS.

  • Guest

    I walked to school when I missed the bus as a kid. So did my brother. When my sons started getting into trouble on the bus and were suspended, they walked to and from school every day they were off the bus. My youngest only did one 3 day suspension. My oldest did one 3 day and two 10 day suspensions before he’d had enough. We lived 9 miles from the school.

  • Earljones_jr

    The mom obviously wasn’t disciplining him correctly in the first place if his misbehavior caused him to be kicked off the bus five times!! And five miles alone for a ten year old is too much!! Especially in 2012. It’s not safe out here. People will snatch that kid up in broad daylight. But no the mom shouldn’t get jail time.

  • Earljones_jr

    The mom obviously wasn’t disciplining him correctly in the first place if his misbehavior caused him to be kicked off the bus five times!! And five miles alone for a ten year old is too much!! Especially in 2012. It’s not safe out here. People will snatch that kid up in broad daylight. But no the mom shouldn’t get jail time.

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