It's 11PM, do you know where your children are?

That's an announcement that we see on our TV at different times during the night. Our mayor here in Philadelphia will pop on the screen and say "It's 10PM, do you know where your children are?" And every night I tell him I sure as hell do!

Every night I leave for work between 9:20 PM and 9:30 PM. It's about a 15 minute drive from my house to work, and I have to be in by 9:45PM.

While I'm driving to work, without fail, I will pass kids of alllllll ages still outside.

Doesn't anyone have a curfew anymore?

My kids have the same rules I had. My kids don't go out on school nights during the year. Now, as the year draws to an end, I might let them go out a little bit but they are either home by dinner time or they are home around 7PM, 8 PM at the latest. But during the school year, they are in the house doing school work, studying, getting showers, etc.

On weekends they can go out and they have a curfew. I have a 15 yr old son who goes out to his one friend's house all the time, a bunch of them go there, they hang out and will go around to the store, the school and play stick ball or just take a walk to the water ice place, etc. They are not hanging in a park, or a corner or anywhere else where they could get into trouble. I usually have him come home by 11:30PM. He never walks home, I pick him up or someone else gives him a ride home. If they go to the mall or laser tag or the movies, they'll come home when they are done so it might even be earlier than 11:30.

My other 2 kids are usually with friends, at their houses or ours, or at the mall, movies etc and always get a ride. The latest for them is 10PM, maybe 10:30 if they are at some one's house. They always get rides and they are never walking around the neighborhoods.

I just can't believe how many kids I see at 9:30 at night, riding bikes in the middle of the street, cutting between cars and then yelling cause someone has beeped at them. I'll be driving home on the weekend from picking up my kids and I'll see a girl about 15-16 yrs old walking home by herself. That just blows my mind.

It's 9:30PM, why are these kids out riding around in the dark anyway???

We had to be home in the neighborhood by dark. We could hang out and play Jailbreak but we had to be on the street when it got dark.

I know we always used to walk home, but we always had someone else with us and I think it was just a different world and time when I was younger. We could do that and didn't have the scares that we have now.

There's too much trouble going on these days, it's scary out there. So when the Mayor of Philadelphia asks me "Do you know where your children are?" you better believe your sweet patooty that my answer is "Hell yes!"