Judge blasts modern parenting that turns children into ‘snowflakes’ after father breached court order because he didn’t want to force his children to walk 100 yards to their mother’s house when he dropped them off

A Crown Court judge has blasted overprotective modern parenting that turns children into ‘snowflakes’.

Judge Rupert Lowe spoke out after hearing how a father breached a restraining order by refusing to let his children walk 100 metres to their home.

Instead, Kevin Reynolds, 64, took his two children, aged eight and nine, home to their mother by driving within 30 metres of her house to drop them off, Gloucester Crown Court heard.

Reynolds, from Gloucester, pleaded guilty to breaching the non-molestation order between 24 and 29 December 2022 by entering the 100m exclusion zone around his ex-partner’s home.

Upon hearing that the reason Reynolds flouted the order was because he did not feel it was safe to make the children walk 100 metres unaccompanied, Judge Lowe said: ‘They know the way, don’t they?’

Defence solicitor Steve Young said Reynolds felt he had to watch the children arrive home because he did not want to risk anything happening which might jeopardise his rights of access to them.

The judge said: ‘Yes, but children are not to be turned into snowflakes! They have to learn to live a life.

‘In 1971, eighty percent of children walked to school and by 2023 it was 25 percent.’

Mr Young said: ‘I am looking around this court to see if there is anyone older than me here but yes, certainly I used to walk a mile to school.’

Judge Lowe said it was ‘not doing children any good’, before adding: ‘We wonder why everyone is complaining about anxiety and depression.’

He questioned Mr Young about the reasons for the terms of the non-molestation order but said that if he had been the Family Court judge he would have felt a 100-yard exclusion area was ‘perfectly okay.’

‘They (the children) are old enough and it would do them good,’ he said.

Mr Young said the non-molestation order had been imposed at the ex-partner’s request and in Reynold’s absence.

‘He is speaking to her as little as possible because their relationship is still not good,’ said Mr Young.

Judge Lowe conditionally discharged Lowe for 12 months for the breach and ordered him to pay £150 towards prosecution costs.

‘On the application of your ex-partner the Family Court imposed a non-molestation order, the terms of which included that you must not go within 100 metres of her address,’ the judge told Reynolds.

‘That seems to have been at a time when you were having access to the younger children and dropping them off at her address. They are aged eight and nine and you felt that dropping them off 100 yards away was a bit too far away in the circumstances so you dropped them off at what she says was 30 metres away, which she says she found intimidating.

‘You, knowing what the order was, should have gone back to the Family Court to get it changed to make sure you were not in breach.

‘Because it is not a very serious breach, for the reasons I have described, I am not going to impose a punishment on you.

‘It will be a conditional discharge so if you stay out of trouble for the next 12 months you will hear nothing more about this.’

The judge said he was making Reynolds pay £150 towards costs because, although unemployed and in receipt of benefits, he could have saved public expense by pleading guilty at a much earlier stage of the proceedings than he eventually did.