The name Etan Patz conjures up so much for so many in New York City.

If you’re under 30, it is likely to draw a blank stare, but for many others it’s different, particularly if you were growing up in the city around 1979, when Patz, a 6-year-old Soho boy, disappeared on his first solo trip to school.

“Mom used to say, ‘You’ll end up like Etan Patz and no one will ever see you again’ when I walked too far ahead in NYC as a kid,’” @AlexSalta wrote on Twitter last week. “It worked.”

Patz was a trending topic this week and last as investigators went back to a Soho basement to dig for clues with a new suspect in the case. It’s the kind of story that grips you every time it resurfaces, although it probably didn’t change behaviors as much as people think.

Peggy Schneider, naturally, was thinking about Patz this week, since she was in middle school in Manhattan when the boy disappeared—but then again, she thinks about Patz and his parents a lot.

“I can still see his smiling face; I have probably thought about it once a month for my entire life,” she said in a phone interview.

Her friend was Patz’ babysitter, so she had a personal connection, but even that was not enough to change her habits. She still traveled the city on her own as a young teen.

So did I and most of my friends. The city was less safe in the ’80s, yet many parents then were much less protective than they are now.

Columnist Lenore Skenazy got a lot of mileage a few years ago when she wrote about letting her 9-year-old son ride the subway alone, and has since expanded the column into a movement to promote raising “Free-Range Kids.” Her column would never have drawn the uproar 30 years ago that it did in 2008.

I was a few years older than Skenazy’s son when I began riding the subway with a friend, but around the 3rd grade, I began walking to school alone—of course, that simply involved crossing a street that my parents could see from our window. My friends and I would play ball after school with other neighborhood kids, and we managed to do it without refs or adult supervision.

Still, I didn’t have to cross any streets to get to the concrete “field,” and I know things will be different when my son reaches the age when we have to start making these impossible decisions. There is a lot to be said for letting kids figure it out for themselves, but the rub is deciding when to do it and how much to let go.

Schneider’s youngest sister, Zoe, 40, is a year older than Patz would be today. She doesn’t remember being reigned in much growing up, but somewhere between then and now, city parents began tightening the leashes for better and, perhaps, for worse.

She may be more tapped into this generation of New Yorkers than anyone; she is the organizer of Magic Garden, a large monthly party for people who grew up in the city, giving them a chance to meet people who don’t ask, “What was that like?”

She used to come home late at night from babysitting gigs when she was young, but her immediate neighborhood in Tudor City was shielded from cars. Now in Harlem, she said “it is really scary” to think about her children someday walking by themselves near so much traffic.

“Babysitting at age 9 is crazy, but it was what it was,” she said. “It all worked out and everyone made it through.”

Not that parents didn’t worry quietly. Mine are fuzzy about how Patz affected their thinking, but my mother does remember me taking the train to high school in the Bronx. It wasn’t all that long after Patz disappeared.

“I always say I spent four years looking out the window,” she told me.

Josh Rogers, contributing editor at Manhattan Media, is a lifelong New Yorker. Follow him @JoshRogersNYC.

By Dr. Emily Levy

As students progress through school, their organizational demands increase rapidly. They are required to complete lengthier assignments, take detailed notes, study for exams and transport more materials. For many students, these organizational demands can be daunting, and they often become lost and utterly disorganized in this process.

Most students lack a system for consistently organizing all of their papers, notes, handouts and tests. By learning and implementing the three-tier organizational system below, students will become much more organized and systematic with all of the loose papers that come their way.

So how does it work?

The three-tier notebook organization system is composed of the following three parts: a working notebook, reserve notebook a and long-term filing drawer.

The Working Notebook. This is the notebook that should be taken to school on a regular basis. It can be set up in the form of one three-ring binder with separate tabs for each class or in the form of one color-coded spiral notebook (for taking notes) and one folder (for handouts and homework) for each class. What is most important about the working notebook, however, is that it only contains papers that your child absolutely needs to be carrying with him to school.

One day per week (you should help your child choose this day and have him write it down directly in his assignment book each week) will be designated as his clean-out-my-working-notebook-day. On this day, he will clean out all the papers that he no longer needs to take to school with him and file them in his reserve notebook.

The Reserve Notebook. The reserve notebook should actually take the form of a large, multisection accordion folder. For each class, there will be three sections in the accordion folder: one for homework, one for class notes and one for tests or quizzes. For example, for math, your child would have sections labeled “math homework,” “math class notes” and “math tests/quizzes.” He would have similar sections for English, science, social studies, and all other classes. Remember that the working notebook should be cleaned out and transferred to the reserve notebook on a weekly basis.

The Long-Term Filing Drawer. At the end of the semester or school year, if your child has written a stellar essay, completed a notable project or scored sky-high on a particular exam, you may want to save this work for the long-run. This information should be placed into a filing drawer for long-term safekeeping (you should be in charge of this drawer).

You might want to help your child set up this system and encourage him to maintain it on a regular basis. Within weeks you’ll notice that your child is more organized, structured, and systematic in his approach to managing his loose papers and his overall workload.

Dr. Emily Levy is the founder and director of EBL Coaching (www.eblcoaching.com) which offers tutoring and organizational coaching.

• First, decide if the whole family is ready for the separation, which can be as short as one week or as long as eight weeks. “Our suggestion is you always send the child to camp when the child—and the parent—are ready,” said Joanne Paltrowitz, director of the camp referral service Camp Experts. “You never push a child.” If everyone’s not on board, families can always wait another year.

• Another thing to consider is whether your child might be too young or too old for camp. Paltrowitz suggested the best time to look for summer camps is the year before children enter 4th, 5th and 6th grades. In the older years, friendships have already been formed and “socially, it’s harder” to break in, she said, adding “It’s really important to get your child in on the ground floor.”

• Decide whether you’re looking for day or overnight camps. “It can look very, very overwhelming—there are thousands of camps out there,” said Renee Flax, director of program services for the American Camp Association. Visit www.acacamps.org or www.campwizard.org for extensive lists of accredited camps.

• Choosing a camp is a little bit like matchmaking, so zero in on camps that match your child’s interests. “The parents’ homework assignment is to think objectively about who their child really is,” Flax said. Is your child artsy or athletic? Will they swim in a lake or must there be a swimming pool? Circus camp or riding camp? “It’s not one size fits all,” she said.

• Take location into account. “Some parents are not comfortable with a six-hour distance from their home,” Paltrowitz said. Fortunately, plenty of overnight camps exist within a few hours’ drive of New York City.

• The gamut of prices is wide, so figure out how much your family expects to pay, Flax said. Prices range from free YMCA camps to private camps that cost $9,000 per summer.

• Meet with camp directors—and trust your first impression. If they don’t impress you as being knowledgeable, positive and responsible, heed the warning. “That’s important to the nth degree,” said Sam Borek, owner and director of the Woodmont Day Camp in New City, N.Y.

• Find out how camps recruit their staff. Jem Sollinger, director of Camp Laurel in Readfield, Maine, performs background checks and asks for two letters of recommendation—and that’s before the initial interview with camp counselors.

• Ask camp directors what their return rate is. “If a return rate is very low, that might signal a problem to you,” Flax said. A return rate of over 80 percent probably means happy parents—and happy campers.

• Unleash detailed questions on camp directors. How do they deal with home-sickness? How do children and their parents keep in touch? Can the camp accommodate special diets? How do they dispense medication?

• Ask for a parent referral, suggested Flax. If you’re the parent of a 10-year-old girl in Manhattan, ask to speak to the parent of another 10-year-old girl in Manhattan. Camp directors should be more than happy to oblige.