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Is that "missing" as in run aways and divorced parent abductions as well or just kids taken by strangers? That makes a difference to me on actions you need to take as a parent. Of course I'd be on the look out for an angry ex husband or a depressed youth. We were only talking about complete stranger abductions like the one in the original post. I'd have different advise for other issues.
Says who? A kidnapping is a kidnapping. I should think you'd want to protect your child from all kinds. And even noting the difference between a runaway and a victim of kidnapping, the danger is there when a child runs away. There are still more accounts of children going missing, no matter the cause. So I stand by my saying, It's more dangerous for children today than ever before.
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Originally Posted by num1baby
Yes. And the mother of this 7 year old knew where her daughter was too. She was out of sight for a minute, but mom knew where she was.
Reporting a child has been modernized however since then. Back then you often had to wait time periods in order to report your child whereas now it can be done right away. So how many parents back then who would now report their child weren't able to, but a day or so later the said child turned up were there you think '? I'm not saying don't be cautious but just like molesting of children it only makes up maybe 20 percent of the crimes. It's often without the family that you suffer most opportunity to be abducted from.
Some of the statistics on that second link there are misleading, if not blatantly false. There's a statistic that states that there are 2,000 missing child reports per day, and another stating that 24% of kidnappings are "stranger abductions." Which makes you think that about 500 children per day are snatched off the street or from a store or whatnot by a stranger. That's not true. The number is about 115 per year according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. That's 115 too many! But the risk is incredibly low. Kids literally have a greater chance of dying of strep.
I get the appeal of "parents need to do anything to protect their kids." But it matters that people know the actual risks because it's incredibly important to make sure kids develop competence to be out in the world at an age-appropriate level. I expect that in middle and high school my daughter will be involved in school-related and community things that involve her making some decisions on her own, with only limited supervision. I certainly was. So I consider it part of my job as a parent to start her developing the skills she needs now, in a limited way.
Parents absolutely need to protect their kids from foreseeable risks. But those risks also include them not being able to navigate the world when they're on their own. I went to college, away from home, at 16. If my parents hadn't been willing to let me out of their sight when I was younger (and I was a kid both in a higher-crime era nationally and in a fairly high-crime city for the era, though in a relatively safe area of that city), there's no way I would've been competent to do that.
I would have taught my children to scream "Get the F**K away from me! I don't know you! and then to preceed to curse him out! Yeah I know it is not PC, but I bet everyone in the store would turn around and look. I would even bet that the man trying to take her would think twice as well!
I see what she's saying. I read about a teacher's aid who wrote a love-letter to a nine-year-old last week. That happened at school. Every now and then, some kid is molested on a school bus or in youth group or at church. This stuff mostly happens from trusted adults who have ready access to children they know, not random creeps lurking in shopping aisles. When those things happen, the parents probably know where the children are, just not what is happening at the moment.
I would have taught my children to scream "Get the F**K away from me! I don't know you! and then to preceed to curse him out! Yeah I know it is not PC, but I bet everyone in the store would turn around and look. I would even bet that the man trying to take her would think twice as well!
Lol, I don't know if many kids would have the courage to do it quite like that in the moment. But yeah, it'd certainly do the trick if they did.
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'? I'm not saying don't be cautious but just like molesting of children it only makes up maybe 20 percent of the crimes. It's often without the family that you suffer most opportunity to be abducted from.
