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I think unfortunately a lot of American parents have a skewed picture of what dangers lurk out there. I grew up in Northern Europe and when I was nine my family and I went to visit my grandma who was living in Florida at the time. There was a playground just a few blocks away and my brother and I wanted to go there one day and as we were about to leave my mother came and stopped us. Apparently the other adults at the place we were at had told her that she could under no circumstances let us, a 7 and 9-year old, walk to the playground by ourselves. The risk for kidnapping was too high, they said, especially since we were white children. According to them predators routinely drove around playgrounds looking for kids to kidnap and white kids were especially sought after. It was supposedly too dangerous for us kids to walk alone in the neighborhood at all. This was a nice middle class neighborhood in a Miami suburb. I bet that there had never been a single kidnapping anywhere near there.
Another case-in-point story; I read a post on a local website from a mother who was upset because her 10-year old daughter no longer qualified for the school bus because she lived too close to the school - a 15 minute walk. The mother was upset because of the danger her daughter would be in from sex offenders. She said that she had walked the route that her daughter would have to walk to school and about 30 cars passed by her. This would mean that 30 people would, low and behold, see her daughter every morning. Horrible thought! People would see her! And who knows how many of these 30 drivers would be pedophiles that would have dirty thoughts about her daughter after seeing her walking. No, this mother wanted her daughter on the school bus so that all these pedophiles that lurk on every corner wouldn't see the girl and be turned on by her. My goodness! Isn't that going a little too far? Sadly I don't think this mother is alone in her irrational hysteria.
There aren't pedophiles everywhere. Your kid is not going to be kidnapped walking to the park or to school. In fact, I think this hysterical, overprotective, irrational parenting is doing more harm to the kids than would be done if they were out in public by themselves.
I truly believe we live in an arrogant age of self deluded ideas of ultimate power and control. Sounds crazy, right? Hear me out.
I think because we are able to prevent so much through science, medicine and technology that we have arrived at a point where we think we can stop most anything. I think we are overly confident in our control over our lives and especially those of our children. We think if we just fire the teacher who picks up a student or prevent our kids from walking to school that we are defeating the enemy. Actually what we are doing is creating a culture of fear and suspicion. We are creating a generation of kids who will lack critical thinking and listening to their intuition. That's bad.
Worse: I think this whole child-centered way of thinking is going to continue to get crazier. I've already heard of people wiring their kids to catch teachers' misdeeds or putting a GPS tracker in the child's coat. We even have the ability to have visual and audio surveillance of our children while they sleep.
The people caught in the cross-hairs of all this fanaticism are men, which is a damned shame. Men have a different approach with children than women and I think that it really benefits kids to have both in their lives.
Unfortunately, I think this is a rolling snowball and it cannot be stopped. It's too far down the pike. Parents have had CPS called on them for leaving children at a playground or a 10 year old at home alone. It's scary.
I truly believe we live in an arrogant age of self deluded ideas of ultimate power and control. Sounds crazy, right? Hear me out.
I think because we are able to prevent so much through science, medicine and technology that we have arrived at a point where we think we can stop most anything. I think we are overly confident in our control over our lives and especially those of our children. We think if we just fire the teacher who picks up a student or prevent our kids from walking to school that we are defeating the enemy. Actually what we are doing is creating a culture of fear and suspicion. We are creating a generation of kids who will lack critical thinking and listening to their intuition. That's bad.
Worse: I think this whole child-centered way of thinking is going to continue to get crazier. I've already heard of people wiring their kids to catch teachers' misdeeds or putting a GPS tracker in the child's coat. We even have the ability to have visual and audio surveillance of our children while they sleep.
The people caught in the cross-hairs of all this fanaticism are men, which is a damned shame. Men have a different approach with children than women and I think that it really benefits kids to have both in their lives.
Unfortunately, I think this is a rolling snowball and it cannot be stopped. It's too far down the pike. Parents have had CPS called on them for leaving children at a playground or a 10 year old at home alone. It's scary.
I wish I had the article handy but I read a statistical analysis on how unlikely it is that your child would be kidnapped,a victim of stranger danger, shot by a school sniper, etc....vs. the real dangers (drowning) and car accidents.
I can understand why people become paranoid, as someone who has been abused. But speaking from experience, most child molesters find ways to get themselves in trusted positions. They know how to fly under the radar as "well-meaning" pediatricians, teachers, caregivers, church elders, etc. For example, I was molested as a child but always in a places that most people would have deemed "safe"--my bedroom, bathroom, and homeroom classroom. The truth is that most child molestation is by someone that both the child and parent knew long beforehand, and that the parent had come to trust with their child. Child molesters know better than to try to molest a child who doesn't know them, especially in a public place like the beach, because they know people have their guards up and are keeping an eye on children. They wait till people have their guards down before making a move on a child, and that way they can also emotionally blackmail their victims into secrecy--"it's cause I love you," "if you tell mom she will be jealous", etc.
My BIL studied to be a teacher, even got his masters degree. On his second day as a kindergarten teacher, one of the little boys was trying to stab another in the eye with a pencil. BIL picked up the boy and prevented the injury. He was fired for picking up the student. I really feel like that wouldn't have happened if he was female.
I sometimes think the reason we are so overzealous about stranger danger is that we just want to scare our kids so we don't have to watch them. If you're sending your 5 year old out to play in the front yard, or down the street, it makes sense to tell them not to talk to anyone but other kids. I'm always outside with my kids, so it's okay if they talk to the man who walks past with his dogs, or the guy jogging with his stroller, or the mailman, or the ice cream man. I'm there and nothing is going to happen.
There is such a huge double standard between men and women. I believe sincerely that women probably abuse children as frequently as men, but that they get away with a whole lot more because they aren't suspected nearly as much as men. Female teachers can get away with hugging their students, being alone in a room with a child, etc. and are just seen as being "maternal", whereas men doing the same are seen as "creeps".
Just know you did the right thing. Do not be hard on the parents because a parents myself, it isnot easy to trust. Just look at the news stories. Every night there is a story about abduction and molestations. Because it is an epidemic. These child molesters need to be taken off the street, after their first offense. We as parents have difficulties raising our children because of child abductors and or molesters. Years ago our kids did not need to be so highly guarded. It is why our children are in the house more. We cannot let them play in the neighborhood as we did many years ago. It is not paranoid ;it is real.
Every night there is a story about abduction and molestations. Because it is an epidemic.
First off, I don't think there are such news stories every night. This is the alarm and over-excitement that the OP is talking about. Your feelings that this is an "epidemic" are due to sensationalist news stories about cases from all over the place. Maybe you live in Florida and hear about a kidnapping in Oregon. Watching it on the news makes people feel that these stories are personal, when nearly all of the time they are random and faraway.
From the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children:
Quote:
115 children were the victims of “stereotypical” kidnapping. (These crimes involve someone the child does not know or someone of slight acquaintance, who holds the child overnight, transports the child 50 miles or more, kills the child, demands ransom, or intends to keep the child permanently.)
Nearly all kidnapping and molestation involves family members and other trusted adults.
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