“What if Someone Follows Your Advice and Their Child Is Abducted by a Stranger — Like I Was?”

Marlin: I promised I’d never let anything happen to him.
Dory: Hmm. That’s a funny thing to promise.
Marlin: What?
Dory: Well, you can’t never let anything happen to him. Then nothing would ever happen to him. Not much fun for little Harpo.

I WISH I could guarantee 100% that nothing bad will ever happen to any of my children. Or their friends. I wish my daughter’s best friend wasn’t losing her dad to cancer and that my childhood friend wasn’t a senseless victim of domestic violence that orphaned her 3 children. But life happens. Even bad stuff. You never know what’s coming your way and the avoidance strategy isn’t effective.

I would live a life of regret if I didn’t let my children experience a proper childhood. One with friends playing outdoors and adventures. At parks and ball fields and one that includes epic late night manhunt games.
It’s called childhood. It’s supposed to be the best part of life. Try not to ruin it for your kids.

Your response is so well-stated, Lenore. And kudos to the people who wrote to you for surviving their attacks and being able to respond to you with such thoughtfulness.

Nice response. I would also add that not even being home in bed is 100% safe. There have been a couple cases in the last fifteen years or so where a child was abducted from their own beds while parents were at home. At least one that I recall was on the secondfloor of her home. That doesn’t mean I’m going to watch my child sleep, just in case.

Why do we blame for victim or the messenger? Does it give people closure to do that? I feel bad about any child who is or has been hurt, but often there is little you can do to prevent them all 100% of the time.

Sometime there is no Why, and that is the hardest thing of all to come to terms with.

As others have posted: Life isn’t without risk. In my area, just the other day, an alleged drunk driver ran his car through the yard of an apartment building where a family was gathered, killing a woman and her 14 month daughter. There is just no way to protect yourself 100% of the time with 100% accuracy.

Your reply demonstrates your usual trademark combination of sensitivity and common sense, Lenore. (Without of course your trademark humor, which would be inappropriate here.) You speak for me and others.

Telling your kids “it’s ok to talk to strangers, but never go off with them without telling me first”, isn’t just about telling them. You have to TEACH it to them. They need to understand how and why. A good way is playing it out at home. Make up a scenario, and grill your kids in how to react, and if they react the wrong way, you stop them right away and ask them “why would you do that?” It’s like sports, the only way one gets better at it, is by practicing until it’s second nature.

I’m sure many here where taught at a very young age to navigate their neighborhood. That by the time we were 8-9 years old, we were independent and very street smart. We didn’t even have to think what we should do, we just did it. It had kept us pretty save all those years. And we are smarter now because of it.

I feel bad for the woman who wrote that letter. And not to sound insensitive, but bad things just happen. We have very little control of that. But, it doesn’t happen frequently. In fact, most probably have never experienced anything like that their whole lives. They probably don’t know anyone in their circle of friends that has happened to as well. In the vast population of this world, or even just the population of North America, statistically these are rare incidences. We can’t live in fear because of one bad thing that happened to us years ago. Or live in fear because we hear of some bad things happening to some people all over the world.

We also have to keep in mind, that whether we intend to or not, realize or not, we end up teaching our children these same fears. Which sets them up to fail as they get older. So in sheltering our children, we actually do them more harm. Because they become ill equipped to deal with life as they get older. They become fearful, and very reliant on their parents, well into their teens and 20 something. Some parents even ask themselves, why their kids are so inept, insecure, and fearful in their young adult lives. Duh. lol

I was also groped by a stranger in public. I was 8 or 9. That moment did not scar me quite so much as my mother’s non-reaction when I told her. “You have to watch out for boys, because they’ll do stuff like that”

was not a boy. was a man.
I was not responsible.
boys are NOT inherently dangerous to girls.

I spent my adolescence equating feminine to slutty. I wore boys and men’s dress clothes and was often mistaken for a lesbian when I barely understood what that was. Even when young men were interested in me as a person, that scared me to death and I had more defense mechanisms than a c-class submarine.

I have grown passed my past. I know that my mother said what she did because that was all she was able to say. We do not equip parents with the words to help a child put events like this in perspective.

It is not your fault. You did nothing wrong.
You’ve learned a lesson that not everybody is a civilized person.
The good news is that most people try to be decent human beings.
Don’t be afraid of all people because of what one person did.
Don’t be afraid to enjoy what you love.
Don’t be afraid to live your life.

Your commentor made me realize all over again that often a big part of the problem is that we seldom hear from the kids themselves.
Back in the early 1970’s when daycare and early childhood education really took off, and opposing camps began warring over the supposed results – I distinctly remember that I figured one day about a decade later we’d be hearing from the kids themselves. That never really seemed to happen.

But this particular “what if” question posed above raises the same old issue for me.
In real life, there can always be a “what if” merely rising from one’s bed, and not proceeding to smartly hide in one’s closet until bedtime that night.
Life of course, demands far more of us, than this. And so we bravely meet the challenge.
Bravely.

That helpless shrug that surrenders to what others might think….the inability to calm one’s own fears……or a blind acceptance of anything and everything regardless of what critical examination might provide – are all rather symptoms of disorder, to me.
Ironically, disorder that most often is decidedly NOT medicated by legal drugs or otherwise.

The gentleman who made the video promoted his agenda in the usual way, and prompted desired results by use of propaganda and questionable statistics, and it becomes apparent enough.
But like all good opportunists – when one sees a good thing, one wishes to dip into that gravy train.
Again, and yet again, value added children.
Devoid of any ‘risk’ label – they’re worthless to that cause.

A beloved child is always the very last thing we should want to lose. We would part with all worldly possessions, and no doubt trade our very life to avoid it. All normal and natural, to the good.
But where are the limits and boundaries to embracing such a human thing, which allow that same invaluable child those things in life which make life itself precious?
For life is to be lived. In the moment, and in all stages of the game. That is the point.
Not to be preserved in amber for some rare moment in time when one is deemed to be risk-free.
When does that ever happen, for any of us? Ever?

And so, if all the flocks, herds and hounds of hell claiming “what if” are gathered up and sent packing where they no doubt, belong – what then?
Do we settle down and become relaxed enough to regain and retain common sense?
Calm.
A valuable resource I have treasured all my life.
Learned from my elders as a mere child.
I don’t believe I would have naturally come to it entirely on my own.

Why is it that we accept that living has risks for adults, but not for children?

While there will always be insensitive people who say “why did she do X” anytime something bad happens, as a general rule, society doesn’t have the mentality of “even one is too many” towards adults. We don’t go looking for anything and everything that could have avoided a tragic outcome and insist that now everyone must avoid doing that thing. We tend to accept that sometimes random, unpredictable, and tragic things happen to good people, but that we shouldn’t seclude ourselves from the world in an effort to avoid them. In fact, we consider doing that a phobia.

I think a huge part of the problem is that we live in a society that expects the victims (or potential) victims to take matters in their own hands in terms of waylaying any potential threat. A lot of people assume that with the advent of laws such as the Rape Shield Laws (in which victims of sexual assault can’t have their sexual history used against them in court as a defense) that we’ve moved into a society that puts the blame on the offender. But that’s simply not true because we have, instead, developed this “protect at all costs” mentality that begins at the earliest ages.

For example: at my daughter’s school, students are not permitted to wear anything with a sport logo on it. No Niner’s gear, no Shark’s gear, no Raider’s gear (which is barely a team anyway, but I digress). The reasoning is because local gangs have started using jerseys and hats as a way of identifying members of their own gangs and opposing gangs.

We went shopping the other day and I found this really cute top for her. Her response?: “I can’t wear that. I’ll get dress-coded.” The reason? On the back, up at the neckline, there was a baseball sized cut-out. They’re not allowed to wear anything that shows the back. Really?

Or how about that kindergartner whose story has gone viral in which the school forced her to put a shirt over the sundress she’d been excited to wear because it had spaghetti straps? Then, added insult to injury, when they also made her wear jeans under the ankle length dress. Like the dad said when he complained, anatomically, at that age, she’s no different than a boy.

I’m reminded of a line from the show CSI in which they were investigating several swarm attacks on tourists and when they identified one of the shoes as a Doc Martin, Greg commented that he used to wear them in high school. Catherine responded by saying they became the shoe of choice for skin-heads and Neo-Nazis everywhere. That’s when Greg said, “Yeah, they kinda ruined it for everyone.”

We’ve done the same thing. In our over-zealous need to protect our kids, we’ve begun putting unnecessary restrictions on them. Not just in terms of going out to play, but in the ability to express themselves as the individuals they are. All in an effort to protect them and create a “distraction-free” environment for them to learn in.

We need to start putting the blame where the blame actually belongs. On the offenders and those who actually create the distractions by acting out. Not by suspending some kid who decided to dye their hair blue or opted to pierce their nose. Not once, in all my years of school, did I find my ability to concentrate hindered because the guy in front of me got a mohawk.

Not sure how this is any different than:

“How would you feel if a trusted family member or close family friend molested your child?”

Because that happens frequently, far more frequently than kidnapping by strangers. As for harm and death, cars, swimming pools, and bathtubs are far more risky yet most people don’t avoid those things.

People protect kids from unlikely events, like being kidnapped from a park. Instead, they choose more risky behavior, like driving the kid to Uncle Milt’s house with a swimming pool.

Point this out, and you make people angry.

It’s interesting that the first writer finishes with:
“But if we can do anything to prevent something like this from happening to another child, shouldn’t we?”

You hear this all the time. If we can do something to stop X, shouldn’t we?
Well, no, not necessarily.
The issue is the idea of opportunity cost. What are the costs of overprotecting children? What are the costs of making sure no-one drowns? How much money do we spend to prevent a risk? How many other risks do we create to prevent that one risk?

How much money should we spend to save a life? Well, that depends on how many lives we could save if we spent that money elsewhere, doesn’t it?

I believe children can learn responsibility and self-awareness in a much more controlled environment than allowing them to walk unchaperoned from a park more than one mile from their home, crossing a busy street in the process. Ten-year-old children should not have the responsibility for protecting their six-year-old sibling. A ten-year could hardly be expected to protect himself from harm’s way, let alone protecting his younger sibling. You say that we can’t be responsible for every unforeseen worse-case scenario; however, we can predict with almost 100% certainty if our younger children are with us or at home, there is far less risk than them walking alone along a major highway and crossing another street to get to their home. It is a risk I hope other parents are not so willing to take as the parents in question. I think you have written a very controversial (and dangerous) book, to say the least. There may be a lot of younger parents that so desperately want to be “the modern mom” and misconstrue your liberal message as a new way of parenting. I thought this incident was a one-time event, but it seems the parents, as well as you, believe young children can or even should have to be their own protectors. As I have said before, until your children are in college or reach the age of 18, they are your responsibility. Did you consult with a child therapist or child psychiatrist before writing your book? And maybe you don’t realize, but even free-range chickens aren’t really free-range in the true sense of the word. They are all either in larger pens or in fenced-in areas. I would also like to know your definition of what type of responsibility a 6-year old needs to learn that can’t be taught in the home or school. Do you believe small children need to be in a park all alone for several hours or some other similar scenario in order to learn responsibility??

I also am horrified by your statement “There’s no way to guarantee absolute safety in any situation. But if we can agree not to blame anyone but the criminal, or bad luck, when kids are hurt, that might help at least a tiny bit to mitigate the pain.” What if the child is killed or badly harmed, both of which could have been prevented if parents did what they are supposed to do – parent! I fail to see why we can’t teach young children everything they need to know about responsibility, kindness and respect at home, or taking them to church, or other events. I don’t think as a parent you need to take any risk concerning their lives, even the very tiniest risk when it could be prevented. Maybe it didn’t happen to your son when he took the subway – but it could have, and it could happen in the future. And, yes, I would be worried to death if my 9-yr.old was on the subway alone. My friend’s daughter (adult) moved out of New York just for that reason – lots of crazies on the street. I believe your book might be taken as permission for parents to allow their kids (no matter how young) to roam about unsupervised. Then they wouldn’t blame the perpetrator, but your book for promoting “free-range” children as the parent’s guide du jour.

The problem with the “if it saves even one child” mentality is that it fails to consider the risks/deaths resulting from taking preventative action.

For instance there are some people who die BECAUSE they were wearing a seat belt. It’s rare, but it happens. Sometimes they’re trapped in the car while it burns, while a passenger without a seat belt was thrown from the car and survived.

People could wring their hands and lament, “If only they weren’t wearing a seat belt, they would still be alive today.” Then they could insist that seat belts be outlawed because “if it even saves one person” from the same fate, it’s worth it.

But the risk of dying BECAUSE of your seat belt is much, much lower than the risk of dying if you fail to wear it. So more people will be saved if everyone wears a seat belt, and those rare situations where the seat belt contributed to their death are just rare tragedies.

I feel like the 115 kids per year kidnapped in “stereotypical kidnappings” in this country is the same type of rare tragedy as someone getting killed because they wore a seat belt.

But when you look at the increase in obesity, diabetes, anxiety, and suicide because kids are over-supervised and denied the freedom and learning experiences necessary to their normal development, I think that more kids die from those causes than from the stranger kidnapping fear. These over-parented kids are the equivalent of not wearing your seat belt for fear you might be that rare statistic who dies because of it. To finish the metaphor, the “seat belt” for free range kids is the developmentally appropriate freedom to gain the life experiences and confidence to handle oneself in the world.

We need more study citations showing the risks/deaths from over-supervising children, so we can show that in constantly supervising every child in an attempt to save those 115 children/year, we are actually sacrificing X number of children/year to do so.

Kat Villavicencio: Surely you don’t quite mean all you’re saying there – do you really want to say parents are responsible for averting every possible risk to life and limb until a child is 18? And then what? They go from zero to 100% responsibility overnight?

Also, if you have kids, I’m going to give you the credit of not believing that you would honestly prevent your kids from doing anything that presented any danger to their lives until 18. How about climbing trees? Skiing? Swimming? Ice-skating? Climbing stairs? Risking catching germs by going out in public without a mask? And of course, as Lenore always points out, being a passenger in a car? And will you let them learn to bicycle and then to drive when they’re old enough? To literally avoid every risk of death, regardless of its likelihood, is to live no life at all. Your kids would hate your guts and be counting the days until their 18th birthdays. But like I said, I don’t actually believe you treat them like that – do you?

“I don’t think as a parent you need to take any risk concerning their lives, even the very tiniest risk when it could be prevented.”

So you don’t ever take the pretty big risk of driving your kids anywhere in the car?

“we can predict with almost 100% certainty if our younger children are with us or at home, there is far less risk than them walking alone along a major highway and crossing another street to get to their home.”

I can certainly predict that there is less risk to my child of being struck by a car if she is home. But there are other risks there. A home invasion could occur. The house could catch fire. One of the many large trees in our yard could fall and go through the roof. A plane could crash into our house. She could be abducted while I sleep. Heck, a car could go through our house so even that isn’t a 100% lack of risk. All of these things have happened and, if they happened to us, I would wish that my daughter was walking along a major highway or anywhere other than home.

I make no such predictions as to a decreased risk if I am present. My presence doesn’t stop of car from running onto the sidewalk (as just happened here yesterday on the same road my child crosses to get to school). My presence doesn’t stop a car from running a red light. My weak self is unlikely to be able to stop a man who really wants to abduct my child. My presence may not even be enough to stop her from darting out into the road if she were so inclined for some reason. Depends on how close she is to me. Considering my child burned her arm cooking cupcakes on Monday with me 2 feet away, the only thing that I am actually 100% certain of is that my mere presence doesn’t stop my child from being injured.

“As I have said before, until your children are in college or reach the age of 18, they are your responsibility.”

If you are content to allow your children to wait until their 18th birthday to spend their first moment without supervision, go for it. I live in a college town and see the havoc that attitude wreaks every school year.

You are correct that my children are my responsibility until they are 18. And I have only that many years to teach them everything they need to know in order to be independent people capable of making positive adult decisions. See, THAT is my primary responsibility as a parent. It isn’t just to ensure that they live until 18 at all costs. It is to ensure that at 18 they are capable of being productive members of society. They learn how to be capable adults by spreading their wings and practicing self-reliance and sense of responsibility in increasing amounts as they build to that age, not by being thrown into it at 18.

On a TV show years ago they demonstrated “how easy” it was to convince adults to leave a shopping mall with a stranger and go outside and get into his car.

It was surprisingly easy, and yes, these were adults being tricked… the very people helicopter parents think are the “smart ones,” the ones who will protect small children.

@Kat Villavicencio

As a parent you don’t have only the duty of keeping your children safe. You also have the duty to foster your children’s development into a healthy, responsible and independent adult. Risk is necessary for that, as explained e.g. in this article focusing on play: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201404/risky-play-why-children-love-it-and-need-it

Basically by going too far into “protection mode” you risk stunting the development of your children by denying them the chance of engaging in enough risky activities they actually need to best develop themselves.

Kat — No one is saying that a six-year-old is equipped or prepared to be kicked out of the house after school and sent to the park alone. As FRPs, we also agree that some 14 and 15 year old’s aren’t capable of that either. But we do believe that there are strength in numbers and the more children out and running around, the safer it is for all children — even the younger ones who might not otherwise get to play unsupervised. FRPs promote allowing children to mature and explore at levels the children are comfortable with as well as waiting until the child has the cognitive functions to do so on their own.

Think of it another way: My 10-year-old son’s best friend has read Les Miserable AND comprehended most of it, to boot. My son struggled through The Hobbit and prefers to read Captain Underpants. We both, as parents, choose books that will challenge our children while still conforming to their level of understanding and comprehension. FRPing follows the same principles.

Not only that, but there are some things a parent just can’t provide their children:

from the University of Illinois http://urbanext.illinois.edu/toddlers/exploring.cfm

Children learn by exploring their environment. But their exploring should happen in safe places and in ways that help them learn. As you see your child begin to discover her world, keep these ideas in mind:

Exploring is normal and important for children to do.
Exploring is one of the first steps in learning about objects and in learning how to solve problems.
Children are fascinated about how things work, what they look like from the inside, and how they are made.
Skills like pulling up, standing, crawling, walking, climbing, and running help children explore and test their environment.

from: Aistear: the Early Childhood Curriculum Framework http://www.ncca.biz/Aistear/pdfs/PrinciplesThemes_ENG/ExploringThinking_ENG.pdf

Children use their senses, their minds and their bodies to find out about and make sense of what they see,
feel and experience in the world around them. They gather information and develop new skills, including
thinking skills. They form ideas and theories and test these out. They refine their ideas through exploring
their environment actively and through interacting and communicating with adults and with other children.
Much of this happens through play and other experiences that allow children to be creative, to take risks, and
to make discoveries. As they learn, they retest their theories adjusting them to take on board new discoveries
and new experiences.

from: naturallearning.org http://www.naturalearning.org/sites/default/files/Benefits%20of%20Connecting%20Children%20with%20Nature_InfoSheet.pdf

Studies of children in schoolyards found that children engage in more creative forms of play in the green areas. They also played more cooperatively (Bell and Dyment, 2006). Play in nature is especially important for
developing capacities for creativity, problem-solving, and intellectual development (Kellert, 2005).

from: Brighthorizons.com http://www.brighthorizons.com/family-resources/e-family-news/2013-children-and-nature/

…when children are outside and surrounded by nature, they experience an ever-changing and free-flowing environment that stimulates all the senses. Going outside to play fosters children’s intellectual, emotional, social and physical development.

Interacting with the natural world allows children to learn by doing, and experiment with ideas. In the natural world, children think, question, make suppositions, and thereby develop inquisitive minds.

When children play outdoors there may be opportunities to interact with new and different playmates. In nature, children can play alone or connect with one another, learn to share, and problem solve. In the natural world, children often collaborate to make up games and rules because there are no prescribed sets of instructions. When exploring outside, school-age children may not be in close proximity to adults, which gives them the opportunity to make up their own rules and solve their own problems, without inhibition.

from: cleveland.com http://www.cleveland.com/parents/index.ssf/2010/06/unsupervised_play_allows_child.html

They played “cops and robbers,” ‘house” or “school,” their own reality-based dramas. They also became the characters in fantasies involving queens and dragons, cowboys and horses, flying caped heroes and tall buildings, pirates and sinking ships.

And as they did this, researchers are telling us now, they were developing “executive functions,” the ability to self-regulate, the measurement of which turns out to be a better indicator of success in school than the results of an IQ test.

Kids with good self-regulation skills are better able to control their emotions, resist impulsive behavior, and become self-disciplined and self-controlled.

Kat? Could you possibly respond to any of the comments here?

Blaming the victim disturbs me. Blaming the parent when someone takes their child exempts the actual criminal. Blaming the parent when a child dies (unless they killed them) is cruel. Why do we do this?
Nobody says that the families of the victims of the 9/11 attacks were to blame, for not keeping them in their houses and “letting” them work somewhere that had already been the site of a terrorist attack.
Nobody blames the parents of the Sandy Hook shootings for sending their kids to public school. Nobody tells them that it’s their fault for not homeschooling their kids, for letting them out of their sight.
Those are both very rare situations, and yet nobody blames the parents or the families, because we blame the actual cause- the criminal actions of others that there can be no way to control. Black swan events.
Horrible things happening to kids while they are out being kids are black swan events too, and the families and parents are victims just as much as the child is.

Liz,

Blaming the victims is the way people make themselves feel superior, and safer. By blaming the victims, parents or whomever, they are proclaiming to the world that it could never happen to them, because they are better than the victims. It is rather sick when you think about it.

There are some victims that you could logically blame, overdoses, suicides and the like.

The comparison to the risks of driving a car is apt. The lifetime risk of driving is about 1% death and 5% hospitalization. But, people accept this risk or don’t think about it. The benefits to personal freedom and accomplishment are worth it to almost all people. Yet, some die or are disabled.

The same is true for children. Life in a cocoon is boring and stultifying. Constant oversight from ages 6 to 18 tells the child that he (or she) is helpless. Then he is supposed to lead an independent, confident, and fulfilled life. It can’t work that way.

The well-lived life has some risk. There is no choice in that. The training must begin early.

The Joey Salads demonstrations are disturbing. One reaction is to watch the kids ever more closely. Consider that no amount of telling children how to react actually trains them to react independently. Watching them makes them feel safe, and so they are unthinking.

Put them on their own in stages. There will be natural, appropriate fear. They need that independence to say “No, I’m not going with you, I don’t know you.” That refusal requires a feeling of independence which they can’t get by being watched.

Skipping to young adults, many are selling themselves into debt-slavery by accepting the offer of college loans and the promise (by who?) of great jobs and futures. They don’t have the independence to refuse these “kindly” offers and the lies of schools and government. They have been trained to avoid all risk, and don’t have the personal independence to think for themselves and say no the the nice man telling them what to do.

Wise words, Lenore.

It’s all about balance and living life as fully as one can without paralyzing oneself (or one’s children) with the horribles that might happen rather than focusing on common sense limits that free one to enjoy the present.

You answered this very well. And it’s so nice to hear such civility and thoughtfulness on both sides!

For a lot of people, there’s something satisfying about blaming the victim. It’s a protective ward. “This terrible thing would never happen to me or my kids because I’m smarter and more cautious. I am safe.”

It’s a lie they tell themselves, but it makes them feel better, and most of their decision-making centers around making themselves feel better.

I’ll take my own crack at answering the original email. Obviously I don’t share that experience. What I have is the commonplace car accident. I was 9 too. My parents had forgotten the trip I wanted to take. I begged and cajoled, and kept pushing until they said yes. I blamed myself for that accident for years. I re-analyzed that argument about the trip from every angle. Because of course the whole parade of horribles, [watching that man bleed out, medical mishandling (the hospital lost my mom for 2 days, and she was too injured to get help), my dad loosing his license from a clerical error, my sister and I being temporarily disabled] wouldn’t have happened if I had given up on begging for that trip. It’s not the same as being kidnapped and left for dead of course, but it is a sizable taste of awful. And I’m sure if I encouraged someone to let their kid go and it ended tragically I would feel a lot of that again.

“But if we can do anything to prevent something like this from happening to another child, shouldn’t we?” When my daughter had trouble absorbing oxygen, (possibly due to my resisting a c-section, it seemed like the right choice at the time) and then quit breathing in the night, believe me I was trying everything with half a chance of preventing SIDS. Fans, pacifiers, keeping her room on the chilly side, monitors, the whole 9 yards. “Anything” as you say if it hopes to prevent SIDS. All of that keeping her sleep shallow in the hopes it would keep her alive. I was envisioning her dead at every turn. It was like taking a half dose of the horror I felt in the aftermath of the car accident every single day. And instead of waning the horror grew. Horror is bad enough to live with when you have lived through a horrifying event. But it makes no sense to live with when nothing has happened. I don’t want people who haven’t shared my horrors to share my horrified reactions. It is a grave burden, it sucks the joy out of living. It effects me every time I step into my car. And as hard as it was to forgive myself after the car accident I learned how. I learned that eventually I would be able to forgive myself if something awful happened. I forgave myself for my daughters rough birth. And I tell myself that if anything happens to my daughter I will deal with that guilt then. But there is no way to do all the anythings “to prevent something like this from happening to another child” without inviting in a substantial helping of the horror that comes with actual horrific events. Life hands out enough horror, without dwelling on horrors that don’t belong to us too.

Questions: Is there anything being done to legally fight these laws?
Petitions to sign?
Any lobbying bring done?
Maybe the upcoming elections are a good place to start asking these questions in a ‘town hall’ meeting setting?

Families are being town apart. Children are being traumatized and physically abused and neglected when they are placed in foster care, all causing more harm than good.

@Kat – I’m really hoping you did not mean that email the way it came across, because my first reaction was “oh, so you’re the only person in the world with critical thinking skills, while the rest of us will read Lenore’s book or website and immediately send our toddlers out into the world unattended?”. At the age of 10, I was hauling my younger brother all over the place. We regularly did a 3+ mile round trip to the ice cream shop on our bikes. We walked to our local pool (6 blocks away!) with the fee and a note from our mom.

We can’t teach our children everything they need to know before we give them any independence. That’s not how kids learn. You can tell them pretty much anything you want – if you have kids, then you know they might hear about half of what comes out your mouth. Kids learn by doing. Most of our learning throughout life is experiential. The only way to teach a kid how to be independent is to give them some (developmentally appropriate) space to act independently. Why do we hold our toddlers’ hands when we cross the street, and tell them each time to look both ways? Because there will be a day (long before they are 18) when they want to do it for themselves, and it is our job as parents to let go of that hand and walk beside them.

Protecting our children from harm is only one part of parenting. Our task is to raise the next generation, to prepare them for adulthood, to give them the tools to seek their own adventures and chase their own dreams, and make their own happiness, and hopefully make the world a little better than they found it. It’s scary and exhilarating and sometimes exhausting, but the glow on my kids’ faces when they master a new task or do something on their own for the first time is priceless. I could never deprive them of that experience out of selfish worry.

This:
http://medicalkidnap.com/2015/05/07/ohio-cps-destroys-family-of-5-parents-acquitted-of-any-wrong-doing/
Happens far more often than strange adults in the park. This is just the most recent, they usually have at least a half dozen per month.

CPS is the one who adopts kids, and the parents never see them again, and they get abused in the (for profit) foster-care system.

Your free range kids are more likely to be removed from you, never to be seen again by a judge than a criminal.

But there have been no national interviews on this problem. The Lakota nation has been decimated by South Dakota’s CPS.

I think people don’t recognize the HUGE harm done by clipping children’s wings. Peter Gray outlines this very clearly. Kids need to play independently, in various groupings, to develop social skills. They need to learn to accept feeling hurt or not being the best, to accommodate people with different abilities, to manage frustration and anger, etc. Sheltered at home or in parent-initiated playdates and classes, they’re missing out.

And a whole generation will suffer as a result.

It’s ironit that I read this today because at 5 minutes earlier, I was making a drawing to address this very issue!

In the 1960,s a neuroscientist discovered that the brain is made up from 3 major parts. He called this the triune brain. All 3 of these parts were developed at different times on the evolution scale. The neocortex is the youngest and most intelligent part of the brain. It can look at both sides and weigh up pros and cons in order to make a decision. This is the ONLY part of the brain that can do that. The rest of the brain can look at one side only.

However this higher level thinking takes longer to do. Therefore during times of stress (or worst first thinking) we temporarily disable the neocortex. This is normal to do this on occasion. When the rational part gets shut down at an abnormally frequent amount of times, it’s quite damaging and the, ‘let’s look at one side only’ becomes normal thinking.

One side only can be (worst first thinking) but it can also be, ‘Oh! That puppy is so cute! I wonder if this stranger has more of them in his van’? The ‘look at both sides’ part of the brain has become neutered from years of helicopter parenting. The child’s own judgement hasn’t developed. All they know is mommies mantra of, ‘don’t talk to strangers’.

However the child’s own ‘lets look at one side one’ can override this with the thought, “But that puppy is soooooooooo cute!” Joey Salads video shows that this can happen often. Their mothers also told them about stranger danger but the cute puppy still won out.

The reptilian complex (survival brain) can call an emergency over ride. That’s good! However the overprotected child hasn’t learned survival. They only remember mommies mantra of ‘don’t talk to strangers’.

We agree that children should be protected. We disagree on the most effective way to protect them. Instead of asking Lenore, “How would you feel if….” You can ask yourself, How would you feel if you helped disable the the child’s judgement and therefore the thought, ‘But that puppy is soooooooooo cute’ won out?

http://www.onmysoapboxx.com/tough-decision

@ Olga Morris

“Free range Parenting. … As opposed to contained in a cage parenting? ” Yeah, that’s pretty much the dichotomy. I had a friend who was helicoptered before it was the thing to do. Her parents asked me to “babysit” her when we were both in middle school. I refused to let her parents call it that or pay me. But I came and I stayed with my friend, and lived with their rules for brief episodes. If feels like being in a cage. A body needs to move, a child’s body desperately needs to move. (She was became desperate, like a hint of suicidal desperation, at the prospect of loosing her only readily available physical outlet, a trampoline) Also children have a huge need for independent exploration.

Once, and only once, another friend and I convinced the helicopter parents to let us take our friend for a walk in her own neighborhood. We went around a circuitous block. It was an enormous thrill to her (again she was in middle school) and she was breathless with excitement when we got back. She had no idea how to navigate. Within a minute of loosing sight of her house, she had no idea where we were or how to get back. We didn’t know her neighborhood and had never walked in it but had no problem finding our way back.. dull walk. We were never allowed to do it again.

Please please please think about this prior to letting your child walk too far in the 50s
A supposedly a safer time I walked 12 houses on my way to the corner park and was abducted and molested. I am 65 years old and still the thought of this happening to any child brings me to tears. And my poor mother the guilt turned her inside out and created a somewhat well meaning over protective parent. There has to be a balance and for me a ten and six year olds should not walk a mile home look at the risks. Maybe it would be a good idea to explore other other ways to allow children to be more independant. There is no way to relate the horror of just one child being abducted. All the therapy after the fact can’t undue it, is terrorifying for everyone involved. I hope one parent is spared by listening to those of us who have been there.

And that’s exactly right, the 50s were a “supposedly safer time.” There was exactly the same ratio of loonies to regular folk as there is today. Wait. I think there’s probably less today, actually. We’ve come so far with teaching children to advocate for themselves, be educated about their bodies and boundaries and saying no, even to adults, that the incidence of victimization is likely lower, and the loonies are being identified more easily because there is less shame for victims.

But whatever. Life is life, humans are humans, some are aberrant, but no more than there ever were, and possibly less.