“After Hearing John Walsh, I Cannot Let My Kids Go”

After watching a really creepy episode of a cop drama last night I felt the fear rising. And that was fiction. Sheesh.

Maybe ban televison to imporve emotional security and mental health?

We often talk about the parents role in a free-range family, but you can’t really be free-range unless you are raising your kids to be independent. That means that you are training them to make risk assessments **themselves** and to watch their own environment and make good decisions. Obviously, a meteorite could just as likely come through your roof as a PCP-crazed rapist could through a window – and both would make your choice in parent styles moot, but teaching kids to understand risk is a core value of the free-range lifestyle.

I think the thing the writer misses is that you cannot control everything. Polly Klass was taken from her bedroom, as was Elizabeth Smart. You cannot completely avoid “risk.” But that’s the allure of helicoptering. You feel like you are in control when you are not. I’d rather teach my child about risk, give him tools to use, but help him to be independent, so that I don’t have to bring him with me when I run an errand when he’s 15.

I’m sorry but John Walsh and everyone like him play on our fears as parents and they make millions of dollars doing it. When you stop and do a little research, there is very little stranger danger, though it does happen. Most children 95% are victimized by people they know. There are several studies out there that debunk the coolaid that these people and politicians feed us. As a past child victim, these people do not forgive nor do they allow us or want us victims to forgive, grow and move on. I suggest you educate yourselves about the dangers and that the danger is mostly within the family unit. Shame on you John Walsh for saying otherwise and quit revictimizing us and making money off of us!

I would also suggest just not watching John Walsh. When an interview with him comes on TV, turn it off. He is drawing everything he says from his personal experience, and everything he says is skewed from that perspective.

Think about this – if Adam Walsh had had a completely normal childhood, and John Walsh gave interviews about that, would you listen to him? Would you base your life on what he said?

Tapes of tortured children? My TV would have been off the minute that was even mentioned. There’s no need, in my opinion, to listen to anyone talk about that.

I’d suggest she not take her child in a car anywhere since isn’t the statistic for a kid being in an injury car accident much much much higher? She can obviously do what she wants, but at some point her kids will start resenting their lack of freedom and independence. And she has another issue if she can’t stop watching interviews or videos like this. What about all the videos of happy kids playing? Why isn’t she watching those?

I feel for the Walsh family as I do for any parent whose child dies before them. The wife must feel some about of guilt for being in a different isle. But here’s the thing….

She didn’t murder her son.

Again. She didn’t murder her son.

Here’s something also important….

We are all going to die.

If we live our lives trying to keep ourselves and our loved ones from dying, we are fighting a loosing battle. Sure I don’t want my children to die before I do, but I don’t have much control over that. Nor would I like my children to be tortured shortly before their deaths. But….

We are all going to die.

However, I do have control over what my children do and how they do enjoy life. And I try to live it like they have cancer and are dying because if they did have cancer then we wouldn’t spend time worrying over if someone is going to kidnap them and murder them, now would we? We’d spend quality time with them and try and make their last few days special.

So I spend quality time with my children and try to make every day special in case it is in fact the last one for them or for me because we are in fact all going to die. And the vast majority of us have no idea when or how we are going to die (only those who happen to be dying really have some inkling).

And we need to get over the fact that we aren’t immortal.

As L says, we are more likely to die in a motor accident than be kidnapped, yet we still get in a car and take our children to the library, out to the park, out to eat, to the pool, to school,….

We are all going to die. Repeat that to yourself and think about what you should be doing rather than worrying over something that inevitably is going to happen anyway.

I think the writer needs to ask herself, what benefit did I get from XYZ (walking to school, riding a bike around the neighborhood, etc) and think why should I deprive my child of that experience? After that, the parent needs to go through the kind of therapy that people use to desensitize their fear of say dogs for example. Imaging being 100 feet from a dog, then getting comfortable with that, then 50 feet, then 25 feet, then 10 feet, then petting the damn dog. Although I guess with being free range, it’s in reverse. Letting them be out of your sight for 30 seconds, then 1 minute, then 5 minutes and so on. And seeing how HAPPY and SELF CONFIDENT your child becomes when they see how you let then have some autonomy and the belief that they are capable of doing things on their own. And if she NEVER wants to let her kids out of her sight, when they get to college or just being on their own as adults, how are they supposed to cope?

On a side note, does she not allow them to drive in cars? Or is that risk something that feels normal and regular and everyday, so it’s okay if they say were killed if someone drove them over a bridge (which is what happened in NYC not too long ago)

You choose not to allow your children the freedom to roam because of your own self interest. Read your letter again. It isn’t about how awful it is for the kids who die. It is about how awful it is for the PARENTS to live through. It’s about John not Adam; Stan not Etan and Marc not Polly. The kids aren’t mentioned in your letter at all except for the effect their death had on their parents.

Parenting is the one thing of the few things we undertake that REQUIRES us to put aside our own selfishness and do what is best for the children we choose to bring into the world or bring into our homes. Children need space to grow into mature, responsible, independent adults. They need childhoods filled with fun and not fear of the boogieman around every corner. Is it scary to let them go? Absolutely! But we have to push down our own fears and do what is best for them, not what is best for us. Every time my daughter goes out if my sight, a part of me worries until I see her again. But I wave and let her go, knowing it is her job to slowly spread her wings to prepare for a life without me and it is my job to let her no matter how afraid I am. Because it isn’t all about me.

And ask yourself this, when will it be enough? At what age will you be able to allow your child to walk out the door without you with a 100% guarantee that they will not meet some horrific tragedy before they return? 18? 22? 25? For every Etan Patz, there is a Natalee Holloway, Chandra Levy, Eve Carson. All over 18 and all murdered. All mourned by their parents just as Etan Patz is mourned by his. Their parents are no less devastated because they got a few extra years with their children. Should Eve’s death now keep us from allowing our children to go to college? Should Chandra’s death keep us from allowing our children to do internships? Should Natalee’ disappearance keep us from allowing our adult children to vacation with friends?

At some point, we have to step back and let them live their own lives. It is never easy. It is not going to be easier at 16 or 18 or 21 when you have kept them close to you because if fear. It is much easier to slowly give them room so that when they do have to leave you, you know they can handle it.

And stop listening to John Walsh. He has exploited Adam’s death to make himself a millionaire. He wants you to fear because that is where his paycheck is. If everyone realizes that the world is not an awful and scary place full of danger for children, he loses money. He doesn’t want to lose money so he will shove every morsel of fear down your throat that he can. The more gut-wrenching and horrifying the better. He stopped being about Adam and became about his own fame and pocketbook many, many years ago. He probably disgusts me more than I feel an ounce of sympathy for him anymore.

Using a different analogy, airline disasters are like strangers abducting children. They are events that get a lot of air time on the news when they happen because they are so rare. Just like we can name kids who have been abducted and killed by strangers (Adam Walsh, Etan Patz, Polly Klaas), we can also name flights which ended in disaster (Pan Am flight 103 that exploded over Lockerbie, TWA flight 800 from New York that exploded over the Atlantic Ocean). Because these events are so rare, we end up mentioning aviation disasters and kidnappings that happened many years ago.

What never gets mentioned on the news are all of the millions of people who fly every day who make it to their destinations. The millions of kids who walk to school, take a public bus, or ride their bikes different places are also never mentioned. It would be really boring to hear about everyone going places without incident. Fear sells and generates ratings.

This dredging up of old events doesn’t just happen in the States. In 1990 my husband was working in a small town in England and I came along. Whenever I would mention running in the nearby woods, people would tell me how dangerous it was because someone got murdered while walking alone in the woods. It turned out that the murder happened about 10-15 years previously, but people still talked about it like it happened yesterday. Again, it was a very rare and sensational event that stuck in people’s minds.

As Dr. Phil and others say, we are not raising children, we are actually raising adults. We need to teach our children to become self-confident and to function as adults. When our kids go off to college, or start careers, we won’t be by their sides 24/7. Self-esteem doesn’t come from being constantly praised. It comes from age-appropriate mastery of something. I liked the suggestion of letting your kids go in small doses. For example, let your children walk to a neighbor’s house by themselves. When you see that they can do that safely, let them go a little further. You’ll be amazed at the boost in their self-esteem from trusting that they can handle being on their own for a few minutes.

One more thing. Read Lenore’s book. She has some great strategies for assessing real risks and how to avoid the prevalent fear mongering.

I wonder if people like this ride in automobiles…

I’m not going to judge this mother. But I am going to ask what is she doing to proactively to teach her children risk assessment, conflict avoidance/resolution, self-awareness/accurate gut instinct, and a whole host of other skills to prevent them from becoming victims as adults since she is choosing not to let them learn those skills through controlled and scaled independence. As long as she isn’t putting her children in danger later by denying these important skills, and she isn’t telling me how to teach them to my kids, I have no issues with her choice.

Donna, your comment (and its follow-up) blew my mind. Awesome.

TURN. OFF. THE. TV.

It is my duty to prepare my children for the challenges of life

If you look at the website for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children they have this to say about child kidnappings each year:

115 children were the victims of “stereotypical” kidnapping. These crimes involve someone the child does not know or a 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.

Compare that to about 1 out of 6 women being sexually assaulted. Yet we still go about our day.

Donna–I really liked the first 2 paragraphs of your post.

I think that is right, the letter writer needs to figure out why this is so important to her. Are you afraid others will judge you? What does it mean to you and why? Maybe something from your childhood?

I’m also not going to judge the mother, because I can see that what she is doing is out of love for her children. I was a bit of a helicoptor parent, thinking of all the bad things that may happen. Not just stranger danger, but getting hit by a car if crossing the road on her own,burning down the house, etc. Luckily I have a strong willed daughter, that when she was 8 convinced me that she could walk home from the school I taught at and that she attended in a small country town (there were 52 students at the school) We lived across the road from the school. I allowed her, although she had to lock the door and ring me as soon as she got home. (which was 2 min later) Guess what nothing happened. But letting my girl ‘go’ was baby steps for me. Now that she is almost a teenager (in 2 weeks, 3 days and 5 hours, or so she tells me) she keeps surprising me with her independence. Yes she does do silly things and gets herself into some trouble, but nothing that can be worked out. All I can say to this mum, if she wants her children to be freerange is take little steps and I bet she will be surprised at the resoursefulness of her children, and yes the fear is still there in the back of your mind but that can be pushed out of your mind. Good luck to that mum and her family, whatever she decides.

*I did not read all the previous comments*
Dear Mom of Four,
I am a mom of two, and I agree with you on some of your points. 50 children needlessly dieing is a wholly unacceptable number. But not allowing your child freedom to do things on his/her own will not prevent dieing. I agree, the idea of an adam walsh or elizabeth smart or jaycee dugard is terrifying.
My niece was taken from a mall play area when she was two, she still remembers it, I don’t care what they say about memory, she has vivid memories of a strange man taking her away from her mother and sisters. BUT she cried as loud as she could, she kicked,she screamed, she fought! and when the man set her down to take a breath and someone walked over to a crying two year old to tell her “your daddy is right over there sweetie” she told that wonderful woman that he was NOT her daddy, at TWO YEARS OLD. and that woman brought my niece straight to security and now she is 15 and still with us. THANK GOD! Thank God my sister, and the rest of my family taught her (and all the kids in my family) that you don’t go off with strangers, no matter how nice they look or act. That if someone does take you without your permission or your moms permission you kick, scream, yell, bite, do all those things to hurt that person that you aren’t supposed to do otherwise. From a very early age, we were taught that. Not “don’t talk to strangers” or “strangers are scary” But Don’t go off with a stranger. Don’t get in a car with a stranger. Fight if someone takes you away from your family, or where you are supposed to be. The other thing I think was very important that my mother and father always told me was about the threats bad people make. I remember having conversations with my mom about what would happen if someone tried to kidnap us (and I fully believe conversations about things like that are very important) She told us that they will threaten our family if its what the feel will make you come with them, or calm down. She told us not to worry about that, she told us that more often than not they say those things to scare you, but its not really true, they can’t really follow through. If it was true, they would attack those grown ups and not a small child. My parents told us that in a situation where we are facing life or death, or extreme danger that is one time where it is completely appropriate to be selfish.
The story about my niece terrifies me. And all the other stories terrify me too. But I think about my niece, and how she got herself away, at such a young age. I think about all the stories of kids that got away from attackers, and I see a theme. They all fought, none of them believed the person who told them harm would come to others if they tried to get away, all of them said their only thought was “I need to get away, no matter what”. I don’t know the thoughts of children who didn’t get away, and it is too tragic to dwell on for me. But I will teach my children to fight. I will tell them that their safety and life is paramount in a life or death situation. I will tell them that mommy and daddy can take care of themselves, if someone threatens us to threaten them. I will do everything I can to make them know that telling someone that they are in danger is NEVER the wrong thing to do.

@sam: The way I read the article it’s the classic misunderstanding of risk. “50 dead kids a year is a wholly unacceptable risk in my mind”. OK, fine. we’re not willing to accept 50 dead kids. So how do we reduce the number of dead kids to less than 50 a year?

You’d have to keep them indoors and never drive them anywhere. You have to keep them away from all outdoor activity. You’d have to keep them away from all possible ways of committing suicide; all of those rank higher than death by abduction. So the logical conclusion is that you have to put your kids into padded rooms in a straightjacket.

The problem is that by not allowing kids to experience life outside a carefully controlled bubble they don’t learn the coping tools they need to survive.

We had an extreme case like this when I was in high school; a 15 year old who had been raised by his parents, home schooled, and rarely allowed contact with anyone outside his home until he was “old enough to handle it”. The net result is that he was completely unprepared to handle normal 15 year old life and dysfunctional in society.

I’ve traveled to many places in the world; the kids best able to handle foreign environments are kids who grew up exploring. I’ve seen kids who had to go home after a few days because they could not cope with another culture. Invariably these were American kids who grew up protected and sheltered. Not to say that the free range kids always enjoyed it, or even acted appropriately, but they did not freak out and could deal with other customs, languages, and concepts.

How would you cope if you lived in Syria right now? Or Greece?

My tips: Enjoy your freedom. And help others who aren’t so fortunate.

I don’t want to sound morbid, but who tapes the screams of tortured children? The torturers? Who then send them somewhere so that a private citizen like John Walsh can have them, along with the accompanying detailed information that his son was dead BEFORE the tapes were made? This just makes no sense to me and, truthfully, it sounds like a great way for him to fear-monger to parents.

Donna is absolutely right! Believe me, I have 4 kids aged 10, 11, 23 & 26.
We often hear it said “Little kids, little problems. Big kids, big problems”, but I also say “little kids, little worries. Big kids, big worries”. The fear never leaves. When we have young kids we are waiting for the day that they are big and we won’t have to worry any longer. Never happens. NEVER. Now the fear is they will die in a car accident because they drive, or they will get in a car with someone whose impaired, or they’ll fall prey to drugs, or be in the wrong place at the wrong time when something “goes down” (innocent bystander), or a million other scary things that go through your mind when they start to go out with friends to clubs and bars etc. Sometimes they forget to call to say they won’t be home and these crazy worrisome thoughts that your child is dead in a ditch somewhere crop up. But you learn to live with it and trust your child and always hope for the best. Bad things can and do happen. Such is life.
Last week my daughter told me she is booking a trip to Mexico with her friend. Mexico!! Is she nuts?? I told her “Are you crazy? You want to go to the beheading capital of the world!?? Don’t you read, don’t you know what is going on in Mexico? Drug lords are leaving dead, dismembered bodies in the street!” But she is young and carefree and rolls her eyes and answers ” Mom, we’re just going to a resort, not downtown Tijuana! I know what’s going on, we have no intention of going anywhere except the airport and the resort. No tours, no visits into town. We’re not stupid!”
And there you have it. She’s right, she’s not stupid. She’ll go, I’ll worry. I’ll kiss her goodbye at the airport and say “Have fun, be careful. I love you, be careful!” Perfectly normal. And I’m 99.99% sure that she’ll come home with great memories to share. Even from the beheading capital of the world!

Buffy, psychopaths often videotape or record their victims they can have more thrills later reaching it. If the policehave confiscated those tapes, it would make sense to bring the parents of a murdered child in to see if they could identify the killer. Harsh, but true. I hope none of you on here have to live through having a child tortured and brutally murdered. The reason it’s hard on the parents is because most parents love their kids so much that they would never get over the horrible feeling of knowing what their child had to endure. If I had to go through that I might want to do everything possible to prevent it from happening to another child as well, even if it meant acting irrationally. And to everyone here who has been putting down John Walsh, let’s not judge this poor father too much, OK?

Mom-of-4 … back when I was pregnant with my firstborn I shared your thinking about the slightest risk being unacceptable. I cut out caffiene, hair color, nail polish, sunscreen, cold cuts, soft cheeses … the list goes on and on. We couldn’t go out to eat because there was so little I felt was safe to eat. We couldn’t go to art openings because there was no guarantee the water was filtered. I didn’t exercise outdoors because I was concerned about air quality or overheating the baby. Our entire lives were cancelled for the sake of our future son. I don’t know how my husband tolerated it.

After two miscarriages before my second child, I wondered about the causes. I researched the actual risk of the things I had been giving up, and discovered they were really quite small. I started comparing everything to the risk of dying walking across the Target parking lot, and almost everything was minuscule in comparison. I’ve tried to keep that perspective as they’ve grown. I’ve watched the “protected” children of my relatives, finally given their freedom with the car keys at 16, get into trouble because they really didn’t know how to stay out of it. I’d rather them learn with bicycles and feet. I’d rather them have the confidence to handle themselves in public before they go off to college – so they can go off to college, instead of being so afraid that they feel they have to stay home to stay safe.

We’re not raising children to be children their entire lives. We’re raising them to have the ingenuity and strength to save this planet from the mess than we and our parents and our grandparents have made of it. They don’t get that staying inside playing video games. Be strong for them. I know you can.

I don’t have any advice, I just want to hug this Mom of Four. That’s a rough spot to be in.

Mom of Four – I understand your fears. I also agree with all the comments above about how fear sells and keeps us from living our lives. If you are trying to take a rational approach, and protect your kids- the two most important things you need to do
a) don’t ever let your kids in an automobile
b) don’t let you kids swim or go near water.

(I don’t recommend either of those things, but just trying to point out the ludicrousness of trying to protect your kid from every possible danger.)

Also, I want to say I actually think it’s dangerous TO overprotect your kids. Childhood is a time to learn and grow increasingly independent. If you deny your kids that opportunity, you truly are endangering them.

I love what kate June 18, 2012 at 10:25 wrote. That is beautiful.

When people say things like that they are raising their child the way they “feel” is right, what that generally means is that they are doing something completely irrational that can actually do harm to their kids in some way, but they are going to continue to do it because they “feel” better when they do it. It’s all about feelings and not about reality and what is logical and healthiest for their kids.

When you shelter your children because of irrational hysteria, you are doing your child harm. They do not reach appropriate developmental milestones. They don’t learn to assess risk and understand it for what it really is. They don’t learn to feel confident and independent on their own. We are seeing the results of the first generation to raise their children as prisoners. We have parents calling college professors for their children (even though professors can’t legally divulge info about an adult student.) we have parents showing up at job interviews, calling bosses, etc… for ADULT children. We also have college grads that no one wants to hire because they aren’t independent enough to take the initiave on the job; they can’t do anything on their own. It’s so bad that adults are having to stay on their parent’s insurance until 26, b/c they can’t manage to get their own. And, despite the fact that new grads are far less costly to employers than experienced workers, and generally, businesses would save money by hiring them, no one wants to b/c they just can’t function (I’ve seen article after article on this.) Then, the parents placate them by blaming the economy for the 53% unemployment rate among college grads. Never mind that it’s below 10% for everyone else, and that during my generation, no one had issues finding jobs out of college because we were independent and could function and do what needed to be done. Employers say that they would rather hire older workers b/c their job ethic is plain better, despite them being expensive.

Imagine the devastation that will be felt when children continue to die despite having been protected from everything. This type of thinking only serves to give parents a warped sense of the control they have (or think they should have) over the destiny of their children, and the tranquility of their lives.

Another thought. Parenting is the only enterprise I know where most of the focus is on avoiding the downside, less on preparing for the upside. Since my kids have a very good chance of living to adulthood and beyond, I choose to put most of my efforts in to preparing them for that journey, both in terms of success and enjoyment.

Yan, it would be interesting to see how the rate of heart disease for that age group has changed over time, and how it corresponds with the rise of irrational parental fears. It’s hard to keep kids active when they have to be supervised every second of the day, aren’t allowed near the road, near “strange” animals, on hills or trees or around water . . . or God forbid, anything dirty . . . .

SKL, so true. When I hear people say that kids no longer play outdoors because of computers and video games, I laugh. Yes, I do believe that it is a part of the problem, but I think the bigger problem is the hysteria and paranoia of helicopter parenting.
If I would have been confined to a 12 foot radius around my driveway when I was a kid, or had to have my parents sitting there supervising me as I played, believe me, I would have gotten bored as heck in 5 minutes. I would have retreated to the basement to play in a virtual world too.
Really imagine having the constraints of today’s kids. That’s why they don’t play outdoors, there truly is “nothing to do”.

Bravo!

That reminds me of Saturday night. We were at a graduation party in a friend’s yard. The yard was surrounded by shrubbery, then a sidewalk, then the street. My 5yo thought it was fun to pass through the imaginary wall made by the shrubbery and play on the other side briefly. Every time she went through to the other side, some concerned parent would get my attention and make sure I was properly worried. I even heard the ever-popular “what if that 1% chance happens, and you won’t have your kid any more.” Sigh.

So I guess I need to be either running after my athletic kid with my middle-aged body, or forcing her to sit near me the entire evening. Sorry. Man, it makes me tired to have to go over this with people again and again. Maybe I should tell people they are really 13-year-old midgets. Or teach them to cuss. That would make the other parents happy to see them run off.

Etan Patz – disappeared 1979
Adam Walsh – died 1981
Polly Klaas – died 1993

These names stay with us because, thank goodness, these sorts of violent abductions are mercifully rare. On the day that Adam Walsh was kidnapped, millions of U.S. children were likewise out of their parents’ line of sight for much of the day and were just fine, and continued to be fine for the rest of their childhoods.

@KATE…
“Ultimately, as awful as it sounds to say it outright…I’d rather my child had a wide range of enriching and humanizing experiences, because no matter what precautions I take there is a chance he will die young, and I want his life to have been as full as it possibly can have been no matter how long or short his time is. If he could be snatched from his bed, I’d rather he have had years of exploration and experiences to draw courage and resilience from, rather than leave too soon a life full of ‘when you are older’ unfulfilled potentials”
You literally brought a tear to my eye with this! While I canNOT control others behavior, I too aim to raise my children to make good decisions and to have the skills necessary to live a productive, and fulfilling life. Another way to look at it is this – what if the PARENT dies young? Have you done all you can to make sure that they have the skills necessary to survive without YOU? We have known several young couples who have lost one and/or both lives to just tragic illnesses or accidents. At this point my children are 16/13/11 and I truly believe that if something happens and today is my last day, that I know that they have the skills necessary to survive without me. They also know that no matter what, that they are deeply loved, and trusted. Even in my absence, I think that they have the life skills necessary to carry on, and the only reason they have them is becasuse I have tried my very best to teach them how to handle themselves, and any adversity that might come thier way, on the path to becoming independant adults.

I want to know how old the kids are that Mom of 4 has. It really does make a difference, from her view point.

Young kids do tend to need a little more supervision. It is hard to imagine your toddler out roaming the woods, because the child is a toddler and doesn’t have the skills yet.

But when the child is 8 (for instance) it is much easier to see that the child would be fine in a few acres of woods. The child has developed observational skills, has a better idea of direction, has more life experience.

I have seen this often in the posts here: “I could never let my child who is now 18 months ride their bike down the road.” Parents of older kids have no trouble seeing that it is possible because they have seen the skills that their kids have developed. These parents try to convince the parents of younger kids, but it is a leap that a parent not familiar with the age group can grasp.

Mom of 4, if you have young kids, give it some time. If your kids are a bit older, allow small steps for yourself. Let them roam the library while you sit and read. Don’t make everyone stick together at the park. Most people are very good people, as evidenced by the fact that you quoted of 50 kids a year. Out of a population of about 300,000,000.

Mom of 4,

I have no advice. You have made your decision and if you believe it’s the right one, then it is the right one for you. But I do have a comment.

I’m glad you weren’t my mom.

I’m glad my mom was okay with throwing me in harms way on occasion. I’m glad I had the chance to do things I didn’t think I could tell her about back then, and which make her cringe when I tell her about them now. I’m glad she allowed me to make mistakes, and get myself out of danger, and learn that the world is what you make of it (safe or dangerous). I’m glad that she could look in the eye our small community’s tragedy of a young boy dying while ice skating with his family, and still allow me to continue to go out with my friends on the ice. I’m glad that when she heard names like Adam Walsh and the others you mention, she did not immediately jumpt to the conclusion that the same thing would ever happen to me.

I am 5 months pregnant this week, and I can’t wait to be a mom like my mom.

I don’t know if my comments will help, or even matter, but here goes. I became a single mother very young. I had no family to turn to and no one I thought of to help out. This was in 1965. I just decided it was my job to take care of my baby and do everything I could to keep him safe and let him grow up healthy. But the way I figured to do that might surprise Mom of Four: I had the completely irrational fear that if something should happen and I died, my son would have NO ONE to take care of him, so I had to teach him all the things he would need to know to take care of himself. Like Mowgli, I suppose.

I was always looking for opportunities to show him how to fend for himself in the world, like how to cross the street safely, what to do if he felt afraid of someone, how to get to school and back, what to do if he was lost, all that stuff. I also taught him how to cook because, jeeze, how could he take care of himself if he was starving? Many times I had to bite my lip and hold my breath while I allowed him to do something that scared me half to death, like take his bike down the road and across a busy street when he was eight, to the gas station where the friendly owner had a policy of fixing kids’ flat bike tires for free.

My competent son is now 46 years old and takes very good care of himself and others. Always has. He’s also had a fine life so far. And, as an added bonus, he grew up to be a chef.

I’m helping to do the same things with my grandson, not because there will be no one to raise him, but because it works out so well.

Dear Mom of 4:
Every mom has her tolerance of risk and how that manifests itself into daily activities. For me, I know for a fact car crashes are a leading cause of death in kids so my car is one that has more airbags than cupholders.

I also know drowning is a “top 5 killer” so swimming lessons are non-negotiable every summer.

Suicide is also a “top 5 killer” therefor I look for ways for the kids to get the self esteem they need by doing things on their own and also encounter people who may be flat out mean. They need to be able to handle themselves confidently and social poise to fend off bullies and deal with the things life throws at them. It’s through this confidence they can ask for help and, fingers crossed, find other ways to deal with the pain and anxiety of teen hood without doing the unthinkable. To me one child who takes his or her own life is too many. That’s my POV though. And the suicide rates for teens is much higher than the John Walsh kids I assure you and in my mind, more disturbing.

As others have pointed out, there are several John Walsh cases where the parents was righthtere and were still powerless to keep their child from being abducted.

The end point being, you can do everything “right” and still have things turn out miserably wrong. There are somethings that are completely out of our control and the question then becomes, what will benefit my child the most in the long run? Only you can answer that for your family. I’d just ask you to give some balance to your answer.

Kindly,
Ali

If the tiny risk of having something horrific happen to your child is “unacceptable”, why isn’t the 100% risk of your child never having the kind of healthy social interactions, normal life, and maturing experiences that life is supposed contain, “unacceptable?”

You see, there’s no risk-free path, ever. Either you risk *some* level of “danger,” or you assume the much larger risks associated with denying your child a healthy relationship with the outside world.

BTW, I wonder how many severe abuse victims would be pleased to hear that they’ve been deemed unfortunate still to be alive? Some perhaps, but surely not all.

I wonder what John Walsh would say

From the comments it seems I’m one of a minority of men who read this blog (hard to tell with some handles). So often stories on here are about mom this, mom that. That’s OK, Lenore is a mom and it’s her blog. But this topic has come up a couple of times and I figured it was time to put it out there.

You see, I so rarely see the fathers mentioned in discussions like this. They’re the fears of moms, discussed by other moms. I doubt Lenore or most other women on here disrepect the male perspective. But this is not a mom blog, it is a blog about raising kids.

When I see the kind of fear that “Mom of Four” and other moms on here have expressed, I can’t help thinking that when your wife gets like that, that’s when you as a man have to step up, give them a big hug, and tell them that the child will be okay, help calm them down. It’s a woman’s job to worry about her children, to nurture them and kiss their boo-boos and all that. I think it’s a dad’s job to be sure that the other side is kept up – the risk-taking, free-range side. Women get caught up in the “what ifs”. A man can be calmer, point out the statistics; by our nature we’re just more detached (we never carried that life though we did help create it).

The point is, the outrages this blog chronicles happen when things get out of BALANCE. Men and women are different, and the man is there to help make that balance, between risk and safety. My wife will always worry about our daughter, and I will too, just in a different way. My job is to help our daughter explore that crazy world outside – and help her come back to the loving home my wife has created.

“A man can be calmer” my butt. Some people are worriers and some are not. It has no connection with whether they can pee standing up or not. The biggest worrywart I know on the topic of what could happen to loved ones is a big tall strong deep-voiced hairy-chested empeened person.

Back to actual fruitful discussion here–The problem is so much fear being expended on something that might happen, could happen, but is impossible to eliminate by controlling the environment, and is also much less likely than other risks that can be eliminated by controlling the environment. Given the existence of somebody who is dedicated to hurting any child at hand, there is no way to eliminate that risk. Home? Windows. School? Mad gunman spraying bullets. Store? Any random shopper around any random corner. Playground? All those strangers! Meanwhile, the person expending all the fear on studying every stranger for the signs that they are a ravening murderous monster may not be thinking about, say, checking that the car safety seat is effectively installed–to quote only one much more likely cause of harm to children. Or the things they do may actually increase danger. Think of that silly police officer who told parents to make their kids (and babies, I presume) stand by the gas pump on the off chance that somebody might steal their car while it was being fueled up, notice kids in the back, and decide to kill them (instead of blurting, “Oh, shit!” and ditching the car) because hey, kids right there, why not become a monster this afternoon?

Teach your children to refuse to go with strangers. Teach them that they don’t have to be nice children if people are trying to make them do things. They can kick and scream and bite and make a huge scene and draw blood. This may not always work because sadistic serial killers have occasionally dressed up as cops in order to fool their victims. But this raises the old problem of living with bears.

I live in bear country. They are the biggest bears in the world, or close to it. Bears den within an hour’s walk of where I am sitting right now and I live downtown. Bears, like people, generally prefer to go do their thing and be left alone. Like people, some bears will, given the opportunity, steal and/or break your stuff. If the situation goes sour, the bear may severely injure or even kill the person. And every decade or so, a bear decides to eat a human being.

The ordinary thing to do is to let the bear know you are coming so that it can go on doing its peaceful thing somewhere away from you. You can avoid tempting a bear to steal and destroy by following a few simple precautions at home and in camp, mostly involving keeping food well packaged and out of sight. If you don’t startle the bear, or walk too close to its food, or get between a sow bear and her cubs, you can avoid nearly all bear attacks. But if a bear decides to kill and eat you, nothing will change its mind.

There are two ways to deal with this knowledge. The first is to accept that if you want to enjoy life on the island, there is the remote yet real possibility that you may end up fighting for your life against a predator. The second is to hide in your house and car all the time.

Now, along with the biggest bears in the world, we have a large Coast Guard base. Every year there are new transfers. And every year there are Coast Guard dependents who never leave the base because they are afraid that a bear will jump out and eat them.

They never go to restaurants in town, or the first-run movie theater, or the parks–we have a lot of parks–or the beaches–all free access, all the time–or just walking in the woods. They miss the spring community festival, the full schedule of summer children’s activities at the library and the visitor center, hiking in the fall with the Audubon Society, and the arts council’s winter schedule of concerts and plays. Because although nobody has ever been mauled by a bear in or near town, it could happen.

Obviously we don’t put our children at risk of likely situations that we couldn’t get them out of; we don’t wander through thick undergrowth with them in tow, for example, or send them around curves in the river out of our sight while the salmon are running. But we refuse to stop living our lives in case the bears that occasionally come right through our area want to eat our children. A bear could be right outside my door, right now. I am still going to work in the morning. My daughter will still walk to the library for big kids’ game time in the afternoon. There is a small possibility that one of the adults visiting the library tomorrow is a pervert and that despite everything I have told her about calling me if somebody wants her to do something we didn’t plan, she will go with that person. It’s also possible that somebody will have a psychotic break or be angry-drunk on a Tuesday afternoon in the library. There is a much greater possibility that she will miss her childhood if I assume that every bear is a man-eater.

@nebuchadnezzar: I rarely get confronted with sexism on this website, but that post truly made me cringe.

And it was as helpful to ‘Mom of four’ as a hole in the head. I am sure she is very capable of thinking for herself and making her own decisions without needing a man to take control.

Nebuchadnezzer, by your logic children raised by single mothers couldn’t grow up free-range. But they do because your argument is false. Half the over-protective parents I’ve met in the world are fathers. And as Lin pointed out, none of that was helpful to the mother who wrote the letter or any parent who is lurking and reading. Although they may make different choices than I would implying it’s because they don’t have a man to be logical for them or because they are more detached than their wives is bull.

I would like to add my two cents from the perspective of someone who was raised in a very protective helicopter-mum family.

Please please please do not let fear and social pressure rule you.

As a parent, you obviously want to protect your kids and I can understand that. But it’s a balance. You cannot control your child’s environment 24/7, you cannot be with them 24/7. What you CAN do, is help your child build the confidence they need so they know what to do in any situation. You can’t do that by keeping them in a protective bubble.

My mum is on the extreme side but she was heavily influenced by the “danger-around-ever-corner” theory and was scared by everything and everyone. We were kept on a pretty tight leash and everything was “dangerous” and to be avoided. There was a constant air of fear and believe me, kids pick up on that. They did not prepare me for adulthood (or you know, living in a world with lots of different people) at all. Thankfully I have always been a pragmatic and fairly independent person.

Result: I have always suffered from general anxiety and depression. I have had panic attacks. I am incredibly shy and it has been a struggle building confidence in myself. Because I didn’t get the same experiences my friends did (going out to play etc) I would say I’ve always been playing catch-up socially.

The only upside – I realised how completely irrational and paranoid my mum was early on and and learned to find the truth out myself (thank goodness for the internet).

Teach your kids to enjoy life, have fun, be courageous – if you give your kids the right knowledge and tools, they’ll be able to face any situation and adapt.

amazing the things that happen everyday and people go about like nothing is wrong in this world.

When I was a child and teenager, if we were watching a TV show with crime, diseases, wild animals or other perilous situations, my parents would play “spot the errors” and “what would you do in that situation” with us.

Instead of freaking out at all the danger, they looked on these shows as a learning tool, a way to teach us how to recognize trouble, how to stay out of trouble, and the best-chance way out of it if you get into it.

@Jenny Islander: Good point on learning the real risks. If you are ready for bears, you are ready for almost anything, because you have to stay alert for bears.

An Air Force wife I used to work with sent us a couple of snapshots from their new Alaskan assignment.

A sign on the base laundromat that said, “CLOSED! Polar Bear asleep inside!” and a shot of the large white mound of fur blocking the aisle. It woke up and wandered out, but that was her intro to polar bears.

There was an article in our paper yesterday about “couch surfing” (Google it if you don’t know the concept.) They interviewed a 31-year-old single woman who participates by opening her home to well-screened surfers, and they asked if she wasn’t worried about doing that. She pointed out she’d been in the Air Force in a combat zone and knew how to protect herself, so she wasn’t really worried.

Not that we can so totally prepare our kids that they have “nothing to worry about” in even the direst situations, but it is interesting how preparation mitigates fear and opens up possibilities, isn’t it?

Teach your kids to scream. No matter what, even if the worst happens and the psychopath threatens to kill them. Even if he does follow through, wouldn’t you rather have your child in your arms, chances are he’ll freak out and try to get out of there before he gets caught.. There’s no way a child’s scream could be missed in the middle of the night, or in a grocery store. Teach your kids that it’s not ok to go anywhere with a stranger, no one is going to get out of a store with your kid if he’s screaming, which gets your attention, and you scream that someone is abducting your child.

Please, please read Lenore’s book and keep up with this blog. It sure opened my eyes !!!!

I’ve often wondered what John Walsh thinks of Lenore and her book? Has he ever commented publicly about it? Just curious.

“Ah, but “stereotypical stranger abduction,” especially with a sexual abuse theme — yes, this is the one to hang your hat on. It’s “every parent’s worst nightmare” — any why is that?”

I think it is the possibly of not knowing that is every parent’s worst nightmare, not the death itself. I can honestly say that, although my child dying in any way would be a tragedy, if my child HAS to die, I’d rather it be in a car wreck or cancer than an abduction. If your child dies of cancer or in a car wreck, it is horrible but the knowledge of the death is immediate. You can have a funeral, mourn and, hopefully, eventually move on with your life the best that you can. With a child abduction, the tragedy is ongoing until the child or his body is found. Parents of abducted children spend a substantial period of time, sometimes the rest of their lives, stuck in limbo of not knowing if their child is dead or alive and being tortured at that very second.

The risk these people are unwilling to accept is absolutely NOT the risk that that their child will die but the risk that they will be stuck not knowing if their child is dead or alive.

Can you guess who said the following?

“my younger brother **** and I — were ordinarily in the back row with the old women and nuns, wearing the black eyes and split lips that we’d pick up in fist fights the Saturday night before…”

“My nose was broken at least four times by the time I graduated from college, and it was usually at least partly my doing.”

“I fought over girls, I fought for my honor… I fought for the love of fighting.”

“My brother and I had been self-centered and arrogant. Selfish, arrogant little boys.”

“I was a great swimmer and made an A in the final, but I never showed up for class. The instructor said, ‘You never came to class the whole term. I’m going to give you a D.’ I told him, ‘I know more than you do about swimming. Why should I come here and sit, freezing my ass off in this pool in the morning?’ He said, ‘Because I say so. That’s why. And you still get the D.”

“Girls love bad boys, and I’d get caught all the time, sneaking out of their houses, parking with them in cars, bringing them into the living room. Their fathers wanted to kill me, and there were lots of ‘You keep your son away from my daughter’ confrontations. But those never worked. It only made the girls want to see you more.”

“She looked about 20. She was beautiful, and she had a body. Boy this incredible, centerfold body… I never gave much thought to how much **** was. She was pretty, and she dressed sharp. And there was also that body…. Then one night **** was sitting around at my place and picked up a copy of that days **** Evening News. In it was a picture of ****, who had just won an art contest. ‘Holy Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,’ *** said. ‘There’s a picture of **** in the paper, ****, and she’s 16 years old. But you know, she had this way about her. She had a certain presence. And after a while I just got over how young she was. She was way more sophisticated than anybody in her high school and she always dated older guys. She had a fake ID. That’s how she got into [the bar where they met]. She was bored with high school…. We had a good time together [wink wink nudge nudge], and I relaxed a little after she turned 17. She was beautiful, she was caring, and she was up for anything .”

“We would hustle money playing pool all the time.”

“Someone in college who was therefore a barbarian and way too old for her. **** was thinking, ‘Well she hasn’t brought him home yet, which means he must be 58 years old and married with children.’ For a long time I would drop **** off down the block, do anything not to be seen around her house.”

So who was this violent womanizing poll-hustling predator?

Thiese are the words of JOHN WALSH from his book “Tears of Rage.” You don’t even have to read far into the book to see it.

@hineata: your post made me laugh. I’m not afraid of bears or mountain lions, but once when I was surveying I got trapped in a cow field, and the cows came over and started head bumping me. I thought I would **** in my pants. I still remember that far more vividly than my encounters with bears. (No encounters with live mountains to date; they’re even bigger cowards than me.)

We are afraid of the unknown. And most of our fears are irrational.

Turn off the TV.

My grandma is the same way. A steady diet of TV makes otherwise sane people stupid. It’s to keep your bass chained to the chair for the $$$$$commercials. 😀

I understand the fear. It’s hard to have something so precious knowing that it could be taken away from you, and you may or may not have any control over if or when that happens. Parents lose their kids everyday, to strangers, the other parent, car wrecks, fires, cancer, sometimes accidents as unpredictable as a branch falling from a tree and killing a six month baby in his mother’s arms. My aunt lost her healthy teenage daughter to a freak brain aneurism at her kitchen table. It’s terrifying, and it’s tempting to think that if you could JUST watch them enough, JUST make sure to eliminate enough danger from their lives, you could keep them safe from all that, and ensure you never have to know that kind of heartache. But you can’t. You never can.

I remember when I was a kid, I was obsessed with the idea that somebody would break into our house in the middle of the night. I was almost positive that it would happen eventually and I used to lie awake at night listening out my window for every little noise. I begged my mom to get an alarm system, even though we lived in a pretty safe neighborhood. To me, the fact that it COULD happen was unacceptable, no matter how small the risk, and I spent years trying to come to terms with it and find a way deal with the fact of having to live in a world you can’t always control. There was no “ah-hah” moment with that, but I can say that I’ve gradually come to be a less anxious person. I know what irrational fear feels like, and everyday I make a conscience decision that I’m not going to let fear consume me or stop me from doing things, within reason.

I know it’s ten times harder when the fear you feel is for your kids, but the principal is the same. It’s true that it doesn’t always require alot of extra effort to monitor your kids, or helicopter them, so you may think there’s no good reason not to. In many ways, it’s easier because you don’t have to feel that worry and try to come to terms with it. All I can say about that is, for me, the only thing I’ve found that keeps me grounded is to be against irrational fear on principal, in all situations, and not just when it’s convenient. I’ve made logic over fear a life-philosophy. I take risks whenever I believe that the benefits of doing so outweigh the potential consequences. Because it’s a part of my life, it spills over into parenting as well.