“I Was Kidnapped as a Kid, and Lenore Is Wrong.”

What these legions of mental midgets don’t realize is that stories make the news precisely because they are NEWS, which means RARE. You don’t hear about someone having poached eggs for breakfast because millions of people do it daily. You DO hear about every single airplane crash because they are so RARE.

The day they stop reporting airliner crashes is the day to stop flying. The day they stop reporting child abductions is the day to keep the kids close.
Until then, wake up, remember your grade-school math for Pete’s sake!

“By this line of reasoning, parents should
feel guilty for even sleeping. Why weren’t
they awake, standing guard in their
children’s room all night? No parenting is
good enough or safe enough when we think
this way. And, of course, that is the way we
are encouraged to think.”

Exactly. It seema that if you’re well-adjusted and well-rested with energy to spare & have kids, then you must be selfish or even negligent in what you’re doing. Nuts. I draw boundaries to ensure I’m not overtaxed–they’ve slept in their own room, on the other end of the house, since BIRTH, I feed them the same stuff I eat (they’re 2 & 4 now) , they stay in bed until 9 am so I can, they play independently on their own inside our outside in a fenced area–and they do great.

“Parenting is 24/7?” No, breathing is 24/7–that’s it.

LRH
Android 2.2

the letter writer’s experience is horrifying to be sure, but rare. there are risks with everything in life, and sometimes even under protection children can be hurt. i was bitten by a swan as a kid, while strapped into my stroller. my mom didn’t want to let me crawl around for fear i would fall into the pond, but i became easy prey for a nasty swan the moment she turned around to chat with someone. we can’t protect our kids from all things all the time, and shouldn’t shelter them from every experience of independence, fearing a horrible but statistically unlikely outcome.

Actually, I can’t tell from the first letter printed (from the woman who was kidnapped as a child) whether she was kidnapped by a stranger or not.

And yes, Lenore, I agree with your basic point — simply because horrible things do happen (and obviously kidnapping is horrible, regardless of whether by a stranger or not, though thinking through what steps to take to prevent it probably depend in part on who one expects to be doing it) doesn’t mean we can or should necessarily do all we can to prevent them, especially if they are tremendously rare events and the costs of preventing them, e.g., never sleeping, never letting one’s child out of one’s sight, are impossibly high.

My cousin is one of those people.. She will not let her 4 children play in their fenced in back yard without her sitting there. There is a very busy road that is slightly elevated near her yard. She has told me she worries a “pervert” will be driving by, see the kids, happen to glance over (while doing 35) during the 40′ section of road that you might be able to see over part of her fence, pull over to the side of the road.. Hop the 7′ wood fence, and kidnap one or all the children, so quickly that she could not do anything about it. They way she described it, that it seemingly happens all the time, was really pretty sad..

I live in a small town where a 5th grade boy was struck by lightning on the playground last summer. The entire elementary school was there, waiting to board the busses, and lightning struck this one child. Since then, I have heard many parents blame the school for not having lightning rods, blame the child for holding a metal skateboard, and blame the school again for dismissing while it was raining. No one seems willing to accept that it was an incredibly rare and unpreventable tragedy. God does not normally go around picking off kids in playgrounds. But now, at the hint of a storm, parents rush to drag their children inside lest they be struck by lightning. People just love to normalize the abnormal, and fear the astonishingly rare.

@Lihtox, I was just having that same thought, that helicoptering really just stems from a phobia. I have a phobia of centipedes that started when I was 7 and one crawled across my face while I was sleeping, waking me up and propelling me into a screaming fit. Since then, I can’t hardly stand the sight of them and if they get anywhere near me I freak out until I or someone else kills it. It’s difficult to overcome such an indelible experience and to take steps to put it behind you. Helicopter and over-protective parents suffer from phobias of the worst kind, but in today’s society it’s not a condition that needs to be treated, it’s “good parenting”.

As a species, we are absolutely incapable of assessing risk, particularly infinitesimal risk, accurately. Here’s a talk by renowned security guru Bruce Schneier on just how bad we are at this:

http://on.ted.com/Schneier

It’s a great video and it’s implications extend to Free Range parenting and every other perception of danger or security we can find. I especially like his brief talk about the Tylenol scare from the ’80s: we are fundamentally just as vulnerable to that today as we were before, but everyone feels better because of “secure packaging”.

That said, I can agree that if it happens once, we’re more likely to presume it will happen again. I drove absurdly cautiously for about 4 years after my car was hit not once but thrice in the span of 9 months. I have since gotten over that fear and drive much more reckle . . . er . . . I mean . . . normally now.

Nobody wants these things to happen, but there is probably no way that either of the two situations described could have been prevented. If someone wants to kidnap my kids badly enough, I’m powerless to stop it. So, I maintain a level of vigilance that’s appropriate given my location, the age of my children, and some vague assessment of their ability to spot danger themselves (my son, not at all, my eldest daughter, over estimator).

The pool of water being 1 inch deep.

Freak stuff happens, lightning can hit the same place twice. But just because it can does not mean it will.

I think its sad that we don’t call these fears of kidnapping, molestation, or whatever, what they are – phobias. They are irrational fears. As the stats show, it is irrational to think that something bad will happen to your child when they are out of your sight/care.

I have ichthyophobia – the fear of fish. This phobia stems from the time when I was younger and my parents had a cabin on a lake full of Silver Carp that would jump into the air and land on you, your jet ski, the boat, the water mattress, anything really. Now, I’m afraid of fish in general.

If I got on the news and starting warning of the dangers of fish, people would think I’d lost it. Yet when people who have had something traumatic (that is exceedingly more rare than getting smacked in the head by a large flying fish, which has been added to the EPA’s list of “Injurious wild animals”) happen with a child and are warning against the dangers of kidnapping for example, society/the media doesn’t go “gee, that nut has kidnappaphobia” they say “OMG! Listen to this person or this could happen to you!!”

Its unfortunate really, and a reason to avoid your local nightly newscast.

Protecting our children from the big dangerous world out there should always be a priority for parents but that does not mean that our children need to be completely disconnected from the world in order to accomplish this. The fact is that one day our children are going to grow up and be part of that world and you can either prepare them little by little each day as they grow up by teaching them how to be independent or you can hover over them until the age of 18 and then throw them to the wolves, so to speak, and hope for the best. I say we should teach them little by little so that at age 18 they are prepared to face the world alone. It is simply another method for protecting your child, and to me it makes more sense.

If any of these paranoid parents ever puts their child in a car, you can tell them right then and there that they are full of sh**.

I read one of the Letters to the Editor that had a problem with the mother leaving her child in the children’s section of the library.

The whole point of free range parenting is to know your child and their limits. I would never leave my 5 year old son alone in the children’s section, mainly because (due to behavioral issues) he couldn’t be trusted to stay there. Whereas, I’m sure the 5 year old in the story was mature enough to stay there.

Meanwhile, another dozen or so kids today got squished by inattentive drivers. And trying to do anything about that is an uphill battle that involves having people call you anti-car.

Here’s some interesting statistics from amberalert.gov

SUMMARY OF AMBER ALERTS
From January 1, 2010, to December 31, 2010, 173 AMBER Alerts were issued in the United States involving 211 children.

At the time the AMBER Alert cases were intaked there were 80 Family Abductions, 74 Non-Family Abductions, 16 Lost Missing or Injured, and 3 Endangered Runaways.

Eleven (11) cases were later determined to be hoaxes, and 10 cases were later determined to be
unfounded.

Of the 173 AMBER Alerts issued from January 1, 2010, to December 31, 2010, 150 cases resulted in a recovery, 28 of which were successfully recovered as a direct result of those respective AMBER Alerts being issued.

As of February 25, 2011, when statistics for this report were finalized 2 AMBER Alerts issued in 2010 remained active and 9 children were recovered deceased.

——–

That means that 152 kids under the age of 17 in the US and its territories went missing long enough to issue an AMBER Alert. 152 out of 70 some million kids…. Your odds of getting struck by lightning, according to weather.gov are 1 in a million. Your child is 70 times more likely to get struck by lightning than abducted.

Thank you Elissa on those eye-opening statistics.

I would also be interested to know how many of the AMBER Alerts were intentional abductions or unfortunate side effects of other crimes. We had an AMBER alert in Phoenix last week because a car was stolen from a gas station while the parent went in to pay and there was a sleeping baby in the child seat in the back. It lasted less than 20 minutes before the car was recovered and the baby was safe.

But I guess non-free rangers would take this as a reason to rally against leaving your child in the car when you went inside to pay for gas….

I compiled these stats for last year’s “Take Your Child to the Park” day:

Are you afraid of being struck by lightning? No? Why not? Because the odds of getting struck by lightning are– 1 : 280,000

— Number of missing minors each year (includes teen runaways, parental abductions, and kids who wandered away for a couple of hours): 750,000 (1)

— Number of missing minors who are kidnapped by strangers each year: 115 (1)

— Number of missing minors who are kidnapped by strangers each year and never return home alive: 50 (1)

— Rate of sterotypical kidnapped kids who remain unrecovered/killed vs all missing: 1 : 15,000

— Number of kids in 2000: 72,000,000 (2)

— Rate of stereotypical kidnapping per capita: 1: 626,086

— Rate of stereotypical kidnapping and murder or never-recovered per capita: 1: 1,440,000

— Number of children injured annually in car accidents: 184,000 (3)

— Number of children killed annually in car accidents: 1,335 (3)

— Number of children: 72,000,000

— Chance of child dying in car accident: 1 : 53,932

— Number of minors who die of cancer every year: 2,300(4)

In other words:

— A child is 11.6 times more likely to die in a car accident than be kidnapped by a stranger.

— A child is almost twice as likely to die of cancer than in a car accident.

— A child is 26.7 times more likely to die in a car accident than be kidnapped and killed by a stranger.

— A child is 46 times more likely to die of cancer than be kidnapped and killed by a stranger.

— A person is 5.1 times more likely to be struck by lightning than a child is to be kidnapped and killed by a stranger.

It’s a pretty-safe world out there. Maybe it’s time we act like it.

(1) link: DOJ report on Stranger Kidnappings (data is from 2002) http://www.missingkids.com/en_US/documents/nismart2_nonfamily.pdf
(2) link: US Cencus data 2000. http://www.kidscount.org/cgi-bin/aeccensus.cgi?action=profileresults&area=00N
(3) link: CDC data from 2008. http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/factsheets/childpas.htm
(4) link: Cancer facts. http://www.kristinasrainbowsofhope.org/facts.html

I second the “Museum of Thieves” recommendation.

It’s a parable about what the world would look like if we followed the precautionary principle to the limit with respect to kids.

What really surprises me is that more people don’t make the connection between how we treat our children compared to how the US government has begun to treat us. All this zero tolerance crap, the risk-adverse behavior to the point of insanity, prosecuting men for sneezing in the presence of children, is happening at the same time we are getting body scanners in airports, warrantless digital tracking of our personal information, warrentless GPS tracking of our cars.

It’s all done in the name of security because, you know, something MIGHT happen. Even taking 9/11 into account, the odds of dying in a terrorist attack are so extremely low it’s laughable. I don’t know how the odds compare to child abduction but I’m sure the two are similarly miniscule. And yet we are throwing millions and millions of dollars at this “HUGE problem.”

It’s the exact same mindset as these people who can’t justify leaving their kid in the car for 2 minutes because “you never know what might happen.”

That’s why I think Free-Range philosophy is so important – if we can take back childhood and get more people on a grass-roots level to ease up, maybe the Powers That Be will follow suit.

Elissa: I do say to not leave kids alone in the car. Not for kidnapping reasons but for car theft reasons which is way more likely to happen because while abductions don’t happen every day in every town, car thefts do!

Lenore,

I’ve been meaning to share a story with you for some time, and this seems as appropriate a time as ever.

Last Christmas evening, snow came to Atlanta. This is unheard of in our southern city, and my children (3 yo girl and 6 yo boy) wanted to go outside and frolic about. I offered to take them on a wintry stroll around the neighborhood. We live in Midtown Atlanta, and can see the city’s skyline from our porch. It was beautiful out. After strolling quite some way, darkness came, the snow started really coming down, and we turned back. It was maybe 7:30pm.

Within a few hundred yards of home, my little daughter was getting slower and slower, and my son was eager to pick up the pace. He enjoys pushing boundaries, and I feel like it helps him develop personally, so I told him to go ahead if he wanted, but to wait at the next intersection — which was within site of our home. We’d then all cross the street together and walk the last half-block to home. He ran up around the bend, and I urged our little girl onward.

After a few more seconds of her poking, I got nervous about my son not being within sight. At night. In the snow. Good thinking, dad. So I picked up my daughter and hustled along after him, fully expecting to see him 30 seconds later at the intersection near our home.

Alas, he wasn’t there. It was now dark. Wet snow was starting to dump. We live in the middle of a nice neighborhood, but we were still smack dab in the middle of the city. Busy roads surrounded it, and on top of that, what kind of crazy people would be out and about in the snow on Christmas evening?

I called repeatedly for him with no response. Did he cross the street by himself and run back to the house? Did he make a wrong turn? I didn’t know. I guessed he headed back to the house, so I hugged my daughter close and ran the five or six houses home, preparing to give him a tongue-lashing for crossing the street without me. Seconds later, I opened the door, asked my wife where he was, and she replied that he hadn’t come in. I will never in my life forget that moment.

To my wife’s credit, she didn’t lose it. I told her he’d run ahead and he must have gotten confused in the dark. We left our daughter with my visiting father-in-law, my wife hopped in her car, and I sprinted back to the intersection. I guessed that he had simply kept walking along the sidewalk, not noticing that he’d reached the intersection, so I ran the way he might have gone, calling his name the entire time. The next intersection — about 50 yards ahead — marked the edge of the neighborhood and what was ordinarily an extremely busy through-street, but at that moment was completely empty due to the Christmas snow. The only person to be seen was an obviously homeless man who was walking away from me maybe 25 yards in the distance. Oh s**t, I thought.

Right at that moment, my wife called: someone in the neighborhood had taken him in, he’d given them her phone number, and he was fine. She was going over there to pick him up, and they’d meet me at home.

I learned later that my son had indeed gotten confused in the dark, he hadn’t heard me calling, and he hadn’t realized he wasn’t in the right place until he came upon the busy street at exactly the same place where I spotted the homeless man. The people who took him in lived on that same street and they reported that a stranger (almost undoubtedly the man I’d seen) had knocked on their door, told them he’d come across this lost boy, said that judging from the toys on the porch their house looked like kids were welcome, so could they please help him find his home. When my wife picked him up, he was perfectly fine and more embarrassed about getting lost than concerned.

I’ll never know the name of the man who shepherded him to that family’s porch, and I’ll probably never see him again (I’m sad to say I wouldn’t recognize him if I did), but I am forever grateful to him.

The time that elapsed between when I asked my son to wait at the intersection and when I received the call from my wife reporting him safe was less than ten minutes — maybe five — but it might as well have been eons. Did I screw up? Absolutely. Did I feel like the worst father in the world? Unquestionably. Did it all end up ok? Thankfully.

And on that Christmas evening, I was reminded of something incredibly important: A random stranger — even a man who’s so down on his luck that he’s walking around in the snow on Christmas evening — will look out for a boy who needs help and make sure he finds his way home.

We cannot fall into the trap of thinking, “My child wasn’t kidnaped today because I was standing there preventing it.” Sadly, there are horrible tragedies that are pure accidents, and there are also horrible (and thankfully extremely rare) instances of people purposely seeking out children to victimize. But really, it is totally false to think that the only reason your child wasn’t kidnaped is because you were standing there watching over him. First off, nobody can by the laws of physics and reality be everywhere at once. So you’re bound to fail and feel guilty. Second, it’s simply not true.

Dolly, car thefts do not happen every day in most places. If you live in a place where car theft is a daily occurrence, I’d suggest moving. Thefts FROM cars happen pretty frequently and I’m sure a car theft happens somewhere in the US every day but cars are not disappearing off the roads at alarming rates.

I also agree with Elissa that you are using infertility as an excuse to be overprotective. I also find your belief that somehow your children are more precious and irreplaceable to you than people who didn’t go through fertility treatments to be … I’m not even sure of a word, ridiculous maybe. I had to go through fertility treatments to get pregnant and I’m not married so have the additional problem of lack of regular access to sperm. I am also over 40 and would not consider having another child for health reasons. My daughter still slept on her stomach when she was a baby because it was the only way she slept. She wanders around stores by herself. She’s been left in a car for a few minutes. She just came in from jumping on her trampoline in the front yard unsupervised. And most nights I take the dog for a walk after she goes to sleep. No child is replaceable and the idea that patents who can have more children are less devastated about the loss of a child is insulting to parents who have lost children through any means.

“more cautious than necessary” sounds like the very definition of helicoptering. You might not hover as low as some, but a helicopter is still a helicopter.

Atlanta Dad,
“And on that Christmas evening, I was reminded of something incredibly important: A random stranger — even a man who’s so down on his luck that he’s walking around in the snow on Christmas evening — will look out for a boy who needs help and make sure he finds his way home”
what beautiful insight. Thanks for sharing your story.

I don’t know how the odds compare to child abduction but I’m sure the two are similarly miniscule.

Child abduction (with no qualifiers) is not especially common, but it still happens fairly frequently, almost always in custody disputes – Mom has custody, Dad takes the kids anyway.

Sometimes the non-custodial parent (or rarely another family member) has a good point – the custodial parent is abusive or neglectful and for whatever reason the courts aren’t agreeing with them. Often it’s the other way around – the reason the non-custodial parent didn’t have custody is because they’re a terrible person!

At any rate, it’s devastating to everybody. However, most of the population of this country isn’t living with such acrimony towards their ex-spouses. Their kids’ other parents aren’t abusive, nor irrational enough to want to take the child to harm them.

Stranger abductions, which is what everybody *thinks* of when they think of abductions, are very rare (fewer than 200 a year, although *reports* of stranger abductions are somewhat higher due to multiple people reporting the same case and various types of false alarm. However, even reports of stranger abductions aren’t all that common in comparison to the under-18 population of this country) and, contrary to popular belief, are much more common with teens and pre-teens than with small children. This is not just about ease of access (teens go out and about more than toddlers) but also about the fact that even most predators prefer older children or near-adults to younger ones.

Sadly, our entire culture is making this phobia a norm. It’s a lot like fear of witchcraft in the middle ages.

I have this book, Dream Babies (the older edition, sadly), which chronicles Western parenting advice for the past several centuries. Now, parenting advice and parenting practices don’t always mesh, but all the same it’s fascinating the way things like this often seem to run in cycles – for a generation or two it’s fashionable to keep your child under your thumb, then everybody pushes freedom, and so on.

On a similar note, apparently pedophile panics run in cycles as well. There was one in the 20s, another a few decades later, and now we’re in the midst of one that’s just refusing to die, but I suspect the gestalt is finally starting to change. Witness the fact that there are books, for children, framed as dystopias where kids are kept under lock and key for their own safety.

I was bothered by the letter to the editor about libraries. When I was kid, it was common for moms to let the kids (who could read) browse the kids’ section while they went and found their own books.

@Elissa, I work for the agency that puts out the Amber Alerts for my state. There is NO way on earth that we can get one out in 20 minutes – you would not believe the work involved and steps to take.

I think I need to call your state agency to get details on how they’ve streamlined the process!

The arguments in favor of helicoptering kids are irrational. The people that adopt that style don’t think twice about driving their kids around but those kids are far, far more likely to be killed in a car wreck than be abducted.

I am actually going to stand up for Dolly at least a little bit. To wit: by no means can one child replace another. It’s not like buying a new car to replace your old one, or even getting a new home if your old one burns down etc (especially if insurance covers it etc). It’s a human being, a unique life all of its own specifically different from the others–and it’s forever gone.

HOWEVER, for many people, being baren (having no children) leaves them empty, and for them to go from having a child to not having one–and knowing you will never ever have one (at least biologically)–is an additional pain for such people to bear ON TOP OF the loss of the original unique child.

But for someone who can have still have children, then at least they will not have that pain, they will still be parents again. True, it does not mean the other child was replaced like a broken refrigerator etc, again, each child is unique & special and nothing will replace them, not even a new one–but the point is, at least that specific couple won’t be childless on top of that specific loss.

I think that is what Dolly was trying to say, and I have to say–it makes perfect sense. I don’t think she was implying that children are interchangeable like spare parts in a toolbox etc.

LRH

Aside from my parenting blog, I am a self defence instructor, and have been involved in the martial arts for 27+ years.

Lots of the self defence course I have addresses factors within your control, and the decisions you have to make in a crisis situation. But what is important in my program is to understand that no one wants to be a victim, and however much you prepare, sometimes bad things happen.

It is the ability to roll with it and survive which is the most important element of self defence ever that I share.

Good work, Lenore.

@united: I think it is very sad you were kidnapped. That must have been terrifying for you and your mom. But it’s even sadder that you say you were kidnapped BECAUSE your mom went in the house. That’s WHEN you were kidnapped, but it’s not WHY. Being briefly unattended might have provided opportunity, but not motivation.

@Amy: where do you live that our neighbors are calling the police when your kids play in your own yard? Is that a common experience where you live? I honestly can’t imagine that happening here.

@ SgtMom: I’m offended that you use over-40 parent with an only child to define helicoptering. That describes me and a number of my friends, and we don’t (though my kid is 2, so I certainly supervise). Stereotyping just a bit?

Last year I gave a speech in one of my classes about giving kids a little more freedom. During the Q&A section, a girl raised her hand and said, “I have a friend who was kidnapped when she was little.” It was clear that the whole time I was giving the speech, she was waiting for her chance to tell me I was wrong. It wouldn’t have mattered what I said, she still would have said the same thing. I gave the same speech a few weeks ago in a different class. When I gave my final thought, the teacher gave his own speech about the time his daughter had gone to the park without telling them, and he was so frantic thinking that she had been kidnapped. The moral of his story was not, “Even though I was so scared, everything was fine.” It was, “She could have been kidnapped like THAT, so I should have kept a closer eye on her.”

Sometimes people are so stuck in their own fears and beliefs that we can’t say anything to change their mind. It basically sucks.

@Dolly as a fellow infertile and mom-to-one (and only one, not by choice), I don’t imagine you were intending to create offense, but neither can I for a minute imagine that having the opportunity to mother multiple children would lessen my grief an iota were something to happen to any child of mine.

Beyond that, one of the several things I’ve learned from the infertile communities of which I’m a part is the idea that “there is no Pain Olympics,” that it is not possible, useful, or appropriate for one person to try to quantify the grief they feel relative to another’s. Indeed, I’ve learned that I personally am not even able to predict how I would feel if “X” happened in my life — I know I never imagined until I was told I couldn’t do it (incorrectly as it turns out, but nonetheless) how deeply not bearing a child would hurt me — never mind being able to compare the depth or impact of my emotions to those of others. So sure, if you feel that you personally would suffer more losing the single child you have, than you would feel losing one of many children — well (based on what you’ve said), it will never be possible to know for sure, but perhaps you’re right. But please don’t imagine that the experience of infertility or of parenting fewer kids than one might have liked to affects everyone that way; I don’t want to be painted with that brush.

It is so very difficult to have this argument at all. It is so difficult to combat the “one death is one too many” self-righteousness with dry logic and statistics, making the same tedious arguments again and again, or try to articulate why a childhood spent running through the streets and woods is so much better than a childhood spent safely tethered to a Nintendo.

But you keep fighting it, Lenore, with common sense and with humor. You’re one of my living heroes, and I don’t have many.

No, Terry. You say “No”, because it’s not true. In fact, the crime rates all around have dropped to 1960s levels.

We struggled with infertility for 4 years before we decided on the adoption route. It came to a point of either choose to try IVF, or choose adoption. There are many reasons that we went for adoption (have you met my inlaws?? Those genes need to die). But one of them was that I didn’t want to become one of these moms who went through 5 IVF cycles and practically bankrupted themselves and destroyed their bodies to have that vaunted ‘biological child’. What sort of pressure would that child be under, I thought? That child has a lot to live up to. And it can lead to the problem of thinking that this child is the only reason for my existance, and therefore I have to guard this child’s every moment. I could see the potential for making myself crazy by needing to have this child somehow grow up ‘perfect’ because they were so hard to come by. So rather than driving myself crazy and getting 1000 shots for a 50% chance of having a kid at the end of it, I went the ‘sign 1000 forms and wait a year and have a near 100% chance of having a kid’ route.

Another reason I wanted to avoid IVF was that I saw what my old next door neighbors were like. Their son was conceived after a long, long IVF battle. But it seemed like they could hardly enjoy him because they were so worried all the time. If he fell and scraped his knee, they scooped him up and rushed him into the house like he had gotten a knife wound. They didn’t want him to get dirty, to take any risks at all. They ended up moving to another house in the same town, mostly because they were so worried about the traffic on the busy street. The result was a fearful child, and tense, fearful parents.

My kids are amazing. But I know that they are resiliant too. They spent the first half year of their lives in a third world country, without me hovering, and did fine. They are no less precious to me than a bio kid would be. But they have taught me that I don’t have complete control over my life, and that’s ok. Everyone will do fine anyhow.

Sgtmom: That is a sad story about the almost kidnapping but a great ending that at least it was not a successful kidnapping.

That is what I meant when I said earlier that we really cannot judge others for their feelings because unless we lived the EXACT same life as them, we don’t know what it is like to be them. I would imagine if you were almost kidnapped that it would leave a big mark in your heart and head and effect how you live. It is mean to make fun of someone for say sleeping with their parents like he did after he was almost kidnapped. We don’t know how terrifying that may have been for him. Counseling and therapy would be a good way to help with it.

I also get that some posters on this blog are a little too militant at times. Raising kids takes sensitivity and understanding that all kids are different. All parents are different. There is no one size fits all. That is why I don’t name call helicopter at a drop of a hat. I am with Linda that there is a disconnect between parents of older kids and parents of younger kids because just because an 8 year old can play outside alone perfectly fine, a 3 year old may not be able to and that is okay. It is not helicoptering. We all live in different neighborhoods with different traffic and different situations. That is why it is up to each individual parent to make that call for themselves.

I used to not leave my kids outside alone for even a second. I used to stand right by them since our yard is not fenced in to catch them in case they darted for the road. As they grow older I can let up. Now I can feel comfortable going inside to get a drink or something for a minute or two and feel that they are safe. I don’t have to stand right next to them while outside. I trust that they know not to leave the yard or go in the street. It is about progression of allowing them more and more freedom the more older and mature they get.

@LindaLou: You can’t *always* watch any child. You have to let them sleep, you have to go to the loo (and yes, most of them want to come too, but sometimes I want to have a little privacy for that!). My son plays in his room while I shower in the morning. Yes, I would follow him around outside, but I might not be looking at him every second.

Drowning is fast and silent, contrary to media depictions. It could happen while you were right there, if you didn’t realise that it was happening. That someone’s child drowned is not evidence of neglect.

And if you think children are going to stop jumping in puddles, you have not been exposed to Peppa Pig recently*.

H
*Peppa Pig is a show in the UK. Almost every child I know seems obsessed with it. The whole family likes jumping in muddy puddles so much that it’s the dad’s birthday treat.

@ Linda Lou – Actually what Lenore said was “Even Free-Rangers know that 4-year-olds are not ready to take on the world by themselves. We’d never recommend that.” I have yet to see Lenore or a single other regular commenter on this blog actually support letting 4-year-olds walk to preschool by themselves, stay home by themselves, or many of the things that older children can do.

Of course, free range applies to small children, in bits of responsibility that they are able to handle. For example, I would never let my child walk to the store on her own at 5. I will, however, allow her to walk around the less than 10 aisle Trader Joe’s to look for the lobster while I shop or go to the counter and “pay” for ice cream (exchange her toy for ice cream) at Chick-fil-a by herself. I won’t let her walk to the park by herself but will walk around the path that takes her out of my sight for short periods of time while there. I won’t let her walk several blocks to play with friends but letting her play in our own yard by herself is fine. Even at 2, my child played alone while I took a shower and didn’t come with me every time I went from one room to another. As a single parent my only option was that or repulsing everyone else by my stench.

Watching your children 24/7 only to then free them to range doesn’t work whether you free them at 8 or 18. You need to build up and increase responsibility until they are able to handle things on their own. This build up should start at a very young age, even as young as 2, with age-appropriate freedoms. However, turning toddlers and preschoolers out to fend for themselves has never been a part of this blog.

“Peppa Pig is a show in the UK. Almost every child I know seems obsessed with it. ”

It’s on in the US too. My daughter loves it. Many episode do involve jumping in mud.

BMS “Have you met my in-laws–those genes need to die.” HA HA HA! I died laughing at that, that was hysterically funny!

Kenny I agree, Lenore is a hero to me. I absolutely love that woman–I am not IN-LOVE with her, okay?–but I absolutely LOVE her.

The posts by Heather and Robin and Donna here are some of the best posts I’ve EVER seen here, EVER. So sensibile, so logical, so lacking in mud-slinging (as I may sometimes stoop to) in making their very sensible points. Donna is right, free-range isn’t about overdoing it to the point of being deliberately neglectful. I will add that some things some of us may do may cross that line, but if it does it’s because we’re “feeling out” what is okay and isn’t, the whole trial & error thing. Example: last year my now 2-year old son left our yard and wandered off into freakish territory, he was actually ON THE ROAD, we were looking all over the place for him. This road is easily 150 yards from our place, he could’ve wandered any other way & just been in nature’s woods–much less dangerous, but he wandered onto the road. Luckily the police didn’t get involved (although I’m told someone called–and I don’t blame them by the way) and he was not harmed.

That was scary and a very frightening experience, perhaps it was a mistake even–but regardless, in response, we built a fence & if they are in that fenced-in area they’re left to their devices for stretches of time, but outside that fence–if they’re even allowed outside the fence at all to start with, they’re scrutinized MUCH more closely. You live and learn, and try to not beat yourself up over those times you misjudge things.

LRH

Sorry I am off topics, I didn’t know where to send this.
THere is a series about climbing trees now and then in “Ben”. I thought it was interesting.
http://comics.com/ben/2011-05-16/

I came looking for this post because someone forwarded the librarians’ response to a list I was on as a ‘great example’ of how to respond.

Public librarians as a group have a phobia of unattended children. In Massachusetts, where a five-year-old was sexually assaulted a couple of years ago in a library in the stacks, not 20 feet from his mom, the librarians are even more phobic. (There are libraries in Massachusetts that won’t let you in the children’s department without a child in tow.)

Even if they are not paranoid about predators, many public librarians have horror stories about un- and under-attended kids’ behavior, and the demanding/entitled behavior of some parents, who *do* expect the library to act as a supervised drop-off center, and DO expect the librarians to supervise their kids.

Always ask what the rules are in a library. Always be clear that if you allow your child out of your sight, it is NOT because you expect them to be supervised. And let paranoid comments by professionally frightened librarians roll off your back.

Jenny Islander 1st paragraph–amen, amen, amen! I think it can be taken farther–if you leave your keys in the car and someone steals it (yes, that includes if you leave your kids in there to pay for gas etc)–it’s not your fault, you didn’t “entrap” or “encourage” the thief. The thief stole your car and temporarily kidnapped your kids. That’s it.

Yes, there’s something to be said for being vigilant and using locks etc, but still–last time I checked, if I see someone’s keys in their car and decide to go for a ride, I’m not going to get off because “well, your honor, they left the keys in there, you’d think people would have more sense than that, it was practically an invitation to take it.” Nope. It’s stealing, and your example works the exact same way.

2nd paragraph–I will say that a .44 Magnum with hollow points or a 12-gauge pump shotgun will keep them away (only if you need to in self-defense cases, I’m not talking about hunting), but beyond that–you’re right, nothing will. I in particular take exception to the persons who say that “you’re in THEIR country, and that’s their way of telling you to stay out of THEIR country,” but that’s for another time (hopefully not) to elaborate on.

LRH

@Larry Harrison: There are Coast Guard dependents who have lived here for years and literally never walked anywhere off the base because a bear might jump out and snatch them. They live right next to some of the most beautifiul roadside hiking and picnicking in North America, all of it theirs for the price of a tank of gas, and they never see it.

That is the difference between taking precautions and being a prisoner of fear.

Several were opposed and thought that the mother should have gone to extraordinary efforts to get her child to school or allowed him the reward of staying home.

I’m not sure reward is the right word here. Maybe if the kid had actively done things to avoid going to school, but the whole situation was out of his league.

And yeah, two year olds aren’t babies except in the sense of “Oh, you’ll always be my baby!” They’re toddlers or preschoolers.

“And, BTW, since my older kids are now a high schooler and a middle schooler, I’m pretty sure I have more real life experience with allowing them to gradually take on more and more responsibility and freedom than someone wiht a five year old (no offense ~ my youngest child is in kindergarten and I know from experience that you are just at the beginning of your journey with this).”

Well, if we’re going to play this game, my oldest is a junior in college and I usually agree with Donna. Now what?

Well, if we’re going to play this game, my oldest is a junior in college and I usually agree with Donna. Now what?

Now let’s you and her fight. I’ll get the popcorn!

With confidence, knowledge, and common sense. It’s like the good book says, GIVE a man a fish and he’ll eat for today. TEACH a man to fish, and he can eat whenever he wants…and then some. lol

Wait, is that one actually in the Bible? The only good book I know with a quote like that says that if you build a man on fire he’ll be warm for the night, but if you set a man on fire he’s warm for the rest of his life. But that book isn’t the Bible either 🙂

I just found an interesting article while this has been on my mind…

http://www.oprah.com/oprahradio/Raising-Independent-Children

Nothing too special, but there is a line in it I love concerning how crucial it is to teach children to travel by themselves.

On the argument about 2 year olds being babies… I’m definitely on Donna’s and Jen’s sides.

My kids were NOT babies at 2 except maybe my middle daughter. She seemed much more babish at that age probably because she was just starting to talk (only knew maybe 15 words when she turned 2) and had fine motor skill issues so she couldn’t do all the things her older siblings did at that age. I’ve always been a little more protective of her because she’s my “flighty” kid. She’s 8 1/2 now, though.

Yesterday I took my 5yo dd and 10mo son to a park a mile and a half away. We walked. I kept having to tell my 5yo to NOT hold onto the stroller. We live in a small town. The only time she has to hold my hand is if we’re crossing a busy street.

At the park I let the baby crawl around the freshly mowed grass (where he got it all over his hands). Back at home he wanted to go outside in our backyard so my older son (9 1/2) took him out there, set up an umbrella and some toys and played with him for, oh, all of 20 minutes and then left him alone.

The 10 month old loved it. He sat outside munching on crackers and playing with his toys then started crawling around. Our yard is fenced in and faces the railroad tracks. There is no way to get from the tracks to our property because of the very thorny berry bushes that stretch the length of the tracks all through town.

If anyone had seen him they would have though he was completely unsupervised but he wasn’t. I was in the house at the computer and could see him through the patio doors. He was having a blast and didn’t need me sitting outside with him. He even crawled out of my direct line of sight a few times but I just waited for him to reappear.

He wanders all over our house and I sure don’t follow him around. I don’t need to. And I especially won’t need to at 2.

I totally agree with everything Erica S said. If you treat your children like they are incompetent and helpless they will be helpless. I’ve treated my kids like they can do anything, encouraged them to learn to do everything for themselves and taught them to be independent and self-reliant.

I’m still constantly amazed when I’m on other parenting sites at the amount of paranoia and fear that mothers have. One woman was all proud to state she lets her kids play alone in their privacy fenced yard with the padlocked gate but only if they are together and their big dog is out there. Her kids were 7 and 13. They were NEVER allowed out of the yard without an adult present not even in their own front yard to play with friends. She lived in a nice quiet suburb but she didn’t trust anyone, not even her kids.

I can’t imagine being 13 and having to have Mommy watch me ride bikes up and down the sidewalk. How demeaning. By the time I was 13 I was taking the bus or riding my bike to the mall 2 miles away (in Chicago). My dad even bought me the lock so I could take my bike and would give me money to catch a matinee in the summer (if I took my younger brother). That was in the early 90s.

I’ve seen plenty of comments on here about people letting four and five year olds out and about on their own. In fact, when I read Lenore’s remark about four-year-olds, I wondered if she wrote it specifically to distance herself from such comments.

Now, I’m not saying that four-year-olds are not far more capable than we give them credit for today (see anecdote later), I’m saying that society today has a problem with letting TEN year olds out without parents, so if people come here to find out about freerange kids they are likely to switch off if they read about five or even six year-olds out without parents. And if they are looking for ammunition to ridicule FRK, they will find it here.

Of course saying that assumes that “freerange kids” is actually a movement and that this blog, and specifically the comments, represents some sort of mouth piece for that movement. Both highly debatable.

* I listened to a radio programme a while ago featuring an elderly woman who said that her mother used to leave her alone to go out to work when she was four . The presenter asked her what she did with her time, and the woman replied “I used to sit by the fire and do some knitting”.
I’m not romanitising this, I’m not saying it’s good. I’m saying who today can think of a four-year-old and conjure up an image of a child sitting by the fire looking after herself and what’s more use the opportunity to get on with some knitting!

I hadn’t thought of this as a phobia before, but it really fits. It’s a mass phobia — like the fear that your neighbor is a witch who dances in the woods near Salem with the Devil in the pale moonlight, curdles your cow’s milk, and entices your husband to sin.

What’s interesting here is that these mass phobias should blossom and fade quickly, even when religious leaders or others try to extend them and use them to retain or extend power over people, etc. In this case, though, the media feeds it, the common folk won’t let go of it, and it just keeps going — maybe even getting stronger.

The government bakes it into our laws, even, perpetuating it even more strongly.

It’s a phobia fueled by a wave of ignorance that should have lost its momentum by now.

If I like to run barefoot on the beach, and one day I cut my foot badly on some broken glass hidden in the sand, you can bet I’ll have a (healthy?) fear of running like that again.

Would I demand that they close the whole beach? Would I support a law for everyone’s protection that fullly-enclosed footwear had to be worn on the beach at all times? Would I tell my children there would never ever EVER be anymore beach visits for me and mine?

No. None of those things. I’d be more careful than usual for a while (after my foot healed), but before long some circuit in my brain would ease back into “normal” position, and I’d realize on some deep level (whether I thought it through consciously or not) how rare that danger was, and I’d slip back into my old, regular habits.

People seem to be missing that ‘circuit’ these days. A lot of people.

Even someone who was once kidnapped should be able to eventually realize how rare that is, and adjust back to something approaching their previous level of comfort with society and normal human interactions (which includes normal, friendly interactions with strangers).

Kids are the most resilient of us all! They break an arm, and not long after they want to climb that tree again.

I wonder if the person who was kidnapped and returned at age four was tormented more by her loved ones’ reaction to the event than the event itself. I think many people mess up a kid’s whole life due to how they treat the child after an event and in their hysterical reaction to the event, when the event itself might have only caused a short disruption in normal life, followed by some well-tended healing — if it had been handled properly. Instead, someone starts pumping their minds full of the irrational phobia that lasts forever.

… and none of my children were “babies” at age two. Geesh.

@pentamom, what do you mena “Now what?” I barely even stop by here anymore because I find a large number of the posters (not LENORE,but the people she attracts) to be ridiculous to the point of negligence when it comes the supervison of very young children. There is no more to it than that. The only final thought I would add is that it’s really sad that Lenore’s good work has been perverted in to the sort of dangerous radicalism where anything goes.

@pentamom, maybe if I were attemtping to lecture you about what you needed to do with your young children in order to ensure that they are independent when they’re older, you might have a point. If you’re claming you wouldn’t respond with “BTDT”, well, I doubt it.

Wow, I’m a dangerous radical. I don’t think I’ve ever been considered “dangerous” or “radical.” I love it. Although I suspect that anyone who thinks that I’m a dangerous radical probably has some helicopter issues.

Nor have I read anything here that I would consider dangerously radical. There have certainly been people I disagree with. There have been comments where I think the poster went further than I would go. But “dangerous radicals” indicates a negligence requiring CPS interference and I’ve never seen anything at that point.

@LindaLou, I’m still stuck on your first comment where you seem to claim that a 2 year old should be watched at all times. Do you mean that literally? So I’m supposed to sit and stare at my 18 month old all day?

As a SAHM not wealthy enough to hire domestics, I’m responsible for cleaning, laundry, cooking, shopping, supervising homework, errands, yardwork, and religious teaching of my older kids; and I choose to support my older children’s involvement in sports and scouts. Am I supposed to perform these activities for my older three children whilst simultaneously fixing my eyes on my toddler 24 hours a day?

Because unless you are prepared to say Oh Yes! to my above questions, you have to concede that completely missed the point of Jessika’s story about the drowned two year old, which was that even when you are *keeping an eye out*, which is the reasonable (and real-world) alternative to *continual and uninterrupted staring at child*, ACCIDENTS HAPPEN that are NO ONE’S FAULT. Claiming otherwise perpetuates a horrible attitude that no matter what happens, a parent is at fault and must be shamed.

As for me, I can’t get past the claim that two-year olds are babies. They’re not. Babies are so much easier; you can put them down and count on them being where you left them when you come back (and they can’t follow you into the bathroom).

It is a horrible truth that some children get kidnapped, molested, killed. We can and should be aware of ours and our childrens surroundings and activities. But I have to wonder if there were parks full of children and parents, if the streets had dozens of kids playing and the kids all knew each other and the parents in a neighborhood all knew all the children…wouldn’t the world be safer? Wouldn’t the children be safer?

@Donna, yes you’re a better mother than every other mother. That’s what you’re trying to convince yourself of, right? I’m out. Like I said, this place just gets more and more stupid with each passing day. It’s no longer a place where anyone with a little common sense and a normal understanding of child development can feel comfy. You’re just as bad as the helicopters at this point. “Helicopter issues!” Give me a break. @@.

@Cyndi, I’m sorry for the loss of your son. I can’t imagine how it feels to lose a child.

This is a bit off-topic, but it relates to the fact that anything can happen anytime. Earlier this month my son and his friend (both age 12) went skiing on their own. My son was very excited about going because it was the first time that he took the ski train without parental supervision both ways. He and his friend ran into some of their other friends (ages 12-15) and did a lot of jumping in the ski area’s terrain park.

Sometime during that day my son sprained his ankle, though his foot didn’t really hurt him until the next day (his ski boot probably restricted any swelling). I took him to the ER to get an x-ray (no broken bones). He’s still on crutches.

Did my son’s injury happen because there were no parents watching the boys? Of course not. It would have happened even if my husband, one of my son’s friend’s parents, or a parent of one of the kids who they ran into were there. Will my husband and I forbid our son from jumping in the terrain park? No, because we realize that my son’s injury was a freak thing. He had been jumping in terrain parks for the past couple of years without any injuries. The point is that things will happen whether you’re hyper-vigilant or let your kids be independent.

The parent being physically present in The Cat in the Hat, destroys the most crucial aspect of the Freudian construct of the original.

“According to this model of the psyche, the id is the set of uncoordinated instinctual trends; the ego is the organised, realistic part; and the super-ego plays the critical and moralising role.[1]” Wikipedia

Obviously, The Cat is the Id, the children – ego, and the super-ego the parent. BUT it is only when the critical, moral, parental voice, the “super-ego” is INTERNALIZED, that we are on the path to becoming moral beings.

The internalized parental voice, the super-ego, is our conscience. Those who never incorporate the parental figure’s “voice” within their own psyche (mind), but instead allow it to remain a physical, bodily manifestation outside of themselves – who tells them what they are, and are not, allowed to do – will never be able to conquer their inner Id. And will therefore be doomed to an adulthood of poor impulse control, unchecked base desires, and general amoral behavior.

The children in The Cat in the Hat demonstrate that they are well on the road to being upstanding, moral beings: They have internalized the super-ego. We know this because time and again, despite the lack of a PHYSICAL parental figure, they deny the impulses of the Cat, the Id. The bodily presence of the mother in the newer editions, destroys this finely wrought construct.

And yes, this was written while smoking a pipe and wearing a tweet jacket with leather patches (and horn-rimmed glasses, of course!).

Cyndi: Sorry for your loss. That does not make it okay to tell others how to feel though and minimize other’s pain. Considering I almost committed suicide during my miscarriages and infertility it obviously was a big deal to me. I also lost 40 pounds in about 2 months because I was so depressed I stopped eating. So yeah, you can call BS all you want but that doesn’t make it true.

@ Tuppence: I thought the fish was the super-ego. Now you have me confused. 🙂

@Lafe — Thank you for noting my omission. Further inspection revealed that my findings were based on The Cat in the Hat Comes Back. In this subsequent telling of the tale of the Cat , Sally, and her Brother, the Fish is no longer present.

We may see this divulgence as a strengthening, rather than a weakening, of the original thesis — evidence that the Children are proceeding developmentally along the path of internalization of the super-ego: In the later story, not only do they no longer require the bodily presence of a parent to do the right thing, they no longer need the parental figure substitute – the Fish – to admonish them about their moral obligations.

“For him (Freud) “the installation of the super-ego can be described as a successful instance of identification with the parental agency,” while as development proceeds “the super-ego also takes on the influence of those who have stepped into the place of parents — educators, teachers, people chosen as ideal models.”[17] ” Wikipedia

hehe. And props to you and Lola for your reasoned remarks.

LOL Tuppence, very good!

Yes, the fish is definitely the superego. And FWIW, I put about as much stock in Freud as I do in in Seuss for serious understanding of human psychology — actually, probably less. 😉

Reposted from elsewhere ‘cuz I’m a dummy:

Yeah, kids in pools are a different matter altogether. A kid might not even notice another kid on the other side of a pool (and I’m talking about a backyard pool) drowning, since drowning is frequently less dramatic than we think. I don’t even like rereading this article because I find it disturbing, but every parent really should read it at least once:

http://mariovittone.com/2010/05/154/

A nine year old might not even notice another kid drowning in a pool, especially if they’ve been goofing around and going under and holding their breath and stuff.

I don’t let my kids swim unsupervised in our own 24 foot backyard pool unless there are at least two of them, and at least one is a teenager (but I’m not sure I’m ready to give my just turned thirteen year old the privilege of being alone with the 10 yo yet this year.) I had to put my foot down the first year my then 18 year old daughter thought she was “responsible” enough to swim all alone and explain it’s not about that. I will be where I can see them easily at all times, such as hanging out in the kitchen, near the window — I don’t necessarily feel the need to be at poolside, although more often than not, I am. But I won’t let them be in for any longer than it takes for me to run downstairs and grab another towel, without me at least in line of sight, unless there are at least two and at least one is “of age.”

Cyndi: you don’t have to feel sorry for me. You are trying to compare your pain to mine and tell me how to feel. I was stating MY personal feelings on how I would deal with something happening. You can say you feel differently but you cannot argue with how I say I would feel about something. You don’t even know me. That is the beauty of the human race- everyone is different with different personalities and different experiences. So none of us think exactly alike. I am a more sensitive and depressive person so when something bad happens to me it destroys me. Maybe you are tougher by nature. If I feel all hope is lost, then I get suicidal. If my children died, I would kill myself. I have no doubt about it. I couldn’t deal with it and since I cannot have more and my one goal in life is to be a parent, then my life would be over in my opinion and I would end it. That is the truth of it. Just because you might react differently does not mean that how I say I will react is BS.

Cyndi: ps just because my kids are my whole life does not mean I don’t let them live their life well. I do everything to make their life good and that means teaching them independence and lettting them flourish and grow up.

On FRK 5/20/2011

@ Dolly: I saw a short film recently about a man in Indonesia who saw his entire family (wife and kids) swept out to sea during the 26 Dec 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. He was understandably devastated, and wandered around in shock for days, wanting only to die himself.

But he noticed all of the children who had lost parents (about 230,000 people were killed by that disaster), and suddenly felt that he should be a father to as many of those hurting orphans as possible.

He built (or rebuilt) a house that became a children’s home, and today he cares for dozens of children who love him as a father.

I don’t discount your strong feelings on this subject, but I would respectfully suggest that you consider two things:

1) No one really knows in advance what they are strong enough (or not strong enough) to handle. People amaze themselves when disaster strikes, and they can overcome things that were unimaginable to them before.

2) The world is full of kids who need parents (more than 140 million of them). It breaks my heart that so many in affluent countries ignore this astounding need. We spend fortunes on artificial methods to get a child “of our own”, or think that if our child died there simply would be no option other than death. If that man had killed himself, or folded his arms and said, “Well I’m not going to settle for anything but my own flesh and blood,” what a tragedy multiplied that would have been.

It’s fantastic that you love your kid(s), but there’s so much that a person can do with a life, even if tragedy interrupts things. Things to think about…

Lafe: What a sad but inspiring story. Actually that could totally be something I would do. I am kinda a mom to every kid I ever meet in that I love and can play with every kid in the world pretty much.

Oh, Dolly, shut up already about how awesome you are. We get it, you’re terrific, nobody cares.

Yes, and you were telling her the same thing you post in every other comment – you’re wonderful, you play with aaaaaall the little kids (whose mommies are busy talking on the phone ignoring them, naturally), kids everywhere just LOVE you because you are JUST SO COOOOOOOL, and you’re the bestest mommy EVAH.

It’s getting old. It is not all about you. If you want to say “Wow, that’s a cool story! What a great guy!” you can say that without necessarily following it up with “But I’m just as great as he is! Really!”

Donna, I’m not insecure – and, as I know I’ve said before, attributing annoyance at you and your behavior to somebody else’s mental state is incredibly rude. If you stepped on my foot and I said “ow”, and you then blamed it on where I’d put my foot and my vanity as regards the appearance of my toes, you’d be just as wrong.

You’re not a mind-reader, you’re just incredibly inept at not sounding boastful and not annoying the heck out of nearly everybody.

I can’t “not read” your comments. That’s a lot like asking people to “not hear” other people talking outside their window, you know?

Seriously, stop talking about yourself so much. Try, just try, to make ONE comment to somebody else in reply to something THEY have said that doesn’t ultimately revolve around you you you and how wonderful you you you are. I don’t know why you think we all need to hear how great you are, I don’t know or care why you need to say you’re terrific every other sentence (and you’ll note I have the manners and good sense not to speculate, because I’m sure that if you want psychological help you’ll pay a professional), but it’s obnoxious and annoying.

Uly, I think I have a little crush on you.

I don’t remember where I read it (probably here!) there was an article about keeping your newborn safe at the hospital and they took advice from a woman who nearly had had her first child kidnapped. She stayed awake the entire time she was at the hospital the second time around. And of course the article didn’t mention how that was bad for her physical and mental health, and an exhausted mom is WAY more likely to bring harm to her child then a one in (is it a million?) chance encounter with a kidnapper.

NEVER take advice from someone who has faced tragedy (or near tragedy) in such a way! That should be common sense! Their perspective is skewed in a way it shouldn’t be, and they need to heal and learn from their experience. But these people are letting fear teach them, instead of logic. I can understand, I deal with anxiety all the time, but now I have a daughter and I want her to have everything good in the world. Including time alone, including playing outside, including making strangers into friends, including being curious and touching things. I refuse to let the fear teach her, confine her, or make her helpless.

I don’t understand how people expect their kids to grow into independent, strong, mature adults when they make fear such a big part of their lives. I really don’t.

Sorry, I didn’t mean for this to be so long!

Kelli: That was the comment of the decade!

I call the phenomenon you’re addressing the Sanctification of Victimhood. Somehow, undergoing a tragedy is supposed to make you an expert. It doesn’t. But that’s what celebrity/therapy/recovery culture promotes; displaying vulnerability to a mass audience is considered a “super-healthy” behavior.

Why should having your son kidnapped in a shopping mall entitle you to be taken seriously about how to choose a babysitter? Why should having your kid killed at Columbine make your anti-evolution views true? Why should having a (questionably) autistic kid and two especially big boobs make you an expert on vaccination safety? The answer seems to be “if it bleeds, it leads.”

I’m going to weigh in on the argument about infertility making your child more precious to you. In a very small sense, I think it’s true. What are we really saying when we give our kids freedom? We are saying that it’s alright to sacrifice a little safety for a better quality of life. But in sacrificing that safety we are also saying that it’s okay to take a slightly larger risk that harm could befall our children. In letting our kids walk to school, we are taking a risk. They could be snatched up, run over by a drunk driver, etc. etc. I think the point of free-ranging is not to deny that there is ANY increased risk in letting our kids be free range, there definitely is. To be free-range, to me, means to believe that the risks we take are miniscule and worth the reward. But in saying this, we have to also realize that we are saying, on some level “My child COULD be harmed or killed, but this is a risk I have to accept”.

If you agree with that, the next logical conclusion is either that parents who helicoptor are grossly over-estimating the risk, or that they are less accepting of ANY risk. What I mean is, the idea that there child is in any danger of harm or death is 100% unacceptable to them (which we all know is silly because you can never truly eliminate risk), and they will take any means possible to reduce that risk.

Here’s where talking about statistics about this sort of thing gets complicated. If you agree with what I said above, it means that I, as a non-helicopter parent, am more “okay” with the idea that my child could be killed than a helicopter parent. Of course I am NOT okay with it. I would never be okay with it. But I am MORE okay with it than someone who helicopters, who is 100% un-okay with it. As appalling as this idea is, even to me, I recognize that it must be true.

And the way I believe this relates to infertility is simply that people with more children, or people who can have more children, will feel less grief at the loss of a child. “Less” only as a comparison to people who have just one child. It absolutely does not mean that people with plenty of children will not feel grief at the loss of one, but on some level we must realize that grief is quantifiable. Even if our emotional brains won’t accept it, especially if we are going through it, logically it has to be true. I would feel grief over the loss of my dog. I would feel more grief over the loss of my daughter. I would feel even more grief if I lost my daughter AND found out that I could never have another child. Not because I believe that another child would be able to replace my daughter, but that grief is simply compounded on top of my grief over my daughter. Just like if I had multiple children, my grief would be greater if more than one of them died than if just one died.

I remember reading a story in high school about a woman with two children taken by Nazis during WWII. One was a boy about 5, the other a girl about 3. The Nazis told her she could only choose one of her children to take with her to the concentration camp, the other would be killed. Of course the woman did not want to choose. The idea of choosing was unthinkable to her as she couldn’t imagine the grief over losing one of the children would be any less than the grief over losing the other. Their lives were equal to her, at least in her emotional brain. But when she realized that she had to make the choice, she chose the son on the grounds that he would have a better chance of surviving, and she left her daughter to be killed. It was a horrifying story and a horrifying choice, but what it shows to me is that grief can be quantified, whether we want to accept it or not, and if we are forced to, we can make these kinds of decisions.

And Beth, thanks. Try to remember that if/when I annoy you. (Social skillz. I haz them… sorta. Or, as my other motto goes: Sure, you don’t like me now – but just wait, apparently I grow on you!)

A few days of deep breathing has given me some perspective, at least. I am calm, cool, and collected again. /sighofrelief