Trying To Keep Parenting Perspective After the Maddy Middleton Tragedy

People die. It’s one of those sad, but inescapable facts of life. Children are people. Thus by the transitive property of “obvious”, yes, some children will die.

Some will die in accidents. Some will die from illnesses. Some will die in terrorist strikes, from neglect, or from physical assault. Some children will be murdered. It’s going to happen. It’s sad, and it’s not always preventable. It may happen to your child.

Read that again: Your child may die. Think about it for a while. Realize that the worst could potentially occur, and there could be absolutely nothing you can do about it. Make peace with the idea, and put it behind you. To quote a famous novel: “Fear is the mind-killer.” You must face your fear and go beyond it in order to think clearly.

Now, really think about what happened to this girl. She was met by someone that she and her parents knew. She was not far from her home, but within her own apartment complex. She was not abducted by some stereotypical “dirty old man”, but by another child (his being tried as an adult, notwithstanding). The situation of her death is far from what the media would have you believe is a “typical” abduction. It is, in fact, an example of what we free range parents know to be the much more common situation.

What could the parents have done? Confine her to her family apartment? Not allow her to have any young friends or acquaintances? Schooled her in not-stranger danger? No, those are all nonsensical reactions. And there’s nothing sensible that YOU could do to prevent the same sort of thing happening to YOUR child.

Children die. The worst could happen. Let the fear pass through you until nothing but common sense remains. Then, and only then, should you take action.

“That smug belief blames the grieving, and gives unearned conceit to those who are not.”

Wonderful line.

I’ve often pondered, what it is that parents really do teach their children – about the philosophies of life that will serve them well as grownups.
I suppose a knee-jerk response to that remark might be something along the lines of……”Well, they have to survive to adulthood.”
Of course they do.
But in what shape?
Afraid of their own shadows? Incapable of independent free thought?
I didn’t have a clue what I had really absorbed from my upbringing, as a chld and as a teenager, until it was all on the line and then I of course, found out all kinds of things I didn’t know I’d learned.
I’m pretty sure many of those things wouldn’t have even been set – had I been helicoptered, sheltered or over-protected as a kid.

Any tragedy is what it is – and a terrible thing to have happen in anyone’s life.
It has never been a reason to close up shop and throw away common sense and rationality.
Life’s challenges force us to create and adjust, not run away and hide.

Life has never been risk-free.
The wealth of the world won’t buy it. We know that.
Intelligence weighs out the checks and balances of risk, and we act accordingly.
No matter what we do or don’t do, some events are going to get through the cracks in every door of security we can possibly erect and set in place.
Life’s like that.

I agree with JP. This IS a wonderful line: That smug belief blames the grieving, and gives unearned conceit to those who are not.

Brutal truth.

“The answer is easy. Lets remove all trees from the world.”

That’s overkill. We only need to keep kids away from the trees. We can do that by taking custody of kids who go near trees, and putting them in group homes in Evergreen Terrace, at the intersection of pine and oak.

I don’t know if this is free-range or not free-range, but I honestly don’t understand how somebody so young can be so depraved. It kind of makes it hard not to believe in such a thing as bad blood, honestly.

Also, I know many here would think this is unjust profiling, but my mom would never for one minute have trusted a 15-year-old boy who showed a strong interest in us girls at 8 years old, however nice everybody in the neighborhood thought they were.

“From what we know so far, this tragedy does not seem to have been preventable.”

When did everything become preventable?
How would you, Super George, have prevented this murder? I truly don’t understand what satisfaction others get in pointing out the fault of others.

The definition of tragedy: a very bad event that causes great sadness and often involves someone’s death.
We cannot prevent every bad event. Even most. Seatbelt technology, air bags, crumple zones, still don’t prevent most children from dying in automobile accidents. Yet we still drive in the car every day and assume this risk. All car accidents are preventable if we don’t drive.

I did say that to my friend when she was telling my 8yo daughters about Maddie (to try to scare them out of going out alone): “how many kids played outside yesterday and did NOT get hurt?”

I have no idea which message is getting ingrained in my kids’ minds.

My wife and I heard a story on CBC radio this morning that could be considered a counter to the “worst-first” thinking, especially when it comes to the whole “stranger danger” BS.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/5-year-old-flags-down-help-after-mom-knocked-out-in-car-wreck-1.3173308

@E, the movie theater discussions make sense in terms of public policy. If we’re asking, for example, whether there was any reasonable way to keep guns out of the hands of the perpetrators, that’s a question we can ask and try to answer.

But, if the question we’re asking is how to ever keep somebody from going into a movie theater and committing violence, I’m not sure that asking that question won’t cause more harm than good. We are not so much wiser and smarter than every other generation of humans that *we* will be able to answer the question of why some people do really bad things.

I’m not sure why we’d find a crime like this committed by a 15 year old particularly surprising, except for our contemporary belief that there’s no substantive difference between a 5 year old and a 15 year old. But, there is. A 15 year old is physically mature and has many of the same drives and impulses as older adults. They are also, though, more impulsive and less experienced (as young adults tend to be in general). It’s no more shocking that a 15 year old would do this than an 18 or 22 year old, because young people have always tended to commit the most crime. My husband was robbed at gunpoint many years ago by three teen guys who he thinks couldn’t have been more than 14-16. That’s not in any way shocking, and it’s actually the demographic that commits much of the crime in our city.

And certainly if the idea were that the best response to movie theater violence is to simply never, ever go to a movie theater again, and to even potentially punish people who do go to movie theaters for doing something so risky, that would be a terrible outcome.

So, is it human nature to want to know why something like this happens? Of course. I just don’t think our speculation, in this case, will get us any farther than it got our ancestors five hundred years ago who would have wondered the same thing when an individual committed a heinous act against another individual. Unlike in the theater shootings, where we could at least ask questions about things like gun laws, what are the policy outcomes in this case? Cracking down on 15 year old boys hoping to identify those most likely to commit horrific crimes? Punishing parents who allow prepubescent children to spend time alone with teens? I just don’t see our speculations leading to anything good.

@E, I think it’s the rhetoric of “what led us to this point” that concerns me. What point have we been led to? Where 15 year olds commit senseless acts of violence? Because human beings have been committing terrible, senseless acts of violence against one another as long as there have been humans. If we frame this as a current social problem that we can address with legislative solutions, then I think we’re both thinking about it in a very limited and ahistorical way and setting ourselves up for consequences that will harm far more people than random horrific violence does.

But, we are never okay with concluding, “Nothing could have been done.” Once we start looking for answers, we insist on finding one, no matter how forced or simplistic or even damaging it is. So I do think there’s some wisdom, when we have an event that is obviously a tragic aberration, to simply say, “We do not currently and probably never will understand the human mind and heart well enough to explain exactly how something like this happened or propose reasonable ways to prevent it from happening again, so we’ll mourn and then move on with our lives because anything we come up with will probably do more harm than good.”

“I think it’s the rhetoric of “what led us to this point” that concerns me. What point have we been led to?”

The point of accepting senseless violence.

Senseless violence may be difficult, even impossible to eradicate completely, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be made more rare. Saying “we can’t stop all the violence” doesn’t mean we can’t try… and succeed… at stopping SOME of violence.

Even if we’re thinking about what, say, this boy’s parents could have done, would that really have helped or be widely applicable?

It kind of reminds me of the “warning signs” that were given out after Columbine. Ignoring the fact that they were based on misrepresentations of the perpetrators and the event (the shooters were more bullies than bullied, for example), as far as I know not a single actual school shooting was prevented because of these lists, but many schools adopted zero-tolerance policies that have harmed many students. Is it possible that, say, Eric Harris’s parents could have taken more of an interest in what was going on in his life and found out what was going on and stopped it? Sure. That is possible. That is always a possibility. But, there’s very little we can do usefully with that as a society. If we conclude, for example, that the school should have taken some of the violent rhetoric that used in class assignments more seriously–as we have–what do we get? Zero tolerance policies that crack down hard, and sometimes criminally, on students who use violent rhetoric in class assignments. And the overall effect of that has been negative, not positive, because the reality is that the vast majority of the time the student in question posed no danger.

So, yes, I do think we have to accept that senseless violence will sometimes happen. That doesn’t mean that, with our own kids, we can’t be involved in their lives and aware of what’s going on with them. It doesn’t mean that we can’t make our own choices about what is and is not safe for our child. It doesn’t mean we can’t try to encourage, in our children and communities, cultures of care and compassion. But it does mean that we accept that even with our best intentions and even best actions, we will not stop every act of violence–even every act of violence against children–and that large-scale attempts to do so will often bring unintended consequences that do more harm to society than isolated violent incidents.

I also think we need to realize that often our “concern” is voyeuristic. Of course a society that entertains itself primarily with stories of women and children being brutalized and murdered by sadistic killers will want to know what was going on inside this guy’s head and what led to these events. It’s a real-life CSI! It’s a murder mystery come to life, and we want a satisfying conclusion with all the loose ends tied up and a clear motive. Part of me wants that, too. I am no less fascinated by the psychological of those who commit unthinkable, heinous acts than anybody else. But let’s own it for what it is–a kind of voyeuristic, entertaining fascination–rather than pretending it’s a virtue. Because, again, that is what leads us to demanding white girl laws and zero tolerance policies, and those have gotten us nowhere good.

I hesitated to post on this post (and chose not to on the other one) and realize I probably should not have.

As a parent, when bad things have happened to friends or classmates of my children, I look to understand (if I can) what happened and reflect on those things in regard to my children (whether it be our rules, their peer group, our child’s own behavior, etc) to see if there is anything that we should be paying more attention to, if we should adapt our approach, etc.

I have no issue with a community doing the same thing.

I sincerely doubt that anyone that reads this website would be considering a complete reversal to their attitude towards raising children and the amount of freedom they enjoy. I understand that people who are in this child’s community might feel differently — especially now. It’s part of being human.

There’s a Simpsons episode where a bear is spotted in Springfield. Homer and the townspeople angrily clamor for the mayor to do something about the ‘constant bear attacks,’ even though there was only one bear spotted and it was passive. With townspeople screaming, “Think of the children! Won’t somebody please think of the children!” the town launches the Springfield Bear Patrol, complete with roving vans and stealth bombers.

Lisa says the bear patrol is ridiculous. Homer points out that the bear patrol must be working because no more bears have been sighted. Lisa then picks up a rock and says that by Homer’s logic, this rock must keep tigers away, because we also haven’t seen any tigers.

Lots of parents out there have instituted bear patrols and even found some tiger rocks to try to keep their kids safe. And the sad part is that it seems to be socially acceptable.

I don’t like the way some commentators here assume a completely fatalistic approach to serious crimes or accidents, as if absolutely nothing could ever be done to prevent them.

I agree that it is unreasonable to devise any sort of action program, laws and/or policies that totally prevent all these rare but vicious crimes, or all rare but deadly accidents. However, that shouldn’t preclude a reasonable discussion, one that for obvious reasons can’t involve those immediately affected by such events, about measures that might be taken.

Specifically, I think society as a whole needs to come up with some better way to deal with teenage depression, suicidal thoughts and other angst that goes far beyond the motions of adolescence. By “better way” I don’t mean mandatory reporting laws that create some paranoid state in schools or youth groups, but mental health services and the offer of proper outlets for teens to discuss their issues.

That doesn’t mean such measures would have prevented this tragedy.

Now something I don’t like is this ex-post-facto search for “signs of evil” such as the music he uses to listen, the color and style of his clothes, the fact he plays video-games or else.

Of course, the tragedy in California is profoundly saddening.
Likewise, the deaths of children by a falling tree.
Should we now post Tax-paid guards around trees?
My ward was part of a week-long Scout leadership course in a beautiful forested camp. No trees fell. He said the best part was when the Scouts were set free from training lectures, and allowed to actually DO THINGS…hmmm, sounds like Free-Range to me. And they all came back alive.

@Eric S. You make a lot of gross generalizations and judgement.

First off, there is literally no way my children could have the same childhood I had because they had 2 working parents for the vast majority of their childhood, while I had 1. We live in a a neighborhood with some stay at home parent(s) and some 2 working parents households. Off the top of my head, I can count 4 different elementary schools that were attended by kids that were only 4 houses apart!

So, while there might be some attitudes (which is what I believe FR is about) that can be the same as a generation ago, the practical experience is going to be different.

Calling people “clueless” does not help anything.

I don’t think anyone here is opposed to society working toward minimizing tragedies.
Nor do I think anyone disagrees that to learn what can be learned, horrible things must be examined.

But the commentary that people engage in, in the face of tragedy, is no examination of facts, no learning.

The public discourse that surrounds tragedy has as much in common with those valuable investigations as a vulture’s feeding has in common with a coroner’s autopsy.

You never know where thinking might lead, so it’s best not to indulge. Just go with the flow, man.

So I am afraid of things… Anxiety is in my genetic makeup. When it comes to my kids it triples. I am afraid they will drown when they are out in the water. I am afraid cars will run them down on their bikes when they ride. I am afraid that lettuce they just ate has ecoli. CNN has now even convinced me that escalators are likely to eat me and my children at any moment (you guys saw this right?). And of course I am afraid that some random stranger will take my kids away from me. Its terrifying.

Of course, all of the above save maybe the escalator (ecoli included) is far more likely to happen than some wack job taking my children. But fear has little to do with statistical realities for most of us. Many folk feel safer having a gun in the house even though stats show this does not make us safer. I feel safer in a car than a plane. Again, stats show I am wrong but that does not matter to my lizard brain.

With the latest tragedy in Santa Cruz my fear would drive me to lock the kids away in safety… Watch them closer… Leave no opportunity for any harm to come to them. But what I am really managing here is my fear, not their safety. Back to those statistics, escalators are not likely to eat me or my children nor is a stranger likely to take them. Most of what we do is to limit our fear, limit our anxiety and make it easier to get through the day. Its like how we ask them to call when they get to their friends house (I do this). This does not keep them safer, it just lets us know they are safe.

On the flip side, if I spend all my time tracking and monitoring my children I wont have time and energy to be a decent father. This is not a fear, its a fact. I wont have time left to put a good meal on the table and enjoy it with my family. I wont have the patience left at the end of the day to play a game with them. I will dump money into monitoring systems instead of saving for a family vacation. The end result will be a child more scared of the world than I am, and I would not wish that on my enemy let alone my child.

So I bite back my fear and try and learn to trust them and the world, the whole time praying to the agnostic unisex colorless god in the sky/tree/sea that they are safe. I attempt to find that balance of safety nets which make me feel good without stopping them from enjoying a salad in the waves.

Way to optimize your page views on the death of a young girl with free range parents. Absolutely disgusting. I came here because I knew you’d do this too. Snug is right.

“Way to optimize your page views on the death of a young girl with free range parents.”

Yes, that should cause a huge spike in ad revenues.

@Valerie regular readers of this site know exactly what Lenore stands for and speaks against. You, apparently, don’t.

You cant trust anyone with your child .