A few more thoughts on kids and safety

I can't stop thinking about Friday afternoon.

In my last post I mentioned a friend whose 6yo was stopped last year while outside alone -- yesterday I went back and read that archived email discussion, where the mom asked for input from a bunch of mothers about supervision for young kids outdoors. I was startled by the number of people who said they would never have allowed the child to ride her bike around the block because of the risk of stranger abduction.

I guess they're in good company, though:

In a recent study of parents' worries by pediatricians at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, nearly 3/4 of parents said they feared their children might be abducted. 1/3 of parents said this was a frequent worry-a degree of fear greater than that held for any other concern, including car accidents, sports injuries, or drug addiction. [from that authoritative source, Redbook -- no luck so far tracking down the quoted study]

I am no criminal justice expert, but that seems a mite confused to me. What we think of as kidnapping is a rare event, with an incidence in the range of 100-200 cases per year. It appears, though I am having trouble tracking down precise numbers, that about half of those cases end in fatalities. Less dramatic non-family abductions happen much more frequently (in the range of 50,000-60,000 cases per year), but those abductees are mostly teens, mostly girls, and -- the scary part -- mostly the abductors are known to the child. (When a 15-year-old takes off overnight with her 18-year-old boyfriend, it's classed as a non-family abduction.) The person most likely to molest your child is someone whom you have granted access: the soccer coach, the Scout leader, the babysitter. Not the faceless bad guy cruising the neighborhood while twirling his mustachios.

The most dangerous thing kids do, it seems to me, is ride in cars: approximately 1800 kids die annually in the US in car crashes. And yet I have never heard someone say, "I'm terribly concerned about keeping my kids safe, so I'm going to drive as little as possible because that's the thing most likely to kill them." It doesn't make a lot of sense to me to drive a child to school because you're worried about stranger abduction if he walks -- you'd be increasing his exposure to a greater risk in order to diminish his exposure to a much smaller one.

Approximately 1500 kids drown each year and still the pools and beaches are packed. (This is why I am less than obsessive about bathing my children, you know. It's not laziness; it's safety-mindedness.) I could keep going down the list of most common causes of death, but I won't: my point is that kidnapping doesn't even appear.

It's possible that someone could throw my kid in the trunk and take him away forever, and of course I would never get over it. I check the state sex offender registry every so often, to see if anybody I ought to know about has moved into my neighborhood. I re-read Gavin de Becker every so often, and I keep talking with the kids about his ideas. But at the same time I object vehemently to the idea, expressed repeatedly in that archived email thread I mentioned, that you can't be too careful with your kids. Of course you can be too careful. You might raise a kid who is overly cautious, who is afraid of the only world he will ever live in. You might raise a kid who is frustrated that you are so cautious, and who rebels against your caution in unsafe ways. You're wrong, he figures, and you won't listen to him, so he'll just do what makes sense to him.

We can disagree on the appropriate middle ground; I suspect we'd all draw the too cautious/too careless lines in different spots. (Check out Free Range Kids for an interesting perspective on this question.) I do think it's important to bear in mind the differences in neighborhood norms and kid temperaments. I wouldn't have let my oldest son walk a quarter-mile alone at age 6, because it just wasn't done in the neighborhoods where we lived at the time. When my second son was 6 we had moved to this neighborhood where kids do run around on their own, but he would have been frightened and embarrassed at being instructed to walk home by himself. I would never have imposed that consequence for car misbehavior because it would have upset him all out of proportion to the misdeed.

Joe is my explorer. At age 3 he decided to walk around the corner to visit a neighbor without telling me he was going. He didn't think it would be a problem. (Ai yi yi.) Since then, we have spent a lot of time talking about how to explore safely. Joe exudes a distinctive certainty that's part of my decision-making calculus -- he's not easily cowed. I think it's reductive to argue for age-based cutoffs, when 6-year-olds can span such a wide range.

It still vexes me that this woman called the cops on me, and maybe this post is mostly things I wish I could have said to her. (Though she probably would have kept saying, "Six! He's only six! Six years old!") I support the right of a thoughtful parent to make decisions for his or her own child, even if they're not the decisions that seem best to me. I only hope I don't wind up justifying any more of my own decisions to the cops. :-/

Comments

[Julie]

I've been thinking about this too...part of me is amazed at your restraint (if she really did keep Joe from walking home, should the police not have had a few words with her??) while the completely non-confrontational part of me would have let that one go. ;)

I read about a study last year that said more kids were getting injured crossing the street, because their parents were too protective and never allowed them to learn how to cross by themselves. That really struck a chord with me (I tend to be on the protective side...) and I immediately had a talk with my eldest about crossing safety, and every time we walk anywhere she knows that she's allowed to run ahead and cross on her own. It seems like such a dumb little think, but I think she really appreciates that freedom.

[Karen]

I totally agree with your points and fully support your choice to provide a consequence to Joe that was both effective and appropriate. And I agree with the previous commenter that the other woman's behavior concerns me greatly.

Last spring my 8 yr old and her friend took their scooters down the road with my approval. It's 150 yds from our house to the stop sign. I expressly told them not to go beyond the stop sign. I did not stand outside and watch, but periodically I would peak through my blinds and check their position. At one point I saw them lingering by a home at that end of the street, and then I saw them go down that driveway. And then I did not see them.

I know the woman who lives in that home. I've spoken to her many, many times. She has brought gifts to my daughters from far away places. But what I thought at that moment was GIFTS! She brings them gifts! I don't know her at all....what if she's really after my girls? I freaked out and called her house and left her a message that I wondered where the girls were, having seen them go down her drive. Moments later they reappeared on the street carrying lemons from her garden that she'd given them to bring to me. She called me just after that to say they'd stopped by and were fine. Ugh.

How sad that we live in a world where adults are so suspicious of each other. But I do not like the way that other woman treated your son, and I guess my caution would be not about the stranger cruising the street, but the oddball neighbors that you don't really know.

[Sarah]

It seems to me that you chose an appropriate, thoughtful consequence for your son and took a lot of variables into consideration. That woman was casting her judgment based on outside appearances without knowing any of the facts, apart from your son's age. It's amazing how the criticism of strangers can be such a hurtful thing.

If I've learned anything from reading your blog over the last four years, it is that you are nothing if not a thoughtful, well regulated parent. The woman was obviously hysterical and in need of a stiff drink. Some people's problems can't be solved with rational discussion, not that is was any of her business in the first place.

Please excuse my misspellings. It's hard to type while lying down!

[amy]

I am a nervous parent, but I try to keep some perspective. Some days it's easier than others, naturally, but for me it is imperative that my daughter (4) wear a helmet when she's on her bike because of the likelihood of head injury in the event of a fall. I am hawkish when she's in or near water because of the high number of kids who drown every year. When she starts kindergarten in a year, I'll walk her to the stop because it's a fair distance, she'll have to cross two intersections, and we have no sidewalks in my neighborhood.

Still, I fear stranger abduction and I get creeped out by the number of people I don't know who insist on talking to her. I think the irrational part of the fear comes, in part, from the fact that the adults who raised me never demonstrated that they were worried about me or other kids - though I now know they were. So, I (and my husband and my peers) didn't have anyone model risk-assessment or dealing with letting a child go out into the world. It's compounded in our culture by the increased demands on parents to be perfect when it comes to keeping a kid safe/happy/etc.

[CJ]

Julie, it wasn't restraint; it was ignorance. It wasn't until after the dentist appointments were over that I had a few minutes to say to Joe, "How are you feeling about that whole thing?" He said, "I'm angry at that lady," and told me why.

I'm thinking about calling the police station tomorrow to see if I can speak with the responding officer. I'd like to have a description of her inappropriate interaction with Joe appended to the report.

Sarah, I am delighted to hear from you no matter how your spelling happens to be. I was just thinking about you as I was knitting a sleeve, hoping that no news was good news.

Amy and Karen, hear you loud and clear on the difficulties of hammering out the details -- what's too cautious? what's too risky? It's tough. Amy, I am also a helmet fanatic. When your mother is a speech pathologist who has logged a lot of hours working with brain-injured people, you're going to be wearing your helmet, end of story. If the boys forget I will remind them: "In this life you only get...." They finish the sentence for me, usually with a heavy sigh as they go to the garage for the forgotten helmet: "...one head."

[Pippi]

I read the last post as well and I have to say that you are totally right on. Your children are so lucky that you aren't overprotective. While in some ways I can see where the other woman was coming from (I might ask a kid walking alone if he was ok and offer help) I think she crossed a line. Having him walk home was totally reasonable. 6 year olds can be quite capable if we give them opportunities and you clearly know what your son can handle.

[Lilian]

Thanks for looking up the stats for the other causes of death -- my husband would love this post (which reminds me of the book Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences , one of his favorites) because of that. Oh, and thanks for giving me a nice one-liner to say to the boys when they don't want to wear helmets (in the comment above).

Anyway, I already told you in a previous comment that I think what you did is perfectly fine.