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Ugh.
So we're in the middle of this whole "thing" about safety and unattended children and whatnot over elsewhere.
And somebody who thinks this woman should not have left her 12 year old babysitting her younger siblings in the mall (actually, I agree with that, I just disagree that it was criminal or that the children were in any particular danger) goes "The world has changed for the worse, it's not safe, doesn't anybody remember Adam Walsh????"
You know what? I don't remember Adam Walsh. You know why? Because he died before I was even born!
When the statistics show that every measure of crime (including violent crime against children, which is what's relevant here) has gone down since then ("do you want your kid to be that low statistic???"), and the facts and the evidence all show that kids today are safer than they were when I was growing up and for a good decade or two before that as well, what does that say about your argument ("If something terrible had happened to any one of those children then nothing would have been written like that and it would be total outrage at the mother then") if the only specific thing you can think of to bolster it is a case that is thirty years old?
Not that any specific cases would make a difference. Horrible things happened to kids in the 50s and the 30s and the 90s and in the past year as well. The question isn't whether or not these things happen, but what the appropriate response to that fact is.
And somebody who thinks this woman should not have left her 12 year old babysitting her younger siblings in the mall (actually, I agree with that, I just disagree that it was criminal or that the children were in any particular danger) goes "The world has changed for the worse, it's not safe, doesn't anybody remember Adam Walsh????"
You know what? I don't remember Adam Walsh. You know why? Because he died before I was even born!
When the statistics show that every measure of crime (including violent crime against children, which is what's relevant here) has gone down since then ("do you want your kid to be that low statistic???"), and the facts and the evidence all show that kids today are safer than they were when I was growing up and for a good decade or two before that as well, what does that say about your argument ("If something terrible had happened to any one of those children then nothing would have been written like that and it would be total outrage at the mother then") if the only specific thing you can think of to bolster it is a case that is thirty years old?
Not that any specific cases would make a difference. Horrible things happened to kids in the 50s and the 30s and the 90s and in the past year as well. The question isn't whether or not these things happen, but what the appropriate response to that fact is.
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I had a friend in high school and his aunt had taught her 4 year old (so, my friend's cousin) to scream "Help! Strangers! Child molester! Help!" if someone suggested getting in their car or coming with them or anything. At the time, it seemed funny, but now I have to wonder if that kid is totally screwed up from all her stranger danger talks, or if the opposite has happened and she just thinks it's all one big game.
I don't really do stranger danger TALKS with the kids/Kira. Sometimes we just role play. I say, "What if someone asks you to come into the car and have candy?" She says, "I say no." "What if Mommy tells you to come inside and wash your hands?" "I come inside and listen." "What if your friend wants you to come play in her yard?" "I ask you first." "What if Aunt Jenny wants to take you to the park?" "I tell you first so you know I'm with her." etc. So it's not a scary conversation, just a "what would you do?" And she knows not to go with people she doesn't know, and always to ask me before she goes with someone she DOES know.
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The correct question to ask is, of course, "doesn't anybody remember Marion Parker?"
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Reading the wikipedia page on her, though, even SHE is not yet the first.
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At least every subsequent poster called him an idiot in a variety of ways, and pulled out the "half the point of going to DW is for the kids to interact with the employees" card, the "my child has been carefully taught that the first person he should look for in a crisis is the nearest Disney employee" card, and even the "no child has ever been kidnapped at Disney World ever" card. (Although none of them pulled out the "your child is more likely to be struck by lightning twice than get kidnapped and killed by a stranger" card.)
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Does he... let his child... go to school?
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It's interesting, because another friend of ours posted on her blog today about the "free range" notion because she was wondering if she was hindering her 5-year-old's development by not letting her play in the front yard unless she was more-or-less present (she'd let the kid stay out while she went to the bathroom or whatever), while the other kids on the street mostly played out front unsupervised.
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paranoidvigilant about it than they used to be?How would one go about trying to determine the causality on that? I guess I'd need to see the trends before the Walsh case got publicized and to see how it lines up with other campaigns of that type.
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But I'm not an expert statistician or anything like that.