Look, I'm glad they found the kid

[pegkerr]

But don't you wonder a little a bit about a) our culture and b) this kid's upbringing when you realize that he wasn't found for four days because he was purposely avoiding the searchers because he had been told never to talk to strangers? I mean, come on, the kid's eleven years old! Don't you think he should have better judgment at this point than to think, "Hmmm . . . break the no-talking-to-strangers rule . . . die in the wilderness . . . boy, tough choice there. . ."

Good lord, I hope Fiona at age 12 would have more sense.

Comments

[kalquessa.livejournal.com]

It does suggest that his instruction in survival was a little...lopsided?

[copperwise.livejournal.com]

I don't know. Ryan was watching the news earlier, and he said the kid had that facial expression and aura of "massive brat" going. It's theoretically possible that he was having a great time making everyone search for him. They say he had no food or water, but there's no real way to prove that he didn't. His parents told the media he "wasn't in the mood" to discuss how he wandered away and got lost in the first place, when he was supposed to be at the climbing wall.

The whole thing is a little Runaway Bride for me. I expected, after her sordid tale, that there would be copycat disappearances. One has to wonder.

[madlori.livejournal.com]

Well, I give the kid a break. He was probably semi-delirious from exhaustion, exposure and dehydration. I wouldn't be thinking too clearly in those circumstances, either.

[nmalfoy.livejournal.com]

I think that's just it. The boy doesn't appear to be the brightest crayon in the box. I have no doubt that your girls have enough sense to know, in a situation like that, to go to a "safe" stranger (a cop, a teacher... my mother would always tell me when I was little to find an old lady and ask her for help, or a sales clerk, or some such). Either the boy just isn't very bright or he's making excuses because there's a deeper reason why he didn't want to be found.

Just an opinion based on what little I know.

[snippy]

I don't, actually, think he should have better judgment, but I do think he should have been taught better. His parents taught him never to talk to strangers, and to fear being kidnapped. Are these fears unreasonable? No, but they are out of proportion to the other dangers he faced.

And the guy who found him did the right thing: stay there and call for help. Don't try to take the kid away from where you found him, because he might think you're trying to kidnap him.

[prunesnprisms.livejournal.com]

One of the news stories I've read makes it sound like the kid is a wee touch developmentally disabled. That might explain it--and why he'd wander away from the camp in the first place.

[graygirl.livejournal.com]

Runaway Bride, Runaway Boy Scout. Bleh.

[http://users.livejournal.com/anam_cara_/]

Off topic, but- saw this and thought of you:
http://www.religionnews.com/press02/PR062205B.html

[king-tirian.livejournal.com]

This story is highly fishy. He didn't have anything to eat or drink for four days and was sunburned but only suffering minor dehydration? He spent four days on a hiking trail and never found his own way to at least relative civilization?

[rabican.livejournal.com]

I missed something. What is this about?

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's pretty weird. It's common for very young lost children to hide from their searchers, but I think that's usually something affecting the six-and-younger bracket.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

"Good lord, I hope Fiona at age 12 would have more sense."

You mean the 12-year-old who isn't allowed off the block? You have to wander the streets before you can develop street smarts.

(Yes yes, I'm sure she wouldn't avoid people if she were lost in the wilderness. But there's no substitute for experience, especially experience at a developmental age. I was taking the subway, by myself, to school in New York when I was twelve.)

B

[mark356.livejournal.com]

I was nodding with you when I read the comments; it's been a rant of mine for a very long time that we're taught stranger danger and not how to interact with people; teaching us stranger danger is far more dangerous. (You probably know sexual abuse stats already.) But I just read the article, and my theory is as follows: He just wanted to have a little adventure. I know that when I was 12 (and often sometimes now!) I thought it would be so romantic and fun to escape all of the trappings of civilization, and go as far away from all other people and as far into the wilderness as I possibly could, alone, and see what things I might discover from that experience, either about the land I'd wander in, the world in general, or about myself. If he was demonstrating how he kept warm, and he was prepared enough to only suffer from minor dehydration, and it was his decision to go away from the other people in the first place, and he was hiding from the searchers, and cracking jokes very shortly afterwards, there's very little doubt in my mind that that was how he was seeing it.

Stranger Danger--overkill?

[skg.livejournal.com]

To mark356's point, it seems that in the past ten years or so, there has been a dramatic increase in teaching (overemphasizing) "Stranger Danger".

2004 (I think) statistics showed that fewer than 100 children were actually kidnapped by strangers. (I'll see if I can find the ref) Most abductions are by family members (often an estranged parent, sadly), but the media has made such a huge splash with each stranger abduction that everyone fears it all the more.

I realize that it is small consolation if your child is one of the 100, but the fearmongering is out of control. More children were abducted when I was a kid--and I was allowed to go pretty far from home. We were taught not to talk to strangers, but not to take it to such extremes that we would not ask for help if lost or hurt. We learned to trust our instincts and avoid people who made us feel uncomfortable.

My mother told me that there was a woman with a small child (of about three) in a store she was in the other day. The kid couldn't get more than two feet from the mother and she would say "Brendan, come back over here. Do you want someone to steal you?"

That, IMO, is going too far. That kid is going to have a complex.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Strangely enough, it is not uncommon for people lost in the woods to hide from searchers. It is not a rational behavior at all; it stems from being mentally impaired by exhaustion, dehydration, low blood sugar, hypothermia or whatever. Adults do this too. I suspect it is a lizard-brain reaction that takes over when the higher brain functions aren't, well, functioning.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/06/talking_to_stra.html

B

[diony.livejournal.com]

And thus Gavin de Becker (in Protecting the Gift which I attempt to get all parents everywhere to read) suggests that teaching little kids not to talk to strangers is foolish -- it's much better to teach them how to tell whether or not a stranger is safe to talk to.

It's something that comes up in my teen classes, too. When we do boundary-setting scenarios the younger girls (13 or 14) often try to pull a 'I'm not supposed to talk to strangers' or 'I'd just go find my parents' and I have to point out to them that as they're becoming adults they'll be talking to lots of strangers & their parents won't be around.