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

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.