What We Believe About Child Safety Is Wrong

Our deeply held beliefs about child safety on the streets of America are largely false. And, what most parents are doing to keep their children safe is the most dangerous thing they could do.

Last week I wrote about the Smith family of Noblesville, Indiana, parents who went afoul of police and child services after allowing their 9-year-old to walk 4 blocks alone to mail a letter to Santa. Though no immanent threat was apparent, an elderly woman stopped their son along the way and called the police. The police officer that arrived at the Smith home lectured Mrs. Smith and her son, saying there were “dangerous people in the neighborhood.”

Their story is not unusual. Across America parents who give their kids freedom to roam are being treated like negligent fools. Several social media responses to last week’s blog post lamented, “Well, the world just isn’t like it was when we were kids.” That widely held, but mistaken belief is at the core of the problem.

 

My kids, pictured here circa 2000 were free-range kids, within reason. They

survived quite nicely.

Go looking for proof that kids are in greater danger today than a generation ago and you simply won’t find it. It doesn’t exist.

Here’s the reality: Crime against children today mirrors that of 1970. Almost no one seems to know this except the crime statisticians who gather the data. In the ‘70s and ‘80s such crimes rose, reaching a peak in 1993. Since then, it has declined. So those you hear lamenting, “The world just isn’t like it was when we were kids,” are mistaken. It’s very much the same as it was in 1970, when kids were allowed to roam freely in their neighborhoods.

The Crimes Against Children Research Center reports that crimes against children continue to fall across the board.

What are the odds of your child being abducted and killed by a stranger? 1 in 1.5 million. Still, that’s what most parents worry about. So instead of letting their kids walk to school or move about freely in the neighborhood, they drive their kids everywhere to ensure their safety. But guess what the #1 cause of death among children under 14 is? Riding in a car. In fact, your child is far, far more likely to be hurt in a car accident than by a stranger while walking to school.

And that fear of random strangers? Truth is, the person most likely to abduct a child is a family member. And person most likely to molest a child – someone the child knows well.

Why are our fears so upside down and backwards?

Those 1.5 million kids not killed by a stranger today don’t get their stories told on the news. Their safe day isn’t interesting. But that one kid in 1.5 million; his story is told over and over and over again by news channels with 24 hours to fill. And in our nation's lurid attraction to grief-pornography, we'll watch the parents weep openly on Dr. Phil. Never mind that 3 children die and nearly 500 are injured everyday in car accidents. Not interesting. Not compelling. Not heart-pounding.

So wanna have a screwed-up view of your kid’s safety? Watch television news, the place where, “If it bleeds, it leads.”

In his book, The Science of Fear, Daniel Gardner detailed the many ways American parents fear the wrong things, that death statistics reveal a child is more likely to choke to death on food than to be abducted and killed by a stranger. So we drive our kids to school, but don’t know the Heimlich maneuver?

We fear the wrong things! And in doing so, we’re raising a generation of children who are not learning independence and self-reliance. They’re not exploring and discovering their world, it’s being spoon fed to them by irrationally fearful parents.

A day or two after New Years I pulled up to my local coffee shop, on the very route Jacob Smith took to Santa’s mailbox on the square. Across the street I saw Jacob’s mother amble down the street with the family’s old blind dog on a leash. Jacob and his little brother ran along the sidewalk ahead of their mother. I shouted hello.

 

The Wall Street Journal: Campouts Test Helicopter Parents.

Inside with my coffee and Wall Street Journal, the article I found first was about Kindergarten in Germany and the practice of children being sent on weekend camping trips away from their parents to explore in the wilderness. In the startling 3^rd paragraph it reads: “While U.S. preschoolers practice their ABCs, their counterparts in German Kindergarten, age 3 to 6, head into the outdoors to learn to get dressed, prepare meals and go to bed–all without their parents.” On these camping trips the children are given knives and taught to whittle sticks for roasting hot dogs over a fire for dinner. One group, all non-swimmers, camped on an island.

Could you imagine this in America, were children are treated like paper-thin, fragile blown glass that might break if jostled, where hypervigilant parents supervise their every move? Our culture is so awash with irrational fear no school would ever be allowed to take 4-year-olds into the forest for a weekend campout.

What German children learn in Kindergarten isn’t in the U.S. curriculum. They’re taught to be independent, self-reliant individuals. And childhood in otherwise rigid Germany is pretty relaxed. The WSJ article pointed out that kids as young as 5 are routinely sent alone by their parents to the bakery or corner store. And the nation doesn’t start teaching them to read and write until age 6. To Germans, teaching kids to be resiliant and independent comes first.

On a trip to Japan last October, I saw children who looked as young as 6, waiting alone on busy train platforms for their commuter ride to school, and I noted with interest a square block-sized park filled with perhaps 50 children, swinging, playing ball, clustered in circles talking, and not one single parent anywhere to be seen. My son, who lives there, told me that is normal. 

Think Germany and Japan have got it wrong? Google international test scores and see how American kids stack up against theirs. Then check life-expectancy and child mortality rates in the these 3 nations just to put an exclamation point on how far behind America has fallen.

Other western nations are raising kids the way American parents raised them a generation ago, where kids organized their own pick-up basketball and baseball games and moved about their neighborhoods each day without a helicopter parent hovering overhead, intervening and protecting. They learned to resolve disputes with other kids on the own, be independent, and discover the world on their own individual terms. Those days are gone in America. Now near-all kids activities are adult-directed and supervised.

You can tie a kid’s shoes for him over and over while he watches, but he won’t learn to do it until he does it himself. A lot of child rearing is like that. You simply can’t do the learning for them. They have to do it themselves or they’ll never learn.

Our fears that get in the way of that are emotional, not rational.

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& The Flying Circus

My Parents Would Be In Jail

The following story is true. The family asked me not to use their real names.

NOBLESVILLE, INDIANA    A week before this past Christmas, 9-year-old Jacob Smith was excited for Santa’s visit. In his family’s picturesque Victorian-era home with its deep, wrap-around porch, hardwood floors and tall ceilings, he wrote a letter to Santa.

He’d been thinking of Santa’s cottage, set up on the courthouse lawn just down the street from his home. Santa had a mailbox there for just such a letter.

Warning: This story will end with Jacob’s parents being questioned by the police and child protective services. If you’re looking for a light-hearted Christmas story, this isn't it.

Jacob’s father is an award-winning schoolteacher, his mother a free-lance marketing specialist. The next morning before school they agreed to let him walk alone the 4 blocks to the courthouse square to put his letter in Santa’s mailbox.

Santa's cottage on Noblesville's square. Painted by Rodney Reveal

It’s a ridiculously, unbelievably Normal Rockwell-ish journey, down a brick street lined with historic architecture where Jacob often walked the family dog – a loveable, old blind mutt, past the doors of his family’s friends, even other family members, the route for Christmas, 4^th of July, and Homecoming parades, and then past the coffee shop, restaurants, and businesses his family visits regularly. He dropped the letter in Santa’s mailbox and turned for home, deciding to take the alley that runs from the square east-west behind his house, knowing that would lead him a few steps closer to the family’s kitchen door.

Halfway home he was stopped by an elderly woman in a car. She asked what he was doing in the alley in the dark. He told her his name, his parent’s names, his address, and that he was just a couple blocks from home. She parked her car and insisted that he stop and walk with her to his home. Once home, Jacob told his mother about the elderly woman he met in the alley.

And then a police officer arrived at their door, asking why Jacob had been allowed to walk to the square before school (the elderly woman had apparently called the police). Jacob’s mother recalls an awkward exchange with the female officer who warned Jacob that there were bad people in the neighborhood. And though no law defines such matters, the officer got into a discussion with Jacob’s mother about the specifics of what was safe and not safe in the neighborhood where Jacob’s family had lived for years, but where the officer didn’t live. Again, no law defines these matters, it was just the officer telling Jacob’s mom what she thought should be allowed.

“You know since a child is involved, I’ll have a file a report with the Department of Child Services,” the officer said before leaving.

Once the officer left, Jacob’s mother explained to him that his neighborhood was safe and that he would be free to explore it, with permission, that he shouldn’t stop for adults no matter who they are, especially when he’s confident in what he is doing, that she and Jacob’s father weren’t going to by hypervigilant helicopter parents who obsessed over his every move, that part of growing up is having freedom, making mistakes, and learning to be independent. She told him not to be afraid, but instead to make smart choices.

Then the Child Services lady showed up saying she was there to talk about the “alleged neglect.” This involved a meeting with the entire family around the dining room table, one that left Jacob, his little brother, and his parents uncomfortable. They were being judged for behavior that is not specifically defined anywhere in law, accusations that were leveled by an anonymous, unnamed elderly stranger whose credentials amounted to, at most, having a differing opinion from Jacob’s parents about what was safe in the neighborhood.

Think a moment about this true story. Today, Jacob’s parents are called “free-range parents.” This kind of parenting was simply called “parenting” a generation ago. But today, a stranger could stop your child, redirect your child’s activities, and escort your child somewhere at their sole direction. And because that stranger simply called the police, you could find yourself questioned and lectured by not only the police, but by Child Services on private parenting decisions that have no specific definition in law. It's just one person in a position of power with a differing opinion about child rearing.

And consider that now there is a document in a file and a pdf. in a database that Jacob’s parents were asked to sign showing Child Services had been called to Jacob’s house. Can you imagine the next time a hypervigilant adult with ideas about parenting that differ from Jacob’s parent's ideas decides to call the police because a 9-year-old boy is walking the family dog on the courthouse square (which Jacob does with his parent’s permission). The newspaper or TV story would likely have a line that reads, “This isn’t the first time Child Services has been called to the Smith home.”

If you’re middle aged or older, you know that the freedom Jacob's parents have given him was no big deal in your childhood, as your parents likely gave you far more freedom. Had these standards been in place during my childhood, my parents would have been in jail.

Is the world really more dangerous today for children? I'll look at that question next week in the Hoosier Contrarian.

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Buy The Contrarian's first novel, Noblesville

“Meyer turns the pages of history with gentle care and a warm heart, creating a story I’ll remember forever. Thank you Kurt Meyer for opening a door to my beloved town’s past and allowing me to travel the streets and meet the people of Noblesville 1893.”

Susan Crandall, Author of Whistling Past the Graveyard

Free-Range Parents Raising Free-Range Kids

Saturday morning I sat in Noble Coffee with my clients, Randy and Kathy, just 4 blocks from the house they’re buying, talking about their plan to become "free-range parents.” They’re trading a vinyl-sided house in a typical suburban subdivision for a 150-year-old home in Old Town Noblesville, a traditional neighborhood with tree-lined streets and easy pedestrian and bike connections to stores, restaurants, parks, and schools.

They're excited at the prospect of their children having more independence. They anticipate letting their 9, 11, and 13-year-old kids walk to Alexander's for ice cream, bike to the Forest Park over the footbridge, or take their overnight friends to breakfast at Rosie’s or the Uptown. But we also acknowledged that giving 9 to 13-year-old children that kind of freedom terrifies most parents today. But do just a little research about what actually threatens kids in modern America and you quickly discover that this fear is utterly irrational.

Utterly!

Randy recalls moving freely around Cincinnati at the age of 10 or 12. Kathy was a farm girl who often rode her bike several miles to hang out with friends. “I was supposed to call and check in with my mom when I got there, but often forgot. I’d be gone all day and my parents seldom worried.” My childhood was the same, I was free-range in my hometown, free to explore downtown stores, catch frogs in the creek and play homerun derby on side streets. Everybody’s parents were free-range parents.

But in a single generation, what was completely normal has become borderline criminal. Recently in Silver Springs Maryland, the parents of 10-year-old Rafi and 6-year-old Dvora Meitiv were found guilty of child neglect for allowing them to walk home from the park. Their case and others have sparked a national debate about a generation of parents who have seemingly bound their children in bubble wrap and sequestered them in homes and gated communities. When I ask parents what they’re afraid of, the almost universal answer is abduction or molestation.

Is that fear well-founded?

The most recent study on the issue found that in a given year, 115 American children were abducted by a stranger. There are more abductions, but most children are abducted by family members, not strangers on the street. In his book The Science of Fear, Why We Fear the Things We Shouldn't – and Put Ourselves in Greater Danger, Daniel Gardner found that American children are far more likely to choke to death on food than be abducted. But how many parents worry when their kids are eating? Also in a typical year approximately 3,000 children die in auto accidents.

We don’t let our kids move freely around our community because we’re afraid of abduction? But turns out it’s 26 times more likely they’ll be killed while we’re driving them around in a car. The illusion of safety in having them near confuses the actual threat. And what about our kids being molested? Statistics again show we fear the absolute wrong thing. The person overwhelmingly most likely to molest our kids are soccer coaches, piano teachers, youth pastors, and . . . uncle Joe – people they know well.

And, by the way, there’s absolutely no evidence there’s more child abduction or molestation now than there was 30, 50, or 100 years ago. We simply talk about it now. And talk about it, and talk about it, and talk about it. The evening news and television crime shows amplify each rare incident for its emotional gut-punch and titillation value. It gooses our inner-most fears and so garners our attention, leaving us thinking there are predators hiding behind every corner.

Will our kids be victims of our crime-ridden society if we let them roam free? It’s possible, but what most Americans also don’t know is that violent crime is at a 30-year low. 

My ex-wife and I and our Old Town neighbors were free-range parents before the term existed. The cluster of parents on our block allowed kids to move freely from yard to yard and the 3^rd and 4^th graders walked the six blocks to the elementary school in groups of two or more. As they got a couple years older, they rode bikes to downtown restaurants, the river and Forest Park. But more than once, a subdivision parent who dropped their child off to spend the night or play for the afternoon called us in anger after realizing we’d let them walk a few blocks with other kids to the square for ice cream in the afternoon or for pancakes on a Saturday morning.

So how do most modern American children spend their free time? Studies show that over 90% of their time is spent in front of TV, video gaming systems, and hand-held electronic devices. This one-generation avalanche of change isn’t just depriving children of learning independence. Visit any American school today and you’ll note the large number of overweight children and teenagers. Instead of moving about their neighborhood and community getting exercise and directing their own activites, they’re sitting on their butts consuming brain candy.

And when they head out to activities it’s behind the wheel of the family urban assault vehicle to adult-directed sports where scores of parents sit, watching breathlessly. When I was a kid, the parents dropped you off and came back when practice was over - or you walk there and back on your own. Somehow I, and my peers survived. But in a single generation we created a nation of overweight children who are deprived of time to direct their own activities – something that was normal and expected for all previous generations of American kids. That free-range world is where they burned off calories, learned to solve problems on their own, learned to lead, and came to understand how their communities worked.

But my clients Randy and Kathy are ready to be free-range parents. Randy lamented his children had been living in a “landlocked place” – a modern American subdivision. They are going to give that up and allow their children to roam the sidewalks of the tree line streets – within reason.

And of course the term “free-range parent,” has it kinda backwards. It’s the kids who become free-range. As long as they're home before the street lights come on, isn’t that a better way to live?


To read Kurt's Behind Noblesville posts, or buy a copy of his book Noblesville, follow this link: http://kurtameyer.com/blog/