Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2007 > January > 11 > Entry
Parents: We are afraid
The depth of this problem first became obvious to me reading the comments under this post about kids walking to school alone.
The problem? Parents are terrified. And for the most part, their fears are overblown.
Even so, there are real dangers. And thus, each parent’s approach to their child’s safety is a difficult balancing act. Take a look at today’s paper.
Ken McCall and I wrote about a new U.S. Census survey of parents with lots of fascinating results, much of it upbeat, about the role parent assume in the lives of the children.
But one statistic in the study jumped out at us as startling — about one in five parents keeps their children indoors “as much as possible” to protect them from harm. High numbers on this issue were evident across all types of neighborhoods.
Our story on this issue was trimmed some for space, so here is a more detailed look at the question — are those fears justified?
First of all, there can be no arguing the fact that better awareness that there are people in the world who would harm children given the opportunity is a good thing. There are dangers. Just look at this story from today’s local page about a guy trying to lure high schoolers into a truck.
Kids absolutely must be taught that there are dangers to be on the look out for and what to do in a dangerous situation. But are the dangers truly so great that kids should be mostly kept indoors?
I’d argue no, and the statistics back me up. From the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children comes an ominous statistic — on average 2,185 children are reported missing each day. That sounds terrifying until you read further. Nearly all of those kids are quickly found. And of those who are truly abducted, the vast majority are taken by a family member. Often these incidents are custody or family disputes.
The center does track what it calls “stereotypical kidnappings,” incidents in which children are taken by strangers for more than a day, taken far from home or killed. The average is 115 kids a year who are kidnapped in this way in the U.S., a nation that is home to 75 million children.
If my math is right (please check me) that means the chance of any child being kidnapped in an average year is roughly 1 in 750,000. By comparison, the chance a person will be hit by lightning in an average year is 1 in 700,000. Using the comparison I made in the walking to school post, the chance that person will die in a plane crash in an average year is 1 in 391,581.
Recently, I was speaking with a basketball loving editor here at the paper about the humorous chaos of my six-year-old daughter’s kindergarten basketball games. Kindergarten is probably too young to play organized basketball, we agreed. I started playing organized ball at age 10. The editor had a similar experience.
“Yeah, but long before I was playing pick up games down the street, with the neighborhood kids,” he said. “That just doesn’t happen anymore.”
How true. It makes me a little sad that my kids may never play pick up basketball, sandlot baseball, hopscotch or jump rope with the neighborhood kids. Our kids do play outside in our yard and around our suburban cul-de-sac. They swing on the swing set in our yard alone.
The other kids are out there, I know. We saw them on Halloween, exchanging, “Oh, we didn’t know you lived so close” plesantries with their moms and dads in tow. But at play time, those kids’ voices don’t carry down the street. The basketball doesn’t clang in the driveway.
The kids have all been locked away.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: My Favorite Posts, Student Health and Safety
Comments
By Oldprof
January 15, 2007 8:38 AM | Link to this
Mary, the term doesn’t apply to a parent who exercises reasonable supervision and oversight; it applies to parents who are so intoxicated with the notion of giving their progeny a perfect life that they prevent the kid from growing up. As I noted, these parents don’t stop even after the child is fully grown, of drinking age, out of college, and employed as a professional—they go intercede with the boss on behalf of daughter or son. What would you have thought on your first engineering job if your Momma had come in to tell your boss that you weren’t being treated right?By Mary
January 12, 2007 7:50 AM | Link to this
You have to agree there are a lot of stories in the Dayton Daily News lately about local youth, including kindergartners, being abused by adult role models in schools and churches. Who can helicopter parents trust with their children while they are at work? Kidnapping is not the only relevant statistic. Our obsessions with competing and being number one is also sabotaging our need to cooperate on quality of life issues. Schools seem to emphasize competition among students and spin the blades of insecurity among students and helicopter parents, while trying to limit their own competition such as school choice. I think of a helicopter parent as a hoverer. Why is that always derogatory?By Oldprof
January 11, 2007 10:48 PM | Link to this
Moreover, we live in the decade of the helicopter parent. Let a student fail a subject, earn discipline for misbehavior, or fail to star in the team/band section/cheer squad/play/chess club, and the parent is on campus complaining to one and all about their lack of fairness and inappreciation of quality. Major business magazines have even reported parents of adults who show up at the kid’s office to upbraid the boss for being abrupt or demanding. Our nation has become paranoid! More worried about death from terrorist attack than diabetes or traffic accident (look up THOSE odds). More concerned with feel-good policies than intended results (we set up DUI checkpoints where 1 citation—most of them fractionally over the .08 limit— is issued for every 100 cars stopped—but we don’t enforce traffic offenses like tailgating that are also linked to accidents. People seem terrified that they may lose control of some detail at some point; keeping the kids safe in the den is just another symptom of that disease.By Mary
January 11, 2007 2:10 PM | Link to this
I think the real issue is all parents are locked away at work with employers squeezing every ounce of their time and energy into the bottom line - so we can overpay CEOs, and if any money is leftover, the shareholders. So let’s blame business and good ole capitalistic greed with rigid work conditions and cubicles used to lock up parents. You can also indirectly blame the financial insecurity caused by high divorce rates and deadbeat parents, usually dads, and mom’s need to express herself outside the confines of her home - which used to lock away her talents in other fields. Moms really weren’t just sitting on the sofa watching soap operas. They were usually within earshot of a screaming kid who just broke their arm or leg or who was being beat up by the neighborhood bully. Distance away from one’s child breeds the need/urge to control their activities more. To add to your statistics list, according to one TV ad, a child has a one in 16,000 chance of becoming a professional athlete, but a one in 166 chance of being autistic.