By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
A Seattle news medium saw it fitting to send a news team out to investigate a report of a child leaving school early and walking home. No, it was not The Onion but KOMO News. It does show a sense of the zeitgeist and the culture of fear that is sadly inherent in many today.
A five year old boy wanted to walk home after having first been driving to school by his father. He then left school early and walked home to see his mother. He reportedly walked a mile to reach home.
In an interview with reporters, the father reported that he was “scared to death” when he received a call from the school the boy left.
“When somebody like that calls you, you think of every milk carton kid, every lost kid, every child molester”
The parents are now saying they will be home schooling their children beginning next school year.
The school admitted its error and vowed to beef up security and have more adults guarding the perimeter of the school as well as on crosswalks and throughout the area surrounding the school. It showed surveillance video of the boy leaving.
A news crew had a video segment retracing the boy’s route home. The reporter commented how there was no sidewalk and what he described as heavy traffic. (one car driving by) He asked rhetorically at an intersection “How could a little five year old get across without being hit?”
Then came the almost predictable reference to sex offenders amok in the community
“And I did some checking. There are five registered sex offenders in this general area; [Lacey, WA] fortunately, none around this route.”
Statistically, the boy would have a greater chance of being struck by lightning than being abducted. But the fear is that child molesters wait behind trees and mailboxes all day to pounce upon wayward children.
Remembering back, somehow I survived my half-mile walk to kindergarten along with many of my other classmates. In fact, some of my elder relatives who went to school walking or on horseback generations ago seemed to have survived long enough to continue the family lineage. But today the perception of risk is so detached from actual risk the mollycoddling and defensiveness exercised by parents brings up the question of what is actually more of a risk to the children–the culture of fear or the extremely remote risk.
Sadly, a child errantly walking home becomes matter for a major news outlet.
Source: KOMO News
The views expressed in this posting are the author’s alone and not those of the blog, the host, or other weekend bloggers. As an open forum, weekend bloggers post independently without pre-approval or review. Content and any displays or art are solely their decision and responsibility.
Riesling,
Your mom is probably elderly and no doubt you’re middle aged. Things have changed in this country since your boyhood. I wish we were more like Europe in many ways, alas we are not. And not letting a 16 year old take public transportation is silly.
Prego, Riesling. There is indeed much nonsense here. Hope your Mom had a good day yesterday. She instilled wisdom and common sense in you. Those qualities are dying here in the US.
Thanks, Nick.
I. Annie, when my Mom picks me up at the airport she says, “Welcome to nonsense land!”
What I see Is that there are people who have good parenting instincts as opposed to those who play fast and loose with their young children’s safety. I’m talking about five year olds here, not 16 year olds.
Riesling, you’ve been out of the country for a long time. Europe is a far safer place to raise children in.
Riesling, Your common sense from across the pond is always welcomed here.
Coincidentally, I was talking to a German woman this morning who is married to an American man. She said she is so tired of picking her 16-year-old up after school. Most German kids take the public transportation but since her husband is American, he thinks that would be too dangerous! I told her that my 16-year-old daughter went on a trip to Ireland with 4 girlfriends alone (no adults). Then that summer they went to Berlin alone. That´s what public transportation and youth hostels are for. 🙂
OK. When I was 6 my family moved to a new neighborhood. I was enrolled in a new, Catholic, school. On my first day there I decided that I was afraid of the teacher – a nun. So, I waited until the first recess, and instead of going out the back door to the playground I went out the front door and walked home. Nobody could have stopped me. It was entirely my own idea and I was pretty sneaky about it. Don´t sell your kids short. There´s a lot going on in their little brains that you have no idea about. All that my mom said (she was home cooking supper) was, “What are you doing here so early?” She did call the school to say she was transferring me to the public school. She did not call the cops, a lawyer, or the local TV station. My younger siblings all ended up going to the Catholic school, so I doubt my parents had thought it was somehow unsafe.
My point is, why make a big deal out of this kind of stuff? It´s what kids do – they´re kids.
Shadyn, Factually, the crime was higher in the 70’s/80’s when you were growing up then it is now. You are simply scared sh!tless by the MSM so they can sell feminine hygiene products, prescription drugs, cars, beer, etc. FEAR sells and you are a major purchaser. Stop watching television news and read newspapers. They sell less fear and more facts.
Bernie Madoff conned Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katenberg, Fred Wilpon, and hundreds of other millionaires, billionaires, university presidents, HIGHLY educated, intelligent people. Con men can con most anyone. I routinely con people when I’m working, making them think I’m someone other than who I am. I get them to give me all types of information, often personal information. The con job regarding these manipulative MSM videos is on the impressionable people who think this is why you need to hover over your kids like a Huey helicopter. Those are the con victims! You can instill safeguards. NO safeguard is infallible. The chances of your kids getting kidnapped by a stranger is MUCH less than the odds of getting struck by lightning. So, make sure you also tell them to get out of the water, out from under a tree, not be the highest point in an area, when there is lightning! That’s in FACTUALLY more important.
The important issue is children wander off if not prevented. The parents are right. If a school cannot keep a 5 year old in it is not safe – if their child is taking off at 5 he will be getting himself into trouble. But is this news – other than the school is no good at protecting children? When I was at school in a rural area in the fifties there were playground monitors so children could not leave the premises.
I am a father and I have driven my kid to kindergarten all year long..he was 5 and now is 6…if he just left the school and walked home I would be in major panic mode trying to get to my kid and once he was safe, I would be headed to meet the principal…it is very dangerous…I was born in the mid 1970s and grew up in the 1980s…the world is a much more dangerous place than when I grew up, in my opinion.
And then you have the majority of kids, who’s mothers thought they had taught them well to not go with strangers get bamboozled by a man with a cute doggy, that’s exactly what they did in every video that I posted above. The mom’s were shocked.
This reminds me of a friend of my husband’s, who is a cop. When his daughters were little, he worried if they would remember what to do if a stranger approached them. He’d seen a lot of terrible crimes on the job. So he had a friend of his drive up to the curb where they were playing in the front yard, alone. He offered them candy or a puppy, I can’t recall which, and the girls ran straight inside and told their dad. He was proud as punch of them. I do think it’s a good idea to role play, so kids are confident on how to handle a variety of circumstances and not at a loss as to what to do when their parents aren’t around to tell them.
I know someone who was playing outside with their siblings in the snow. Their little brother, around 5 years old, got tired and walked home by himself. It was about half a mile away. He fell through the ice and died.
Allowing a child to walk home alone depends on age, maturity for that age, the area, and the particular risk factors for that area, including the weather. Some kids are mature enough to do it younger than others, but 5 is too young, in my opinion. Good for him for getting home without getting lost.
Of course, that’s a separate issue from the school just losing him.
On the one hand, I agree with Darren that this did not warrant a news story. And I clearly recall my childhood where my mom would let us outdoors to play in the woods and neighborhood. I was expected to come in at lunchtime and dinnertime, and if I misbehaved, the Mom Network would get word home before I did. And I recognize the disservice we do our children in helicopter parenting, and preventing them from learning their own limits.
I think calling CPS on kids playing in their own front yards, and similar activities, is ludicrous. And older kids of course should be allowed to play outside. We live on a ranch, so my child has more free reign to play outside while I’m doing ranch chores than kids in the city would.
That said, I would be beyond furious if a school lost my 5 year old son. Did they even send anyone off campus to look for him? My child is the same age as the boy in the story. For them to have no idea where he was is so negligent. They are supposed to have safeguards to prevent this exact thing from happening for kids this young. This never would have happened at his preschool. They are so careful.
I live in a rural area, and the town next to ours is a dumping ground for pedophiles. If you look at a Megan’s Law map it looks like multiple scattershot. It’s apparently easier for pedophiles to find places to live within the strict guidelines of their release in places like that. Knowing what I do now, at least in my area, a 5 year old walking a mile alone would have been a terrible risk. Plus, in my area, a child 5 and younger would be an object of interest to coyotes.
I agree that most agree that the war on drugs has done more bad than good. The three strikes, although it probably did lock up a lot of incorrigibles who would just keep on committing crimes, did also lock up a lot of people that might have gone on to lead harmless lives, especially when the war on drugs is factored in.
My point is that although there is a need to lock some people up for good and in most cases they deserve it, incarceration as a first move also creates those very incorrigibles in some cases. There are more successful paradigms that the US could learn from.
Perhaps some statistics are in order.
“The world was so much safer in the 1800s when we had slavery” – no it wasn’t. And slavery had nothing to do with it, especially since almost all of Europe didn’t have slavery. What is it with people and slavery? I actually read some SJW moron dismiss the Ancient Greeks because “they had slavery”. Yep, everyone before 1968 was a moron or evil because they tolerated slavery or racism or were Homophobes.
Idiots.
LOL! The media does indeed instill fear in the vulnerable and impressionable. You can’t make this stuff up.
– United States passes legislation banning the slave trade, effective from start of 1808. 1811 – Spain abolishes slavery, including in its colonies, though Cuba rejects ban and continues to deal in slaves. 1813 – Sweden bans slave trading 1814 – Netherlands bans slave trading 1817 – France bans slave trading, but ban not effective until 1826 1833 – Britain passes Abolition of Slavery Act, ordering gradual abolition of slavery in all British colonies. Plantation owners in the West Indies receive 20 million pounds in compensation
– Great Britain and Spain sign a treaty prohibiting the slave trade 1819 – Portugal abolishes slave trade north of the equator
– Britain places a naval squadron off the West African coast to enforce the ban on slave trading 1823 – Britain’s Anti-Slavery Society formed. Members include William Wilberforce 1846 – Danish governor proclaims emancipation of slaves in Danish West Indies, abolishing slavery 1848 – France abolishes slavery 1851 – Brazil abolishes slave trading 1858 – Portugal abolishes slavery in its colonies, although all slaves are subject to a 20-year apprenticeship 1861 – Netherlands abolishes slavery in Dutch Caribbean colonies 1862 – U.S. President Abraham Lincoln proclaims emancipation of slaves with effect from January 1, 1863; 13th Amendment of U.S. Constitution follows in 1865 banning slavery 1886 – Slavery is abolished in Cuba 1888 – Brazil abolishes slavery 1926 – League of Nations adopts Slavery Convention abolishing slavery 1948 –
We can teach our children all the right things, but it’s evident that their immature brains can be manipulated by those who would do them harm. It’s all well and good to embrace the new fad of “free range children”, but I’d think long and hard about what it would be like to have an abducted child and what it would be like for your child. Think Jaycee Dugard. Some kids weren’t as lucky as her and didn’t live to tell the tale.
This is why you should be wary of mothers.
http://www.viralnova.com/blanche-monnier/
This is why should be wary of bother your father and your mother.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritzl_case