"Stranger Danger" - your thoughts?

I was reading something over on E-Hell about some lady scaring her kid into not leaving her side, and it made me kind of think about how my mom also handled the 'stranger danger' thing when I was a kid (and whether or not the entire concept is logical). When I was younger, as in four or five, my mother made sure I knew strangers were bad, and told me if I talked to someone I didn't know, they'd kidnap me, rape me and kill me. However, what she failed to tell me was that not all strangers were bad, and that policemen, teachers, store employees and a few others were okay to talk to if I was lost. And then she wondered why I screamed and cried and refused to go to school for a year.

What do you think? I don't think it's good to make kids comfortable talking to just anyone since there ARE weirdos out there, but I also don't think they should be taught that every single person on the planet that they don't know is out to hurt them. I think that would kind of prevent the kid from finding a safe place to stay temporarily if he or she was lost because hell...if the kid thinks everyone in the world is going to hurt them, why would they go to people they don't know for help when they could just run away?

Here's the E-Hell topic if anyone wants to read it:
http://www.etiquettehell.com/smf/index.php?topic=51546.0

AP, what else?

Anything to keep the kyd glued to the moo's tits into adulthood and beyond.

I don't agree with setting up children to be deathly afraid of everyone. I was taught to run from anyone who tried to lure me into a car or anywhere else, as well as anyone who told me that they knew my parents and I needed to go with them. I also knew to stick close to home while I was playing outside, to go to the front desk if I got lost while in a store, and to make a hell of a lot of noise if anybody tried to grab me (which nobody ever did). All that worked well for me and my generation, most of whom were never kidnapped (or worse) by strangers. The statistics tell us that a child is more likely to be hurt or killed by a relative than a stranger, so why not teach a kid the stranger safety basics and also make sure Junior knows that he decides who is allowed to touch him and who isn't? You can do that without making him think that a hug from Grandpa means he's being molested.

(I don't mean to steal your discussion here, but I found this appalling thread in the same forum. There's a link at the end of the OP for more trainwreck. Good grief! What a greedy moo!)

I taught my brother and sister to follow their instincts, meaning if it felt wrong to assert themself and run away.
I did not want them growing up scared of every person they encountered. I simply told them both, they would feel something was not right, and should always trust that gut feeling.
I was right, my sister came home from a friends house when she was about 10 and said she did not want to go back. I asked why she replied that the B/F of the mom gave her a bad feeling. A few months later, he ws arrested and convicted of abusing the kids in the house.
I wanted her to use common sense and logic, and she does.

T wo
H ousehold
I ncome
N o
K ids
E arly
R etirement

I think parents who teach their children to be deathly afraid of strangers are doing their children a grave disservice. It is lazy. Most cases of abuse or abduction are people known to the child, but it's much much easier for a parent to say "ALL strangers are molesters" for two reasons...

1. It's easier, there is no thinking required. You don't have to have a uncomfortable talk about "bad" vs "good" touching and you don't have to have a weird discussion about people known to the family who make the child uncomfortable with their attention or encourage "secret games". It's easier to fear things that are unknown.

2. It's convenient. I would hope that many parents hope that their child won't be molested by the overly-friendly known adult. But from the way it appears, since that overly-friendly known adult is willing to take the kid off their hands for any amount of time (possibly for free even), they are more than willing to take the risk that the overly-friendly adult might be a risk to their child's well-being.

"It truly is the one commonality that every designation of humans you can think of has, there's at least one asshole."
--Me

My mother never bothered with all that stranger danger crap, somehow, I survived.

Quote
annie35
I taught my brother and sister to follow their instincts, meaning if it felt wrong to assert themself and run away.
I did not want them growing up scared of every person they encountered. I simply told them both, they would feel something was not right, and should always trust that gut feeling.
I was right, my sister came home from a friends house when she was about 10 and said she did not want to go back. I asked why she replied that the B/F of the mom gave her a bad feeling. A few months later, he ws arrested and convicted of abusing the kids in the house.
I wanted her to use common sense and logic, and she does.

I think this is excellent advice, particularly because it empowers the kid to trust their own judgment.

But if you empower a child, then they'll grow up and leave ... and MOOO will be ALL ALONE!!!

the horror...the horror...

"It truly is the one commonality that every designation of humans you can think of has, there's at least one asshole."
--Me

Anybody who watches the news even occasionally knows that kids are often in more danger from their own families and people they know than they are from strangers.

Nightmare generating school film, anyone???

"A warning about child molestation, it's The Riddle of the Friendly Stranger. Hosted by a deranged housewife (The Puppetmaster) and her dummy named Gabby, who asks a never-ending series of tedious questions about who is and is not a stranger. Things take a turn for the grim when it's final exam time: two men are shown, one of whom is okay and the other is a "sick or dangerous" stranger. At first glance, it's obvious who's naughty and who's nice: one man is a well-groomed, smiling fellow while the other is a sullen, scar-faced nightmare. It turns out, though, that scar-face is actually a cop while the "nice" man tries to lure a little girl into his car. TRULY TERRIFYING TO WATCH!"

And heeeeeere's Gabby!

http://1.2.3.13/bmi/www.skaryguyvideo.com/rotfs2.jpg

- - - - - - - -
"The death of creativity is a pram in the hallway"
- Cyril Connolly

My mother handled things much the same way as the OP's. She frequently told me that if I wandered off or got lost that someone would kidnap me, torture me and then cut me up into little pieces and bury me in the woods. You can imagine my horror, then, when I got lost in a department store one day.

She also made sure to tell me what would happen to me if I didn't obey her: She'd send me away to strangers who would do horrible things to me like burn me with cigarettes and rape me. :flaming m

Well, we didn't have this growing up in the 70's, not like now....of course, children wander off all the time, as we've learned from the mothers who expect us to intervene when one of their kids tries to Darwinize himself.

Aw hell, I used to wander off a lot too...especially at home. I lived with my grandma and my mom went to work, and no father anywhere in sight. Grandma had surgery on both her knees and couldn't manage more than a shuffle, so as you can imagine, she could never corral me when I decided to run around the block to play with the stray cats or go a few blocks away to the river to throw rocks. And I always got the "they'll take ya and rape ya!" talk from Grandma as well, but obviously since I didn't know what that meant at that age, it didn't faze me. And I never got approached by a stranger ever. And we lived in a 95-percent welfare trash 'hood, so it's not like this was the nicey-nice cul-de-sac in the 'burbs where everyone leaves their front door open and looks out for one another.

I think 'stranger danger' is overblown a bit...I agree totally that someone close to the child is far more likely to abuse them, probably because they can be around the kid long enough to learn how to exploit the kid in ways to make him keep his mouth shut,and because Momma and Duhddie would never suspect Grandpa or Uncle Chester of feeling Junior up in the closet during the Christmas party. I wouldn't suggest teaching kids to fear their family on the off-chance their relatives might have pedophile tendancies, but I think teaching the kid about acceptable and unacceptable touching is a must. I would also suggest making sure the kid knows s/he can tell their parents if a relative touches them inappropriately...the only bad thing is a lot of parents whose kids DO get abused by relatives don't believe their kids when they come forward about the abuse.