Child Safety

I was recently having a conversation with my parents about whether kids were less "safe" today than when I was growing up. I posed the question and the quick response from everyone else in the room was a very assertive "yes." I found it terribly hard to believe. Of course everyone knows that kids are more likely to be injured in an automobile than they are to be abducted or "lost" while walking alone on the street. But are there really more "creeps" out there waiting to prey on my kid? When she's old enough to walk to school, will it still be safe for her to do so? Will she be able to play outside? Ride her bike to the park? Walk to the pool to swim in the summer? Go to her friends' houses to play?

Why do these things sound so ridiculously unsafe? In trying to find statistics about the safety of this world for Maya, I happened upon this article reporting on an interview with the author of Free Range Kids, which I think I'll have to read now. In looking that book up on Amazon, I found this quote in one of the reviews:

"If there's a common theme in every chapter, it's that we want our kids to trust and love the community, without paranoia the media is trying to inject us with. We became parents because we felt the world offers enough positives to outweigh the negatives."

What a great sentiment.

Don't get me wrong; I know Maya's only two, and we won't be sending her anywhere on her own any time soon. But she's already got herself an independent streak that's just so beautiful; we'll have to figure out how to foster it safely.

Someday I'll probably also rant on about the new drive to squelch our kids' competitive natures completely by removing from their lives anything that might make them feel bad about themselves...