To have never worried for a second about the possibility of my children being abducted...

[curlew]

......and to have never, as far as I can remember, made any decisions based on the possibility or factored it in to any plans I have made or actions I have taken?

Is this unusual? Do most people worry about this?

Curlew, I honestly think you're being negligent in your views. Possibly dangerously so. You're not preparing your kid fully for the outside world. You think you are but you're not. Not everyone has a deep seated belief strangers are dangerous - that's a sweeping generalisation. A number of people have said it time and time again to you but you're not listening, there are ways of telling them of the dangers responsibly without affecting them. How can you not understand that? It's almost like you're sheltering your child from the world, sticking your head in the sand and making out life is like an Enid Blyton adventure. My DS is not affected in anyway by my warning him about certain things. That's my job as a mother. It's just one bit of advice among many but it gives him knowledge that could one day protect him. Why would any mother not do that?

As an example my DS has travelled by train alone for a 3 hour journey since he was just turned 12 to visit grand parents during school holidays, so maybe 3 times a year. He has one change which includes a change of platform so not a case on plonking him on the train and him being picked up the other end. When he first did it I did tell him to be on his guard about people being too friendly. Obviously having a chat with someone is fine and normal but warning signs are someone being a bit too personal, too much questioning, asking to stay in touch etc. Also told him to ask someone if there was any confusion with the change of train.

Going by my experience too of public transport I also mentioned inappropriate so-called accidental touching and that he should feel free to move if he needed to or even shout out.

You can't protect them 100% but for my peace of mind before I could let go alone by train that first time I had to talk him through some safety scenarios because he's an innocent kid. He doesn't know evil. Nothing bad has happened to him. That's my job as a parent to prepare him for the outside world and whatever it hits him with. My warnings haven't changed his interactions with people. My son has done this journey many times. He tells me about the conversations he has with fellow passengers - the last time a girl doing her A levels and an old couple who heard him get his AS level grade by mobile and had a chat about school to him. So no, it doesn't need to make your kid a shrinking violet unable to interact with people. That's an extremely strange and extreme notion. As I keep saying it depends how you deal with it.

Curlew you're talking nonsense. Very few people apart from the mentally ill believe that strangers are dangerous. The overwhelming majority of us know that most strangers are perfectly normal. But we also know that some aren't and we don't know which so take sensible precautions.

I don't think children are told off for asking for help when they are lost. But you can prepare children to know how to ask for help in the least risky way, for example asking for help from somebody working in a shop or similar where it is busy, there will be colleagues around, likely some sort of CCTV and they will be traceable and probably not insanse or dangerous criminals. Or trying to look for a mother or father with their own children, statistically very few abduction crimes would happen whilst the abductor is with their own children.

I honestly think you are taking risks with your children for the sake of looking 'cool'.

Somebody on this very thread talked about giving their child a stern word for asking a stranger for help when lost. And there are always threads where people worry about approaching- or, more likely, their dp's approaching- a child who looks lost or in trouble.

"Or trying to look for a mother or father with their own children, statistically very few abduction crimes would happen whilst the abductor is with their own children."

Very few? Er- make that none! And how many abduction by stranger crimes do you think happen every year?

How many?

Curlew the mother was probably frantic with worry and was overly harsh. I've done it myself. You then temper it with 'mummy was worried about you, you shouldn't go running off like that as mummy was scared about where you were'. As they get older teach them who is safer to approach like SeaSickSal says.

You're being so rigid about this, it's like some weird problem in your head. Focusing on that one incident with the little girl earlier on the thread. Why won't you respond to logic - I've said it so many times, it's about how you handle it. It's not black and white, there's shades of grey. I certainly haven't affected my child. I don't know of anyone that has, yet they've all told their kids not to go off with strangers. That little girl won't be damaged by what her mum said to her that once.

Its all about perceived risk v real risk I cant remember the stats but they are off the scale low for a random stranger taking your child.

I would not say it does not cross my mind that my child could run off and be knocked over/fall down a ditch/drown but it is not something I worry about in the way an awful lot of my friends do.
Part of me thinks its quite damaging the paranoia we are projecting onto our children.
I was brought up being scared off the bogey man/ghosts which I guess is a metaphor for the same thing. I still wandered off though.

sorry that should say does

Can I ask if any of you have 'lost' a child somewhere? When for 5~10mins, you couldn't find him/her.

What was your first thought? Did you think abduction, did you think he/she has decided to 'escape' and go and discover what is further away, did you think he/she must be hiding somewhere near by?

Why have people got such an issue with the way Curlew chooses to parent her own children?

Why do you feel the need to keep pushing the point that she must tell her DC about stranger danger or that she must have worried about the possibility of stranger abduction?

Why can't you accept that some parents have not felt the need to have 'that' conversation with their children and feel that the risk of stranger abduction is so rare as to be negligible?

I wasn't talking about just in a year. I was talking about over time and in different places.

Some of the abductions that took place with Fred and Rose West they believe that there were babies or children in the car and girls got in because that made them look safe so it does happen.

Its is very real. I think and ignorant post - I do not believe you have not on some level made decision to protect your DC from even a subconscious risk of harm.

We have had two atempted abductions recently and one a little while back.
Police have had a presence marked and unmakred outside the schools in the area. Parents have been repeatedly warned not to allow their children to go to and from school unaccompanied.

I agree that these days our perception of risk is greater re media coverage. It has become part of wider approach to parenting in general.

It's up to her what she does just like it's up to everyone but she made a thread about this as if to say her way is the rational way and that anyone who does worry about it is paranoid (in a nutshell). Why does anyone need that validation? As others have said it was to be smug. I thought it too. There was no need for the thread. If you're happy with your choices why do you need to start a thread about it, especially straight after a thread when someone else was talking about their worries?

And yes I do think it's negligent. Abduction is minor but not telling your kids about possible dangers from strangers doesn't give them any tools if they're in a dodgy situation. Curlew keeps going on about how it could affect a child and make them so wary of people it'll impact them negatively. Rubbish. We've said it numerous times it's how you handle it. It doesn't need to be said in a scary, every stranger is a paedophile kind of way. Why would anyone think that. Very strange, extreme view but up to her.

Id rather have a worried child than a missing child.

The risk of abduction is very small but the consequences huge. So because of this I tell DS not to speak to strangers. I reinforce this when we are in a busy or new place. Freedoms he is allowed in certain places we go to are withdrawn when in the unfamiliar/busy.

So, one person doesn't warn her DC that it may be dangerous to accept a lift from a stranger, and they make it to the ages of 18 and 12 without being abducted.

And this proves what?

As someone said on a thread recently, the plural of anecdote is not data.

I Have read and re-read Curlews posts and cannot see where she has been smug. Whereas I feel you Tabliope have been rather hectoring and sarcastic towards her.

The opening post simply asks if abduction is a real fear for some parents, because she doesn't see it as one. She even apologises after she is accused of being smug, and says she doesn't mean to be. And yet you labour the point.

Calling someone negligent, simply because they do not share your method of parenting or type of fears is arrogant.

LtEve I'm not the only one that thought it smug. I have been on this thread a lot but it's been an ongoing discussion and points are being thrashed out. Normal in a debate. It's AIBU. She hasn't always given straight answers. A lot of people have been very logical and come up with good points which she hasn't really been able to answer. It's a discussion.

I make no apologies for saying that I think not informing your child of possible dangers in life is negligent - especially when they're of an age to be out and about. Why? Because kids' safety is important. I feel very strongly about that but it's her kids so she can do what she likes - obviously. The more she argues she's right the more the ones opposing that view will argue the opposition - that's normal. That's debate. Any of us can leave this thread any time. Which I might do soon as up early for work.

The trouble is, it's such an emotional subject matter. The thought of a child being abducted. And an unbearable thought that the child could be yours.

Curlew is lucky, I think, if she has gone through her child's young life never having worried about her child being abducted for a second. I would imagine that is extremely rare for a mother.

And it seems a bit odd to start a thread about that. I think that's the reason that smugness seems to come into it, although I don't think that's actually the correct word for it.

I do worry about abduction. I cannot imagine going though anything worse than your child being taken and you have no idea what hell, torture they are going through.

I would never put myself, or my dc, into the position of finding that out.

Curlew says herself I don't think I have said, have I? that I have not prepared my children for the outside world, or talked about potential dangers. It's just that abduction is not one on my radar. And for some people it seems to be the number 1 worry

So she hasn't 'not informed her children of possible dangers'

She isn't arguing that she is right - that seems to be your job. She is saying that she doesn't think of stranger abduction as a valid danger that she worries about.

You seem to be reading far more into the posts then is actually there.

She says on the first page she's never talked to them about going off with strangers. I think if anyone was reading more into her posts than is actually there she would have said by now and this thread wouldn't have got to 12 pages.

Make you mind up Tabliope, in your post above you didn't specify, so neither did I.

Where has curlew 'argued that she is right' as I can't see it.

I haven't worried, ever, about my DD being abducted. It's never crossed my mind. I know that statistically it is extremely rare so I choose to worry about things that are more likely to happen.

Sorry? Make my mind up about what? My post didn't specify what and neither did yours? No idea what you mean.

She's argued she's right all the way through

Please show me. I'd really appreciate it because I cannot see it, not once. I do not understand why you have such an issue with her about this because I cannot see, once, where she has been sarcastic, hectoring or determined that she is right. If you could show me maybe I would understand.

I'm a pedant and therefore simply don't believe curlew's thread title to be true.

I can happily accept that she is more worried about someone she knows abducting her child, even a member of her own family.

I can happily accept that she has weighed up the pros and cons and has no wish to helicopter parent her children or smother them.

I can even happily accept that she gives them a greater free reign than most other parents in the Western World (sorry haven't read whole thread, but imagine this is the gist of it).

But no I don't accept for one minute that she has never worried for a second about the possibility of her children being abducted by a stranger.

Of course she has had the thoughts, like the rest of us. And, like most of us, she has put them to one side.

But curlew doesn't want to think that most of us aren't hysterical nit-wits obsessed with the concept of stranger-danger.

It is a smug op, indeed.