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?

in my teens i was flashed at 3 times in different locations , told to get in a car by an old bloke , asked to show the way to a lake through a field another old bloke ,followed for a week by a younger stalker and jumped on and wrestled to the ground in the street , so i drummed it into my kids always be on guard where ever they are .

But the shopping centre story is not true.

I don' 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.

I wonder why too Algorta. One incident I was walking to school, lots of us were although I wasn't in a group. The man stopped on the dual carriage way we had to cross right at the point I was going to cross. He said something like would I like a lift and he had some puppies and would I'd like to come see them. It was a fair bit from home - 20 minute walk to school. I hung back and didn't say anything and I honestly think he might have forcefully got hold of me if I'd been closer. Of course I got a mouthful of abuse that I'd be in trouble for that and he was trying to help me out. I wish my parents had prepared me to get the car reg.

The second incident a friend and I had walked to a fair about 3 miles from home. We were sitting on some railings when a man stopped and beckoned me over. Luckily friend had a mouth on her and told him where to go. I was a very quiet kid.

Just remembered another weird incident. I was in the brownies and there was some get-together of the various troops in the area. Not enough space in the coach so one of the father's of a girl I wasn't particularly friendly with gave me and two others a lift. So 4 of us. His daughter in the front and 3 of us in the back. We drove for ages. So much so that I said will it take much longer. It was like he didn't want to reply because he mumbled something that I couldn't hear. He didn't speak the whole time - we were in that car hours. I felt his daughter felt a bit awkward. The other two girls did too as we were looking at each other puzzled. Eventually we stopped by a waterfall and got out. Still he said nothing. I asked or one of the others asked are we going to this troop get together? I think his daughter might have spoke and said he can't find it! It was like she was apologising for him. Fucking weird. I don't know what was going on there. He couldn't or wouldn't speak to us, could barely look at us. He didn't take us to where we were going so we missed the whole event. My gut feeling was something was wrong and I wasn't happy but luckily nothing happened. Bizarre. But I do feel he was up to something but the opportunity wasn't there.

The flashing stuff happened up the woods and one time he followed us and kept waving his penis when we'd run out into the field. The 16 year old with the shotgun said he'd shoot us if he caught us up there again. He had us against a tree. All incidents happened between 8 and 10.

Flashers...haven't seen one of them in years thank God. Saw quite a few as a kid, usually outside the school playground or near the park.

We'd always run home and tell our parents, cue angry dads marching up to the park!

Tabliope Tue 28-Jan-14 13:30:17
" Your own personal experiences in life cloud where you are on the scale of protectiveness."

I don't think so necessarily. I think it's a combination of personal experiences and society's narrative.

There must be literally thousands of people in this country who have experienced a car crash at close hands. Yet most of these people do not spend their time agonising about whether they should let their children get in a car or not.

A friend of mine nearly died in a car crash the other week. She has not expressed any worry about the fact that her children go by car every day.

I grew up on an island where death by drowning, particularly from boat travelling, was something that affected the village regularly. Yet nobody seemed to have a boat phobia, nor did they only get into boats for necessary journeys: they used them for pleasure and encouraged their children to learn to drive as soon as possible.

Horsey families encourage their children to get up again after a fall, even though horse-riding is recognised as one of the most dangerous sports.

A young relative of mine had several of her friends die horribly in a disco fire. It didn't stop her going out to places which might potentially catch fire.

The fear of abduction, which affects so many areas of life, seems to be a different type of fear.

God I hate these kinds of threads. You're lucky these things don't bother you op. If someone us upset by them tgeyve either had different experiences to you or are mire likely to be stressed by what they see in the media.

Shock people are different to you.

Some people worry their children will get ill
Get fat
get hit by a car
Go to a substandard university
Get a shit job

of course I worry about it! dont most parents

I read DailyMail online far too much though, which details pretty much every single variant of a parents worst nignhtmare coming true

Car crashes, burning to death, falling off a horse are accidents.

People going around flashing, asking kids to get into cars, etc are Not accidents.

It seems from the evidence on here that the more freedom you have as a young child, the greater the risk from strangers ( I am only talking strangers).

If that is a risk a parent is prepared to deal with, then that is personal choice. Others are more risk averse.

We all are shaped by our experiences, we all do the best job we can as parents.

I fell off a horse when I was a child and very nearly died.

By some people's reasoning that would mean that I would not let my children anywhere near a horse.

PleaseJust- it's all about risk assessment. We are damaging our children and society if we fail to judge risk sensibly- and we actually put our children at more risk. For example, a child who has had the dangers of strangers and of abduction drummed into them could be less likely to be able to deal with the possibility of abuse from someone he knows. Which, while still unlikely, is much more likely than "stranger danger" (I'd like to get my hands on whoever invented that neat little cliche)

OP how old are your DC? What freedoms are they allowed.

If they are still babies....lol.

18 and 12

As several threads on here will show you some parents are extremely worried about there children coming to harm. I have read about parents who wont sit in there own garden in the evening when there children are asleep in bed. Parents who take there kids into the petrol station when they pay rather than leave them in a locked car. There is always some story about some kids that supposedly got taken and that does build a lot of fear. There are also the very real and awful things that we have seen in the media over recent years. I try and take what I can in my stride, although weirdly the only thing we wouldnt do was camping - I was just too worried he would get up and go for a wander simply because he could!

LoL. In all my fears we did camping. That resulted in someone prowling round and stealing our tent pegs in the dead of night.

I grew up in the 70s too, walked to school from age 5, played out alone till dark, and everyday of the holidays. and had a couple of weird experiences, flashers or the beach, folk taking my photo when I was naked on beach and one time being locked in an abandoned garage with the older brother of some kids I knew , where he told me was going to rape me, then chickened out and ran off. I wouldn't trade these things not happening for the freedom and independence I had as a child .

My mother worried about everything. My rule of parenting has always been to day "yes" unless there was very good reason to say "no" I didn't worry about abductions, falling out of trees, getting lost etc. etc. because the fact my mother did made my childhood a pain.

Yes, it's risk assessment.. But we all evaluate risk differently.

I am not worried about my daughter getting cancer and dying from it. This may be because I am lucky enough to not have dealt with it in first hand in my family, it's certainly more likely than my daughter being kidnapped.

But it's also that as horrific as the above scenario is.. If I were given a choice between her dying of cancer and going missing one day to never be seen again. I'd choose cancer. To me it is the absolutely worst case scenario that my child could go missing and I could have no idea what is happening to her. So the infinitesimally small chance that she could go missing is what upsets me most.

You can act all smug because you don't worry about it.. But so what? Be happy it doesn't make you panic when a child goes missing for a few minutes in a shop. It makes me stop breathing and want to be sick. Do you think that's a conscious choice? because I'm not clever enough to realize that she is unlikely to have been kidnapped and more likely to have hidden under a clothes rack?

I am even more worried about the possibility as she gets older. I'm American, the Us justice dept suspects that 1/3 of child runaways end up trafficked with in 48 hours!. They may start out as "run aways" but they aren't willingly being prostituted after 48 hours are they? No, they've been kidnapped. And I will be discussing it with dd and ds as they get older.

Curlew it's obvious you don't just talk about stranger danger and don't mention it could be someone known to the family. Who would be stupid enough to do that? I'm sure there probably are but equally you can't just ignore stranger danger and talk about known-person danger.

You temper it. If you think you're paranoid which a lot seem to recognise going by the posts you rein it in or a family member might notice it's affecting the child. What I don't think you should do which is in your OP is completely ignore a danger that lots of us has said could have turned into much nastier situations than they did - it's almost like you're proud of the fact you've never worried about abduction whereas going by my experience and others on this thread it's sticking your head in the sand. No, you don't need to let it rule your life but equally you can't completely ignore. Statistically in my experience it was the stranger situations that were more dangerous - why? Because my parents only ever let family they trusted with my brothers and sister.

Is this a thread about the thread where the OP was worried about camping in case her kids were a suited OP?

I'm with you op - I do care and I am raising my three to trust their instincts, never do anything they find uncomfortable or that makes the uneasy and never to anywhere with anyone without informing me or their dad
I refuse to curtail their freedom due to paranoia. I also think its vital children get to take some risks in order to learn their own risk assessment stratagie
Abuse by strangers is rare . Focusing on that is dangerous

Yes, it's a thread about a thread and I'm sorry but I think I have to agree with PleaseJust - it's like you're smug about it. It's the usual thing on MN - oh I let mine do this that and the other and I'm not worried. And then someone else pipes up and I let mine do this that the other and another thing. Almost like a race to see who is the most relaxed and cool parent. Who cares? Do what you want and let others do what they want, why let it concern you?

"You can act all smug because you don't worry about it.. But so what? Be happy it doesn't make you panic when a child goes missing for a few minutes in a shop"

I am not smug. And of course I panic under those circumstances- that's just a visceral response. It's the decisions we make when we're not in a "primitive" panic I'm talking about.

I think also, if there is a car accident, a fire, a drowning, we know what happens next even if it is not a nice outcome. We know what happens, we have closure and an ending.

With abduction or other missing persons often the parents or family never ever find out what happened to their child/family member. That's potentially more scary I reckon.

IMO terrible things happen and sometimes it doesn't matter what you put into place to protect your children. Adults are abducted, raped, attacked. I try to make sure DS is aware of his own personal safety but I do think it's important to let children have freedom and independence.

I had lots of freedom as child and yes some bad experience, flashers, maybe therewere more common? As I sawa few.

I was also raped as a teen.

But I still let my kids out to play, let them walk to town etc as the risk of abduction is so small its not worth worrying sbout.

Road safety is high on my check list, ditto internet safety.

Also teachign them to cook properly and to be safe usign household appliances etc.

But why would you panic Curlew under those circumstances when you "never worried for a second about the possibility of my children being abducted"? Surely in those circumstances you wouldn't have thought they'd been abducted and just that they were hiding and playing a game? So you have thought for a second they've been abducted if you panicked and presumably you told them never to run away from mummy again in a shop and to stay where she can see you? So therefore you have factored it in to your actions presumably?