Just before Christmas, our nine-year-old son was nearly abducted.
It was 4.45pm, and he was walking home after Minecraft club. He had stopped to stroke a cat that lives near our street when a van drew up beside him. The man inside leaned across. "I've got some sweets," he said. "If you get in, you can have some."
Our son said, very politely, that he lived just round the corner and had an appointment to get back for. The man scowled at him and drove off.
Our boy watched to make sure the van was out of sight before running for home. When he got back, he was breathless. I suggested he use his inhaler – which was when he casually mentioned that he'd been running because a man in a van had offered him sweets.
It's odd how your brain works in situations like this: I was simultaneously shocked and blasé. Here was my son, safe at home – I couldn't believe that someone would be stupid enough to use the sweets line. In fact, I could barely comprehend that it had even happened.
I did know, however, that I had to raise the alarm. I dialled 999, and then posted a message onto a school Care and Share site. I emailed and phoned his school.
While I went through these steps, I felt like a bit player in a soap opera. I spend so much time persuading myself that it is extremely unlikely that anything bad will happen – avoiding scaremongering, hysteria, TV crime dramas and detective novels – that I could hardly believe that this had happened to our child, in our neighbourhood.
The immediate surge of comments responding to my post brought the impact of the situation home. It showed me how frightened people are of this kind of event – and it also confirmed our son's story: another boy had seen the same man just before, and had also been frightened enough to run home.
After speaking to the school and the police, news spread fast. I was repeatedly asked by other parents whether I would let him keep walking. To start with, I stoutly asserted that I would, aware of the look in other parents' eyes. As the days trickled by, though, both my son and I lost our nerve. I went back to picking him up.
After a few days, the investigating officer called. He suggested that perhaps it hadn't been what I thought it was. He said, "Can I ask what your son was doing, walking home at 4.45pm?" I couldn't take it in. Was he really insinuating that it was my fault that my child had been approached? That by encouraging my son to walk home independently, I was essentially setting him up to be assaulted?
I live with a constant feeling that I am being judged as negligent as I strive to give my children greater independence. The policeman's words only reinforced this worry. I'm so tired of the negative scrutiny levelled at mothers, explicitly and implicitly, bullying them into overprotective behaviour which, in the end, actually harms their children. And, at least in my experience, it does always seem to be mothers who are seen to be at fault. The policeman didn't say anything to my husband.
Am I frightened of our boy being approached again? Of course I am – it's my job to worry about our children, as it is my husband's – but it's also our job to let them go. Children need to seize their independence. How else will they learn how to handle it? Our children are taught 'stranger danger' – and they also instinctively know when someone's a wrong 'un. Our son took it in his stride. Why are we trying to take that victory away from him?
We are letting him walk alone again now. He's very happy, and has been thriving at school. Last week he ran to help an elderly lady with her heavy bag on his way home.
I don't think the streets are the preserve of a handful of predators: I think the streets are for everyone, especially our children. I'm going to live by the advice of the policewoman who came to our house the night of the attempted abduction. She looked my son in the eyes and told him not to stop walking to school: "Never forget," she said, "your independence goes forwards, not backwards."
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Guest post: "My son was almost abducted – but I won't stop him walking home alone"
MumsnetGuestPosts · 21/01/2016 15:36
Some of the comments the OP has received (both on this thread and described in her post) illustrate something my dad said when ds was born and I asked him to tell me if dh and I ever exhibited any "paranoid parenting".
He said that when I was young (in the 60s), if something were to happen to a child who'd gone to a shop on their own, then the perpetrator would be blamed. Nowadays, it would be the parent - and in particular the mother 
- who would be blamed.
Victim blaming in action.
FWIW OP - good on you for continuing to let your ds to walk home from school - and for having equipped him with the nous to sense danger.
We let ds walk home from school on his own from age 8 and by 9 he was walking to and from school. At 11 he was cycling to school on his own and at 12 he was cycling home on his own - all carefully judged increments.
....and the greater risk of abuse is in the home from family or "friends" than from strangers in the street.
If the worst happens, prettybird, does it actually matter who will be "blamed"? Would it really make a difference to your risk assessment if you could be sure all blame was (rightly, I agree) laid at the door of the perpetrator and your own conscience was clear? 
I'm flummoxed as to what actual difference it makes.
You're right - I meant to include the word probability. But you knew what I meant.
And yes, I am talking about relative risks. There is a minuscule probability of risk of a kid being abducted by a stranger. There is a much greater probability risk of achild being abused by someone they know.
We need to be aware of risks and do our best to minimise them. However when a risk is already minuscule, the. It is arguable that by over protecting kids and not letting them develop their own instincts, you are increasing the risk to them in future, as they are less able to judge danger for themselves.
I can understand why people are concerned about letting children walk to/from school because of traffic concerns - as that is so much higher than when I was young a loooong tone ago 
(although a part of the change is the Catch 22 of the School Run ) - but the incidence of stranger abduction has not increased in the same way.
There is a spike in Road Traffic Accidents at 12, when children who are used to being supervised at all times are "free" to walk to secondary school on their own for the first time.
That was just one of the reasons why I made a conscious decision to increase incrementally ds' independence from a young age - from walking to the post box age 4 to beginning to walk home from school on his own from age 8 and then cycling on his own.
But I accept that different people assess relative risk and where it appears differently.
And I think the predator would've moved on by now. How would you ever know? Keep the kids inside for the next 20 years on the basis he might still be hanging around?
I do understand what you're saying.
I usually agree with your posts CotedAzure - but we have different opinions on this.
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