I am disgusted at the Madeleine McCann/Shrek debate!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Bigmamie]

I have joined this site solely to remind all you thoughtless, forgetful, selfish ba#@ards that Madeleine McCann is missing!!!!!!!! I cannot understand how anyone can sit with their arms around their own children, in the comfort of a cinema whilst feeding their children popcorn and Coke that there are lots of mothers in this world who cannot do this. Their children have been taken from them and I wonder if any of you had the money or the resources available to them, I wonder if you would have campaigned this long or this hard for their daughters return. I wish the McCanns every success and only wish I could physically find their daughter for them. I am taking my 6 kids to see Shrek tomorrow and I hope my cinema is still showing the Madeleine film. I hope the publicity generated stays in your faces for a long time to come. Tell me, if she passed in front of you down at the shops or at the park could any of you be bothered to actually tell someone. Or are you all just to happy in the knowledge that its not one of your children. There but for the grace of God............

so Haychee, considering you've told your children that strangers are nasty, I'm assuming you've also told them that their uncles, grandparents, father and the fathers of all their friends are probably paedophiles? given that most sexual abuce of children occurs by someone they kno? I mean if you're going to scare them into thinking the world is a nasty place you might as well do it right ey.

It is a parents job and choice to decide what their child is exposed to, nobody elses. It is a parents job and choice to decide what information is enough/too much for their particular child, nobody elses. Full stop.

Haychee, you and a few others, it seems, have become inebriated by the exuberance of your verbose equine excrement at this stage.

Having a POV and entering into discussion is fine but your particular style would be better suited to another site - say bitches'R'us or something!

You are the weakest link - goodbye

Let's be fair to haychee -- she's not told her children that strangers are nasty, she's told them that some strangers are safe and some aren't. There is a difference, even if you still don't agree with how she's phrased it.

So essentially what you tell your kids is that any person they don't know is potentially out to harm them?

I can kind of understand how you may feel that teaching your children to mistrust people makes them in some way 'safer' - but can't you see that it's a bit twisted to give your children this view of the world?

fair enough, and I see nothing wrong with the principle of knowing that not all strangers are nice, they're not, after all, I also see nothing wrong with the idea of encouraging one's children to find a policeman or go into a shop etc if they're lost. But I think there's a fine line between telling children not to get into a car with a stranger or accept sweets or go off with a stranger, and telling them not to talk to them altogether. The lady in the supermarket check-out is, after all, a stranger? the teacher at school starts out as, a stranger? There are many other instances where talking to strangers is perfectly acceptable. And strangers certainly aren't the only dangers in the world - what about cars.

and there are a lot of people that are known to children that harm them. more so than strangers in fact, far, far more, and yet I don't see many people warning their children of the dangers of talking to uncle jim for instance (uncle jim purely an axample name of course not an actual person iykwim)

We are on this site because we have children, we are on this site because we love our children. We are all ADULTs who do what we feel is best for our children. That is bound to differ depending on circumstances etc etc. It is a sad world when, as happened to us recently, a little girl falls off slide, i was busy with DD, DP didnt feel that he could offer any help in case people were suspicious!!! I comforted little girl and went and found her grandad with her.

I grew up in South Africa and went to an Afrikaans school. The south africans very much believe that one should respect one's elders, and that talking back to a grown-up is a very wrong thing to do, well of course I agree with that but...

We had a teacher at school who was a bit too touchy feely if you get my drift. would stand behind you and put his hands over your shoulders moving downwards - you get the picture. I would have told him where to go regardless of the fact he was an adult, and so he never tried it on with me, I would have slapped him without a second thought. But he did try it on with a younger girl who told me about it. He'd touched her and told her it was their "secret", and although she felt uncomfortable she felt she would be wrong to stand up to him because he was an adult and it would be disrespectful. I told her bollocks to that and to, firstly tell him to get stuffed if he tried it again, and secondly to report it, which she did. Suffice to say, said teacher departed in rather a hurry to "take up a position elsewhere" (yeh right).

And yet we were all taught at school to be wary of strangers who might hurt us, and yet the ones who wanted to cause harm were right under our noses and because of the whole respect thing it was considered wrong to tell them to get lost.

..."Stay close to mummy...... because I said so"

My kids will stay close because they do as they are told - and if they don't, we go home.

If they get lost (unlikely) they know to stay where they are - I'll be retracing my steps to come back to them.

Yes, the world can be a rotten place and has rotten people in it, but 'ready for the taking' is just sooooo over the top. A kidnapper or paedo on every corner is just about as likely as a policeman on every corner.

haychee - you never answer posts you don't like the sound of, just harp on to the last person you attacked. What happens when your kids can't find a policeman - and as for 'someone in authority like that', like who exactly?

(and FWIW I've avoided this thread all day but cannot stand the obnoxiousness shown by newbies - I'm pretty new myself but even I know some of the histories of the regular posters and would not dream of attacking their choices. The OP was out of order, but pretty thick by all accounts (as if anyone with a brain would immediately believe something they read in a newspaper without checking it out first), haychee and biddzy01 just came here to rant and cause trouble....)

You werw talking about Madeleine´s campany but now you aret talking about what??? Can´t understand...

CRIKEY what a long thread! Well done to Wannabe for pointing out that our kids are (really big statistic that I've forgotten ) more likely to get hurt or kileed in or by a car than by a paedophile! Maybe they should show a film of that at the start of Shrek...'Children, did your mummy/daddy/carer strap you into a appropraite child restraint, graded good or excellent not cheap-from-Argos on the way here?' Seriously, I see people ranting on and on about paedophiles etc, with a cigarette in one hand and chucking their kids untethered into the back of an old banger with the other!

Children must not understand everything, thát´s because they need a mum to saty there for them. Sometimes they must do what we tell them to do no matter what.

When you go to cinema and see Madeleine´´s picture perhaps you can tell your kids that is serious crime and they must saty alert. They must also know that if something bad woud ever hapen to them YOU will look for them all over the world to.. Not need to lie about the real world we live in, just adapt the best we can.

I think there are lots of dangers in the world (traffic, carbon monoxide, broken glass, predatory strangers, bird flu, predatory friends and relations, dangerous dogs, escaped leopards, escalators, complications from chicken pox, terrorists, fire, the Ebola virus, open water, possibility of suddenly developing a life-threatening allergy). Each of these has a complicated web of factors how likely is it, in the world in general, to be a problem? How likely is it, specifically, to be a problem for your child? How serious are the likely consequences if the Bad Thing happens? What steps can be taken against it? How easy is it for a child to avoid the risky situation or to reduce the risk? How do you personally feel about it (it's hard to factor out emotional responses, no matter how illogical) personal experiences may factor in here?

Each of us has to consider all of these, and our individual children, and decide what messages it is most helpful to give our children. So, for example, I suspect that we'd all warn them regularly about traffic but would be unlikely to make a big deal out of the risk of Ebola or escaped leopards unless there were particular local circumstances that warrant it. What we say about any of the others is going to vary.

I don't think it's helpful to mock others for their choices, whether that choice is to pick one of those dangers and make a big deal out of it with their children or not to dwell on that danger at this stage in their child's development because after due consideration of all the factors they don't consider it to be appropriate. We're not all going to agree, of course, just as we're not going to agree on a whole host of parenting issues, but the fact that someone disagrees with you doesn't mean that they haven't thought carefully about the question or that it's OK to abuse them for it.

Ummm
and then how many of us tell our children that once a year a big jolly stranger will tip toe quietly into our room at night and leave us presents IF WE ARE GOOD .....

(ROFL at this thread especially whoever it was who snottily said she had just come here to post and explain some stuff to all us stupid people so we get it all right just like she does....)

The McCanns have a bloody cheek expecting to spread their misery to every other small child (except their own toddlers, of course) when it was their own selfishness that started up this whole circus.
Bescaue they are suffering, no-one else is allowed a minutes peace.

Are you mixing up things?? Santa with paedophiles?? Seems pretty stupid, isn´t it?

kookaburra, i expect you are joking, no one feels that, but it is in bad taste.

KooKaBurra, because there is someone capable of snatching a child we all shoud be asking ourselves about the humanity we belong to. The real monstre is who enters a bedroom, isn´t it? THAT is the question that horrifies us!

lol...I read the op's name first as Bigamie not Bigmamie, lolololol

Is there evidence that she was 'snatched from her room in her sleep'? Seems more likely she wandered out - but the McCanns are obviousy not admitting that as a possibility. I object to small children in cinmeas being exposed to the idea that bed is not safe(some of whom will be at 'party outings' being told this,so the poor HOST parent has to deal with their terror and bewilderment at this advert.)
This thoughtlessness and sheer lack of sensitivity to OTHER people's children is creating a backlash against the McCanns whoi intially had everyone's sympathy.

Oh blimey !

(never done the beating head against the desk but thinking about it)

my point is that it is ridiculous that people here are lecturing others about THE way to keep children safe and informed when the reality is that surely a good parent makes a sophisticated series of judgements about their own child, the threat, the threat versus benefit ratio the, potential fear of their child etc etc....and our own values as a parent
We warn our children according to an ever moving series of factors so any lectures from one parent to another about what they should be doing is nearly always going to be a dumb idea.

Some of the people here saying that a child should be taught to scream if a stranger comes into their room probably then hang up a stocking on christmas eve.....

If you can't find that funny I don't think you are trying.

No child of 4 goes away like this bby her own, of course. If she wasn´t snached from her bed she was snatched from the pkace she was BY SOMEONE, not by herself. Obvious, isn´t it KooKaBurra??

lets stop this now