Comment by dreeves | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dreeves | Hacker News Reader

This is a huge pet peeve of mine. Prompted by news of an abduction in Missouri a while back, I wrote this: http://messymatters.com/strangers

Excerpt:

I love this quote from security expert Bruce Schneier:

   Remember, if it’s in the news don’t worry about it. The 
   very definition of news is “something that almost never 
   happens.” When something is so common that it’s no longer 
   news — car crashes, domestic violence — that’s when you 
   should worry about it.

The truth of that hit home recently when I saw a news feature on the abduction of a four-year-old girl from her front yard in Missouri. Candlelight vigils, nation-wide amber alert, police blockades where every single car was stopped and questioned, FBI agents swarming the house. I think the expected reaction from parents is “oh my god, I need to be so vigilant, even in my own front yard!” My reaction was the opposite: Wow, this sort of thing really does essentially never happen. Let the kids run free!

[EDIT: It goes on to compare to a non-abduction story...]

In summary, a toddler got separated from her caregivers and wandered off, where a passerby saw her. Seeing no one else around, his first instinct was to scoop her up and take her with him. But he decided that that was a big risk to himself — what would people think? — and continued on, reporting it later.

The girl then fell in a pond and drowned.

As a parent, one of the things I fear most is DCFS. I live on a large area of land with many natural resources and my children are free to do many things. I inform them of dangers and protect them from realistic dangers. But not every other parent thinks that way or agrees with it. It only takes one fearful parent to place a call into DCFS about their opinion on your parenting style. Once DCFS is involved you are at their mercy with little or no oversight.

So beware implementing some of the ideas presented here as things you shouldn't fear. Because not everyone will agree with you, and those other people can make your life very difficult.

if someone like the DCFS wanted to take my kids, i'd get the urge to poke them off my property with a loaded gun. i mean, US citizens have the right to bear arms, for the exact purpose of defending themselves against the government, or what was that?

Unfortunately that would probably just make things worse. :-/

Believe me, I hear what you're saying. But DCFS has no oversight. If you have guns in your house with kids they will take a very keen interest in you. There are DCFS rules for what you can/will/should do with guns in your home that may exceed what you would do. If the DCFS agent finds your gun not locked by an XYZ lock your kids will be taken from you. I am not joking either.

Every attempt you make to establish your rights will lead you further down the path of their goal. Take heed from the stories above and you will see how it works.

They might just come back with more guns, then what?

My cousin's daughter said some sexually explicit things in school, and the DCFS was called. They combed the entire house and computer, looking for pornography, sex toys, etc. My cousin came up clean, but how many people would? I certainly wouldn't.

Even nows my cousin is extremely paranoid about her daughter. At 14, this girl wasn't even allowed to read Twilight; a tragedy, because the girl otherwise refuses to read.

So having a sex toy hidden well in your bedroom that your daughter has never seen before and a daughter that says something vaguely sexual in school could lead to you losing your daughter? Wow.

It depends where that happened. In a few US states (Alabama?) I believe, it is still illegal to sell sex toys! A local raid by CPS (Child Protective Services) that finds sex toys and porn can turn nasty if the local judge, police and other officials feel they can go on a morality campaign, and perhaps choose to find or invent a reason to take the kids away.

They might lose in court but a lot of the damage is already done by then.

I personally feel that a lot parents have been over-protective and irrational lately not because they have started loving or caring for their children more, but because they are afraid of looking like a "bad parent" while this whole media "child threat" frenzy is going on. I am not a parent so this is totally speculative, I have read not studies or haven't done any research on this.

Likewise, times ten. As a parent of three small children, there are certain things I won't say or do around people I don't know very well for exactly this reason.

You also nailed the real issue on the head - it's not that we don't need some sort of child protection services; it's that "you are at their mercy with little to no oversight".

That sounds like the bogus kind of worry that the article is talking about. Do you know how often that kind of thing actually happens? My Google-fu is failing me but my guess is it's gotta be in the 1 in a million range.

It happens many times a day. Google news shows about a dozen times in the past 24 hours:

http://www.google.com/search?q=children+removed+from+home#q=...

And these are just the cases that make the news

But, but, but, Bruce said we needn't worry about things that are uncommon enough to be news.

I dont know, I hope you're not advocating allowing parents to beat their kids with machetes like the first news story there. Logicalmind was talking about letting his kids roam free outdoors, that would be an outrage if government stepped in for that. I've been outraged by the nightmare child removal stories just like everyone else, but those stories don't appear very often, I've maybe heard of ten or so ever. It seems to me if it was happening everyday the outrage would be constant and people would be up in arms.

First, let me say that you should all read that link he posted.

Second, worry about my ability to distinguish real dangers from fake makes me avoid many sources of news. To get a sense of what dangers are actually real, I pay attention to the lives of people I know and read my local police log occasionally. I also try to learn as little about people who get into the news for doing stupid/petty things as possible - no need to give them encouragement.

That is seriously wrong, calling somebody who talks to a kid a child abductor. Does it happen to men only? Both of my two brothers have been saved by strangers multiple times when they were lost. In a place where people are so afraid of strangers interacting with kids there is a non negligible chance that one of them would be dead now (got lost on a dangerous road next to a river, he was walking the wrong way, but fortunately a man noticed him and brought him back to the camping).

Great story! It's another good antidote to the "but you can never be too safe" reaction. As your story shows, maximum vigilance about your child's safety requires that you not instill a fear of strangers. Strangers should be viewed as a source of help, not danger. (Maybe amend that with some common-sense exceptions as they get old enough to grok the subtleties.)

Sadly, the paranoia seems to be out of control. So much so that I take the commenter below ("a couple creepy incidents") with a grain of salt. Was it really something creepy or are kids taught to overreact when a stranger so much as says hello and the story got exaggerated in the telling?

It's ridiculous what I've seen parents describe as creepy. They just cannot get the image of a child predator out of their heads.

- I held hands with a stranger who brought me back to my parents when I was lost

- We opened the door when somebody rang the doorbell we were home alone

- We used to go around town to ask people if we could earn some money by doing stuff in their house or garden

- When my bike was broken a stranger drove me home with his car

To the parents who are freaked out by their kids talking to a stranger the above things may sound mind boggling. A part of this is a cultural difference of seeing kids as sexual objects. Who lives somewhere where people would find it strange if a dad holds hands / hugs / kisses / bathes with his young daughter? I read a story where a dad was arrested for holding hands with his daughter.

I got hit by a car two separate times (I know...I know...). Both times, the car that hit me fled the scene and the very next car that came along gave me a ride home.In the second grade, I was walking home from school through the crosswalk at a green light and the car turned right didn't look and hit me, the other time I was crossing the a road on my bike and don't really remember the specifics. Also, when I was two my parents "lost" me at Knott's Berry Farms...and a stranger took me to the lost and found.

I imagine men are more likely to seem suspicious when talking to a kid, particularly a young girl. No one ever dreams a woman talking to a child could possibly have ill intentions.

I know just the other day I watched a man in his late 30s/early 40s walk out of a supermarket with a 12-14yo girl who was clearly not his biological child (completely different ethnicity) and get into a car. I couldn't help but be just the slightest bit suspicious. I may have been right, I may have been wrong, but if it was a woman with a 12-14yo girl OR boy, not a single eyebrow would raise.

A close family friend of mine is an older gentleman with three kids, none of whom are his biological offspring. It is sad how many askance looks he gets from passerby when he is out shopping with his adopted children.

Perception is a funny thing.

I'm a 30 year old male with a scruffy not-really-a-beard and mostly t-shirts in my wardrobe. When I go out alone, I can't so much as stand in the same grocery aisle as a child without getting suspicious looks from parents and store employees. It's much worse at the swimming pool or beach.

When I have my baby with me, it's the opposite. Kids crowd around me; parents strike up conversations. Mothers are happy to read a book while their daughters talk to me or swim around me at the pool. It suddenly makes sense to people why I haven't shaved in 3 days and wear t-shirts.

They go from thinking Chris Hansen should tell me to "have a seat right over there" to thinking I'm just like Mr. Rogers. I'm still the same person, but the perceived threat level is completely different based on whether or not my kid is with me.

A friend of mine was telling me a story about how if he stands near the women's restroom waiting for his fiancée and her young daughter he gets all sorts of dirty looks. But if he stands there holding a stroller people just smile and walk on by.

I hate this phenomenon. Allowing fear to prevent friendship just isn't worth it. There are just too many interesting, friendly people in the world who happen to be of the masculine persuasion. I go out of my way to encourage strangers--men in particular--to interact with my son, specifically as an act of protest against this way of thinking.

"What if" they're dangerous? Come on. The average stranger is far more likely to try to hurt me than a kid. [1] Life's too short to think that way.

[1] http://allcountries.org/uscensus/139_homicide_rates_by_race_...

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