[News] How NOT to teach your kids about Stranger Danger.

Dave

Staff member
First, stranger danger is total bullshit.

http://www.ksdk.com/story/news/crime/2015/02/05/police-6-year-old-kidnapped-to-scare-him/22950695/

They lured him into a truck, the guy showed him a gun and told him they were going to "nail him to the wall". Then they put a hood over his head and drove him around, where they took him into an area where his aunt took off his pants and told him they could "sell him into sex slavery". Then they took off his hood and hilarity ensued as they told him about stranger danger. Because obviously strangers here were the problem.
 

Cajungal

Staff member
That...is psychotic, and I hate them. What a terrible thing to do to a child.

And yeah, kids are shown and told way too much scary stuff. I even read an article posted by one of my cousins about why they won't send their kids to sleepovers. Like, any sleepovers at all. I can understand not wanting to just send you kid off to a shady-seeming home where you don't know a lot about the family, but come on. Everything out there (besides the news) says the world is actually a safer place. At least everything I've read lately. Imma go article-hunting. Gonna find some kickass graphs.
 
Kati told me about this yesterday.
She also tells me sometimes about how she doesn't think she's doing a good job of being a mommy.
I don't think she has anything to worry about.

--Patrick
 
" felt they did nothing wrong.". Good lord, idiots, you kidnapped the boy. "it was just to scare him" isn't a valid reason for bullies beating a kid into the hospital, it isn't an excuse for kidnapping. The kid's still just as traumatized, if not more, than if it had been an actual kidnapping.
 
Sweet mother of monkey milk, this something I'd see Homer Simpson/Peter Griffin doing! Is satire leaking into reality? Dear lord the world is doomed. That kid is gonna write a book some day, and this will probably be just the first chapter.
 

figmentPez

Staff member
When I was little, I went to a program called Safety Town. They taught us how to cross a street, the rules of the road, not to drink household cleaners, or take random pills, and not to take candy from strangers. All the basic safety information of childhood. Near the end of the course they had a man approach us kids and offer us candy. Naturally, many of the kids accepted. The teachers asked us who had taken the candy, reminded us that we shouldn't, and then introduced the man as a policeman who was helping them teach a lesson. Seemed to me a pretty decent way to teach kids that it's easy to forget you're not supposed to take candy from strangers.

I'm trying to fathom the massive gulf between how Safety Town taught things, and the abuse that these numbskulls have heaped on their poor child, and I just can't understand how anyone thinks it's okay to intentionally traumatize someone.
 
I forget the statistic, but I remember that the majority of kidnappings are a relative or someone a kid already knows. I guess this proves it, doesn't it?:facepalm:

Meanwhile, I wonder how much that poor kid has had to suffer before this incident, because clearly there is not an ounce of brains between those adults. If they actually wanted to teach the importance of not talking things from strangers, they could have done a variation on what Pez said: get a friend that the kid doesn't know well, offer him some candy, but have a note inside that says something to the effect of "You shouldn't take candy from someone you don't know" or whatever.

I don't mind Li'l Z saying hello or making polite conversation with strangers, but I do want him to know he shouldn't take things or go anywhere with strangers (with the exception of emergency personnel) without mom or dad's okay. That's also less about "They'll poison my child!" and more "He really doesn't need a lollipop right now".
 
Someone should burn down all their houses while they're in jail. Y'know, to teach them not to leave their house unattended while they're out.
 
I've said it before and I'll say it again:

Why are people so fucking stupid?
We decided to engineer default safety standards into everything allowing the stupid to survive longer than is useful.

We never that these idiots around when you could put your baby on the dashboard for the drive home whilst downing a fifth of bourbon.
 
Top