Anonymous wrote:So to summarize, we live in a world where

1. Children should assume that all adults mean harm.
2. Adults who are worried about children should call 911 instead of approaching the children, because see #1.

There's something wrong here, and it's not two children walking home from the park.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So to summarize, we live in a world where

1. Children should assume that all adults mean harm.
2. Adults who are worried about children should call 911 instead of approaching the children, because see #1.

There's something wrong here, and it's not two children walking home from the park.

What they should do is not assume everyone means them well! As an adult I make that same assumption. Does not mean I am crazy paranoid or looking at everyone with the side eye, but I do not assume everyone is safe and on their rocker

Anonymous wrote:So to summarize, we live in a world where

1. Children should assume that all adults mean harm.
2. Adults who are worried about children should call 911 instead of approaching the children, because see #1.

There's something wrong here, and it's not two children walking home from the park.

Anonymous wrote:

Actually, if they had run home as quickly as possible, no one would be talking about this at all.

This gentleman was smart to not approach two children without an adult nearby and instead keep an eye out for their safety from a distance. He put their safety first while also avoiding the possibility of appearing to be a person of bad intent himself. It's a balancing act, and I think he handled it well.

Anonymous wrote:Let's not forget that the kids approached a stranger and asked to pet his dog. That illustrates their poor judgment and underscores that they aren't old enough to wander around by themselves. Just to be clear: they weren't playing at the park...they were wandering around for 20 mins.

Anonymous wrote:

+1. I'm the PP that made that comment, and I'm not saying that the fact that he was walking a dog is suspicious. (I have a dog! And walk it!). I'm not a helicopter parent at all (frankly, I can barely keep track of my own comings and goings, never mind the kids.) But the fact that someone is following you for 30 minutes is, at least, odd. When I am walking by myself, as a woman, that is EXACTLY the kind of thing that I am on alert for. If it looks like someone is following me, I cross the street and pretend to tie my shoelace. If the person is just walking in the same direction that I was, they will just keep on going and I breathe a sigh of relief. If the person stops to tie their shoelace or fiddle with their phone, I get to a safe place FAST. That's just personal safety 101 -- be aware of your surroundings and attentive to unusual behavior. I always tell my kid that if they see a person or a car that seems to be following them, get away from it immediately and if it persists in following you, start screaming bloody murder. If you let your kids "free range" and don't give them this sort of training, I do think that's pretty irresponsible.

Anonymous wrote:So to summarize, we live in a world where

1. Children should assume that all adults mean harm.
2. Adults who are worried about children should call 911 instead of approaching the children, because see #1.

There's something wrong here, and it's not two children walking home from the park.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:After listening to the 911 call, I'm less sanguine about the whole free range thing. There was an adult male following these kids for like 30 minutes and the kids didn't notice? That really freaks me out that my kids wouldn't notice if a predator was stalking them and waiting until they got into an area without good visibility. It seems to me that these kids were not as well prepared to protect themselves as their parents would have you believe.

He was a dude walking a dog. Why would they think he was a predator?

Most people walking dogs are not predators. Some predators do use animals as a lure to get close to children, so it is a good idea to be aware of this possibility when you don't know someone. Many predators have quite charming, appealing personalities in the presence of which both adults and children let down their guard.

+1. I'm the PP that made that comment, and I'm not saying that the fact that he was walking a dog is suspicious. (I have a dog! And walk it!). I'm not a helicopter parent at all (frankly, I can barely keep track of my own comings and goings, never mind the kids.) But the fact that someone is following you for 30 minutes is, at least, odd. When I am walking by myself, as a woman, that is EXACTLY the kind of thing that I am on alert for. If it looks like someone is following me, I cross the street and pretend to tie my shoelace. If the person is just walking in the same direction that I was, they will just keep on going and I breathe a sigh of relief. If the person stops to tie their shoelace or fiddle with their phone, I get to a safe place FAST. That's just personal safety 101 -- be aware of your surroundings and attentive to unusual behavior. I always tell my kid that if they see a person or a car that seems to be following them, get away from it immediately and if it persists in following you, start screaming bloody murder. If you let your kids "free range" and don't give them this sort of training, I do think that's pretty irresponsible.

Several people (including me) have mentioned that the helpful stranger basically stalked the kids for 20+ minutes before calling the cops on them. The kids may not have noticed him, may have been keeping an eye on him but not been alarmed enough to run off screaming bloody murder. If they had taken off screaming, that would absolutely have been evidence to the disapproving public that they're not ready to make this walk. These kids really have no way to win this one, besides the obvious, giving in to pressure and staying tied to their parents for the next several years.

Anonymous wrote:I'm sort of a partial free range parent -- I don't think what these parent did was child neglect, but I think all the people saying it's perfectly normal are a little delusional. I grew up in the '70s and there's no way my parents would let me walk around a commercial area with my 9 year old sister when I was 6. No way. You had to be within hollering distance. (Granted, my parents were loud, so hollering distance went a pretty good ways, but not like this.) My dad walked himself to school at that age in the 1930's through a neighborhood that was also not a residential one -- BUT he did it with a big German Shepard so that no one would bother him. (The German Shepard then walked himself home and returned in the afternoon for pickup. Nowadays, granted, that would get you a call to animal control.)
The fact that there are very few children attacked by strangers is in part a result of the fact that there are very few children left unattended around strangers nowadays. As some posters have pointed out, back when there were more unattended children, there were also a lot of creepy things that happened to kids -- but back then, before children were taught all the stuff about reporting anything suspicious, kids just didn't report it as much. (I have a family friend that was murdered as a teen because he went into someone's house that offered him a drink of water --- that's an extreme example and that obviously came to the attention of the authorities, but other posters have mentioned friends that they knew were molested when they were generally unsupervised and which was never reported.) Also, I think my parents were probably somewhat protective in the '70s because they were old enough to remember friends from the '30s and '40s that went out to play and never came home because they drowned in the local pond, got hit playing on railway tracks, etc.

And, I think that the world probably is more dangerous than it was decades ago, because: (1) fewer people are home during the day, so there's not a community of moms and grandparents standing out front watering their geraniums or ironing by the window; and (2) the internet really encourages perverts to think that they are normal, to act on their perversion, and coaches them on how not to get caught.

All that said, I give my kids a lot of freedom -- probably a lot more than most parents in the DC area. But we're kidding ourselves if we think that there aren't risks, and we don't assess those risks each time, and teach our kids how to minimize those risks. Given that the kids in this case were followed for 30 minutes by a strange man--and they did not, as a result, immediately call their parents and/or get themselves to a safe place like a Starbucks to wait -- I don't think they were appropriate trained to deal with the freedom they had been given.

Do I think CPS should take them away? No. (Just like CPS should not take away the kids of other parents that make choices that I think are kind of dumb.) Do I think the parents should reconsider their extreme approach? Yes.

And, I don't blame the guy for not going up to talk to them. As a mom, I would probably say something to them. But I don't blame a single guy for not saying anything. Even as a pretty non-threatening mom, when I speak to kids that aren't my own, even just to ask them if they're alright, the kids often look at me like I've just tried to mug them.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:After listening to the 911 call, I'm less sanguine about the whole free range thing. There was an adult male following these kids for like 30 minutes and the kids didn't notice? That really freaks me out that my kids wouldn't notice if a predator was stalking them and waiting until they got into an area without good visibility. It seems to me that these kids were not as well prepared to protect themselves as their parents would have you believe.

He was a dude walking a dog. Why would they think he was a predator?

Most people walking dogs are not predators. Some predators do use animals as a lure to get close to children, so it is a good idea to be aware of this possibility when you don't know someone. Many predators have quite charming, appealing personalities in the presence of which both adults and children let down their guard.

+1. I'm the PP that made that comment, and I'm not saying that the fact that he was walking a dog is suspicious. (I have a dog! And walk it!). I'm not a helicopter parent at all (frankly, I can barely keep track of my own comings and goings, never mind the kids.) But the fact that someone is following you for 30 minutes is, at least, odd. When I am walking by myself, as a woman, that is EXACTLY the kind of thing that I am on alert for. If it looks like someone is following me, I cross the street and pretend to tie my shoelace. If the person is just walking in the same direction that I was, they will just keep on going and I breathe a sigh of relief. If the person stops to tie their shoelace or fiddle with their phone, I get to a safe place FAST. That's just personal safety 101 -- be aware of your surroundings and attentive to unusual behavior. I always tell my kid that if they see a person or a car that seems to be following them, get away from it immediately and if it persists in following you, start screaming bloody murder. If you let your kids "free range" and don't give them this sort of training, I do think that's pretty irresponsible.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:After listening to the 911 call, I'm less sanguine about the whole free range thing. There was an adult male following these kids for like 30 minutes and the kids didn't notice? That really freaks me out that my kids wouldn't notice if a predator was stalking them and waiting until they got into an area without good visibility. It seems to me that these kids were not as well prepared to protect themselves as their parents would have you believe.

He was a dude walking a dog. Why would they think he was a predator?

Most people walking dogs are not predators. Some predators do use animals as a lure to get close to children, so it is a good idea to be aware of this possibility when you don't know someone. Many predators have quite charming, appealing personalities in the presence of which both adults and children let down their guard.