So, I stayed up most of last night to read most of this book. I did skip around a little.
Of all the things I do worry about, the kids are (shockingly) not high up on that list because-they are with me or I know where they are or they are on our property somewhere. I won't let the ride bikes on the main road, though Matt used to ride his all the way to the fireworks stand some 7 miles away. My reasons are: people drive like maniacs on that road and there are 2 blind spots, a hill and a curve. If it was just fast driving, that's one thing, but these are fast drivers who are on the phone or playing music up so loud they can't hear a siren behind them-they are not looking out for my kids. Kids don't ride bikes on the road anymore, no one is used to watching out for them even if they are actually just driving their cars.
The second reason is that there is no leash law out here, there is a nice dead-end road just down from here that makes for a 5-mile bike ride and every time we try it, there are dogs that rush out and bark and snap, there are dogs that chase us, there are dogs that are chained, but look ready to rip off a leg if they could just get loose. And they do get loose sometimes, or let off the chain. Matt has turned around and come back without doing the whole route because of dogs rushing out and snapping at his feet. This is the road, when you google my county and 'drugs', you get a list of addresses along that one route of meth busts.
I spent a while thinking about if that was legitimate concern or not-obviously the dogs are, but the road-it's 2 lanes wide with a decent grassy ditch on both sides...I think what I will do is let them ride down the gravel road and out the other end and down the paved road to the stop sign there and turn around. That way, they miss the hill and curve that are on our end of things, and they are not yet to the dogs. That's a mile. They could ride to Mr. Holmes-that's 5 miles...there's a really steep hill, but they can walk that. Hmmmm...there are no dogs that route.
The book talked about abductions and murders, how often they happen-which is less than 1%:
"It would take 200,000 years. And then you'd get them back within 24 hours. If you wanted them to be taken for longer you'd need to hang about for around 600,000 years. Because in any one year the average child stands a 0.0005 per cent chance of being abducted by a stranger and a 0.00016 chance of not being recovered alive within 24 hours"
The US population is larger, but the per capita numbers for kidnappings are about the same. It would take approx. 750,000 years for a child left outside, unattended.
Any child that is killed is a horrible tragedy. But when the numbers are about 50 kids in a country of 300 million, it’s also a very random, rare event. It is far more rare, for instance, than dying from a fall off the bed or other furniture.
Car accidents continue to be the number one killer of children, and I am not going to stay home.
I don't worry about the kids getting abducted from the yard, I let Jake go to the bathroom by himself by the time he was 4, getting dirty looks at the playground for it, too. I do worry about them at the big public library, but not at skate day or Disney World. I was worried about the big trip last year-until we were on it. LOL It's been interesting to weigh in my own feelings for each topic, I can see where I do still have issues and I also see where a good talk with the kids would 'fix' some of my concerns, maybe make life together away from home a little more enjoyable.
