When Fear Goes Viral: Panic should never replace instinct
Would you call the cops if you saw this guy on the playground, alone? Answer carefully -- that's my dad!
In my last post, I answered a question from a reader who wanted to know how we could, as parents, quit being an overprotective helicopter parent (which I espouse! Land that ‘copter, please!), but still keep our kids safe from ever-present danger. My answer was that danger may be ever-present, but not the kind of danger we’re all so afraid of. Life, as in being human, is and always has been dangerous. You could get eaten by a saber toothed tiger, right? Or slip in the bathtub. But there’s close to zero chance that your child is going to be grabbed off the playground by a random pedophile, or that if your four-year-old answers the door to the UPS guy, that the delivery person will just suddenly decide to snatch him. That would mean that all non-supervised playground time is inherently dangerous, or that a child can never, ever answer the door.
And what about that guy who’s standing sorta near the soccer field, watching? That older dude in the golf-club hat? Should we whip out our iPhone, take a surreptitious picture, call the cops, and spread the word that the local soccer field has a lurking possible pedophile?
No, because that’s my dad. Seriously, it is my dad. No one called the cops that time my dad spent the bulk of one of my sons’ games last fall hanging around near the goal, but they might have. After all, he was unfamiliar to most of the parents, and he didn’t seem attached to any particular family. He was standing there, rather than sitting with my mom and me, because he likes to stand after sitting in the car for the 45 minutes it takes to drive to my town, and because he could see my son’s signature slide-kick better from that vantage point. But I did wonder if anyone, well, wondered.
I bring this up because there’s a wonderful essay, published in the On Parenting blog on Washington Post online today that was excellent because it made me think about this issue — who’s scary, what’s scary, and how do we decide? — in a slightly new way. I also took note because the story the writer, Janice D’Arcy, mentions — about a so-called threat about an unidentified man hanging around playgrounds that went viral — began in a Washington, D.C. park, and we are heading to DC this weekend for a family visit (say a little prayer for me for good weather and no traffic, okay?).
It seems someone saw a man sitting on a park bench, near a playground, drinking coffee. Far as anyone could can tell, he didn’t approach any kids, but the fuzzy iPhone photos began zipping around the Internet, and the police got involved.
But here’s what happens when you receive a viral email that insists you should be wary, that you should be looking for a “creepy” character in the park, that you should pass along this email to your friends, that you have to shadow your child as he plays: You start to feel something like peer-pressure to panic. What if you don’t properly panic? What if you blow it off? You’re not as good a parent, right? So you dutifully panic.
Another thing that happens, when fear goes viral, is that you’re operating without any realistic perspective on the story. Say your best friend tells you that she saw a guy on the playground more than once and she wasn’t sure who he was or what he was doing there. You could then take that information for what it was worth to you. You could take your friend’s personality into account. Is she the kind who always seems suspicious? Then you might take her warning with a grain of salt. Or is she someone who lets her kids go to the park solo and never talks about stranger danger? In that case you might feel your warning antenna tingle.
But when it’s an email? Worded in that way designed to incite panic? You have zero frame of reference.
As D’Arcy writes:
No longer are hunches spread among friends.They are spread online. This has benefits as warnings can head off real danger, which this person may possibly pose. But unverified information and unjustified fear can also go viral.
If it’s someone else’s hunch, how can we determine if we should dismiss it or embrace it?
Someone else’s hunch. That leaves out one very major thing: Your instinct! You have it, or you should. I’d argue that taking those notes and viral emails and stories on Fox News and CNN as articles of faith is stripping us of our instincts.
Listen, I take those letters I get from my kids’ school district (“two girls from Stimson School reported seeing a suspicious white van slowing down near the bus stop at X Street and K Lane…”) and toss them in the recycling. Because I’d rather teach my children how to judge the relative danger of any particular situation, give them internal fortitude and smarts and a well-honed tingle-antenna, than tell them about any specific white van to look for, or guy in a golf-club hat.
What do you think?
May 25, 2012 @ 4:08 pm
Yes, yes, yes – love your parting comments (and your post, and your blog). We teach our kids how to judge and navigate so many things, and that should include relative danger. Recently in my community, a strange man pulled up alongside a 5th grade boy biking home from school and said that the boy’s mom sent the man to pick up the boy. And they boy says, “Fine. What’s our family password?” When the man stammered, the boy rode away. He was prepared. He used his instincts and followed a family plan of what to do if…. I applaud his parents for letting him ride his bike home after school and setting a plan of what to do. I applaud the young man for his level headed thinking. It was a good lesson for all of us – not to panic – but to have level-headed conversations with our kids about how to judge a similar situation. Thanks for your blog!
May 25, 2012 @ 4:15 pm
Lori,
Hi, thanks for commenting! I think that’s what’s always bugged me about overprotecting with the aim of trying to erase all danger — it’s impossible, for one thing; but it also leaves out a huge aspect of growing kids up, which is teaching them how to assess danger to begin with. I LOVE that story about the boy with the family password! Note to self: institute family password!
Denise
May 25, 2012 @ 9:39 pm
I just had to share a recent experience of mine. We are trying to give our children more and more responsibility. The other day my kids and I walked to the grocery store and on the way home my son (9 years old) started walking ahead. It was interesting to me that my daughter kept asking him to wait for us, not to go off by himself. (We had just spent two weeks at grandma’s and she sounded just like my mom.) Finally, I said, he’s old enough to walk home by himself. I mean it was hardly a huge deal, we were about two blocks behind him and he was within eyesight!
As he reached the busiest corner, he stopped and looked in all directions. Two drivers stopped and motioned him to cross. There was a car poised to turn left (but didn’t have the blinker on) and I guess she thought the cars had stopped for her. She started to turn…I started to panic. I could see he was going to be hit!!! He screamed and ran out of the way. She heard the scream before she ever saw him, but slammed on her brakes anyway. There was all kinds of commotion on the corner as I approached. It dawned on me that even if I had been right there I don’t think I could have prevented it…not that anything happened anyway. So I could be all paranoid and never let him out of my sight or I could do what I did the next day which was to let him ride his bike to the store. When he came home he said, “You know that busy corner? I just waited until there were absolutely no cars coming in ANY direction before I crossed it.” After reading the comment above, we also have a password:)
May 26, 2012 @ 7:15 am
I know this really wouldn’t have prevented your situation because the driver wasn’t signaling but I thought I would share a rule I had when my kids were young. I told them that when an adult signals them to cross a street that they should still take the responsibility to make sure it’s safe and not just believe the adult even if it’s a crossing guard. Somehow I felt safer knowing that my kids were paying attention as well.
May 26, 2012 @ 12:39 am
Trusting your instinct is a good thing. I did that when my younger neighbor, with a girl the same age as mine, started letting college age guys and gals hang around at all hours. Right away, when I went over to get my daughter home for dinner, I noticed that the adults were not modulating their content or language based on the fact that there were young kids around (age 8.) So I wouldn’t let my daughter play in the house when guests were there – they had to play outside, or over at my house. I wouldn’t let my daughter do sleep overs. The college guys and gals would show up at any hour, including 3 a.m. and sleep all over the house, including on the floor and in the little girl’s room. I told the mom the only one in the girl’s room at night, should be the mom. But no, I was “sheltering” my daughter. Because I wanted her to keep her childlike ways and not be exposed to content beyond her years. Not, that I blamed the students or the mother, they were age appropriate (but not considerate.)
We have since moved to another state. Through another friend, a couple days ago, I found out that the little girl next door had been molested by one of those college “friends.” My heart goes out to her, but I am so glad that I trusted my instinct and didn’t bow to the pressure of the other mom to have my daughter over there.
I know this sounds like I am a helicopter parent. I am not. There are many other friends that my kids have that I would feel fine in saying that if I was dying tomorrow, that they could care for my kids. They are not helicopter either, just age appropriate. My kids can stay the night, even go skinny dipping, and I wouldn’t bat an eyelash. Just, with this mom who used to live next door, it was different. Many people, in and out, lots of people I didn’t know in charge of the little girl when mom was out. It is hard to explain, but, it just didn’t work for me.
It was MY hunch though, not something based on other people. Some people noted the young people going in and out, and warned me to be careful. Others felt it was all fine. I am glad I went with my hunch. The people we know are more likely to abuse our kids than the ones we don’t know. Like the grandfather watching the soccer game. Zero concern for that from me.
May 26, 2012 @ 7:21 am
I know just how you feel because it sounds so much like something I would do. I am one of the few parents that let my grade school kids go out on their own sometimes but I would be very careful about situations like you described. One of the reasons is that I’ve read that many of these sorts of crimes are committed by people we know and many times even relatives. Also, I find it surprising that now that my kids are teenagers, many of the same parents that were worried about things like stranger danger are buying their kids cars and letting them drive around as groups. I think these two things are much more dangerous. I know of several kids that have been killed in car accidents but not one who was abducted.
May 29, 2012 @ 12:38 am
Here’s a link to a similar story:
http://www.askmoxie.org/2012/05/rehearsing-for-bad-situations.html
In this situation the man actually touched the woman’s daughter. Gavin De Becker’s book “Protecting the Gift: Keeping Children and Teenagers Safe (and Parents Sane)” gives real data concerning pedophiles, abductions and what you can do as a parent to make your children forewarned without frightening them.
May 29, 2012 @ 2:12 pm
I completely agree, though I have an almost two year old, so we haven’t really gotten to the “stranger danger” lesson. (But we’ll be instituting a family password!) However, (and this is a bit of a tangent to teaching instinct) I was reading an article in a parenting magazine about teaching your children how to react if they were lost/separated from you. The article said that if they were lost in a store, they should look for a person wearing a store nametag (good advice), or look for “a lady or a lady with kids.” That last part angered me, because not all “ladies” are nice and while statistically, more pedophiles are men than women, that doesn’t mean that every man is a pedophile/child molester/kidnapper who should be avoided.
May 29, 2012 @ 2:44 pm
Julia, thanks. I agree — that sort of blanket statement, that “all” women and/or women with children are safe, meaning everyone else is NOT, is a big issue with me. I admit when I have told my boys what to do if they get separated from me, I am confused about what to say. I want to get across to them that they are actually NOT in danger so much as they are temporarily separated from me or their dad. I tell them that the vast majority of those around them are nice and want to help, so they should feel free to talk to just about anyone. At a place like a mall that’s easier; I tell them to just go in any store and go up to the counter to talk to someone who works there — and my emphasis there is to let them know that this person has access to the security people by phone, which is a quicker way to get the message to me that someone has my boy safe than it would be if my son, say, approached a random mom with a stroller in the middle of Macy’s. The idea is to give kids tools for what to do if they get lost, without instilling fear that the minute they’re lost, they might be snatched by a predator!
Denise
June 11, 2012 @ 7:14 pm
This blog post, plus part of the very sane response by Lori K., above, appeared in this story in Time.com today — very cool!
http://healthland.time.com/2012/06/11/stranger-danger-are-parents-too-paranoid-about-safety/
Denise
June 18, 2012 @ 11:27 pm
And speaking of Things That Are Frightening Children, have you seen this blog (http://storify.com/jennycolgan/terrifying-french-children-s-books) that explores the apparent French penchant for terrifying their little ones through literature?
Your point about the perspective that is lost when “news” spreads via email – and when so-called news outlets treat such sensationalized stories – is well taken… I’d argue that the infection has spread beyond parenting and into politics, but I guess that’s another blog.