Where are kids safe?

Where are kids safe anymore, you may be asking yourselves after hearing the story of Jaycee Dugard resurfacing after being abducted for 18 years. I say kids today are safe playing in the front yard. Safe in our neighborhoods. Safe walking to and from the bus stop. To use Jaycee's story as proof that good parents should never let their children go anywhere alone - even the front yard -  is shortsighted. 

I mean, if you use that logic, then you have to consider the story about Yale graduate student Annie Le, whose body was found yesterday in the high security medical school building at her school. Then say to yourself, our kids aren't safe at Yale!!!

Thank goodness for people like Lenore Skenazy over at Free Range Kids. She may seem like the only voice shouting in the wind as a supporter of allowing our children to be raised with independence, but she's not alone. Many moms, like myself, support her ideas about raising free range kids. Helicopter parenting may be popular, but does it really make sense? Especially when you consider that a helicopter mom who drives her child to and from his bus stop, is actually putting her child more at risk in the car than he would be walking through the neighborhood. That's because in America, a child is 40 times more likely to be killed as a passenger in a car than by a kidnapper. 

Children who are raised to be independent are in turn more confident, better at problem-solving and are self aware. Which makes them safer. 

I'm just sayin'.