Mike ~
Thanks for answering ... I missed the bet I had with myself that your children were younger than that! Parenting isn't for cowards, and maybe that's more true these days than it ever has been before.
I absolutely agree with you when you say "watch your kids." I disagree with the second half of what you keep saying: "not the pedophile."
There are problems even with the first half of that equation. Even without getting into issues of giving the kids more freedom as they grow (which is a biggie, and why I asked how old your kids are) -- even without getting into that issue -- Do you have any
idea how many latchkey kids there are in America? How many kids are in daycare? How many are watched by friends or relatives while their parents work?
This is no slam on parents who work full-time to put food on the table; it's simply an observation. If the parents aren't home, they can't be watching the kids themselves. In order to work, parents have to trust
someone to watch the kid. Whom do you trust and what's the process you use to decide to extend trust to someone?
Which brings us to the second half of what you said, "not the pedophile." Excuse me, but I don't think it is either/or -- I think it is both/AND.
My 13-year old son is very industrious. He wants to be a pilot when he grows up. So he joined the Civil Air Patrol the day he was old enough to do that, and has worked his tail off all summer long mowing lawns and pulling weeds for other people. Here's what I've done to protect him:
1) When he joined CAP, I went to all the meetings and met all the senior members in our squadron. I asked about background checks, about CAP regulations safeguarding kids from abuse and senior members from false accusations, about the physical arrangements for overnight outings.
And then I talked to other parents in the squadron: were there any issues there? Did the kids
want to be there? Any rumors I should know about?
The answers to all my questions were absolutely reassuring. CAP requires background checks for all adults who spend time with the cadets; there are national regulations which, when followed, make it difficult for any adult to have private access to any of the kids; there were no rumors that I caught wind of.
2) But I didn't stop there. I sat my kid down and made sure he knew that his learning to fly was not going to depend on these people -- that they were only one of many ways he could get where he wanted to go. I don't want anyone having that kind of leverage over him, able to say, "You have to keep ____ secret because if you tell anyone, you will not reach your dream." So I gave him the tools to prevent that from building up, and we talked about what he could do to protect himself and the other kids.
3) Then I came home and checked our county RSO database. I wasn't expecting to find any of the senior members there (they've all cleared background checks); I was just making sure none of the faces looked familiar. After all, even people with clean checks can have relatives who don't check clean. The parents I'd talked to might have had issues themselves, or might have grown kids, brothers, uncles, cousins, who were offenders. They might not be the only offenders in the county, but so what? Even though they're not the only possible abusers, I still don't want known abusers anywhere near my child.
4) And then I sat my kid down and showed
him the county database, too. We looked at the faces together. I told him, "If you ever see any of these faces, whether at CAP or while you're mowing lawns or visiting friends or whatever,
I want to know." And he said, "You want me to call you? Or just tell you when I get home?"
Smart kid.
The thing is, as they grow they do move out into the larger world. Even when they are tiny you cannot have your physical eyes on them 24 hours a day (if you could, they wouldn't sell toddler gates or baby monitors or cabinet latches!). The bigger they get, the harder it is to watch them all the time, and the less wise it is to do things that way.
You have to let them grow.
So the question becomes, What kinds of things do parents need to do to keep their kids safe from other people? It is physically impossible to watch the kids yourself every hour of every day; you have to watch the environment around them too, and that includes RSOs.
Even if you live in the middle of nowhere (we do), there are always going to be other adults in your kids' lives. So it's good to be able to find out if those people have a history of child abuse. Of course, RSOs aren't the only threat to kids, but so what? They are
one threat. I should ignore one threat just because others exist? I don't think so.
One more thing. Because it
is physically impossible to watch kids twenty-four hours a day (remember those baby monitors?), I'm also going to be very, very unhappy if an RSO moves in next door. If one does, I'm going to be keeping a close eye on my kids ... AND on the predator.
pax