Teach the Children: Your Kids Need to Know What Dangers Threaten Them Everyday

As a single mother, I chose to stay in the Midwest for the homespun flavor, Americana style living - with all the old-fashioned flavor and carefree living that it implies - and it really did and does exist! It was the safest place I could afford to raise my children.

I also went there for the lower crime statistics of rural communities and small cities compared to Chicago that I had left. I had recently been attacked at knife point just five feet from my own door - with my infant daughter sleeping in her cradle upstairs and I couldn't get inside to her before I was slammed against the brick of my building with a knife across my throat.

So, my children were taught - deliberately and systematically, even overwhelmingly, to be cautious in public. To be aware of what was happening around them. When they were little, we made a game of it. A memory kind of a game - like Concentration. We weren't looking for or naming scary stuff - we were noting color of clothing, counting people, eyeballing the size of dogs, or the closeness of trees or buildings … you get the picture.

My rules about never being out alone were strict - very strict - but, because of their heritage, there was always the overwhelming FACT (not fear) that they would be kidnapped by their father and taken to the Middle East and ... we all know well how those stories don't end.

So - we, in a way, faced a similar "fear" to that fear which now grips many, many parents across this nation. For many it is a new fear - a strange fear - a fear based on headlines and news reports - a fear they have never felt - but a valid fear. Our children DO need to be taught how to deal with these fears and with the evils and dangers of THIS DAY.

I have not researched statistics - and I find it very difficult to compare the present days to those of the historical past as it relates to injury and death to children - the causes are so diverse. But - I can walk out my front door and see in grotesque and vivid display all the things that threaten the rising generation - especially those being raised in big cities and even in dear, old Indianapolis!

I pray that the parents raising children in this world - know how to teach their children to remain safe. I am sure that our pioneer mothers gave stern warnings and teachings about what could and should be done to stave off tragedy. And, for the most part, they were probably successful. The numbers of childhood deaths not related to illness, I would guess, would probably be similar to the published and unpublished statistics of our day. It is necessary to teach our children to be alert, to be cognizant of everything around them ... the good, the bad and the ugly.

When I was in 6th grade I was in the park, next to my grade school - in the early morning before school started. I went to a special school many miles from my home. The parents of one of the boys (from my neighborhood and school) drove us that day - early - so he could attend Glee Club. I didn't belong to Glee Club - so I went to the park where the playground equipment was to wait for the bus with my friends to arrive.

I had not been there very long when an older boy, probably from the high school, approached me. He sent me into the restroom, after pleading with great intensity, asking that I fetch his little sister "because she won't come out when I call".

There was NO little sister …

There was no one else in the park;

Except for the boy who followed me into the empty restroom...

Even though I'd been told not to go to the park before school, no one ever told me why. And I was too sheltered and too naive to figure it out on my own. Someone should have been forthright and descriptive with me so that I could recognize danger when I faced it alone.

To everyone raising kids now: Yours is an increasingly wicked world through which you must lead and guide your children ... use it to teach from. Don't be timid with the details.