“These worries that we have are so rare,” says Christie Barnes, mother of four and author of The Paranoid Parents Guide. “It’s like packing a snow shovel in case it snows in Las Vegas.” Based on surveys Barnes collected, the top five worries of parents are, in order:

  • Kidnapping
  • School snipers
  • Terrorists
  • Dangerous strangers
  • Drugs

But how do children really get hurt or killed?

  • Car accidents
  • Homicide (usually committed by a person who knows the child, not a stranger)
  • Abuse
  • Suicide
  • Drowning

Why such a big discrepancy between worries and reality? Barnes says parents fixate on rare events because they internalize horrific stories they hear on the news or from a friend without stopping to think about the odds the same thing could happen to their children.

link: 5 Worries Parents Should Drop, And 5 They Shouldn’t : Shots – Health News Blog : NPR

Honestly, I don’t think I have anything to add to this article. They hit the nail right on the head, parents are freaking out about shit that will probably never happen to their children.

In addition to the questionably safe items I did as a child, and mentioned yesterday, I spent most of my mouth wandering the streets of my home town until the street lights came on. There was no fear of being abducted or any absurd garbage of that nature, there was trust between my parents and me.

Get this, when I was in kindergarten, at the age of 5, I would walk from school to the bowling alley where my mother worked. Google says 1.1mi driving, but with the cut across we can drop maybe .2mi. And that was at 5!

Admittedly, I do not live in a large metropolitan area, but that doesn’t mean people around here are not afraid of the same things.

That is only addressing the one issue, stranger danger, but with the current thoughts most people in this country seem to have about terrorism, they almost seem to think that anyone with brown skin is one. Hell, just look at the fight over the community center they want to build close to ground zero. Guess what, folks, when you fight asinine shit like that, the terrorists have won, but I digress.

Parents, learn what is really dangerous for your kids, and stop thinking that Carlos the Jackal is going to bomb your kids school while a disgruntled white supremacist climbs the clock tower with his M40A3 and starts taking aim at the parking lot where the big van is parked while your kid is in the locker room shooting up heroin.