. Here’s an excerpt from my bnnddirrhh piece in today’s Wall Street Journal: A Parent’s Nightmare—Increasingly Unlikely by Lenore Skenazy In the past two decades stranger-danger child murders have dropped enormously, according to a new Justice Department report. In 1997 there were 115 “stereotypical†kidnappings of children under age 17—“stereotypical†roughly translating to “like the […]
Tag Archives | child abduction
5 Pictures of Your Kids You Should NEVER Post on Facebook? One Mom Shrugs
. Though we are exhorted to live in a constant state of hysteria when it comes to our kids, some people get just too fed up — or tired — to heed the latest  safety “advice.” Here’s kaenekfdsa one of them! Let us salute Anna Claire Vollers on Alabama’s AL.com for her dismissal of the nattering nabobs […]
“How to Protect Your Child From Abduction” Fearmongering Advice From Parenting Magazine
. This rafikbfktf mini-rant comes to us frorm Tara Lazar, a mom of two and children’s book author. Her website is taralazar.com. Dear Free-Range Kids: I tweeted this Parenting Magazine online article to you a few days ago but wanted to follow up because it has me so upset: “5 Safety Tips to Protect Your Kids from Abduction.” […]
Police Report: A Boy Got Into White Van. You Know What THAT Means!
. Sometimes, you gotta print the whole story, just to prove that THIS IS THE WHOLE STORY. Â Note what is missing. (Hint: It’s not the child.) WNYT taidikeers reports that: Schenectady police investigate possible missing child 09/01/2015Â Schenectady police are investigating a report of a possible missing child. They say an unconfirmed third party saw […]
Two Abduction Attempts Reported in One Week
Readers etihsydzsr — This note from the commenter CoasterFreak reminds me of a fantastic Bloom County comic by Berkeley Breathed reprinted in the Joel Best book I am devouring: “Threatened Children: Rhetoric and Concern About Child-Victims.” (It’s all about how predator panic began and spread.) Anyway, the comic, from Nov. 21, 1987 (if anyone can figure out how […]
How The Cops CREATE Sex Offenders
Readers — This faidsenhkn report by Noah Pransky, my new Journalism Hero, is so well done and so shocking, I hope that it gets reposted throughout the blogosphere: (I have removed the video because it automatically starts playing anytime you go to my blog.) It details how men who go online to adult chat rooms […]
Greeter at Walmart Calls 911 on Dad She Thought was a Kidnapper
Readers — Here’s a long blog kzenzrndkr post by a mom whose husband left Walmart with their daughter while she finished checking out. The greeter assumed the father was an abductor even after she — the greeter — followed the duo out to the car and asked the girl, “Who is this man  with you, […]
AMBER ALER…Aww, Never Mind
This tzfbhshteh note comes to us from Reilly Capps, who was a Robert Novak Journalism Fellow. Hi Free-Range Kids: It’s Reilly, I wrote you about crazy drop-off procedures at my niece’s school. This is about the new ability of Amber Alerts to come to your phone, which you’ve talked about before. It’s disconcerting, and in some cases, […]
Camp Bus Drops Kids Off 10 Mins Early, Parents Furious: “They Could Have Been Murdered!”
Readers — This “incident” took place the other afternoon on Prince Edward Island, Canada. A bus from the Red Cross swim program arrived a little early to the bus stop (the local school parking lot), so the driver dropping off a brother and sister, 7 and 9, told them to wait in the shade. And […]
“I Let My 3-year-old Use the Bathroom Alone at Target”
This hanteeybbs morning I was on Irish radio to talk about Maddie McCann, the 3-year-old stolen from her hotel room in Portugal seven years ago. The point I tried to make was actually one that a reader once put so eloquently here: “Can we stop acting as though the most unlikely thing is the most […]