Stranger Danger

So yesterday while sitting in the school line waiting to pick up my boys, my husband and I got into a discussion. These days instead of pulling up to a school and the children being dismissed and running out to find their parents car, children are dismissed a couple at a time to parents who are stuck waiting in a line for almost an hour moving slowly. So why this ridiculous measure? Because to keep children safe we must not allow them any freedom at all!! Let me tell you what's wrong with this picture.

Every 40 seconds in the USA a child is kidnapped. That's right, in the time you've been reading this a child has been kidnapped. Sad right? Well we haven't even gotten to the sad part yet, but we will. One in every 10,000 children kidnapped will die.

So you ask, "Why would you have a problem with protecting our children as much as possible in light of these statistics?" and to that I tell you we are protecting them from the wrong people.

Out of all the children kidnapped only 1.4% are kidnapped by a stranger. Let me make sure you read correct, that's ONE POINT FOUR PERCENT. See this is my point. 98.6% of children kidnapped are kidnapped either by a relative or family friend NOT STRANGERS!

Every year approximately 800,000 children will be kidnapped. Out of that only a little over 11,000 will be taken by strangers.
Each year there are 6 million reports of child abuse. Out of all the children sexually abused, over 90% are by someone they know.

So are we really doing anything to help our children by teaching them stranger danger? Are we hurting them by not teaching them to we aware of their own family and friends? It seems we put a whole lot of effort into the wrong cause.