Sandra Paterson: Let's set our children free

A couple of weeks ago, I lost three children. A neighbour's two kids were in my care, playing with my daughter, and the three of them had asked if they could ride their bikes on the footpath.

"Yes," I said, as they ran out the door, "as long as you stay between the corner and the Lindsays' house," a distance of about 300m.

Half an hour later there was no sign of them, but I was not too concerned. We live in a friendly neighbourhood and my daughter knows all the residents in the surrounding 10 or so houses.

But after I had been to every nearby house and checked the school down the road and, as 20 minutes turned into 40, I began to fret.

Why didn't I make them stand still and listen while I explained the boundaries, I chided myself. Why didn't I remind them not to go anywhere else without telling me? Had I told my daughter often enough not to go anywhere with a stranger?

Predictably, of course, just as another neighbour was about to join the search, they turned up. Having tired of biking they had gone to play in a corner I had overlooked and were suitably sheepish when I told them what I thought of their irresponsible behaviour and how worried I had been.

Later, however, I got to thinking just how paranoid we parents have become. Really, what grounds did I have to be so anxious? One glance at the street told me there had not been an accident and how likely was it that anyone would abduct three children and three bikes all at once?

Somehow our fears have become divorced from reality. Police statistics on abduction for sexual purposes show that between zero and five children are taken every year, but that includes abductors known to the child.

Cases in which children are picked up and murdered by strangers are so rare we know the names by heart - Theresa Cormack, Karla Cardno, Kirsty Bentley, Kirsa Jensen ...

Most of them were in their early teens; in fact, as far as I can recall, only three children under 12 have been snatched and killed by a stranger in the past two decades. Yet despite the extremely low odds we are increasingly afraid for our young ones - a fear which is radically affecting the way we bring them up.

My daughter lives only a block away from where I was raised, but she has so much less freedom. Back then, in the early 1970s, we disappeared for hours, climbing trees and roaming the neighbourhood until our stomachs rumbled.

These days we tell our kids to tell us whenever they change locations, even if they are going just 15m from one house to the other, and we drive them to school because what do you bet there's some pervert out there just waiting to grab them?

The fear of paedophiles and murderers is only the beginning. We've become so paranoid about children's safety in general that we dig holes for the trampoline to sit in so no one gets hurt; most kids will never know what it feels like to bike along with the wind in their hair; and we do not let them cross the road by themselves until they're ... oh ... about 19.

Being careful is wise. But somehow we are removing every suggestion of risk from every element of our children's lives; and, as author and former prison warden Celia Lashlie said a few days ago, this pampered mollycoddling is having a negative effect.

She was talking specifically about boys but it applies also to girls: "If they are unable to take a risk such as tree-climbing and rough-and-tumble, they may look for the risk elsewhere drinking a bottle of bourbon, driving fast or trying drugs. Their world has become too sanitised."

Just how sanitised is evidenced by the announcement of "National Dirt is Good Day," taking place in a city near you on March 19. Unbelievable but true: a day when kids are officially encouraged to go play in mud and sand.

Okay, so it's a publicity gimmick by a laundry powder company, but their research shows that Kiwi kids spend an average of only 13 per cent of their free time playing outside.

We appear to be raising a generation of unfit and smothered but very clean battery-chicks.

I have never minded dirt, but I admit I am probably over-protective. So I have started consciously shutting my mouth when my daughter climbs on to the highest monkey bars and walks along, toes gripping the rails precariously; and this week when she asked to walk home from the petrol station around the corner, I said yes.

I am sorry that someone broke a bone on my trampoline three weeks ago - an adult - but I am not going to get rid of it or dig a hole for it to sit in. I may not even make my daughter wear a helmet when she bikes on the footpath just outside the house.

Bad things happen in life. And no doubt I would have regrets if something happened to my own flesh and blood and I had not been zealous about safety. But I am tired of worrying about it.

Many years ago I went to a blessing service for a baby girl and I remember her father talking about how parenthood made him feel vulnerable. "I could lose so much in a split second," he said, full of emotion, before adding a phrase I have often pondered since: "To love is to risk."

* Sandra Paterson is a Mt Maunganui freelance journalist.