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My kids are 14 1/2. There comes a time when you cannot hover over them like a London fog. In this instance, the bus stop is now within sight-it wasn't before. I'm still what I would consider over-protective-I don't allow them to walk to the shopping center 5 blocks away and my daughter, if she is walking to the library, must do it with friends, not alone.
Myself as a child, I walked to school a half mile away from first to seventh grade; 8th grade was a bus, 2 blocks from home and every morning some creepy guy in an old Fairlane would cruise by very slowly, staring at us...
As MM said, many if not the majority, of child molesters, know their victims. Megan Kanka was killed by a neighbor with the ploy of getting her to come see his new puppy. A boy in Jackson, NJ was sodomized, killed and stuffed in a suitcase by a 16 year old neighbor when he went to the house selling magazines for school; a girl in Florida was killed by a friend of the family-she was seen on a video walking with him; a NJ teenager was killed by her best friend's stepfather after he offered her a ride home and she refused his 'advances'.
Were all these parents negligent? I truly doubt it. I don't want 'dumb and happy' kids, so they know the 'rules', they know the possibility of dangers; even when little(before kindergarten), I'd sit down, play with them and play-act dangers using their Little Tikes doll house(ok, that sounds strange, but I did). Watching over them is not enough; some things need to be drilled into them as well so that, when those moments of independence come, they come with knowledge.
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Don't blame me. I didn't vote for either of'em.
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