The only time welcoming strangers is portrayed as a good idea is in the Bible.
That’s why we’re always telling kids about stranger danger.
News Channel WCNC Charlotte decided to run an experiment on three children to see how they would react to a stranger at their door.
The experiment came about when Megan Lashua says her kids answered the door when she was at work and her husband was upstairs taking care of their younger child.
“I almost started crying. I thought someone could have taken my kids. It was absolutely terrifying,” Megan Lashua said. “They had opened the door, answered it, and had a conversation with whoever this person was.”
The news article doesn’t say who the person at their door was or what they wanted, but thankfully this seemingly wasn’t a harmful stranger and her kids were fine.
Still, Lashua was fearful of the incident. It isn’t known if she called the police but instead shared her fears about the incident with other mothers online asking them for their advice.
The truth is the actual danger of a stranger coming to your door to abduct your child is incredibly rare.
“There are persistent myths surrounding so-called ‘Stranger Danger’ – the idea that children should be wary of all unknown persons,” Child Lures Prevention says.
Most children who are kidnapped are kidnapped by family members. About 100 to 150 children each year are abducted by strangers.
“The fact is, stranger does NOT necessarily equal danger. This is also true when kids are using technology. Since over 90% of child sexual abuse is committed by someone known to the child and their family, advising children, ‘Don’t talk to strangers’ could actually put them at greater risk,” Child Lures Prevention website states.
This is because fear of strangers could prevent a child from seeking help when they are in an emergency from a trustworthy stranger like a police officer, a store clerk, or a mother with children.
While there are instances where children are abducted and abused, these situations are likely to take place when young people are targeted on the internet or are lured into the sex industry.
Callahan Walsh, a child advocate at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children says parents need to rethink stranger danger in terms of different situations.
He says children should be taught to look for red flags like if they are approached by someone who asks for help and says something like “help me look for a puppy.”
They should be taught to always say no in a case where an adult approaches them.
“We want parents to re-think ‘stranger danger’ because we’ve been able to do the analysis of these attempted abductions for over a decade. We know there are certain trends, how kids are being abducted, when they’re being abducted and ‘stranger danger’ just doesn’t fit that model,” Walsh said.
News Channel WCNC ran an experiment on three children whose parents agreed to see how they would respond to good strangers and bad strangers.
The experiment revealed several vulnerabilities and that children are all too likely to let a stranger in their home or advise them that their parents aren’t home.
They got a man to knock on the door and see if the children inside would let him in. The moms were waiting nearby. The first mom acknowledged that her family felt safe living in their cul-de-sac and that her kids would probably open the door, which they did.
The 8-year-old at the second house waited for her 9-year-old brother to open the door but they ultimately let the stranger in.
The little boy at the third house wouldn’t let the man inside but he did tell him that his parents weren’t home, which is also something children should never do.
His mom later assured him that it was OK for him to say “no” to grownups. Experts agree that it’s important to repeatedly talk to your children about safety and to remind them how to safely interact with strangers.
Watch the video below to see the entire experiment unfold! How do you think your kids would react in the same situation?
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