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I'll freely admit that I probably misread your intent, as I half suspected. If all your goals in this situation had your kid's well being in mind, then I misun

I'll freely admit that I probably misread your intent, as I half suspected. If all your goals in this situation had your kid's well being in mind, then I misunderstood you and I apologize for that. From your wording (specially the "engineer the situation" bit) it sounded to me like you behaved differently in those situations because other adults were around. The assumption I made was that you did so to teach them a lesson, so to speak. If your method towards overseeing your child is the same whether there were other adults around or not, then I obviously misunderstood you and I apologize for that. I originally understood "engineer the situation" as "provoke a misunderstanding - where none would have taken place otherwise - with the goal of making other adults uncomfortable and so they may understand their mistaken view". It seems obvious now that this was the wrong reading, but would mind explaining further what you meant by "engineering the situation"? [EDIT] I have one other question: > Our son, per instructions, refused to give his last name. May I ask why? If my son got lost, or needed to ask for help from other adults, or was caught in an emergency situation at school, I would want them to be armed with as much information as possible in order to enable an adult to contact me as soon as possible.

Diederich 10y ago
Sure, no worries. Text is a very sub-optimal medium to transmit the intent behind potentially emotionally charged questions. To be clear, we certainly were behaving differently because there were adults around. We were worried that they might over-react, and so preemptively guard against such entanglements. The 'engineering' was pretty simple: 1. Instruct our son to not release any information that someone could use to file a complaint against us. Specifically, last name, address or phone number. There are, of course, other good reasons to not release such data! 2. This would force someone who wanted to take official action to call 911, or otherwise contact the police. A non-911 police contact would not pose much of a problem since they lacked any contact information. 3. This would serve to give them pause: is this situation really an emergency? Of course it's not! But the final point was... 4. Make sure our son had a functional cell phone, make sure he would be able to call us at need. So if the police were summoned, or the adult pushed him too hard, he'd call us. We live 5 minutes away, so we'd be there right away. I'm not sure this is 'engineering' per se, but in my brain mental steps felt similar to the engineering I do in my profession.
- ghurtado 10y ago
  Thanks for the explanation. > other good reasons to not release such data! What other good reasons? I can't find any outside of thinking that some adult intends to kidnap your child, which could be in gross contradiction with the impression I got earlier from you as a "laissez faire" rationalist type parent. Surely you are aware that the possibility of your kid being kidnapped or hurt by a stranger is infinitesimally smaller than the possibility of them getting hurt by enviromental factors while unsupervised (drowning / sudden seizure / previously undeteced allergy / wild animals... basically any non-human factor). I'd appreciate if you could explain this. Could I ask you a hypothetical? (based on a real life experience of myself) Imagine you are hanging out in your yard with friends at 9PM, when suddenly a shoeless, 3 year old girl you don't recognize appears out of nowhere. Upon asking her name, you only receive her first name. She seems barely able to communicate and you aren't able to get clear information about who she is or where her parents are after a few questions. What would you do? - Send her away without a second thought - Keep her in your house until someone shows up claiming her - Stop what you are doing and focus on helping her find her parents (although its not clear whether she's lost or not) - Call 911 - Call child protection services I will gladly share with you what I did :)
  - linkregister 10y ago
    I'm not Diederich but I'll deconstruct your hypothetical in order to contrast it with her/his example. * 9pm. Late, approaching curfew for children in many municipalities. * 3-year-old. I have yet to meet a 3-year-old who can handle being free-range. * Your yard. This is your neighborhood and you don't recognize this child. This is vastly different from being at a public playground where there are many unfamiliar children. * Trouble communicating. A typical 3-year-old should be able to communicate. If not, she most likely can't handle being alone. * Shoeless. I'm not sure this is relevant unless weather conditions are austere or your neighborhood contains broken glass. The cumulative of these elements leads to an out-of-the-ordinary situation. It implies neglect. A search for the parents or if you're too busy, a phone call to police non-emergency is probably the appropriate response.
  - Diederich 10y ago
rocqua 10y ago
I read it as him 'engineering' the situation to avoid over concerned parents from calling the cops / calling CPS / freaking out the child by telling him this is dangerous.
natosaichek 10y ago
I can't answer for the above poster, but I can say I would much rather my kid call me than tell a stranger his/her last name. Kids are much more manipulable than adults, and giving out identity information might be dangerous. I'd instruct my kid to call me if another adult insists on identification. I think this is age-dependent. If I trust my kid with a cell phone, then this is reasonable. If the kid is too young, and it's a school incident or something, then sure, it's reasonable to tell a teacher or school administrator your last name. Some rando in the park, though? No.
- ghurtado 10y ago
  > Some rando in the park, though? No. Why not? What's the fear here?

Diederich 10y ago

Sure, no worries. Text is a very sub-optimal medium to transmit the intent behind potentially emotionally charged questions. To be clear, we certainly were behaving differently because there were adults around. We were worried that they might over-react, and so preemptively guard against such entanglements. The 'engineering' was pretty simple: 1. Instruct our son to not release any information that someone could use to file a complaint against us. Specifically, last name, address or phone number. There are, of course, other good reasons to not release such data! 2. This would force someone who wanted to take official action to call 911, or otherwise contact the police. A non-911 police contact would not pose much of a problem since they lacked any contact information. 3. This would serve to give them pause: is this situation really an emergency? Of course it's not! But the final point was... 4. Make sure our son had a functional cell phone, make sure he would be able to call us at need. So if the police were summoned, or the adult pushed him too hard, he'd call us. We live 5 minutes away, so we'd be there right away. I'm not sure this is 'engineering' per se, but in my brain mental steps felt similar to the engineering I do in my profession.

ghurtado 10y ago
Thanks for the explanation. > other good reasons to not release such data! What other good reasons? I can't find any outside of thinking that some adult intends to kidnap your child, which could be in gross contradiction with the impression I got earlier from you as a "laissez faire" rationalist type parent. Surely you are aware that the possibility of your kid being kidnapped or hurt by a stranger is infinitesimally smaller than the possibility of them getting hurt by enviromental factors while unsupervised (drowning / sudden seizure / previously undeteced allergy / wild animals... basically any non-human factor). I'd appreciate if you could explain this. Could I ask you a hypothetical? (based on a real life experience of myself) Imagine you are hanging out in your yard with friends at 9PM, when suddenly a shoeless, 3 year old girl you don't recognize appears out of nowhere. Upon asking her name, you only receive her first name. She seems barely able to communicate and you aren't able to get clear information about who she is or where her parents are after a few questions. What would you do? - Send her away without a second thought - Keep her in your house until someone shows up claiming her - Stop what you are doing and focus on helping her find her parents (although its not clear whether she's lost or not) - Call 911 - Call child protection services I will gladly share with you what I did :)
- linkregister 10y ago
  I'm not Diederich but I'll deconstruct your hypothetical in order to contrast it with her/his example. * 9pm. Late, approaching curfew for children in many municipalities. * 3-year-old. I have yet to meet a 3-year-old who can handle being free-range. * Your yard. This is your neighborhood and you don't recognize this child. This is vastly different from being at a public playground where there are many unfamiliar children. * Trouble communicating. A typical 3-year-old should be able to communicate. If not, she most likely can't handle being alone. * Shoeless. I'm not sure this is relevant unless weather conditions are austere or your neighborhood contains broken glass. The cumulative of these elements leads to an out-of-the-ordinary situation. It implies neglect. A search for the parents or if you're too busy, a phone call to police non-emergency is probably the appropriate response.
- Diederich 10y ago

rocqua 10y ago

I read it as him 'engineering' the situation to avoid over concerned parents from calling the cops / calling CPS / freaking out the child by telling him this is dangerous.

natosaichek 10y ago

I can't answer for the above poster, but I can say I would much rather my kid call me than tell a stranger his/her last name. Kids are much more manipulable than adults, and giving out identity information might be dangerous. I'd instruct my kid to call me if another adult insists on identification. I think this is age-dependent. If I trust my kid with a cell phone, then this is reasonable. If the kid is too young, and it's a school incident or something, then sure, it's reasonable to tell a teacher or school administrator your last name. Some rando in the park, though? No.

ghurtado 10y ago
> Some rando in the park, though? No. Why not? What's the fear here?