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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 be

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
  Hah, I'll take 'rationalist type' any day! And I don't mind laissez faire ("a policy or attitude of letting things take their own course, without interfering") much either. My example revolved around strangers because that was the general topic. Strangers in the form of meddling, hyper-protective adults. True blue 'stranger danger' is, as you say, extremely rare. Our son has almost always been very deliberate in action, especially with respect to his own safety. So, the only real situation we had to guard against was the possibility of other adults freaking out that he was alone at the age of 9. Regarding your hypothetical: as noted elsewhere, 3 years is very young. To be more illustrative, I'll disregard the specifics you mentioned, because our actual decision in such a situation would depend on so many more considerations. My general approach would be to ensure the child is safe while minimizing my own exposure to possible unforeseen repercussions. If the child was physically ok, I would tend toward relatively low-grade engagement. If she wandered off, I'd probably follow at a distance as long as needed. The guiding principle is minimal intervention/interference with a baseline of protecting the child from environmental/possible human dangers. If people arrived or she went toward people that posed a possible danger, than I would not hesitate to involve the authorities, because that is clearly moving toward an 'emergency' threshold. These are conceptual guidelines, which might all go out the window depending on the actual specifics of a situation as I saw it.

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
Hah, I'll take 'rationalist type' any day! And I don't mind laissez faire ("a policy or attitude of letting things take their own course, without interfering") much either. My example revolved around strangers because that was the general topic. Strangers in the form of meddling, hyper-protective adults. True blue 'stranger danger' is, as you say, extremely rare. Our son has almost always been very deliberate in action, especially with respect to his own safety. So, the only real situation we had to guard against was the possibility of other adults freaking out that he was alone at the age of 9. Regarding your hypothetical: as noted elsewhere, 3 years is very young. To be more illustrative, I'll disregard the specifics you mentioned, because our actual decision in such a situation would depend on so many more considerations. My general approach would be to ensure the child is safe while minimizing my own exposure to possible unforeseen repercussions. If the child was physically ok, I would tend toward relatively low-grade engagement. If she wandered off, I'd probably follow at a distance as long as needed. The guiding principle is minimal intervention/interference with a baseline of protecting the child from environmental/possible human dangers. If people arrived or she went toward people that posed a possible danger, than I would not hesitate to involve the authorities, because that is clearly moving toward an 'emergency' threshold. These are conceptual guidelines, which might all go out the window depending on the actual specifics of a situation as I saw it.