by Roryanne O'Rourke

Created on: October 27, 2010

Teaching Stranger Danger No Longer Enough

The recent murders of two little girls within the past few days, one in Florida and the other, in Missouri, prompted me to share my thoughts on this subject.

Nothing brought the subject of missing children to the attention of parents everywhere, like the case of Adam Walsh. Adam went missing on July 27, 1981, from a department store in Florida, and a little more than two weeks later, found murdered. On the day Adam went missing, he was only out of his mother's site for a mere seven minutes. She allowed Adam to stay with a group of children playing video games as he shopped a few aisles over. Security guards chased the boys for misbehaving and Adam followed the boys out of the store. Seven minutes was all the time a sex-offender needed to lure Adam away.

In the 1980's, authorities handled the case of a missing child differently than they do today. While exhausting theories of running away, hiding, and playing games to scare parents, authorities made parents wait before the real search got underway.

After Adam's case gained national attention, authorities began following different procedures when receiving reports of missing children. Adam's father, John Walsh, is responsible for co-founding the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in 1984. In the last twenty-five years since the organization began, changes in ways authorities treat cases of missing children have saved countless lives. The center also gives advice to parents on keeping their children safe.

Parents teach their children not to talk to strangers. They inform them of what to do if approached by people on the street, in the playground, even in the schoolyard. They tell their children to let them know if someone makes them feel uneasy. 

In recent years, parents started to explain to their children that people they know could be dangerous as well. Families put strategies in place that every member understood in case of an emergency. Children know what to do if they are lost, they know where to go for help, and parents equip their children with contact information of people they know and trust.

Adults even give children specific instructions for what to do if something happens, such as running in the opposite direction if a car stops and offers them a ride. Parents tell their children to run to the nearest home of a friend. They even go as far as taking their children to self-defense classes, but is all of this enough to keep the children

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