Ever since I first saw my child’s face, held it in my arms, placed it on my chest, fed it, another child’s face has been in front of my eyes for seven years. The boy that someone else’s aunt once came to kindergarten for at a quiet hour. He told the teacher that the mother was late for work, so the aunt was sent for the child. The teacher immediately woke the boy up. The boy obediently went out, dressed, took his aunt’s hand and went out with her into the street. The teacher wished both of them happy days and even gave him a cupcake for the trip while the boy missed his afternoon snack. So he left hand in hand with an aunt he didn’t know and a bun in his backpack.
I remember him for the rest of my life, because he was still me, and the boy’s mother stood in the corner and, so as not to burst into tears and not spoil the experiment, he put a handkerchief in his mouth – we decided to check how many children. that she would break up with a stranger and how many educators and teachers she would let go.
Of course, I knew that such checks are often arranged by psychologists, search volunteers, and even the police. But it’s one thing to know, it’s another to see her calm eyes when she puts her pen in the hands of an unfamiliar adult who will take her to a place where no one knows. Seeing the eyes of a teacher who casually picks up a boy who goes on a journey with an unknown person and gives him a bun for the journey. If I had children at the time, I would probably never have escaped the discovery: that a child, even someone who was innately taught to go nowhere, would believe and leave.
Now, of course, there are no such teachers in kindergartens, and even children have phones, smart watches, but still, every summer, at the end of August, tens of millions of parents in Russia experience seasonal neurosis. It arises from the need to send children back to the kindergarten where they can be picked up and sent to school where they can be stolen again.
The first time I had such a neurosis when I enrolled a child in kindergarten: at first we did not plan to send him there, we thought that our daughter would calmly play on our site, behind a fence and under protection. a dog. But the boy wanted to join the team. How many times have I carefully explained to him that you cannot part with anyone, even acquaintances, so as not to frighten him. Even if the adults promise something. Even if they suddenly have something very useful that their daughter does not have. Even if they need help or are urgently asked to rescue a person. “An adult never turns to a child for any reason. If she’s talking to you, then her intentions are bad.” That’s how I taught. Her daughter nodded. Then we heard how the girl was lured by a stranger in the cafe in the background of the TV, and my daughter, who already read at three, wrote at four, confidently said: “If it were me, I would run into the bushes. she !”. I couldn’t foresee this…
Then, by the way, exactly a year ago we had an incident: our daughter played on the plot of the house. Everything is safe: the fence is two meters, two dogs, my husband and I are at home, the windows are open. Suddenly I hear my daughter talking to someone… I look through the trees and there, on the other side of the fence, there is a car on the road and a male voice beckons my daughter to come out and play with her. Her daughter is running from the window to the house, I look at her through the window and do not know what to do. Maybe it was guests with children who came to the neighbors and wanted to make friends? No, her daughter says there were two men in the car.
“Did I understand correctly that they wanted you to come out?”
The girl was completely frightened: “Yes …”
At the time, I was conducting a dismal journalistic investigation against a political strategist. You know, at first I thought he was the one who sent thugs for my kid. Brad, right? Imagine me going and looking for him! I called a nationwide public figure directly and asked who was currently driving my child and drove him out of the two-foot fence while running an alabai in it. Then I learned that the political strategist had a birthday just then. It’s unlikely that he would try to steal his child from a journalist seeking comment on a sensitive case. Yes, even on your birthday. But at that moment I was very angry. Then, of course, I thought for a long time about what to do. Calling the police? What will I say? I didn’t see people, I didn’t see cars. Maybe they really were guests of the neighbors? Maybe they would even be found and say that there were children with them who invited my daughter to play?
This event upset me for a long time. On the one hand, my daughter did everything right and immediately rushed home. On the other hand, if someone can drive so arrogantly and pull the kid out of their parents’ noses, what do they do around kindergartens, on their way to school?
I understand that this is empty talk. It’s like a psychotherapy session for me. Also for readers. Year after year, on the eve of September, tens of millions of parents organize such sessions for themselves. It is great in my heart to know that it is impossible to explain to a child the prohibition of parting with someone so that it is impossible to guarantee that they will not break up. There are many ways, possibly hundreds, of approaches, methods, and principles to teach a child to be safe. But none of them are guaranteed.
You have almost no influence over the likelihood that your child will be approached and taken away. All these words about how kids from dysfunctional families end up falling victim to maniacs, pedophiles and someone worse are just soothing mantras. It’s also part of psychotherapy. Predominantly well-off children are the victims. Let’s take the story of any maniac who kills children – almost without exception, his victims will turn out to be children of normal families.
Ordinary children are at risk. It has been said that you can’t always trust other people’s adults who call you somewhere. But even worse, you can’t guarantee it won’t go away. I’ve only heard of a child in my life who would go absolutely nowhere: He was a child with a serious mental disorder, with very specific problems in which the child could only act on instructions and orders. Mom put him on the street and told me to wait – even if a hurricane hits or the dogs run, this kid will stay up.
But it won’t work with the rest. And trouble strikes in the most unexpected place. If you teach a child that you can’t take anything from strangers on the street and that you shouldn’t go with them on any pretext, it won’t do a lot of kids any good, because excuse the repetition, forgive the word “nothing”. it means nothing to many children, because by the age of six or even seven, abstract thinking is poorly developed. What shall we do? List all possible baits? A kitten, a movie, a fishing rod, a bike repair, a cake recipe book, help for grandma, medicine for grandpa? The child will remember everything. And when they call him to set up the phone, he can safely go, because dad and mom didn’t say anything about the phone.
There are families who scare the children with fear so that they will scare them more. There are those who believe that the child has a weak soul and will do more harm than horror stories. Who is right, you can not guess. A life story: My friends frightened my daughter with the fact that if you go with strangers they will stick a stick up your ass and shove it out your throat. I even stopped contacting that family when I heard this, their training methods were hit hard. Then a man approached the girl and her friend, asked if they understood Wi-Fi and asked her to set up a router. This girl ran away and her girlfriend left. And he pulled his girlfriend out of someone else’s apartment, a gag in her mouth, the outfit of the Russian Guard. And the other girl was terrified, too. Therefore, when a neighbor looking for his dog approached him, he fainted. You can never guess.
Another example: It used to be fashionable to identify a code word with children. They just say that you can break up with strangers by code word – like this mom and dad posted. He told a girlfriend the password and when she got into a fight with her, her friend’s older brother kidnapped the girl and took her to the back of the garage, where the other kids kicked her and got her wet with paint.
The main danger lies in the fact that the child does not consider the resulting bait spontaneous, natural and therefore suspicious. If a person goes to a child remotely with a direct request to help set up Wi-Fi, this raises suspicion in the child: after all, the mother said that an adult would not approach the child with a request. But if at first a conversation starts and an adult immediately says that he is in a hurry to get to the airport, and then sees a book from the child about radio-controlled models, he seems to remember that his router is not working, and it will work. when the child understands, look for “literally five minutes” to come and set it up. “You just need to get on the plane very quickly.”
And the child will most likely go. After all, the person did not sit next to him with a ready request. And in general – rushing to the airport, when to kill? The child does not include such a situation in the scope of parental prohibitions – it is spontaneous as it is. And she thinks that she was not quarreled with her parents, because mom and dad could not foresee such an option. Otherwise, of course, they would be allowed to go. And they would be allowed to tell the password to my girlfriend, they just didn’t argue at home.
That’s the biggest problem: He believes he instantly better understands which exceptions to the rules should be made. Can’t go with anyone without exception? Well, mom and dad wouldn’t have known that someone had to fix the wi-fi by mistake! Didn’t they tell you not to go anywhere with anyone? But this is a neighbor, the option of the appearance of a neighbor was not discussed, they just did not think about it. The boy himself lost the dog, does he go and look for it? Who would have thought that only a man in rubber boots had caught her and taken her home, who would have printed out exactly the announcements about the find, but her printer broke down at home? The child always thinks he is smart and the parents did not pay much attention or have time to say it.
The most difficult thing is to explain to him that there are no exceptions to this rule. You can go with your mom, dad, grandma, grandpa… Maybe with your own aunt. If there are as many people as possible, the child arbitrarily expands this circle: adds other aunts, uncles, parents of girlfriends, thinking that the parents forgot to list them …
I’m teaching my daughter that even if something happens to her parents right away and they can’t, the police will come for her, there will be at least two police officers, they will definitely have a private car and you can get in. only with the permission of the teacher or school principal. Everything! Nothing about exceptions! There is nothing about “nothing”! Mom, dad, and the police and always in a police car: The kidnappers can wear a uniform, but it’s unlikely they’ll steal a car for that too.
In general, it is enough for parents not to approach children in order to calmly allow their children to go to school. There was no one to approach, because everyone is sitting or living under surveillance. There is no other recipe in any country in the world.
Relying on the intelligence and hard work of the child means putting safety issues on him. Any child can be taken away, you just have to come up with an excuse that will seem like an exception to the rule. And it’s not grammar, you can’t learn exceptions. Children will go as long as there is someone to take them.
The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the editors’ position.