As you know Damsel in Defense blog is pretty hung up on kid safety.

http://www.ksl.com/?sid=21904373&nid=148

Just wanted to give the link to the news article I mentioned in the protecting kids post.  So glad there were people watching this man who saw what he was doing.  We really all can make a difference by looking out for the kids around us.  Being a parent is tough, and it’s easier to point fingers at unruly kids than to help them.  But we just need to remember these kids are the future for all of us, they will grow up with our kids.

I used to be a lot more judgemental, I used to look at kids running by themselves in unsafe places and just think ‘how could you have more kids than you could protect, or afford?’.  But that wasn’t solving anything

Then I started keeping an eye out when I saw a small child alone in a crowded area.  I’ve had multiple experiences where I caught someone following them, and when they turned back and saw me, they left.  The child found the parent and the parent was none the wiser about what could have happened.

And parents can be defensive, I know this well from being a lifeguard.  I would walk through the infant area, picking up kids who were facedown in the pool, drowning, because they’d been left in their lifejacket.  What parents weren’t realizing was that the lifejacket, once wet, makes it hard for an infant to regain their footing, and can actually hold them face down.  I would wade through, picking one up after the other and setting them on their feet, and I would often be yelled at by parents.  ‘Get your hands off my baby!’.  Sometimes they apologized when they realized I’d saved their baby’s life, sometimes not.  But it got me used to the idea of no gratitude.

I get the same sometimes when helping a kid find their parent.  I never touch the child, merely offer help and keep an eye out.  Even so, sometimes when they find the parent and they see me, I get nasty glares.  I’m guessing they just feel guilty.  Or embarrassed.  But I figured out years ago that it’s not for them, it’s for the kids.  If I have to make a few people mad to save a child’s life, I’ll do it.

Something to think about if you decide to put a child monitor on.  If it’s one of those that alerts you when a child is out of a certain radius, just remember that your own EYES should never let them out of that radius.  Remember how much can happen in the SECONDS you don’t watch.  It’s really too bad that society is like this now.  People used to watch out for children.  People used to be able to have confidence in taking their children out.  It just isn’t like that anymore.

I think like pepper spray, there are pros and cons to one of those monitors.

Cons:  If it encourages an attitude that it’s okay to let a kid run until he is out of range, then it is just a bad idea.  If it makes anyone feel more secure about their kids to the extent that they relax their watch, it’s a bad idea.  Also, It’d be easy to grab off a kid and throw away.

Pros: It’s insurance against the worst, to some degree.  I would prefer something with tracking so if someone picked up the kid and ran off, I could find them.  I also like the alarmed backpacks I saw at this website.  I’ve never owned one but I like that they are hard to pull off and are super loud and easy for the kid to equip.  THE MAIN PRO I think is that perhaps a child predator would be deterred by the monitor.  To me, they look obvious, maybe it would make a kid slightly less likely to be preyed on.

I really do believe that defense tools can be an asset, as long as the mindset of the person using them is right.