Often, when we lose something, we get something in return. What did we get in exchange for our innocence?

Often, when we lose something, we get something in return. What did we get in exchange for our innocence?

Eternal Vigilance, I guess...

Life is complicated, I tend to be skeptical of all things. Authority, peers, relgious principles, and even friends are not beyond suspicion. However, suspicion does not mean I must live in fear of everyone.

For me, the child sex abuse issues and stories have brought a mixed bag of things. The Pro is that I am very hard to be shocked or caught off guard by some one's indiscretions, my experiences keep any possibility open. The Con is that I have trust issues with everyone I know to a certain point.

I know what you mean Zombie.

When I was a child, neighbours would offer to give me a ride to school if they were going that way, friend's parents would think nothing about buying us sweets, and there was a group of six of us who would simply play round "someone's house" and our parents didn't always know where we were.

Today, these neighbours would doubtless be investigated by the police, and rumours would run amok.  All because someone did the neighbourly thing.

These child abuse stories have gotten the point where a friend of mine will now only allow her closest family to babysit her daughter.

We have sadly lost far more than just childhood innocence.  We have lost our faith in the neighbour (when I was a child this was almost as important as family), we have become paranoid and mistrustful of everyone, but worse than that, I know people who now question their own childhood interactions with adults, wondering if everything was an innocent as it seemed.

Our neighborhood was just like Andy's.  We would go from house to house and play.  Never thought anything about it.

I'm a bit older than most of you, and can remember a time when there were what we called block moms. My mother was one of them. If a child arrived home from school and found no one home they didn't need their own key- they just came to our place, sat at the table with us and did their homework. When their own parents made it home they knew to look at our house first. It was never something that was organize and set up - it just sort of happened. I had two friends within 5 blocks that I called their mother mom and they did the same with mine. All the ladies just mothered us all. LOL could be a tad annoying occasionally since the mom's all stuck together.

We have sadly lost far more than just childhood innocence.  We have lost our faith in the neighbour (when I was a child this was almost as important as family), we have become paranoid and mistrustful of everyone

Andy's right Schools have banned parents from taking photos / vids of their kids at school shows because of "child protection" - er, protecting them from what, exactly? Oh, yeah, that would be from their own Mums and Dads, and others looking at pics in a family photo album. A teacher was suspended for driving home a pupil who was stranded at the end of the school day when their ride never showed up, and for giving her number to another pupil suffering bereavement in case they wanted someone they could talk to about their grief. And a new law was planned in 2009 to ban parents from giving lifts to other kids unless they were first checked and registered with a new anti-paedophile database.

Vigilance is necessary. But so too is trust and common sense.

I'm a closeted gay parent, and I agree, there's developed a kind of assumed quarantine zone around any child that is not your own. It's completely different than when I was growing up. If we were at a friend's house playing and got into trouble, it was assumed by all our parents that whereever the problem arose, that parent dealt with it, then called the other parent(s) and you got it again when you got home. No, I don't mean corporal punishment (those were rare and only at home and only after multiple warnings; not saying it was the right way to handle it, but it was definitely not a moment-of-anger response either).

But today, the quarantine zone is essentially universal. If someone is visiting someone else's house, it's assumed each parent is to keep order with their own child(ren). There are only a few people where it's assumed OK for them to approach our kids for hugs, or to have them sit with them on the sofa to talk, or whatever. Back in the day, it was assumed when you went to your friend's house their mom would greet you with a hug, maybe a kiss on the cheek, and a reminder to be good.

Seems like a hyper-paranoia has taken hold among parents, at least at younger ages. Given the sexting and sex-with-teacher scandals in schools lately, there seems to be a disconnect in the way parents approach hyper-protection in grade school and it's like they turn off a switch when the kids transition to middle- and high-school. Very odd, I would think middle school at least would garner more scrutiny by parents given the inherent opportunities for issues as the kids mature.