Treading the Line Between Safety and Suffocation

A Los Angeles mother, worried about safety in the schools, worried about the crowd at a convenience store two blocks from her house, worries now that her efforts to keep her son safe may be hurting him.

To avoid danger, she says she has been chauffeuring the boy across the basin to acceptable schools and to play dates with friends. His friends’ parents are exhausting themselves doing the same. But compared with her own childhood, her son’s seems somehow artificial, she says. “It’s more controlling and kids are more controlled. If Joey gets a whim to see Billy, he can’t do it for a month and a half.”

Likewise, worried parents across the country are increasingly controlling their children’s activities, regardless of the neighborhood they live in.

Lawrence Balter, professor of applied psychology at New York University, says that in Manhattan, parents of young teens give their kids accounts for car services to deliver and pick them up from school or parties.

In inner-city areas, some families “tend to confine themselves. They treat their property as a moat,” he says.

In Los Angeles, “children rarely walk,” says Century City psychologist Lilli Friedland. “The trend has extended beyond where it was. Parents are telling older kids not to be out late or in open places, even in people’s houses because of drive-bys.”

Like the rest of the public, parents can be fearful sometimes with good reason and sometimes out of proportion to the real possibilities of crime. Contrary to the impression often created by publicized reports, abduction, murder, gang violence and molestation remain relatively rare events.

In the extreme, “over-parented” children can miss out on developing skills of self-reliance or the ability to trust, psychologists say.

Ironically, too, some say “hyper-vigilant” parents who raise overcautious children may be inadvertently fostering the type of suspicion and isolation that contribute to the deterioration of the very community life that ensures children’s safety.

Striking a balance of reasonable caution isn’t easy.

Danger and safety are frequently subjective matters and parents have to live within their own comfort levels. One way to gauge real safety threats to children is to ask other parents about their practices and experiences. It is also important to keep your own child’s temperament in mind.

Nancy Samalin, director of New York’s Parent Guidance Workshops, says if a child is shy and fearful, parents can play down the fear element and emphasize the coping skills that all children need. For a child who is daring and brash, they might overplay safety warnings.

Cynthia Whitham, a Los Angeles parenting teacher, says that when her daughter was 4 years old, she was torn about letting her walk a block down her Echo Park street to a friend’s house. She wanted her to try her wings, but between the two houses was a crack house and a hill.

Whitham decided to call the other mother when the girl left. One would watch her daughter go half way to the crest of the hill, then the other mother would watch her the rest of the way.

Now, her daughter is 12. Whitham still worries when she’s at work when her daughter wants to take the dog for a walk or go to Burger King. “But it’s daylight. She walks on busy main streets or on back streets by friends and neighbors,” Whitham says.

Children need some freedom to reach the point of autonomy, she says.

“Our job is to raise our children as if the world were safe,” she says. “Because if not, we’re raising them to believe there are monsters at every corner.”

* Lynn Smith’s column appears on Sundays. Readers may write to her at the Los Angeles Times, Life & Style, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053. Please include a telephone number.