• GreenTeaRedFlag [any]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Ah yes, the child should feel perfectly calm wandering around the race track unsupervised.

    • Catherine_Steward [she/her]
      ·
      2 years ago

      there is an important question in what counts as supervision. if there's someone who knows what area you're supposed to be in and that will expect you to report back to them by a certain time, that is a form of supervision. it is, in fact, all the supervision i had at many points throughout my childhood, whether it was at a ball game or a zoo or the neighborhood i lived in or whatever. in any of these situations, any random stranger could have grabbed me and walked off. however, there are several things which make this unlikely

      1. first of all, no one wants a random upset child in their custody, often not even the parents who are legally responsible for them. it takes a very specific kind of very knowledgeable criminal to kidnap random children and not get caught and also do anything with them that would make it "worth" kidnapping them

      2. more people = more chances at such a criminal walking by, yes, but also more risk involved in doing so. if you grab a random child from a crowd and try to walk, like, hundreds of meters out of the facility and back to your car or whatever, somebody's gonna think it's weird that the child you're carrying is shouting for help and saying they don't know this person

      3. because of point 2, anyone who is going out with the intention of kidnapping children is not going to be showing up to the race track or ball game or whatever. they're going to target people they know will be more isolated and more vulnerable ... like children they know, whose schedules they are familiar with

      in short, of course it happens and it's a tragedy. but it happens so seldomly that there really is no point worrying about it. this is america, you're probably more likely to be randomly shot to death by a stranger than to have your child kidnapped from a public place by one

      • GreenTeaRedFlag [any]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Zoos, ball games, and neighborhoods are all places designed with children and families in mind. The race track is not. My point is that a child would obviously become frightened when alone in this environment, and fear of being captured is just an expression of that. I'd also imagine you wanted to be in those places you mentioned, I don't think the other person wanted to be at the race tracks. So being dragged to an unwanted location and left to their own devices, they became terrified, which makes sense.

        • Catherine_Steward [she/her]
          ·
          2 years ago

          i dont see how any of this has anything to do with anything i've ever said in my life. i have never commented on the fears of children under such circumstances

          • GreenTeaRedFlag [any]
            ·
            2 years ago

            You responded to @garbage talking about their feelings of vulnerability at a race track as an unmatched child that they shouldn't have been scared of being taken, which I responded to point out a child wandering the tracks would feel uncomfortable no matter what. You then responded going on about how hard kidnapping a kid is. My overall point was that his feelings of being vulnerable to capture, whether fully grounded in reality or not, were just as expression of the fear a child would feel in that environment. Your response of "um, actually, dragging a kid to races and leaving them alone won't lead to them being kidnapped" is an absurd response. Sure maybe he wouldn't be kidnapped, but what if he ate something he found and got sick, or broke something, or wandered into an area he shouldn't have? Anything could have happened to him in an environment he should not have been in alone.

            • Catherine_Steward [she/her]
              ·
              2 years ago

              talking about their feelings of vulnerability at a race track as an unmatched child

              no, he talked about his feelings as an adult in hindsight about how an unwatched child could have been vulnerable to abductions. he did not at any point mention any feelings as a child, you invented that part.

    • TankieTanuki [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      Unironically yes. I don't see how it's any different than walking down a busy city street.