Why we can’t talk to children
A friend of mine recently talked to a child who was on a school trip. While she was chatting to the child the teacher in charge rushed up and told the child to stop talking to my friend as it was school policy not to talk to strangers. My friend wrote an excellent article about the experience; http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10878/.
The next week my mother-in-law gave my children necklaces she had bought on holiday which had their names on it. She said when she was buying the necklaces her friend had warned her against it because if they had their names around their necks then strangers would know their names.
Shortly after I was at a petting farm and park and my children were playing and I was sitting on my own on a bench. A little girl ran up to the bench and she had a big badge with Birthday Girl on it. My instinct was to say hello and ask her how old she was and was she having a nice birthday. I didn’t, mindful of the two incidents cited above. I was conscious that this would be construed as a suspicious act, not a friendly one. I do think it is so sad that adult’s relationships with children have been so poisoned that if we are a stranger to them we know that we cannot connect with them.