WFPP Guest Post: Talking to Strangers

This entry to the Womanist/Feminist Parenting Primer comes from Amber Strocel, who blogs about parenting, life with kids, and maternity leave at Strocel.com.

As the title implies, this post is about Amber’s struggle with first encouraging and then finding herself afraid of her daughter “talking to strangers”. She discusses her own socialization to both fear and avoid offending strangers, and neatly elucidates both how and why teaching “stranger danger” is not only ineffective but potentially dangerous.

Although she doesn’t explicitly relate her desire for “my daughter to feel confident, to be able to trust herself instead of being nice at all costs” to feminism, her reasonings and decisions are emphatically founded in womanist/feminist ideology. The patriarchy would have us — all of us, but especially women, children, and most especially girls — give up our own autonomy and healthy interdependence in favor of unfounded fear and a frightening disregard for our own feelings. Raising a child, then, to trust herself, and to trust those she feels comfortable with, is revolutionary.

Talking to Strangers

My 4-year-old Hannah is very friendly. At the park she strolls right up to people she’s never met and announces, “My name is Hannah!” She tells me, “I say my name and people want to be my friend.” It makes no difference to her if they’re children or adults, if they respond to her advances or even if they speak English. She will chatter away as long as someone occasionally smiles and nods.

Until about a year ago Hannah was too shy to approach strangers. She didn’t have the necessary social or verbal skills to pull off an introduction. I could see her watching kids play and I could tell she wanted to join in but didn’t know how. Sometimes I would help her, and sometimes she preferred to just observe. I really wanted for her to find a way to bridge the social gap, since she seemed to really want to.

When Hannah became confident enough to approach people on her own I was happy for her. Most people were happy to listen to my boisterous preschooler chatter away incessantly. And she really chattered, spewing forth all sorts of information in rapid fire fashion. Where she lives. How I let her eat dry cereal off the floor. The names of all her friends at school. That time she accidentally called 9-1-1 and I was mad. It occurs to me I might not always be portrayed in the most flattering light in these little expositions, on closer examination.

Listening to Hannah talk and talk and talk some part of my brain screamed Danger! After all, kids aren’t supposed to talk to strangers. Especially not adult strangers. I certainly wasn’t supposed to when I was a kid, anyway. When I was young we were warned about stranger danger and admonished not to accept rides or candy from people we didn’t know. As I watched my daughter chat people up on the playground or at the grocery store I wondered if I should let her do this.

The thing is I don’t believe admonitions about avoiding strangers are all that effective. Anyone who’s ever watched a newsmagazine has seen 7-year-olds get into some guy’s van to help him find a lost puppy. Their mothers swore up and down that their kids would know better, and yet they didn’t. I remember having a preconceived notion of what a ‘stranger’ looked like as a kid myself – in my mind a stranger looked sort of like the Hamburglar. I don’t think that most kids think that someone who seems nice can be a stranger.

Plus the whole message is really very contradictory. I talk to strangers all the time. My kids see me talk to strangers. At the grocery store or the library or sometimes even the sidewalk I will share words with people I’ve never seen before and will probably never see again. I even gave birth in front of people I didn’t know because my daughter was premature and there was a whole team on hand. I suspect that a lot of talk about stranger danger is confusing and pointless.

On the other hand I don’t want to send my daughter out into the world unequipped. The unfortunate truth is that not everyone has good intentions. While stranger abduction is rare, the statistics about sexual abuse are alarming. According to my local abuse prevention authority 35% of girls in grades 7-12 have experienced sexual abuse. I feel I need to arm my daughter in some way so that she’s not a sitting duck.

But how? I thought about my own childhood and what worked (or mostly didn’t) for me. Like most girls I was raised to be ‘nice’. I wasn’t supposed to talk to strangers, but I also wasn’t supposed to be rude to them under any circumstances. At no point were my own feelings or instincts considered. I have found myself sitting beside people who made me feel uncomfortable, responding as they engaged me in conversation. As much as I wanted to get up and move I didn’t, I ignored the voice in my head because it might have offended someone.

When Hannah talks to strangers she is using her own instincts. As a 4-year-old girl she naturally gravitates towards other children of around the same age. She also likes to talk to other parents, especially if they are playing with their own children. Out in public she talks to the people she sees me talking to – the cashier at the grocery store or the librarian. Although she doesn’t verbalize it, she has an idea of who she is comfortable with and who she isn’t.

In fact, Hannah is doing exactly what she should do. She is seeking out certain people. She is honing her social skills by interacting with them. She is learning who she can trust and who she can’t trust. And she studiously avoids people that she isn’t comfortable with. Since she is only 4 of course I am always nearby, in eyeshot and earshot, ready to assist her if she needs it. But so far she really hasn’t.

I want my daughter to feel confident, to be able to trust herself instead of being nice at all costs. I want her to learn how to seek out the help of others as required, in a way that makes her feel safe. I don’t want her to sit passively beside someone who makes her uncomfortable because she doesn’t trust her own intuition. And I want her to engage with others in positive and meaningful ways. I believe that allowing her to talk to strangers on her own terms is critical to that process. Not forcing her, not coercing her, not dictating that she hug someone she doesn’t want to hug. But also not intervening or preventing if there’s no immediate danger.

The world isn’t always a safe or welcoming place. For better or worse, though, our children will live in it. They need to know how to navigate it. And I have come to believe that talking to strangers is one of the best ways to learn.

Amber Strocel blogs about parenting, life with kids and maternity leave at Strocel.com. She is 33 years old and is still afraid to talk to strangers but thanks to her daughter she’s finally learning how.