Safe in the Suburbs?

When we bought our first house together, it was a great big old farmhouse in a quiet hamlet with a shaded yard.  It was close to a general store, seasonal ice cream shop and park.  The location was great.  But the location was also the downside- it was on a busy road that people drove very quickly on.  There were also very few young families in the area.

Mark & I both recalled fondly our own childhoods when we grew up in developments surrounded by kids the same age to play with, safe roads to ride our bikes on, and friendly neighbors to visit while trick-or-treating and selling Girl Scout cookies.  We didn't want to live in the city, city living isn't for us.  We love the community we grew up in and wanted the same quality of life for our children.

After searching for a house for while we decided to build in a new development.  We are Yuppis, afterall!  We loved our house and our neighborhood from the day we moved in.  Kids were always playing in the street and running from house to house.  Every backyard had a playset to explore.  For the adults, there were cook-outs and front-yard conversations and an endless stream of lasagna and cookies when someone new moved in or had a baby.

Our kids were still too young to run off on their own down the street to play in their friend's back yard, but we fully expected it to happen eventually.  After all, the other parents were always looking out their windows and keeping an eye on their own children as well as yours.

We lived in a 1950's TV set... until last summer.

Over the summer there were a series of break-ins in a development just down the road.  A few weeks later there were more- in the development even closer to us.  Then in the fall, they hit a house just doors down from us.

Until that point we had gone to bed with our doors and windows wide open.  Not anymore.  Security signs started popping up in every lawn as unsettled residents started realizing that we weren't immune to crime.

And then this week something else happened.  While all the kids are off for spring break and happily playing outside again, a pair of girls was stalked by a man in his car.  It happened two days in a row.

The police were called, every resident was notified, and our security was shattered.  Yesterday I had a long talk with my kids about what to do if a stranger approaches them.  I tried to reassure them that most strangers mean them no harm, that most strangers are good people.  But there are bad people in the world.

At the end of the night my son said to me "Mommy, all this talk about strangers makes me sad."

Me too, buddy.  Me too.