Parenting can be tough. We want to keep our kids from making bad choices. We want to protect them from harm. Sometimes, finding the best way to do that is a struggle. Often, "logical consequences" are the best way to enforce a lesson. A kid breaks a toy, and he has to pay for it. A child refuses to eat his dinner, and he goes to bed hungry.
Sometimes, though "logical consequences" are not the way to go--particularly if a child's safety is at risk. For example, if you have told your child a hundred times not to play in the street, you wouldn't allow him or her to get struck by a car simply to allow a logical consequence. Obviously, the risk is too great.
For one family in Missouri, it seems as if they did not weigh the risks against the benefits of a "logical consequences" approach to teaching a 6-year-old about "Stranger Danger."
Four adults have been charged in the kidnapping of the boy, who was snatched from a bus stop, told he would never see his mommy again, and threatened with violence and sexual abuse. Among those charged are they boy's mother, grandmother, and aunt.
Investigators say the boy's aunt approached a male co-worker to stage an abduction of the little boy. She said the boy was "too nice" to strangers and that they needed to teach him a lesson about what could happen. Reports say that the boy's mother and grandmother agreed to the plan, and the four solidified the details.
Nathan Wynn Firoved, 23, was allegedly waiting for the boy when he got off the school bus Wednesday. He is accused of grabbing the child and putting him in a truck, telling him that he would never see his mother again. When the boy began to cry, Firoved allegedly showed him a gun and told him that he would shoot him if he didn't stop, and eventually, he bound his hands an feet and threw a jacket over his head. Reports say the abductor also threatened to nail the boy to a wall.
The boy was then blindfolded and led into a basement where is aunt allegedly pulled down his pants and told him he would be sold into sex slavery.
After a four-hour ordeal in which a blindfolded 6-year-old believed he had been abducted by strangers, he was led upstairs where a "stranger danger" lecture awaited him.
Although the family says they were just trying to protect the child from a real stranger abduction, the measures they allegedly took were abusive. The four adults involved have been charged with several crimes, including kidnapping, felonious restraint, and abuse or neglect of a child.
